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THE 

DICTIONARY 

OF 

NATIONAL    BIOGRAPHY 

1986-1990 


THE 

DICTIONARY 

OF 

NATIONAL    BIOGRAPHY 


1986-1990 


EDITED   BY 

C.    S.    NICHOLLS 
Consultant  Editor:  Sir  Keith  Thomas 


With  an  Index  covering  the  years  1901-1990 
in  one  alphabetical  series 


OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 
1996 


Oxford  University  Press,  Walton  Street,  Oxford  0x2  6m» 

Oxford  New  York 

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Taipei  Tokyo  Toronto 

and  associated  companies  in 

Berlin  Ibadan 

Oxford  is  a  trade  mark  of  Oxford  University  Press 


rm,22m 


Published  in  the  United  States 
by  Oxford  University  Press  Inc.,  New  York 

©  Oxford  University  Press  19% 

First  Published  19% 


All  rights  reserved.  No  part  of  this  publication  may  be  reproduced, 
stored  in  a  retrieval  system,  or  transmitted,  in  any  form  or  by  any  means, 

without  the  prior  permission  in  writing  of  Oxford  University  Press. 

Within  the  UK,  exceptions  are  allowed  in  respect  of  any  fair  dealing  for  the 

purpose  of  research  or  private  study,  or  criticism  or  review,  as  permitted 

under  the  Copyright,  Designs  and  Patents  Act,  1988,  or  in  the  case  of 

reprographic  reproduction  in  accordance  with  the  terms  of  the  licences 

issued  by  the  Copyright  Licensing  Agency.  Enquiries  concerning 

reproduction  outside  these  terms  and  in  other  countries  should  be 

sent  to  the  Rights  Department,  Oxford  University  Press, 

at  the  address  above 

British  Library  Cataloguing  in  Publication  Data 
Data  available 

Library  of  Congress  Cataloging  in  Publication  Data 

Dictionary  of  national  biography,  1986-1990: 

with  an  index  covering  the  years  1901-1990 

in  one  alphabetical  series/edited  by  C.  S.  Nicholls; 

consultant  editor.  Sir  Keith  Thomas. 

Includes  index. 

1.  Great  Britain — Biography — Dictionaries. 

I.  Nicholls,  C.  S.  (Christine  Stephanie). 

II.  Thomas,  Keith,  1933-    . 

DA28.D525    19%    920.041— dc20    95-47330 

ISBN  0-19-865212-7 

13579  10  8642 

Typeset  by  Interactive  Sciences,  Gloucester 

Printed  in  Great  Britain 

on  acid-free  paper  by 

Bookcraft  (Bath)  Ltd 

Midsomer  Norton,  Avon 


PREFATORY  NOTE 


THE  450  people  noticed  in  this,  the  final  volume  of  the  Dictionary  of  National  Biography, 
died  between  1  January  1986  and  31  December  1990.  Those  who  died  after  1  January 
199 1  will  be  included  in  the  New  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  which  will  appear  in  the 
early  years  of  next  century  and  will  be  a  thorough  revision  and  updating  of  the  DNB,  the  first 
volume  of  which  was  published  in  1885.  Suggestions  for  entrants  to  the  New  DNB  can  be 
sent  to  the  Oxford  University  Press. 

As  usual,  the  entrants  to  this  volume  are  drawn  from  every  walk  of  fife  and  they  range 
in  age  from  101  (Sir  Thomas  Sopwith)  to  42  (Jacqueline  du  Pre).  There  are  several 
centenarians,  but,  for  the  first  time,  there  are  also  a  few  cut  down  in  their  prime  by  AIDS. 
In  the  selection  of  entrants  we  took  note  of  the  advice  of  experts  in  various  fields  of 
endeavour,  who  gave  their  rime  freely  and  generously  to  us.  We  are  most  grateful  to  them, 
as  we  are  also  to  those  who  wrote  the  articles.  The  latter  had  to  follow  stria  guidelines  and 
obtain  facts  frequently  not  readily  available,  a  task  they  undertook  cheerfully. 

I  am  particularly  grateful  to  Sir  Keith  Thomas,  for  his  assistance  as  Consultant  Editor,  to 
the  Bodleian  Library,  without  whose  facilities  this  book  would  be  the  poorer,  and  to  Jane 
Bainbridge  and  Lorna  Lyons,  whose  efficiency  in  computing  and  administrative  matters 
enabled  the  compilation  of  this  book  to  progress  smoothly. 

As  I  leave  the  DXB  after  having  been  associated  with  the  last  five  volumes  over  a  period 
of  almost  twenty  years,  I  am  fully  conscious  of  the  debt  I  owe  to  the  thousands  of  people  who 
have  assisted  the  book  in  their  various  ways  and  to  the  general  public,  many  of  whom  wrote 
to  express  their  appreciation  of  the  new  volumes.  To  all  these  people  I  say  farewell  and  thank 
you. 

C  S.  Nicholls 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Ahm,  Povl: 

Arup,  Sir  Ove  Nyquist 
Allen,  Douglas.  See  Croham 
Allen,  Sir  Geoffrey: 

Davits,  Duncan  Sheppey 
Allen,  John  Anthony: 

Yonge,  Sir  (Charles)  Maurice 
Amis,  Sir  Kingsley  William: 

Braine,  John  Gerard 
Amory,  (Ian)  Mark  (Heathcoat): 

Boxer,  (Charles)  Mark  (Edward)  ('Marc') 
Anderson,  William  Francis  Desnaux: 

Collins,  Cecil  James  Henry 
Appleyard,  (Walter)  Philip: 

Ross,  (John)  Carl 
Archer  of  Sandwell,  Peter  Kingsley 

Archer,  Baron: 

Silkin,  Samuel  Charles,  Baron  Silkin  of 

Dulwich 
Ardwioc.  See  Beavan 
Askonas,  Brigitte  Alice: 

Humphrey,  John  Herbert 
Averill,  June  Rose: 

Madden,  Cecil  Charles 
Avery  Jones,  John  Francis: 

Wheatcroft,  George  Shorrock  Ashcombe 

Backhouse,  Janet  Moira: 

Pdcht,  Otto  Ernst 
Baker,  Anne  Pimlott: 

De  Manio,  Jack;  Eraser,  Sir  Hugh;  Glass, 

Ruth  Adele;  Halliwell,  (Robert  James) 

Leslie;  Hurst,  Margery;  Johnson,  Sir  Henry 

Cecil;  Mercer,  Joseph;  Moore,  Doris 

Elizabeth  Langley;  Revie,  Donald;  Russell, 

Dora  Winifred;  Russell,  (Muriel)  Audrey; 

Solomon;  Tinling,  Cuthbert  Colltngwood 

('Ted') 
Band,  George  Christopher: 

Odell,  Noel  Ewart 
Barber,  Giles  Gaudard: 

Shackleton,  Robert 
Bardsley,  Gillian  Anne: 

Issigonis,  Sir  Alexander  Arnold  Constantine 
Beavan,  John  Cowburn,  Baron  Ardwick: 

Hamilton,  Sir  (Charles)  Denis;  King,  Cecil 

Harmsworth 
Bellenger,  (Dominic)  Aidan: 

Butler,  Basil  Edward  ('Christopher') 
Benner,  Patrick: 

Marre,  Sir  Alan  Samuel 
Bennett,  Alan: 

Harty,  (Fredric)  Russell 
Bessborough,  Frederick  Edward  Neuflize 

Ponsonby,  Earl  of: 

Clements,  Sir  John  Selby 


Bew,  Paul  Anthony  Elliott: 

O'Neill,  Terence  Marne,  Baron  O'Neill  of 

the  Maine 
Bkk,  Ellis  Samuel: 

Sosnotp,  Eric  Charles 
Blake,  Robert  Norman  William  Blake,     - 

Baron: 

Gibbs,  Sir  Humphrey  Vicary;  Macmillan, 

(Maurice)  Harold,  first  Earl  of  Stockton 
Blunden,  Sir  George: 

Salomon,  Sir  Walter  Hans 
Boardman,  Sir  John: 

Ashmole,  Bernard 
Bone,  Quentin: 

Smith,  Sir  (James)  Erie 
Bonner,  (William)  Nigel: 

Matthews,  (Leonard)  Harrison 
Bowness,  Sir  Alan: 

Moore,  Henry  Spencer 
Bradesg,  Alison  Frances: 

Bulbring,  Edith 
Brand,  David  William  Robert  Brand,  Lord: 

Shaw,  Charles  James  Dalrymple,  Baron 

KUbrandon 
Briggs,  Asa  Briggs,  Baron: 

Fulton,  John  Scott,  Baron;  Hill,  Charles, 

Baron  Hill  of  Luton 
Brock,  Michael  George: 

Peterson,  Alexander  Duncan  Campbell 
Brown,  Jeremy  John  Galbraith: 

Keswick,  Sir  William  Johnston 
Brown,  (Lionel)  Neville: 

Phillips,  Owen  Hood 
Bruce  Lockhart,  John  Macgregor: 

Dunderdale,  Wilfred  Albert;  Easton,  Sir 

James  Alfred;  Young,  George  Kennedy 
Brudenell,  (John)  Michael: 

Clayton,  Sir  Stanley  George 
BuDDEN,  Kenneth  George: 

Ratcliffc,  John  Ashworth 
Bullard,  Sir  Julian  Leonard: 

Berthoud,  Sir  Eric  Alfred;  Johnston,  Sir 

Charles  Hepburn 
BuRCHFiELD,  Robert  William: 

Laski,  Esther  Pearl  ('Marghanita') 
Burrows,  Eva: 

Bramwell-Booth,  Catherine 
Butler,  David  Edgeworth: 

Chester,  Sir  (Daniel)  Norman 
Butler-Sloss,  Dame  (Ann)  Elizabeth 

(Oldfield),  Lord  Justice  Butler-Sloss: 

Lane,  Dame  Elizabeth  Kathleen 
Byron,  Reginald  Francis: 

Blacking,  John  Anthony  Randall 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Cadogan,  Sir  John  Ivan  George: 

Hey,  Donald  Holroyde 
Cain,  John  Clifford: 

Scupham,  John 
Cairncross,  Sir  Alexander  Kirkland: 
Burn,  Duncan  Lya/l;  Hall,  Robert  Lowe, 
Baron  Roberthall;  Jewkes,  John;  Sayers, 
Richard  Sidney 
Caldecote,  Robert  Andrew  Inskip,  Viscount: 

Atkins,  Sir  William  Sydney  Albert 
Caligari,  Peter  Douglas  Savaria: 

Mather,  Sir  Kenneth 
Campbell,  Peter  Nelson: 

Dickens,  Frank 
Carbon,  John  Joseph: 
Fricker,  Peter  Racine 
Cecu.,  Robert 

Bentinck,  Victor  Frederick  Willtam 
Cavendish-,  ninth  Duke  of  Portland 
Chadd,  David  Francis  Lanfear: 

Harrison,  Francis  Llewelyn  ('Frank') 
Chadwick,  (William)  Owen: 

Ramsey,  (Arthur)  Michael,  Baron  Ramsey 
of  Canterbury;  Rupp,  (Ernest)  Gordon 
Challens,  (Wallace)  John: 

Cook,  Sir  William  Richard  Joseph 
Chambers,  David  John: 

Hassall,  Joan 
Chapman,  (Francis)  Ian: 

Maclean,  Alistair  Stuart 
Charteris  of  Amisfield,  Martin  Michael 
Charles  Charteris,  Baron: 
Cooper,  Lady  Diana  Olivia  Winifred  Maud, 
first  Viscountess  Norwich 
Chibnall,  Marjorie  McCallum: 

Cheney,  Christopher  Robert 
Chisholm,  Michael  Donald  Inglis: 

Steers,  James  Alfred 
Clapp,  Susannah: 

Chatwin,  (Charles)  Bruce 
Clarke,  Sir  Cyril  Astley: 

Ford,  Edmund  Brisco 
Clarke,  Roger  Howard: 

Pochin,  Sir  Edward  Eric 
Clenshaw,  Charles: 

Wilkinson,  James  Hardy 
Clive,  Nigel  David: 

Philby,  Harold  Adrian  Russell  ('Kim') 
Collier,  Leslie  Harold: 

Miles,  Sir  (Arnold)  Ashley 
Comyn,  Sir  James: 

Pearce,  Edward  Holroyd,  Baron 
Cook,  Sir  Alan  Hugh: 
Jeffreys,  Sir  Harold 
Cooper,  Joseph  Elliott  Needham: 

Moore,  Gerald 
Cork,  Richard  Graham: 
Fuller,  Peter  Michael 
Cortazzi,  Sir  (Henry  Arthur)  Hugh: 
Pilcher,  Sir  John  Arthur 


Coupe,  George: 

Robinson,  Sir  David 
Cox,  Ernest  Gordon: 

Robertson,  John  Monteath 
Croham,  Douglas  Albert  Vivian  Allen, 

Baron: 

Part,  Sir  Antony  Alexander 
Cruickshank,  Alan  Hamilton: 

Sheehan,  Harold  Leeming 
Cullen,  Alexander  Lamb: 

Barlow,  Harold  Everard  Monteagle 

Dacie,  Sir  John  Vivian: 

Macfarlane,  (Robert)  Gwyn 
Dainton,  Frederick  Sydney  Dainton,  Baron: 
Morris,  Charles  Richard,  Baron  Morris  of 
Grasmere 
Dalton,  (Henry)  James  (Martin): 

Thalben-Ball,  Sir  George  Thomas 
Dal  yell,  Tarn: 

Stewart,  (Robert)  Michael  (Maitland), 
Baron  Stewart  of  Fulham 
Darracott,  Joseph  Corbould: 

Topolski,  Feliks 
Davidson,  Malcolm  Alexander: 

Moores,  Cecil 
Davies,  James  Atterbury: 

Williams,  (George)  Emlyn 
Davies,  (Thomas)  Gerald  (Reames): 

Jones,  (William)  Clifford 
Davis,  Veronica  Mary: 

Edwards,  James  Keith  O'Neill  (Jimmy') 
Day,  Peter: 

Anderson,  (John)  Stuart 
Deedes,  William  Francis  Deedes,  Baron: 

Cotton,  (Thomas)  Henry 
Denison,  (John)  Michael  (Terence 
Wellesley): 

By  am  Shaw,  Glencairn  Alexander  ('Glen') 
Denman,  Sir  (George)  Roy: 

O'Neill,  Sir  Con  Douglas  Walter 
Denselow,  Robin  Nicholas: 

MacColl,  Ewan 
Doll,  Sir  (William)  Richard  (Shaboe): 

Cochrane,  Archibald  Leman 
Drury,  Sir  (Victor  William)  Michael: 
Hunt,  John  Henderson,  Baron  Hunt  of 
Fawley 
Duggan,  John  Francis: 

Church,  Charles  James  Gregory 
DuNNETT,  James  Inglis: 

Goldfinger,  Erno 
Duthie,  Robert  Buchan: 
Piatt,  Sir  Harry 

Eames,  Robert  Henry  Alexander: 

Armstrong,  John  Ward 
Edwards,  David  Lawrence: 

Bliss,  Kathleen  Mary  Amelia 


viu 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Egremont,  (John)  Max  (Henry  Scawen) 

Wyndham,  Baron: 

Zulueta.  Sir  Philip  Francis  de 
Ellis,  Roger  Wykeham: 

Abell,  Sir  George  Edmond  Brackenbury 
Emslie,  George  Carlyle  Emslie,  Baron: 

Fraser  (Walter)  Ian  (Reid),  Baron  Fraser  of 

Tullybelton 
Entwistle,  Kenneth  Mercer: 

Bowden,  (Bertram)  Vivian,  Baron 
Erdman,  Edward  Louis: 

Samuel,  Harold,  Baron  Samuel  of  Wych 

Cross 

Farrar-Hockley,  Sir  Anthony  Heritage: 

Lea,  Str  George  Harris;  Stockwell,  Sir  Hugh 

Charles 
Fawkes,  Richard  Brian: 

Trtnder,  Thomas  Edward  ('Tommy') 
Fermor,  Patrick  Michael  Leigh: 

Durrell,  Lawrence  George 
Firth,  Rosemary: 

Leach,  Sir  Edmund  Ronald 
Fleck,  Adam: 

Cuthbertson,  Sir  David  Paton 
Flowers,  Brian  Hilton  Flowers,  Baron: 

Merrison,  Sir  Alexander  Walter 
Flowers,  Mary  Frances  Flowers,  Lady: 

Fuchs,  (Emil  Julius)  Klaus 
Foot,  Michael  Mackintosh: 

Lee,  Janet  (Jennie'),  Baroness  Lee  of 

Asheridge 
Foot,  Michael  Richard  Daniell 

Wynne,  Greville  Maynard 
Ford,  Sir  Edward  William  Spencer: 

Lane-Fox,  Felicity,  Baroness 
FoRSTER,  Margaret: 

Du  Maurier,  Dame  Daphne 
Fortune.  Nigel  Cameron: 

Arnold,  Denis  Midgley 
Fox,  Sir  Paul  Leonard: 

Greene,  Sir  Hugh  Carleton;  Wheldon,  Sir 

Huw  Pyrs 
Freeman,  Sir  Ralph: 

Wex,  Bernard  Patrick 

Gammond,  Peter: 

Loss,  Joshua  Alexander  ('Joe') 
Gennard,  John: 

Keys,  William  Herbert 
Gentleman,  David  William: 

Bawden,  Edward 
Gere,  John  Arthur  Giles: 

Pouncey,  Philip  Michael  Rivers 
Gilles,  Herbert  Michael: 

Maegraith,  Brian  Gilmore 
Glauert,  Audrey  Marion: 

Fell,  Dame  Honor  Bridget 
Goldberg,  Sir  Abraham: 

Wayne,  Sir  Edward  Johnson 


Gombrich,  Richard  Francis: 

Burrow,  Thomas 
Goode,  Royston  Miles: 

Schmitthoff,  Clive  Macmtllan 
Goodhart,  Sir  William  Howard: 

Sargant,  Thomas;  Sieghart,  (Henry 

Laurence)  Paul  (Alexander) 
Gooding,  Melvyn  Graham: 

Scott,  William  George;  Trevelyan,  Julian 

Otto 
Goodison,  Sir  Nicholas  Proctor 

Wilkinson,  Sir  (Robert  Francis)  Martin 
Goodman,  Geoffrey  George: 

Cousins,  Frank 
Goude,  Andrew  Shaw: 

Shotton,  Frederick  William 
Gray,  Donald  Clifford: 

Jasper,  Ronald  Claud  Dudley 
Gray  (Denison),  Dulcie  Winifred  Catherine: 

Bennett,  (Nora  Noel)  Jill 
Gray,  Sir  John  Archibald  Browne: 

Matthews,  Sir  Bryan  Harold  Cabot 
Grf.f.nhill.  Basil  Jack: 

Cayztr,  (Michael)  Anthony  (Rathborne); 

Runciman,  (Walter)  Leslie,  second  Viscount 

Runciman  ofDoxford 
Gregory,  Richard  Langton: 

Zangwill,  Oliver  Louis 
Grifttn,  Jasper: 

Meiggs,  Russell 
Grigg,  John  Edward  Poynder: 

Boothby,  Robert  John  Graham,  Baron; 

Cazalet-Keir,  Thelma;  Sylvester,  Albert 

James 

Hacker,  Peter  Michael  Stephan: 

Hayter,  Stanley  William 
Hackett,  Sir  John  Winthrop: 

Urquhart,  Robert  Elliott 
Halsey,  Albert  Henry: 

Wootton,  Barbara  Frances,  Baroness  Wootton 

of  Abinger 
Harcourt,  Geoffrey  Colin: 

Kahn,  Richard  Ferdinand,  Baron 
Harris,  Frank: 

Illtngworth,  Ronald  Stanley 
Harrison,  Martin  Lewis: 

Parkinson,  Norman 
Hart-Davis,  (Peter)  Duff: 

Chipperfield,  James  Seaton  Methuen 
Heap,  Robert  Brian: 

Parkes,  Sir  Alan  Sterling 
Heath,  Sir  Edward  Richard  George: 

Trend,  Burke  Frederick  St  John,  Baron 
Hill,  William  George: 

Robertson,  Alan 
HnxiER,  Bevis: 

Lancaster,  Sir  Osbert 
Htnde,  Robert  Aubrey: 

Tinbergen,  Nikolaas 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Hoffenberg,  Sir  Raymond: 

Bull,  Sir  Graham  MacGregor 
Hooson,  (Hugh)  Emlyn  Hooson,  Baron: 

Jones,  (Frederick)  Elwyn,  Baron  Elwyn- 

Jones 
Hope-Hawkins,  Richard  John: 

Terry-Thomas 
Hopkirk,  Peter: 

Teague-Jones,  Reginald  (Ronald  Sinclair) 
Howard,  Anthony  Michell: 

Fairlie,  Henry  Jones;  Paget,  Reginald 

Thomas  Guy  Des  Voeux,  Baron  Paget  of 

Northampton;  Watt,  (John)  David  (Henry) 
Howard,  Philip  Nicholas  Charles: 

Dahl,  Roald 
Howell,  David: 

Brockway,  (Archibald)  Tenner,  Baron; 

King,  Horace  Maybray,  Baron 

Maybray-King 
Howkins,  Alun  John: 

Evans,  George  Ewart 
Hughes,  David  John: 

Lehmann,  (Rudolph)  John  (Frederick) 
Hughes,  William  Hughes,  Baron: 

Ross,  William,  Baron  Ross  of  Marnock 
Hunt,  Sir  David  Wathen  Stather: 

Harding,  Allan  Francis  (John),  first  Baron 

Harding  of  Petherton;  Stephenson,  Sir 

William  Samuel 
Hunt,  Giles  Butler: 

Fleming,  (William)  Launcelot  (Scott) 
Hutton,  Patrick: 

Howarth,  Thomas  Edward  Brodie 

Iggo,  Ainsley: 

Robertson,  Sir  Alexander 
Inglis,  Kenneth  Stanley: 

Hancock,  Sir  (William)  Keith 
Ingrams,  Richard  Reid: 

Muggeridge,  (Thomas)  Malcolm 
Isaacs,  Jeremy  Israel: 

Moore,  (Charles)  Garrett  (Ponsonby), 

eleventh  Earl  of  Drogheda 

Jackson,  Archibald  Stewart: 

Bennett,  Donald  Clifford  Tyndall 
Jahoda,  Marie: 

Himmelweit,  Hildegard  Therese 
James,  Eric  Arthur: 

Lacey,  Janet 
James,  loan  MacKenzie: 

Adams,  (John)  Frank 
Jay,  Sir  Antony  Rupert: 

Cawston,  (Edwin)  Richard 
Jeger,  Lena  May  Jeger,  Baroness: 

Foot,  Hugh  Mackintosh,  Baron  Caradon 
Jellicoe,  George  Patrick  John  Rushworth 

Jellicoe,  second  Earl: 

Cave,  Sir  Richard  Guy 
Jenkin,  Ian  Evers  Tregarthen: 

Coldstream,  Sir  William  Menzies 


Jensen,  John  Peisley: 

Emett,  (Frederick)  Rowland 
Jolowicz,  John  Anthony: 

Hamson,  Charles  John  Joseph  (Jack') 
Judd,  Frank  Ashcroft  Judd,  Baron: 

Kirkley,  Sir  (Howard)  Leslie 

Keegan,  John  Desmond  Patrick: 

Hull,  Sir  Richard  Amyatt 
Keen,  Maurice  Hugh: 

Oakeshott,  Sir  Walter  Eraser 
Kelly,  John  Stephen: 

Ellmann,  Richard  David 
Kennet,  Wayland  Hilton  Young,  Baron: 

Grigson,  (Heather  Mabel)  Jane 
Kessel,  (William  Arthur)  Neil: 

Pond,  Sir  Desmond  Arthur 
Kirby,  Stephanie  Anne: 

Dreyer,  Rosalie 
Kline,  Paul: 

Vernon,  Philip  Ewart 
Knox,  (Ernest)  George: 

McKeown,  Thomas 

Lamb,  Richard  Anthony: 

Sandys,  (Edwin)  Duncan,  Baron  Duncan- 
Sandys 
Lancaster,  Terence  Roger: 

Jacobson,  Sydney,  Baron 
Langley,  Bernard  William: 

Rose,  Francis  Leslie 
Larminie,  (Ferdinand)  Geoffrey: 

Kent,  Sir  Percy  Edward  ('Peter') 
Layton,  Robert  Edward: 

Abraham,  Gerald  Ernest  Heal;  Rubbra, 

(Charles)  Edmund  (Duncan) 
Lea,  Kathleen  Marguerite: 

Gardner,  Dame  Helen  Louise 
Le  Bailly,  Sir  Louis  Edward  Stewart 

Holland: 

Mason,  Sir  Frank  Trowbridge 
Lees-Milne,  James: 

Sitwell,  Sir  Sacheverell 
Leslie,  Sir  Peter  Evelyn: 

Seebohm,  Frederic,  Baron 
Lewison,  Jeremy  Rodney  Pines: 

Ede,  Harold  Stanley  ('Jim') 
Llewellyn  Smith,  Christopher  Hubert: 

Bell,  John  Stewart 
Lloyd,  Brian  Beynon: 

Sinclair,  Hugh  Macdonald 
Lock,  Stephen  Penford: 

Fox,  Sir  Theodore  Fortescue 
Low,  Rachael: 

Carreras,  Sir  James  Enrique;  Grant,  Cary; 

Greenwood,  Joan  Mary  Waller;  Lockwood, 

Margaret  Mary;  Manvell,  (Arnold)  Roger; 

Quayle,  Sir  (John)  Anthony 
Lucas,  Percy  Belgrave: 

Balfour,  Harold  Harington,  first  Baron 

Balfour  of  Inchrye 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Lunt,  James  Doiran: 

Glubb,  Sir  John  Bagot 
Lyall,  Sutherland: 

Banham,  (Peter)  Reyner 
Lynden-Bell,  Donald. 

Woolley,  Sir  Richard  van  der  Riet 

McAvoy,  Douglas  Newton: 

Gould,  Sir  Ronald 
MacCarthy,  Fiona: 

Reilly,  Paul,  Baron 
McCarthy,  Kevin: 

Downie,  Allan  Watt 
McCarthy,  William  Edward  John 

McCarthy,  Baron: 

Fisher,  Alan  Wainwright 
McCrea,  Sir  William  Hunter: 

Woolley,  Sir  Richard  van  der  Riet 
McEwen,  John  Sebastian: 

Willing,  Victor  James  Arthur 
McKitterick,  David  John: 

Cockerel!,  Sydney  Morris 
Maclagan,  Michael: 

Laithwaite,  Sir  (John)  Gilbert 
Maclean  of  Dunconnel,  Sir  Fitzroy  Hew, 

Bart.: 

Stirling,  Sir  (Archibald)  David 
McLean,  (John  David)  Ruari  (McDowall 

Hardie): 

Wolpe,  Berthold  Ludwig 
McMullan,  Dennis: 

Cosslett,  (Vernon)  Ellis 
McNally,  Thomas: 

Stonehouse,  John  Thomson 
Macnaughton,  Sir  Malcolm  Campbell: 

Baird,  Sir  Dugald 
Malpas,  James  Spencer: 

McElwain,  Timothy  John 
Manktelow,  Michael  Richard  John: 

Moorman,  John  Richard  Humpidge 
Mansfield,  Eric  Harold: 

Wittrick,  William  Henry 
Marsh,  Arthur  Ivor: 

Boyd,  Sir  John  McFarlane 
Marsh,  Norman  Stayner: 

Gardiner,  Gerald  Austin,  Baron 
Marshall,  Sir  Colin  Marsh: 

Granville,  Sir  Keith 
Masefield,  Sir  Peter  Gordon: 

Lockspetser,  Sir  Ben;  Sopwith,  Sir  Thomas 
Octave  Murdoch 
Mason,  Philip: 

Moon,  Sir  (Edward)  Pender  el 
Matthews,  Robert  Charles  Oliver: 

Hicks,  Sir  John  Richard 
Matthew-Walker,  Robert: 

Ogdon,  John  Andrew  Howard 
Mellor,  (David)  Hugh: 

Braithwaite,  Richard  Bevan 
Mennell,  Stephen  John: 
Elias,  Norbert 


Menumn,  Yehudi  Menuhin,  Baron: 

Du  Pre,  Jacqueline  Mary 
Miall,  (Rowland)  Leonard: 

Goldie,  Grace  Murrell  Wyndham;  Vaughan- 

Thomas,  (Lewis  John)  Wynford 
Midwinter,  Eric  Clare: 

Edrich,  William  John  ('Bill');  Ramsey, 

(Mary)  Dorothea  (Whiting);    Wall,  Max 
Millar,  Fergus  Graham  Burtholme: 

Syme,  Sir  Ronald 
Mills,  Ivor  Henry: 

Mitchell,  Joseph  Stanley 
Minogue,  Kenneth  Robert: 

Oakeshott,  Michael  Joseph 
Mitchell,  Donald  Charles  Peter: 

Pears,  Sir  Peter  Neville  Luard 
MrrcHisoN,  (Nicholas)  Avrion: 

Medawar,  Sir  Peter  Brian 
Montgomery,  Doreen: 

Strong,  Patience 
Moore,  David  Moresby: 

Tuttn,  Thomas  Gaskell 
Moreton,  Sir  John  Oscar: 

Wates,  Sir  Ronald  Wallace 
Morgan,  Kenneth  Owen: 

Shinwell,  Emanuel,  Baron 
Morley,  Sheridan  Robert: 

Lillie,  Beatrice  Gladys,  Lady  Peel 
Morris,  Alfred: 

Peart,  (Thomas)  Frederick,  Baron 
Morris,  Malcolm  Simon: 

Andrews,  Eamonn 
Moser,  Sir  Claus  Adolf: 

Kentner,  Louis  Philip 
Mum,  Frank: 

Marshall,  (Charles)  Arthur  (Bertram) 
Ml  ir  Wood,  Sir  Alan  Marshall: 

Harding,  Sir  Harold  John  Boyer 
Murley,  Sir  Reginald  Sydney: 

Riches,  Sir  Eric  William;  Sellors,  Sir 

Thomas  Holmes 
Murray,  Oswyn: 

Momigliano,  Arnaldo  Dante 

Neville,  Jill: 

Gibbons,  Stella  Dorothea;  Smart,  Elizabeth 
Newsam,  Sir  Peter  Anthony: 

Clegg,  Sir  Alexander  Bradshaw 
NiCHOLLS,  Christine  Stephanie: 

Bergel,  Franz;  Elliot,  Sir  John;  Fisher,  Alan 

Wainwright;  Markham,  Beryl;  Stonehouse, 

John  Thomson;  Terry-Thomas; 

Winterbotham,  Frederick  William 
Nichols,  Roger  David  Edward: 

Berkeley,  Sir  Lennox  Randal  Francis 
Nicoll,  Douglas  Robertson: 

Jones,  Sir  Eric  Malcolm 
Nisbet,  Robin  George  Murdoch: 

Mynors,  Sir  Roger  Aubrey  Baskerville 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Onslow,  Richard  Arthur  Michael: 

Murless,  Sir  (Charles  Francis)  Noel; 

Richards,  Sir  Gordon 
Ormsby,  Francis  Arthur  ('Frank'): 

Hewitt,  John  Harold 
O'Sullivan,  Timothy  Francis: 

Thrower,  Percy  John 
Oxbury,  Harold  Frederick: 

Logan,  Sir  Douglas  William;  Swann, 

Michael  Meredith,  Baron 

Parker,  Peter  Robert  Nevill: 

Isherwood,  Christopher  William  Bradshaw 
PartrdXjE,  Frances  Catherine: 

Brenan,  (Edward  Fit z)  Gerald 
Pawson,  Anthony: 

Rous,  Sir  Stanley  Ford 
Peierls,  Sir  Rudolf  Ernst: 

Skyrme,  Tony  Hilton  Royle 
Perry,  Samuel  Victor: 

Chibnall,  Albert  Charles 
Peters,  George  Henry: 

Clark,  Colin  Grant 
Pickering,  Sir  Edward  Davies: 

Haley,  Sir  William  John 
Pigott,  (Christopher)  Donald: 

Clapham,  (Arthur)  Roy 
Ponsonby,  Robert  Noel: 

Pritchard,  Sir  John  Michael 
Powell,  (John)  Enoch: 

Utley,  Thomas  Edwin  ('Peter') 
Powers,  Alan  Adrian  Robelou: 

Fry,  (Edwin)  Maxwell 
Preston,  Reginald  Dawson: 

Manton,  Irene 
Price,  (William)  Geraint: 

Bishop,  Richard  Evelyn  Donohue 
Priestman,  Judith  Anne: 

Jameson,  Margaret  Ethel  (Storm'); 

Lehmann,  Rosamond  Nina 
Probert,  Henry  Austin: 

Dickson,  Sir  William  Forster 
Pronay,  Nicholas: 

Anstey,  Edgar  Harold  Macfarlane;  Wright, 

Basil  Charles 
Pugsley,  Sir  Alfred  Grenvile: 

Collar,  (Arthur)  Roderick 

Rafferty,  Anne  Marie: 

Cockayne,  Dame  Elizabeth 
Randle,  Sir  Philip  John: 

Young,  Sir  Frank  George 
Read,  Donald: 

Chancellor,  Sir  Christopher  John  Howard 
Rees-Mogg,  William  Rees-Mogg,  Baron: 

Young,  Stuart 
Reid,  Diana  Grantham: 

Baxter,  (Mary)  Kathleen 
Reiss,  Herbert  Erik: 

Steptoe,  Patrick  Christopher 


Renfrew  of  Kaimsthorn,  (Andrew)  Colin 

Renfrew,  Baron: 

Daniel,  Glyn  Edmund 
Renwick,  Sir  Robin  William: 

Soames,  (Arthur)  Christopher  (John),  Baron 
Richards,  Sir  James  Maude: 

Lubetkin,  Berthold  Romanovitch 
Richards,  Jeffrey  Michael: 

Harrison,  Sir  Reginald  Carey  ('Rex') 
Risk,  Sir  Thomas  Neilson: 

Fairbairn,  Sir  Robert  Duncan 
Ritchie,  (George)  Stephen: 

Irving,  Sir  Edmund  George 
Roberts,  (Richard)  Julian: 

Francis,  Sir  Frank  Chalton 
Robinson,  Derek: 

Plant,  Cyril  Thomas  Howe,  Baron 
Rodgers  of  Quarry  Bank,  William  Thomas 

Rodgers,  Baron: 

Gaitskell,  Anna  Deborah  ('Dora') 
Rogers,  John  Michael: 

Gray,  Basil 
Roll  of  Ipsden,  Eric  Roll,  Baron: 

Figgures,  Sir  Frank  Edward 
Rooke,  Sir  Denis  Eric: 

Jones,  Sir  Henry  Frank  Harding 
Rose,  Harold  Bertram: 

Paish,  Frank  Walter 
Rose,  Kenneth  Vivian 

Rothschild,  Sir  (Nathaniel  Mayer)  Victor, 

third  Baron 
Rosier,  Sir  Frederick  Ernest: 

Martin,  Sir  Harold  Brownlow  Morgan 
Roskill,  Eustace  Wentworth  Roskill,  Baron: 

Cross,  (Arthur)  Geoffrey  (Neale),  Baron 

Cross  of  Chelsea;  Stevenson,  Sir  (Aubrey) 
Melford  (Steed) 
Russell,  Donald  Andrew  Frank  Moore: 

Roberts,  Colin  Henderson 
Rycroft,  Charles  Frederick: 
Laing,  Ronald  David 

Saunders,  Dame  Cicely  Mary  Strode: 

Winner,  Dame  Albertine  Louisa 
Saville,  John: 

Silkin,  John  Ernest 
Scarfe,  Norman: 

Jennings,  Paul  Francis 
Scott,  Sir  David  Aubrey: 

James,  (John)  Morrice  (Cairns),  Baron 

Saint  Brides 
Scott,  Francis  Geoffrey  Riversdale  Winstone 

('Rivers'): 

Dennis,  Nigel  Forbes 
Seymour-Ure,  Colin  Knowlton: 

Hulton,  Sir  Edward  George  Warris 
Shearer,  Moira: 

Ashton,  Sir  Frederick  William  Mallandaine; 

Helpmann,  Sir  Robert  Murray 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Sherfield,  Roger  Mellor  Makins,  Baron: 

Caccia,  Harold  Anthony.  Baron;  Millar, 

Frederick  Robert  Hoyer,  first  Baron  lnchyra 
Sherrin,  Edward  George  ('Ned'): 

Baddeley,  Hermione  Youlanda  Ruby 

Clinton;  Gingold,  Hermione  Ferdinanda 
Shipley,  Stanley  Albert: 

Fan,  Thomas  George  ('Tommy');  Petersen, 

John  Charles  (Jack') 
Shone,  Richard  Noel: 

Moynihan,  (Herbert  George)  Rodrigo 
Simon,  Brian: 

Pedley,  Robin 
Sinclair-Stevenson,  Christopher  Terence: 

Hamilton,  Hamish 
Slack,  Paul  Alexander: 

Hunt,  Norman  Crowther,  Baron  Crowther- 

Hunt 
Slater,  Stephen: 

Van  Damrn,  Sheila 
Smith,  David  Burton: 

Willtams,  Raymond  Henry 
Smith,  Sir  David  Cecil: 

Harley,  John  Laker  (Jack') 
Snow,  Michael  Neville  Seward: 

Graham,  (William)  Sydney 
Solthby-Tailyour,  (Simon)  Ewen: 

Hasler,  Herbert  George  ('Blondie') 
Stall  worthy,  Jon  Howie: 

Reed,  Henry 
Stearn,  William  Thomas: 

Holltum,  (Richard)  Eric 
Stewartby,  Bernard  Harold  Ian  Halley 

Stewart,  Baron: 

Blunt,  Christopher  Evelyn 
Stduiat,  Gordon  Macmillan: 

Turnbull,  Sir  Alexander  Cuthbert 
Storr,  (Charles)  Anthony: 

Bowlby,  (Edward)  John  (Mostyn) 
Street,  Sarah  Caroline  Jane: 

Clarke,  Thomas  Ernest  Bennett;  Neagle, 

Dame  Anna;  Powell,  Michael  Latham; 

Pressburger,  Emeric 
Stroud,  Barn 

Grice,  (Herbert)  Paul 
Swallow,  Norman: 

Mitchell,  Dents  Holden 
Sykes,  Geoffrev  Robert: 

Croft,  (John)  Michael 
Sykes,  Sir  (Malcolm)  Keith: 

Macintosh,  Sir  Robert  Reynolds 

Taylor,  Arnold  Joseph: 

Myres,  (John)  Nowell  (Linton) 
Taylor,  Elizabeth  Julia  ('Lib'): 

Howard,  Trevor  Wallace 
Taylor,  Peter  Arthur  Storey: 

Cobbold,  Cameron  Fromanteel,  first  Baron 


Templeman,  Sydney  William  Templeman, 

Baron: 

Russell,  Charles  Ritchie,  Baron  Russell  of 

Killowen 
Tesler,  Brian: 

Thomas,  Howard 
Thwlwall,  Anthony  Philip: 

Kaldor,  Nicholas,  Baron 
Thompson,  Arthur  Frederick: 

Acland,  Sir  Richard  Thomas  Dyke;  Taylor, 

Alan  John  Percivale 
Thorogood,  Bernard  George: 

Slack.  Kenneth 
Thwaite,  Anthony  Simon: 

Nicholson,  Norman  Cornthwaite 
Todd,  Alexander  Robertus  Todd,  Baron: 

Bergel,  Franz 
Tomkins,  Oliver  Stratford: 

Mtlford,  (Theodore)  Richard 
Tomkins,  Stephen  Portal: 

Hutchinson,  Sir  Joseph  Burtt 
Took,  Barry: 

Murdoch,  Richard  Bernard;  Williams, 

Kenneth  Charles 
Tooley,  Sir  John: 

Goodall,  Sir  Reginald;  Turner,  Dame  Eva 
Trapp,  Joseph  Burney: 

De  Beer,  Esmond  Samuel 
Trelford,  Donald  Gilchrist: 

Hutton,  Sir  Leonard 
Trewtn,  Wendy  Elizabeth: 

Albery,  Sir  Donald  Rolleston 
Trickett,  (Mabel)  Rachel: 

Cecil,  Lord  (Edward  Christian)  David 

(Gascoyne-) 
Tyrrell,  David  Arthur  John: 

Andrewes,  Sir  Christopher  Howard 

Ullendorff,  Edward: 
Coke,  Gerald  Edward 

Vaeey,  Marina  Vaizey,  Lady: 

Spear,  (Augustus  John)  Rusktn 
Varah,  (Edward)  Chad: 

Morris,  (John)  Marcus  (Harston) 
Vernon,  (William)  Michael: 

Forbes,  Sir  Archibald  Finlayson 

Walbank,  Frank  William: 

Finley,  Sir  Moses  I. 
Walkden,  Paul 

Scott,  Sir  Peter  Markham 
Walker,  David  Maxwell: 

Smith,  Sir  Thomas  Broun 
Walker,  Richard  John  Boileau: 

Piper,  Sir  David  Towry 
Wallace,  Ian  Bryce: 

Hall,  Henry  Robert;  Semprini,  (Fernando 

Riccardo)  Alberto 
Walters,  (Stuart)  Max: 

Gilmour,  John  Scott  Lennox 


LIST  OF  CONTRIBUTORS 


Wardle,  (John)  Irving: 

Dexter,  John;  Olivier,  Laurence  Kerr,  Baron 
Warnock,  Sir  Geoffrey  James: 

Grice,  Paul;  Warner,  Reginald  Ernest 

('Rex') 
Warrack,  John  Hamilton: 

Goossens,  Leon  Jean;  Matthews,  Denis 

James;  Sorabji,  Kaikhosru  Shapurji 
Waugh,  Auberon  Alexander: 

Sykes,  Christopher  Hugh 
Webb,  Kaye: 

Streatfeild,  (Mary)  Noel 
Wells,  Alan  Arthur: 

Week,  Richard 
Wells,  John  Campbell: 

Cleverdon,  (Thomas)  Douglas  (James) 
Wenham,  Brian  George: 

Trethowan,  Sir  (James)  Ian  (Raley) 
Williams,  Sir  Robert  Evan  Owen: 

Wilson,  Sir  Graham  Selby 
Williams,  Val: 

McBean,  Angus  Rowland 
Willmott,  Phyllis  Mary: 

Aves,  Dame  Geraldine  Maitland 
Willocks,  James: 

Donald,  Ian 
Wilson,  John  Francis: 

Ferranti,  Basil  Reginald  Vincent  Ziani  de 
Winchester,  David  Henry: 

Basnett,  David,  Baron 


Windsor,  Alan  Ernest: 

Buhler,  Robert;  Middleditch,  Edward  Charles 
Winton,  John: 

Davis,  Sir  William  Wellclose;  Hopkins,  Sir 

Frank  Henry  Edward 
Wintour,  Charles  Vere: 

Hopkinson,  Sir  (Henry)  Thomas 
Wolff,  Otto  Herbert: 

Dudgeon,  (John)  Alastair 
Wollheim,  Richard  Arthur: 

Ayer,  Sir  Alfred  Jules 
Woodcock,  John  Charles: 

Allen,  Sir  George  Oswald  Browning 

('Gubby') 
Worlock,  Derek  John  Harford: 

Dwyer,  George  Patrick 
Wright,  (Arthur  Robert)  Donald: 

Hamilton,  Walter 
Wyatt  of  Weeford,  Woodrow  Lyle  Wyatt, 

Baron: 

Hastings,  Francis  John  Clarence  Westenra 

Plantagenet,  fifteenth  Earl  of  Huntingdon 

Young,  Alec  David: 
Owen,  (Paul)  Robert 

Ziegler,  Philip  Sandeman: 

Colville,  Sir  John  Rupert;  Windsor,  (Bessie) 
Wallis,  Duchess  of 


NOTE  TO  THE  READER 

An  asterisk  (*)  in  front  of  a  name  indicates  that  there  is  a  separate  entry  for 
this  person  in  the  DNB. 


DICTIONARY 

OF 

NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 

(TWENTIETH  CENTURY) 
PERSONS  WHO  DIED  1986-1990 


ABELL,  Sir  George  Edmond  Brackenbury 

(1904-1080),  private  secretary  to  the  viceroy  of 
India,  was  born  22  June  1904  in  Sanderstead, 
Surrey,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and 
two  daughters  of  George  Foster  Abell,  director 
of  Lloyds  Bank,  and  his  wife,  Jessie  Elizabeth 
Brackenbury.  His  brother,  (Sir)  Anthony  Abell, 
became  governor  of  Sarawak.  He  was  a  scholar 
and  senior  prefect  of  Marlborough  College,  and 
scholar  of  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  obtained  a  first  class  in  classical  honour 
moderations  (1925)  and  a  second  in  litcrae 
humamores  (1927).  A  triple  blue,  in  rugby, 
cricket,  and  hockey,  he  captained  the  Oxford 
rugby  XV  in  1926,  and  played  cricket  for 
Worcestershire. 

He  joined  the  Indian  Civil  Service  as  a  district 
officer  in  the  Punjab  in  1928,  becoming  deputy 
registrar  of  co-operative  societies  and  a  settle- 
ment officer.  He  enjoyed  the  work,  and  coped 
effectively  with  crises,  quelling  a  riot  in  Dera 
Ghazi  Khan  gaol  by  walking  into  the  middle  of 
it,  while  the  warders  were  taking  refuge  on  the 
roof.  In  1 94 1  the  governor  of  the  Punjab 
appointed  him  as  his  private  secretary,  and  in 
1943  he  was  promoted  deputy  secretary  to  the 
viceroy,  the  second  Marquess  of  *Linlithgow.  In 
1945  he  took  over  as  private  secretary  to  the 
viceroy,  by  then  Viscount  (later  first  Earl)  *YVav- 
ell,  and  he  continued  to  hold  this  post  under 
Louis  *Mountbatten  (later  first  Earl  Mountbat- 
ten  of  Burma)  until  the  end  of  the  Raj,  thereafter 
serving  as  Mountbatten's  secretary  when  he 
became  governor-general  of  India. 

His  role  in  government  during  the  critical 
years  leading  up  to  the  partition  and  transfer  of 
power  in  India  was  of  central  importance. 
Although  the  Hindus  regarded  his  Punjab  back- 
ground with  suspicion,  Wavell,  whom  he  liked 
and  admired,  used  him  to  coax  M.  K.  *Gandhi, 
describing  him  as  'diplomatic  and  persuasive'. 
He  wrote  the  first  draft  of  the  hand-over  scheme 
to  be  presented  to  the  new  Labour  government, 
and  was  on  the  small  committee  used  by  Wavell 
to  work  out  the  details  of  his  'breakdown  plan'. 


He  tended  to  moderate  Wavell's  tougher  tele- 
grams, but  respected  his  soldierly  directness. 
However,  he  came  to  feel  that  the  British  posi- 
tion in  India  was  untenable,  that  partition  was 
inevitable,  and  that  the  British  should  extricate 
themselves  quickly.  Although  less  comfortable 
with  Mountbatten's  personality,  he  therefore 
worked  happily  to  implement  his  policy.  He 
drafted  the  partition  plan  for  the  viceroy  with 
General  Hastings  (later  Baron)  *Ismay,  and 
helped  to  keep  him  from  some  of  the  mistakes 
inevitably  made  in  the  rush  to  meet  the  deadline. 
'The  Lord  needs  George  or  Ismay  to  steady 
him,'  commented  a  diarist  close  to  the  scene. 

On  his  return  to  England  in  1948  he  joined  the 
Bank  of  England  as  an  adviser,  serving  as  a 
director  from  1952  until  1964.  He  was  respons- 
ible for  all  matters  connected  with  staff,  and  for 
the  buildings.  He  developed  the  new  graduate 
entry,  organizing  a  career  structure  which  made 
proper  use  of  graduates'  talents.  He  also  ended 
the  old  division  between  men  and  women,  and 
integrated  them  into  one  staff.  He  had  directorial 
responsibility  for  three  major  new  Bank  build- 
ings, including  the  New  Change  office  block  at 
the  top  of  Cheapside. 

He  was  first  Civil  Service  commissioner  from 
1964  until  1967,  chairman  of  the  Rhodes  trustees 
from  1969  until  1974  (having  been  a  trustee  from 
1949),  chairman  of  the  governors  of  Marlbor- 
ough College  from  1974  until  1977,  and  presi- 
dent of  the  council  of  Reading  University 
between  1970  and  1974.  This  was  at  a  time  of 
rapidly  increasing  numbers  and  general  student 
restlessness.  That  Reading  did  not  suffer  the 
disruption  of  many  other  universities  had  much 
to  do  with  the  confidence  which  Abell  engen- 
dered in  dons  and  students.  They  respected  his 
mind  and  his  sense  of  humour  defused  many  a 
difficult  situation. 

He  enjoyed  the  outdoor  life,  shot  well,  and 
tied  his  own  flies.  He  remained  the  all-rounder 
throughout  his  life,  and  brought  his  common 
sense  and  his  clear  mind  to  a  wide  range  of 
problems.  He  retained  the  discretion  of  the  civil 


Abell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


servant,  and  his  response  to  biographers  and 
journalists  who  wanted  to  get  behind  the  scenes 
of  the  closing  years  of  the  Raj  was  that  he 
continued  to  regard  his  role  as  that  of  a  private 
secretary. 

He  was  appointed  OBE  (1043),  CIE  (1946), 
and  KCIE  (1947).  He  received  an  honorary 
LL  D  from  Aberdeen  University  in  1947,  and 
became  an  honorary  fellow  of  Corpus  Christi 
College  in  1971.  He  married  in  1928  Susan, 
daughter  of  Frank  Norman-Butler,  inspector  of 
schools,  and  they  were  close  companions 
throughout  the  rest  of  his  life.  They  had  two  sons 
and  a  daughter.  Abell  died  at  their  home  in 
Ramsbury,  Wiltshire,  1 1  January  1989. 

[Philip  Ziegler,  Mountbatten,  the  Official  Biography, 
1985;  Penderel  Moon  (ed.),  Wavell:  the  Viceroy's  Jour- 
wl,  !973;  private  information  from  relatives  and  from 
Sir  George  Blunden,  Sir  Harry  Pitt,  and  Judge  Chris- 
topher Beaumont;  personal  knowledge.]  Roger  Ellis 

ABRAHAM,  Gerald  Ernest  Heal  (1904- 1988), 
musical  scholar  and  leading  authority  on  Russian 
music,  was  born  9  March  1904  in  Newport,  Isle 
of  Wight,  the  only  child  of  Ernest  Abraham, 
manufacturer,  and  his  wife,  Dorothy  Mary  Heal, 
a  jeweller's  daughter.  In  spite  of  his  strong 
musical  interests,  he  planned  a  naval  career, 
attending  a  naval  crammer  in  Portsmouth.  Ill 
health  forced  him  to  abandon  this,  though  he 
retained  a  lifelong  interest  in  naval  history,  and 
after  studying  for  a  year  in  Cologne  he  published 
his  first  book  on  music,  a  study  of  Alexander 
Borodin  (1927),  an  autodidact  like  himself.  Apart 
from  some  early  piano  lessons,  he  was  self-taught 
but,  during  the  following  years,  he  contributed 
widely  to  musical  periodicals  and  also  published 
monographs  on  Nietzsche  (1933),  Tolstoy 
(1935),  and  Dostoevsky  (1936),  as  well  as  an 
introduction  to  contemporary  music,  This  Mod- 
ern Stuff  (1933),  renamed  This  Modern  Music  in 
later  reprints.  He  taught  himself  Russian  and 
published  two  collections  of  his  primarily  analyt- 
ical essays,  Studies  in  Russian  Music  (1935)  and 
On  Russian  Music  (1939).  In  collaboration  with 
M.  D.  Calvocoressi,  he  wrote  Masters  of  Russian 
Music  (1936).  In  1935  he  joined  the  BBC  as 
assistant  editor  of  the  Radio  Times  and  subse- 
quendy  served  as  deputy  editor  of  the  Listener 
(1939-42),  remaining  its  music  editor  until 
1962. 

During  World  War  II,  when  interest  in  Rus- 
sian music  was  at  fever  point,  he  published  Eight 
Soviet  Composers  (1943)  and  made  a  valuable 
behind-the-scenes  contribution  to  broadcasting 
as  director  of  gramophone  programmes  (1942-7), 
helping  to  lay  the  foundations  of  the  Third 
Programme  in  1946.  He  returned  to  the  BBC  in 
1962,  as  assistant  controller  of  music,  after  hav- 
ing spent  the  intervening  years  (1947-62)  as  the 
first  professor  of  music  at  Liverpool  University. 


He  spent  a  further  year  as  chief  music  critic  of 
the  Daily  Telegraph  (1967-8),  before  becoming 
the  Ernest  Bloch  professor  of  music  at  the 
University  of  California  at  Berkeley  (1968-9). 
His  lectures  there  were  subsequently  published 
under  the  title,  The  Tradition  of  Western  Music 

0974)- 

Although  the  public  tended  to  associate  him 
with  Slavonic  and  Romantic  music,  his  scholar- 
ship was  of  quite  unusual  breadth  and  depth. 
He  edited  symposia  on  Tchaikovsky  (1945), 
Schubert  (1946),  Sibelius  (1947),  Grieg  (1948), 
Schumann  (1952),  and  Handel  (1954).  He  set  in 
motion  The  History  of  Music  in  Sound  (gramo- 
phone records  and  handbooks)  and  the  New 
Oxford  History  of  Music.  The  latter  occupied  him 
for  the  best  part  of  three  decades;  he  edited  three 
of  its  ten  volumes  personally — the  third,  Ars 
Nova  and  the  Renaissance,  1300-1450,  in  collab- 
oration with  Dom  Anselm  Hughes  (i960),  the 
fourth,  The  Age  of  Humanism,  1540-1 630  (1968), 
and  the  eighth,  The  Age  of  Beethoven,  1700-1830 
(1982).  He  also  brought  out  his  magisterial, 
synoptic  overview  of  western  music,  The  Concise 
Oxford  History  of  Music  (1979).  He  was  closely 
involved  in  The  New  Grove  Dictionary  of  Music 
and  Musicians  (1980).  His  selfless  work  as  an 
editor  is  nowhere  better  exemplified  than  in  his 
completion  of  Calvocoressi 's  Master  Musicians 
study  of  Mussorgsky  (1946)  and  his  work  on 
seeing  Calvocoressi's  larger  study  through  the 
press  in  1955  (published  in  1956). 

Abraham  was  of  medium  height,  with  a  genial 
and  warm  personality.  His  writings  are  excep- 
tional in  the  field  of  musicology  for  not  only  their 
scholarship,  which  was  always  worn  lightly,  but 
also  their  freshness,  originality,  and  readability. 
He  had  the  rare  ability  to  stimulate  the  interest 
and  engage  the  sympathies  of  the  less  informed 
as  well  as  the  specialist  reader,  and  commanded  a 
ready  wit  with  the  gift  for  a  felicitous  and 
memorable  phrase.  Although  Abraham  wrote 
widely  on  Russian  music  and  literature,  he  was 
also  the  author  of  a  penetrating  study  of  Chopin's 
Musical  Style  (1939),  which  was  a  model  of 
lucidity,  economy,  and  good  style.  Always  a 
Wagnerian,  Abraham  long  planned  a  book  on 
Wagner's  musical  language.  In  the  1940s  he  even 
made  a  conjectural  reconstruction  of  a  quartet 
movement  that  was  published  by  the  OUP.  He 
also  made  a  conjectural  completion  of  Schubert's 
'Unfinished'  Symphony  in  1971. 

He  held  honorary  doctorates  from  Durham, 
Liverpool,  Southampton,  and  Berkeley  in  Cali- 
fornia, was  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
(1972),  and  president  of  the  Royal  Musical  Asso- 
ciation (1969-74)-  He  was  appointed  CBE  in 
1974.  From  1973  to  1980  he  was  chairman  of  the 
British  Academy's  Early  English  Church  Music 
committee.  Some  of  his  finest  and  most  absorb- 
ing  writing   is   to   be   found   in   Slavonic  and 


a&R  1966-1990  Acland 


Mmac     Essays   and  Stadia   (1968).  Adand  returned  to  ] 

Whether  as  a  lecturer  or  broadcaster,  Abraham's  Forward  March,  a  loose 

audhaon  was  always  teaujH  n  d  by  a  keen  seme  of  trnird  hoi  hopeful,  and  the 

mmmm.TixptAAaacmofSlavmmuamdHaurm  mats   of  the    1941    Owmartrr   under  J.   B. 

Mmac:  Easy*  for  GermU  .ikraham,  edited  by  •Priestley,  to  found  the  Common  Wealth  party 

Malcolm   Hamrick  Broun  and   Round  John  in  July  1942.  Sheltered  by  the  electoral  truce 

Wiley  (1985X  paid  ham  fitting  and  tunety  trib-  between  the  major  parties,  Common  Wcakh  < 


by-elections,  and  by  1945  bad 
In  1036  he  married  (bobeJ)  Patsy,  daughter  of       four  MPs.  Its  appeal  was  essentially  in  the  more 


Abraham  had  an  abiding  love  of  the  limdon  and  on  Merseyside;  though  ks  1 

Fnghsh  rrnmrrys»de  and  the  music  of  Sir  Edward  ship  was  never  more  than  15^000,  the  party  was 

*EJgar,  and  from  the  early  1960s  hved  in  a  organized  with  panache  by  R.  W.  G.  Madcay  and 

converted  scfaod  m  Ebcrnoe  near  Perwotth,  until  the  evaugtlnm  Acland  proved  hwiiclf  a  master 

his  death  at  the  King  Edward  YD  Hospital,  of  electioneering  tactics.  For  funding  they  could 

Nlidhurst,  18  March  1988.  also  rdy  upon  sympathetic  businessmen  such  as 

[Hair  11  hi  H.  BUrnu  amd  tomld  J.  Wlcy,  Slnmmic  mmi  Alan  Good  and  Denk  Kendal. 

Western  Mmac:  Essays  for  Gerald  Abraham*  1985;  Sw  In   die  general  election  of  1945  Common 

Jack  Wesuwp  (td\  'A  Birthday  Greeuug  10  Gerald  Wcakh  Install  its  MPs  and  the  deposits  of  every 

Aaaahan*,  Mmac  ami  Letters,  w6L  hr,  1974;  peraol  candidate,  as  pohtus  reverted  10  the  fanuhar 

knowledge.}                                   Robut  Latton  two-party  pattern.  Nevertheless,  AdamTs  crea- 
tion had  hrlprd  to  prepare  the  way  for  Labour's 

ACLAND,  Sat  Richard  Thomas  Dyke,  fif-  victory,  and  in  this  he  was  the  crucial  dement, 

teenth  baronet  (1906-1090),  pohtirisn  and  pub-  Rarely  effcetiw.  in  the  House  of  risiuwu.  he 

hast  of  'good  causes ,  was  born  26  November  was  ; 

1906  at  Broaddyst,  Devon,  his  ancestral  home,  packed 

the  eldest  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  a  ganghnj 

daughter  of  Sir  Francis  Dyke  Adand,  fourteenth  always 

PC,   nuniiin    in  the  governments  of  R   R  he  was  seen  by  many  as  the  true  prophet  of  a 

•  Asqukb  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Oxford  and  belter  future.  As  an  earnest  of  has  personal 

QMspiAra  anti-war  daughter  of  Charles  James  over  the  f— ill's  vast  KBerton  estates  m  Devon 

Cropper,  of  EBergrcen,  Westmorland,  land-  to  the  National  Trust  in  1943  and  always  fived 

owner  and  grander  He  was  eduratrd  at  Rugby  frugally  if  generously.  But  labour's  first  attain- 

and  Banaol  College,  Oxford,  where  he  received  a  stent  of  fufl  power  meant  that  his  moment  of 

second  dass  in  philosophy,  politics,  andeconom-  historical  anpun  am  had  passed. 

its  in  1927.  His  career  rpitnmiird  a  family  Adand  returned  to  the  House  of  Commons  m 

tradition  of  rrfotmhi  public  service,  both  nation  1947  as  MP  for  Graiescnd  under  the  sponsor- 

afiy  and  in  the  west  country.  ship  of  Herbert  "Morrison  (later  Baron  Morrison 

Adand  stood  imwnirisfnRy  as  a  liberal  for  of  Lambeth)  and, 
Torquay  in  1929  and  Barnstaple  in  1931,  captur-  for  the  rest  of  his  fife.  Increasingly  a 
mg  the  latter  seat  in  1935.  Radical  by  tempera-  divorced  from  iiiunilii  un  politics,  he 
meat,  he  became  involved  m  the  efforts  of  the  his  scat  in  1955  in  protest  against  the  develop- 
Left  Book  Club  to  create  a  progressive  aKancc,  mem  of  the  H-bomb 
and  by  the  begmnmg  of  World  War  B  had  rufiuniw    More  and 

from  conventional,  secular  Uwiahuu  become  one-diniensionaL  A 

a  Christian  Sodahst  concern  for  the  since  1940,  Adand  served  as  a  church 

he  grew  up.  His  Penguin  best  seller  of  1940,  friendship  with  kft-uing  bishops  thereafter;  but 
Umter  Kmmrf,  rhqucatly  sununed  up  the  aspira-  his  attention  came  to  centre  upon  rduration,  a 
iofnaarywhosawthewarasanopprntunky  traditional  concern  of  both  lus  father  and  grand- 
gape  from  the  Jiiilmi 11  of  the  1920s  father  (Sir  A.  R  D.  •Adand).  Abandoning 

1930s  and  establish  a  more  rgahtaiian,  less  Wcuminwri,  he  was  senior  lecturer  at  St  Luke's 

society.  This  message  was  itpiaud  College  of  Fdutmiun.  Exeter,  from  1959  id 

in  The  Farmard  March  (1941)  and  What  It  MM  1974. 

Be  Like  (1942),  and  then  dabomted,  after  the  In  retirement  Adand  wrote  frcdy  on  cduca- 

pnnmmh  o(  Sw  Wi^jan:  ,a:er  naflUB    *Be.tr-  naunl  ~^r.tn..  |hc  r-v-^c^i  af  njcauu z  wwM 

idge,m//«w/rCcaBrDMe(i943)L  peace,  and,  in  his  fast  years,  the  disacultis  faring 

Having  served  briefly  as  a  heutenant  in  the  the  third  world.  Now  that  he  was  a  figure  of  the 

Royal  Devon  Yeomanry,  manafly  as  a  ranker,  past,  having  outlived  his  period  of 


Acland 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


during  World  War  II,  he  had  few  readers.  He 
continued  to  cherish  his  beloved  Devon  country- 
side and  protect  its  traditions,  including,  some- 
what surprisingly,  stag  hunting. 

Acland  succeeded  his  father  in  the  baronetcy 
in  1939,  having  married  in  1936  Anne  Stella, 
ARIBA,  architect  daughter  of  Robert  Green- 
wood Alford,  of  Cheyne  Walk,  London.  They 
had  four  sons,  the  youngest  of  whom  died  when 
five  days  old,  in  1945.  Acland  died  at  Broadclyst 
24  November  1090  and  was  succeeded  in  the 
baronetcy  by  his  eldest  son,  John  Dyke  Acland 
(born  1939). 

[Acland's  own  publications;  Paul  Addison,  The  Road  to 
1945,  1975;  Angus  Calder,  The  People's  War,  1969.] 

A.  F.  Thompson 

ADAMS,  (John)  Frank  (1930- 1989),  mathema- 
tician, was  born  5  November  1930  in  Woolwich, 
the  elder  son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of 
William  Frank  Adams,  civil  engineer,  and  his 
wife  Jean  Mary  Baines,  biologist,  both  of  Lon- 
don. He  was  educated  at  Bedford  School  and 
then  spent  1948-9  doing  his  national  service  in 
the  Royal  Engineers.  He  went  to  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  was  a  wrangler  in  part  ii 
(1951)  and  gained  special  credit  in  part  iii  (1952) 
of  the  mathematical  tripos.  He  continued  at 
Cambridge  as  a  research  student,  first  under 
A.  S.  *Besicovitch  and  then,  more  significantly, 
under  Shaun  Wylie.  His  Ph.D.  thesis  (1955)  was 
on  algebraic  topology,  which  remained  his  main 
research  interest  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Adams 
spent  the  year  1954  at  Oxford,  as  a  junior 
lecturer,  where  he  came  under  the  influence  of 
J.  H.  C.  *Whitehead,  then  the  leading  topologist 
in  the  country. 

Returning  to  Cambridge  in  1956  as  a  research 
fellow  at  Trinity  College,  Adams  developed  the 
spectral  sequence  which  bears  his  name,  linking 
the  cohomology  of  a  topological  space  to  its 
stable  homotopy  groups.  In  1957-8  he  was  a 
Commonwealth  fellow  at  the  University  of  Chi- 
cago, where  he  proved  a  famous  conjecture  about 
the  existence  of  H-structures  on  spheres,  using 
the  same  ideas.  On  his  return  from  America 
Adams  became  fellow,  lecturer,  and  director  of 
studies  at  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge.  There,  in 
1 96 1,  he  confirmed  his  already  high  international 
reputation  by  solving  another  famous  problem, 
concerning  vector  fields  on  spheres.  For  this  he 
invented  some  operations  in  K-theory,  which 
later  bore  his  name,  and  these  proved  to  be  of 
fundamental  importance. 

In  1962  Adams  left  Cambridge  for  Manchester 
University,  where  in  1964  he  became  Fielden 
professor  in  succession  to  M.  H.  A.  Newman, 
and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  at 
the  early  age  of  thirty-four.  At  Manchester  he 
took  much  further  the  powerful  methods  he  had 
originated  at  Cambridge  in  a  celebrated  series  of 


papers  'On  the  groups  J(X)',  which  opened  up  a 
new  era  in  homotopy  theory.  In  the  first  of  these 
he  made  a  bold  conjecture  about  the  relation 
between  the  classification  of  vector  bundles  by 
stable  isomorphism  and  their  classification  by 
stable  homotopy  equivalence  of  the  associated 
sphere-bundles.  Reformulated  in  various  ways 
this  Adams  conjecture  (later  a  theorem)  became 
one  of  the  key  results  in  homotopy  theory. 

By  1970  Adams  was  the  undisputed  leader  in 
his  field  and  his  reputation  was  such  that  he  was 
seen  as  the  obvious  person  to  succeed  Sir  Wil- 
liam *Hodge  as  Lowndean  professor  of  astro- 
nomy and  geometry  at  Cambridge.  He  was 
delighted  to  return  to  Trinity,  his  old  college, 
although  he  never  became  very  active  in  its 
affairs.  Among  Adams's  various  research  inter- 
ests in  this  later  phase  of  his  career  three  sub- 
jects predominated:  finite  H-spaces,  eq invariant 
homotopy  theory,  and  the  homotopy  proper- 
ties of  classifying  spaces  of  topological  groups. 
Although  he  published  important  papers  on 
these  and  other  subjects  throughout  this  period 
he  also  began  to  publish  more  expository  work, 
notably  his  lecture  notes  on  Stable  Homotopy  and 
Generalised  Homology  (1974)  and  his  monograph 
on  Infinite  Loop  Spaces  (1978),  based  on  the 
Hermann  Weyl  lectures  he  gave  at  Princeton. 
The  latter,  especially,  gives  a  good  idea  of  his 
magisterial  expository  style  and  particular  brand 
of  humour. 

Adams  was  an  awe-inspiring  teacher  who 
expected  a  great  deal  of  his  research  students  and 
whose  criticism  of  work  which  did  not  impress 
him  could  be  withering.  For  those  who  were 
stimulated  rather  than  intimidated  by  this  treat- 
ment, he  was  generous  with  his  help.  The 
competitive  instinct  in  Adams  was  highly  devel- 
oped, for  example  in  his  attitude  to  research. 
Priority  of  discovery  mattered  a  great  deal  to  him 
and  he  was  known  to  argue  such  questions  not 
just  as  to  the  day  but  as  to  the  time  of  day.  In  a 
subject  where  'show  and  tell'  is  customary  he  was 
extraordinarily  secretive  about  research  in  pro- 
gress. 

Although  Adams  enjoyed  excellent  physical 
health  he  suffered  a  serious  episode  of  depressive 
illness  in  1965  and  there  were  further  episodes  of 
depression  later.  To  what  extent  his  professional 
work  was  adversely  affected  by  the  nature  of  the 
treatments  he  received  to  help  control  the  condi- 
tion is  not  clear,  but  certainly  his  contributions  to 
research  in  later  years  were  not  as  innovative  as 
those  of  his  youth.  Moreover,  he  never  played 
the  prominent  role  in  the  academic  and  scientific 
world  to  which  his  professional  standing  would 
have  entitled  him.  Even  so,  his  influence  was 
great;  those  who  turned  to  him  for  an  opinion 
were  seldom  left  in  any  doubt  as  to  his  views. 

His  great  contributions  to  mathematics  were 
recognized  by  the  awards  of  the  Junior  Berwick 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Albery 


(1963)  and  Senior  Whitehead  (1974)  prizes  of  the 
London  Mathematical  Society  and  the  Sylvester 
medal  (1982)  of  the  Royal  Society-.  He  received  a 
Cambridge  Sc.D.  in  1982.  He  was  elected  a 
foreign  associate  of  the  National  Academy  of 
Sciences  of  Washington  (1985)  and  an  honorary 
member  of  the  Royal  Danish  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences (1988),  and  he  received  an  honorary  Sc.D. 
(1086)  from  the  University  of  Heidelberg.  His 
Collected  Works  were  published  in  1992. 

In  1953  Adams  married  Grace  Rhoda,  daugh- 
ter of  Charles  Benjamin  Cam ,  time  and  motion 
engineer.  Soon  after  the  marriage  she  became  a 
minister  in  the  Congregational  Church.  They 
had  a  son  and  three  daughters  (one  adopted). 
Family  life  was  extremely  important  to  Adams, 
although  he  preferred  to  keep  it  separate  from  his 
professional  life.  The  family  used  to  do  many 
things  together,  especially  fell-walking  in  the 
Lake  District.  Adams  acted  as  treasurer  of  the 
local  branch  of  the  Labour  party-  and  might  be 
described  as  an  intellectual  Fabian  in  outlook. 
Adams,  who  was  driving,  died  immediately  fol- 
lowing a  car  accident  at  night,  on  the  Ai  near 
Brampton,  7  January  1989. 

[I.  M.  James  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvi,  1990.]  I.  M.  James 

ALBERY,  Sir  Donald  Rolleston  (1914-1988), 
theatrical  manager,  was  born  19  June  1914  at  33 
Cumberland  Terrace,  London,  the  elder  son  and 
second  of  four  children  of  (Sir)  Bronson  James 
•Albery,  theatrical  manager,  and  his  wife  Una 
Gwynn,  daughter  of  Thomas  William  Rolleston, 
Irish  scholar  and  poet.  Educated  at  Alpine  Col- 
lege, Switzerland,  he  joined  the  family  firm  of 
Wyndham  &  Albery,  the  owners  and  managers  of 
three  London  theatres:  the  Criterion  in  Picca- 
dilly Circus,  and  Wyndham's  and  the  New  (after 
1972  the  Albery),  both  built  by  his  grandmother, 
the  actress  Mary  *Moore,  and  Sir  Charles 
*Wyndham,  her  partner  and  second  husband. 
His  first  position  of  importance,  as  general  man- 
ager of  the  Sadler's  Wells  Ballet  (1941-5),  was 
complicated  by  wartime  emergencies.  On  one 
occasion  he  arrived  in  Bath  to  find  that  the  trucks 
containing  scenery  and  costumes  were  immobi- 
lized in  a  siding  close  to  unexploded  bombs. 

On  first  nights  at  his  theatres  Donald  Albery, 
a  tall  lean  figure,  would  be  seen  walking  about 
the  auditorium  with  a  slight  limp.  He  was 
prematurely  bald,  with  a  long  narrow  face,  and  in 
later  years  his  resemblance  to  his  father  became 
more  marked.  He  inherited  the  family  business 
sense,  though  his  taste  in  plays  was  modern 
whereas  Sir  Bronson  was  known  for  his  classical 
productions.  In  1953  he  formed  his  own  com- 
pany, Donmar,  and  his  choice  of  dramatists 
included  Graham  Greene,  Tennessee  Williams, 
Edward  Albee,  Jean  Anouilh,  and  (Dame)  Iris 
Murdoch  (adapted  by  J.  B.  *Priestley).  Greene's 


The  Living  Room,  with  Dorothy  Turin,  was  his 
favourite  production,  and  I  am  a  Camera,  John 
van  Druten's  adaptation  from  Christopher  *Ish- 
erwood,  gave  him  'enormous  pleasure'. 

Although  he  ran  his  theatres  with  an  eye  to 
commercial  success  he  could  spring  surprises, 
and  on  occasions  was  prepared  to  take  risks.  He 
had  youthful  memories  of  going  to  Paris  with  his 
parents  to  see  the  Compagnie  des  Quinze,  which 
Bronson  admired  and  brought  to  London  know- 
ing that  their  appeal  would  be  limited.  On 
hearing  about  Samuel  Beckett's  Waiting  for 
Godot,  Albery  went  to  Paris  and  decided  to  put  it 
on  in  London.  He  hoped  to  cast  the  play  with 
star  names  for  the  tramps,  but  after  two  years  of 
failing  to  persuade  any  of  them — including  Sir 
Laurence  (later  Baron)  *01ivier  and  Sir  Ralph 
•Richardson — the  play  went  on  at  the  Arts 
Theatre  Club  directed  by  the  young  (Sir)  Peter 
Hall  and  without  stars  (1955).  Greatly  daring,  he 
transferred  it  to  the  Criterion  in  the  heart  of  the 
West  End,  where  it  survived  for  nearly  300 
performances  though  the  audiences  were  frankly 
puzzled.  Many  left  at  the  interval;  the  perform- 
ances were  disturbed  by  shouts  of  'Take  it  off!', 
'Rubbish!',  and  'It's  a  disgrace!'  The  run  was 
dogged  by  illness  in  the  cast  and  inadequate 
understudies.  In  these  unhappy  circumstances 
the  high  teas  provided  by  the  management 
between  the  Saturday  performances  were  greatly- 
appreciated. 

During  the  late  1950s  and  1960s  the  idiosyn- 
cratic productions  of  Joan  Littlewood  at  the 
Theatre  Royal,  Stratford  East,  appealed  to  Alb- 
en-.  Under  his  management  they  came  to  the 
West  End  and  some  went  to  New  York — another 
example  of  his  adventurous  spirit.  These 
included  A  Taste  of  Honey  and  Brendan  Behan's 
The  Hostage  (both  1959)  and  Fings  Ain't  What 
They  Used  TBe  (i960).  Out  of  gratitude  to  Joan 
Littlewood  he  presented  a  crystal  chandelier  to 
the  Theatre  Royal.  This  connection  brought  him 
his  greatest  success,  the  musical  Oliver! (i960)  by 
Lionel  Bart  (who  also  wrote  the  score  of  Fings 
Ain't).  Oliver!  had  been  turned  down  by  three 
managements  and  opened  so  disastrously  at 
Wimbledon  that  doubts  were  expressed  at  the 
wisdom  of  bringing  it  into  the  West  End,  where 
advance  bookings  (at  the  New)  amounted  to  just 
£145.  A  new  musical  director  had  to  be  found  at 
the  last  moment,  but  the  first  night  changed 
these  gloomy  expectations,  and  the  Sean  Kenny 
revolving  set  on  which  everything  in  Dickens's 
novel  happened  was  rapturously  received. 
Oliver!  ran  for  2,618  performances  and  has  since 
been  revived. 

In  i960,  against  strong  competition  from  Ber- 
nard (later  Baron)  Delfont,  Albery  added  the 
Piccadilly  to  the  Wyndham-Albery  empire. 
Thus  3,360  seats  were  offered  to  the  public  at 
every  performance  in  these  four  theatres.  At  one 


Albery 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


point,  when  it  looked  as  if  the  Criterion,  the 
oldest  of  them,  would  be  endangered  by  a  Picca- 
dilly Qrcus  development  scheme,  Albery  leaped 
eagerly  into  the  fray  and  fought  hard — enjoying 
the  battle — and  finally  won.  After  Oliver!  he 
produced  several  other  musicals:  in  1966,  a 
failure,  jforrocks,  which  lost  £70,000;  and  in  1968 
a  success,  Man  of  La  Mancha,  which  called  for 
extensive  structural  alterations  to  the  Piccadilly 
stage,  and  so,  by  special  permission  of  the  lord 
chamberlain,  the  safety  curtain  was  never  low- 
ered during  the  run.  Albery  was  the  first  manager 
to  investigate  the  tourist  trade  in  relation  to  the 
theatre.  This  pioneering  survey  proved  beyond 
doubt  that  without  overseas  visitors  the  theatres 
would  suffer  irreparably  (though  this  situation 
had  been  suspected  for  years). 

When  Sir  Bronson  Albery  died  in  1971 
Donald  Albery  took  control.  In  1977  he  became 
the  third  member  of  his  family  to  receive  a 
knighthood;  in  the  following  year  he  sold  the 
theatres  and  retired  to  Monte  Carlo.  Ian  Albery, 
his  son  by  his  first  wife,  carried  on  for  a  time. 
During  the  Albery  regime  their  theatres  were 
regarded  as  being  among  the  best  run  in  London, 
and  the  two  back-to-back  theatres,  Wyndham's 
in  Charing  Cross  Road  and  the  Albery  in  St 
Martin's  Lane,  housed  some  of  the  most  inter- 
esting productions  of  the  period.  From  1958  to 
1978  Albery  was  also  a  director  of  Anglia  Tele- 
vision. 

Albery  was  married  three  times.  In  1935  he 
married  Rubina  ('Ruby'),  daughter  of  Archibald 
Curie  Macgilchrist,  medical  officer  in  India;  she 
died  in  1956  as  a  result  of  injuries  incurred  in  a 
World  War  II  air  raid.  They  had  one  son.  In 
1946,  the  year  of  his  divorce  from  Ruby,  he 
married  (Cicely  Margaret)  Heather,  daughter  of 
Brigadier-General  Reginald  Harvey  Henderson 
Boys.  They  had  two  sons  and  one  daughter.  The 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1974  and  in  1978  he 
married  Nobuko,  daughter  of  Keiji  Uenishi, 
businessman,  and  former  wife  of  Professor  Ivan 
Morris.  Albery  died  in  Monte  Carlo  14  Sep- 
tember 1988. 

[Wendy  Trewin,  All  on  Stage,  Charles  Wyndham  and 
the  Alberys,  1980;  Peter  Bull,  /  Know  the  Face,  But..., 
1959;  family  papers;  personal  knowledge.] 

Wendy  Trewin 

ALLEN,  Sir  George  Oswald  Browning 
('Gubby')  (1902-1989),  cricketer  and  cricket 
administrator,  was  born  31  July  1902  in  Sydney, 
Australia,  the  younger  son  and  second  of  the 
three  children  of  (Sir)  Walter  Macarthur  Allen 
and  his  wife,  Marguerite  Julie  ('Pearl' ),  daughter 
of  Edward  Lamb,  of  Sydney,  minister  of  lands  in 
Queensland.  His  sister  married  Sir  William 
•Dickson,  marshal  of  the  Royal  Air  Force.  His 
brother  died  on  active  service  in  1940.  Although 
by    birth    a    third-generation    Australian — his 


father's  brother  had  played  cricket  for  Australia 
against  England  at  Sydney  in  1887 — Allen  was 
taken  to  England  at  the  age  of  six,  so  that  he 
should  be  educated  there.  In  the  event,  his 
parents  chose  to  settle  in  England,  his  father 
becoming  commandant-in-chief  of  the  Metro- 
politan Special  Constabulary,  in  which  post  he 
was  appointed  KBE  in  1926. 

It  was  not  long  before  'Gubby'  Allen,  as  he 
came  to  be  known,  was  resolutely  English.  After 
showing  early  promise  as  a  cricketer  at  Summer 
Fields  School,  Oxford,  he  had  three  years  in  the 
Eton  XI  ( 1 919-21)  before  winning  a  blue  at 
Cambridge  in  1922  and  1923.  After  two  years  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  he  left  without  a 
degree  and  became  a  stockbroker  in  the  City.  By 
1923  he  was  making  the  occasional  appearance 
for  Middlesex,  and  gaining  a  reputation  as  a 
genuinely  fast  bowler  and  no  mean  batsman.  Of 
no  more  than  medium  build,  Allen  achieved  his 
pace  through  timing,  thrust,  and  a  fine  follow- 
through.  He  made  the  most  of  an  elastic 
strength,  while  managing,  at  the  same  time,  to 
play  the  game  with  style.  Between  the  late  1920s 
and  the  mid- 1930s  there  was  no  English  fast 
bowler,  apart  from  Harold  Larwood,  capable  of 
more  dangerous  spells. 

Allen  was  essentially  an  amateur.  Even  when, 
in  1929,  he  took  all  ten  Lancashire  wickets  for  40 
runs  for  Middlesex  at  Lord's,  he  had  done  some 
stockbroking  in  the  City  first  and  arrived  on  the 
ground  too  late  to  open  the  bowling.  He  never 
played  first-class  cricket  regularly  enough  in 
England  to  score  1,000  runs  or  take  100  wickets 
in  a  season.  Not  surprisingly,  perhaps,  it  was  in 
Australia,  when  he  went  back  there  as  a  member 
of  the  MCC  sides  of  1932-3  and  1936-7  and  had 
plenty  of  bowling,  that  he  was  at  his  most 
consistent. 

On  the  first  of  these  tours  Allen's  refusal  to 
resort  to  'leg  theory'  distanced  him  from  his 
captain  Douglas  *Jardine.  Despite  that,  he  took 
twenty-one  wickets  in  the  five  test  matches.  Four 
years  later  he  took  another  seventeen  test  wickets 
at  the  same  time  as  enduring,  as  England's 
captain,  the  mortification  of  seeing  Australia 
recover  from  the  loss  of  the  first  two  test  matches 
so  effectively  that  they  won  the  last  three  and, 
with  them,  the  Ashes.  There  developed  on  the 
tour  of  1936-7  a  friendship  between  Allen  and 
his  opposite  number,  (Sir)  Donald  Bradman, 
which  was  to  last  for  over  fifty  years  and  have  a 
major  influence  within  the  corridors  of  cricketing 
power:  this,  although  it  was  Bradman  with  his 
prodigious  scoring  who  did  more  than  anyone  to 
turn  the  tables  on  England. 

In  the  seventeen  years  which  passed  between 
the  last  of  Allen's  twenty-five  test  matches,  at 
Melbourne  in  1937,  and  his  last  first-class  match, 
against  Cambridge  University  at  Fenner's  in 
1954,  he  played  very  little  first-class  cricket,  even 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Anderson 


for  Middlesex.  This  was  partly  because  of  World 
War  II,  during  which  he  served,  to  the  rank 
of  lieutenant-colonel,  in  military  intelligence 
(MI 1 5)  at  the  War  Office,  partly  because  of  the 
time  he  gave  to  the  City,  and  partly  through 
choice.  He  did,  however,  accept  an  invitation  to 
take  a  somewhat  experimental  MCC  side  to  the 
West  Indies  in  1947-8,  a  decision  which  he 
considered  afterwards  to  have  been  a  mistake.  He 
was  forty-four  by  then,  older  than  any  England 
captain  since  Wr.  G.  *Grace  in  1809,  and  he  tore 
the  first  of  many  hamstrings  on  the  outward 
voyage. 

Elected  to  the  MCC  committee  for  the  first 
time  in  1935,  at  what  was  then  an  unusually- 
young  age,  Allen  became  in  time  the  eminence 
grise.  As  a  cricket  administrator  of  dominance 
and  durability  he  ranks  with  the  seventh  Baron 
•Hawke  of  Towton  (1 860-1 938),  the  fourth 
Baron  *Harris  (1851-1932),  and  Sir  Pelham 
•Warner  (1873-1963).  For  half  a  century  there 
was  scarcely  an  issue  connected  with  the  game  in 
which  he  was  not  closely  involved.  He  was 
chairman  of  the  England  selectors  from  1955  to 
1 96 1,  president  of  the  MCC  in  1963-4,  treasurer 
of  the  MCC  from  1964  to  1976,  a  member  of  the 
Cricket  Council  from  its  formation  in  1968  until 
1982,  a  prime  mover  in  founding  the  national 
coaching  scheme,  and  co-author,  with  H.  S. 
•Altham,  of  the  MCC  Cricket  Coaching  Book 
(1952),  the  standard  work  of  its  kind. 

Allen's  other  main  sporting  interest  was  golf,  a 
game  to  which  he  applied  himself  diligently  and 
which  he  played  well  enough  to  have,  at  his  best, 
a  handicap  of  four.  His  own  account  of  a  good 
round,  stroke  by  stroke,  was  always  something  of 
a  ceremony.  As  a  source  of  cricketing  reference 
he  had  no  equal,  and  in  the  summers  after  his 
retirement  from  the  City  (he  was  a  member  of 
the  Stock  Exchange  from  1933  to  1972)  there  was 
never  much  doubt  where  to  find  him:  he  would 
be  in  his  customary  place  in  the  window  of  the 
committee  room  at  Lord's. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1962  and  knighted 
in  1986.  He  was  awarded  the  TD  (1945)  and  US 
Legion  of  Merit  (1046)  for  his  war  services.  Allen 
died  29  November  1989  at  his  home  overlooking 
the  Lord's  pavilion  in  St  John's  Wood,  London. 
He  never  allowed  himself  to  be  talked  into 
marriage,  though  he  always  enjoyed  feminine 
company. 

[E.  W.  Swanton,  Gubby  Allen,  Man  of  Cricket,  1985.] 

John  Woodcock 

ANDERSON,  (John)  Stuart  (1908-1990), 
chemist,  was  born  9  January  1908  in  Islington, 
the  only  son  and  younger  child  of  John  Ander- 
son, master  cabinet-maker,  and  his  wife,  Emma 
Sarah  Pitt.  His  parents,  both  widowed,  married 
about  1901-2.  From  his  father's  previous  mar- 
riage there  were  two  stepsisters  about  twenty 


years  older.  Family  circumstances  declined  cata- 
strophically  in  1916,  when  his  father  died.  Just 
before  that,  his  mother  went  to  work  in  a 
munitions  factory.  His  sister  left  school  early  and 
the  family  suffered  ten  years  of  acute  poverty. 
These  years,  during  which  he  was  solitary,  made 
Anderson  permanently  shy,  and  awkward  in 
relationships.  He  was  educated  at  Highbury 
County  School,  Acton  Technical  College,  and 
Imperial  College,  where  he  topped  the  first-class 
honours  list  in  1928  and  received  the  prize  in 
advanced  chemistry.  After  his  Ph.D.  in  193 1,  he 
spent  two  semesters  in  Heidelberg,  returning  to 
Imperial  College  (the  Royal  College  of  Science) 
in  1932  as  a  demonstrator. 

From  discussions  with  his  colleague  Harry 
Emeleus  about  how  inorganic  chemistry  should 
be  taught,  came  their  landmark  textbook  Modern 
Aspects  of  Inorganic  Chemistry  (1938).  Never- 
theless, believing  that  his  future  at  the  RCS  was 
blocked,  in  1937  Anderson  obtained  a  senior 
lectureship  at  the  University  of  Melbourne, 
where  his  leaning  towards  the  chemistry  of  the 
solid  state  increased,  and  he  became  especially 
interested  in  the  constitution  of  non-stoichio- 
metric  compounds. 

In  1946  the  Atomic  Energy  Research  Estab- 
lishment was  being  set  up  at  Harwell  and  'J.  S.', 
as  his  colleagues  always  knew  him,  was  invited  to 
join  the  chemistry  division  as  a  deputy  chief 
scientific  officer.  Among  other  work  he  was 
responsible  for  analysis  on  fallout  from  atomic 
tests.  Before  the  first  British  nuclear  test  on 
Montebello  Island  in  1952  Anderson  went  to 
Melbourne  to  arrange  for  analysis  of  the  air 
particles  that  would  result.  He  had  been  offered 
senior  positions  in  Britain,  but  deep  apprehen- 
sion about  the  danger  of  a  nuclear  war  led  him  to 
accept  a  chair  at  Melbourne  University  (1954-9). 
Although  Ph.D.  degrees  were  now  possible  in 
Australian  universities,  research  funds  and  stu- 
dents were  lacking  and  his  stay  in  Melbourne  was 
something  of  a  disappointment.  He  left  after  only- 
five  years.  He  had  become  FRS  in  1953. 

In  195 1  he  had  been  urged  to  accept  the 
directorship  of  the  National  Chemical  Labo- 
ratory in  England,  and  in  1959  he  received 
another  invitation,  which  eventually  he  accepted. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  frustrated  by  the  difference 
between  his  assessment  of  the  purpose  and  possi- 
bilities of  the  NCL  and  those  of  the  bureaucracy. 
Within  a  year  of  his  arrival  he  was  approached 
about  a  new  chair  of  inorganic  chemistry  at 
Oxford,  but  he  felt  committed  to  the  NCL. 
However,  two  years  later  the  invitation  was 
renewed  and  he  accepted,  arriving  at  Oxford  in 
October  1963.  This  was  the  time  of  the  first 
systematic  application  of  electron  microscopy  to 
solid-state  chemistry,  and  hence  to  understand- 
ing non-stoichiometry  at  the  atomic  level.  He 
retired  from  the  Oxford  chair  in  1975. 


Anderson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Aiming  to  continue  work  with  another  active 
solid-state  research  group  free  of  administrative 
chores,  he  joined  the  University  College  of 
Wales,  Aberystwyth.  He  renovated  a  cottage  in 
the  country  a  few  miles  inland  from  Aber- 
ystwyth, and  while  the  work  was  in  progress  he 
lived  alone  through  an  unusually  cold  and  miser- 
able winter  in  a  caravan  on  the  property.  Finally, 
in  1979,  the  year  he  received  an  honorary  D.Sc. 
from  Bath  University,  the  Andersons  returned 
once  again  to  Australia,  where  three  of  their  four 
children  (and  their  grandchildren)  lived.  They 
settled  in  Canberra.  Anderson's  continued  pleas- 
ure in  working  'at  the  bench',  even  as  a  senior 
academic,  amazed  everyone.  When  the  new 
'high-temperature'  superconducting  oxides  were 
discovered  in  1987  his  enthusiasm  (at  the  age  of 
seventy-nine)  ensured  that  over  a  short  period  he 
was  co-author  of  eight  publications  in  the  held. 

Anderson  was  of  medium  height  and  spare 
frame  with  a  face  which,  in  later  years,  took  on  a 
weathered  texture  from  life  outdoors.  He  was  an 
unusually  private  man:  he  seldom  relaxed,  even 
with  close  colleagues.  But  this  was  a  mask,  for  he 
loved  an  argument,  especially  on  scientific  mat- 
ters, about  which  he  was  passionate.  A  very 
'British'  chemist,  he  delighted  in  'string  and 
sealing-wax'  methods,  and  practical  work  in 
general,  especially  glass-blowing.  His  ability  to 
concentrate  deeply,  excluding  all  surrounding 
activities  and  people,  was  also  remarkable.  When 
a  question  was  put  to  him,  the  answer  was 
invariably  a  thoughtful  silence  preceding  a  well- 
phrased  reply.  His  main  contributions  to  science 
lay  in  exploiting  the  electron  microscope  to  study 
reaction  mechanisms  in  the  solid  state,  and  in  the 
influential  'Emeleus  and  Anderson'  textbook. 

In  1935  he  married  Joan  Habershon,  daughter 
of  Hugh  Habershon  Taylor,  of  Enfield,  Mid- 
dlesex. They  had  three  daughters  and  a  son. 
Anderson's  drive  decreased  only  when,  in  1989, 
he  contracted  throat  cancer.  For  the  last  two 
years  of  his  life  his  wife  was  confined  to  a  nursing 
home,  but  his  children  and  young  colleagues 
guarded  his  welfare.  His  phenomenal  memory, 
puckish  humour,  and  sharpness  of  intellect  per- 
sisted to  the  last  days;  he  died  25  December  1990 
in  Woden  Valley  Hospital,  Canberra. 

[B.  G.  Hyde  and  P.  Day  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxviii,  1992;  personal 
knowledge.]  P.  Day 

ANDREWES,  Sir  Christopher  Howard  (1896- 
1988),  virologist,  was  born  7  June  1896  in  Lon- 
don, the  elder  child  and  only  son  of  (Sir) 
Frederick  William  *Andrewes,  pathologist,  and 
his  wife  Mary  Phyllis,  daughter  of  John  Hamer, 
publisher.  He  was  educated  as  a  day-boy  at 
Highgate  School,  but  he  was  frequently  ill  and 
spent  many  weeks  in  bed  at  home,  where  he 
watched  and  recorded  the  wildlife  in  the  garden 


below.  He  was  an  unusually  able  and  enthusiastic 
schoolboy  naturalist  and  produced  remarkable 
diaries  recording  the  plants,  insects,  and  birds  of 
his  neighbourhood.  He  entered  St  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital  as  a  medical  student  in  191 5.  In 
19 1 6  he  obtained  an  open  scholarship,  and  other 
prizes  followed  later.  After  war  service  in  the 
Royal  Navy  in  the  winter  of  191 8-19  he  returned 
to  London  and  qualified  MB,  BS  in  1921,  with  a 
gold  medal.  He  became  MD  and  MRCP  in  1922 
and  FRCP  in  1935. 

He  worked  at  St  Bartholomew's  until  1923, 
and  then  spent  two  years  in  the  laboratories  and 
wards  of  the  Rockefeller  Institute,  New  York.  He 
returned  to  St  Bartholomew's  in  1925  and  in 
1927  joined  the  staff  of  the  Medical  Research 
Council.  Apart  from  brief  wartime  secondments 
he  worked  for  the  Council  at  the  National 
Institute  for  Medical  Research,  first  at  Hamp- 
stead  and  then  at  Mill  Hill.  He  rose  to  be  head  of 
the  division  of  bacteriology  in  1940  and  deputy 
director  in  1952.  He  retired  in  1961. 

He  was  not  interested  in  detailed  administra- 
tion, but  in  1946  he  promoted  the  idea  of  a 
research  station  to  work  on  common  colds  in 
human  volunteers.  He  persuaded  the  authorities 
to  set  up  the  Common  Cold  Research  Unit  at 
Salisbury,  Wiltshire,  and  he  was  in  charge  there 
until  he  retired.  He  also  wrote  in  1947  the 
original  memorandum  proposing  to  the  World 
Health  Organization  that  it  set  up  a  World 
Influenza  Centre  (WIC),  to  study  viruses  from 
around  the  world  collected  by  a  network  of 
national  laboratories.  The  original  WIC  was 
established  in  his  department  and  the  network 
continued  long  afterwards,  being  the  model  for 
WHO  reference  laboratories  and  networks  on 
other  subjects. 

At  first  Andrewes  was  interested  in  cancer 
viruses,  but  then  he  worked  with  a  biophysicist, 
W.  J.  Elford,  on  the  fundamental  properties  of 
virus  particles,  their  size,  density,  and  inter- 
actions with  antibodies.  In  the  1930s  he  lectured 
on  the  possibility  of  virus  vaccines  being  devel- 
oped. His  joint  paper  with  K.  G.  V.  Smith  and  P. 
Laidlaw  in  1933,  describing  the  transmission  of  a 
human  influenza  virus  to  ferrets,  was  a  landmark 
and  his  research  was  involved  with  the  study  of 
influenza  viruses  for  decades  thereafter.  The 
Common  Cold  Research  Unit  did  pioneering 
work  on  the  transmission  of  colds  and  in  1953 
reported  that  a  common  cold  virus  had  been 
grown  in  human  cells  cultured  in  a  test-tube. 

Out  of  Andrewes's  interest  in  natural  history 
in  general  grew  his  interest  in  the  natural  history 
of  viruses  and  in  virus  classification  and  tax- 
onomy. He  was  a  leader  in  getting  virus  tax- 
onomy established  on  a  sound  basis  and 
internationally  agreed  and  recognized.  The  envi- 
ronment of  free  but  focused  enquiry  and  individ- 
ual    initiative    at     the     Institute    suited     him 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Andrews 


admirably.  He  was  a  lively  person,  good  at  debate 
and  repartee;  a  big  man,  he  loved  to  walk,  to  a 
park  or  to  a  good  place  for  collecting  flies,  and  his 
red  face  and  wind-blown  white  hair  showed  it. 
He  could  be  a  tough  scientific  opponent,  but  he 
treated  the  laboratory  as  an  extension  of  his 
family  and  visited  most  members  daily,  stimulat- 
ing and  helping  them  in  their  experimental  work 
and,  at  times,  in  their  careers. 

He  was  a  member  of  many  scientific  commit- 
tees on  subjects  ranging  from  respiratory  disease 
and  influenza  vaccines  to  poliomyelitis,  myx- 
omatosis, foot-and-mouth  disease,  and  cancer. 
He  wrote  many  scientific  papers  and  a  number  of 
books,  including  the  classic  Viruses  of  Vertebrates 
(1964).  He  received  honorary  degrees  from  Aber- 
deen (1963)  and  Lund  (1968)  and  many  medals 
and  prizes  from  institutions  in  Britain  and 
abroad.  He  was  elected  FRS  (1939)  and  a  foreign 
member  of  the  US  National  Academy  of  Science 
(1964),  and  he  received  the  Robert  Koch  gold 
medal  from  West  Germany  in  1979.  He  was 
knighted  in  1961. 

In  1927  he  married  Kathleen  Helen  (died 
1984),  a  trained  physicist  and  daughter  of  Robert 
Bell  Lamb,  wool  merchant.  They  had  a  simple 
home  life  and  raised  three  sons.  The  eldest,  John, 
and  one  of  two  twins,  David,  became  highly 
regarded  general  practitioners,  while  the  other 
twin,  Michael,  engaged  in  research  in  electronics. 
Andrewes  died  31  December  1988  in  Michael's 
house  at  Redlynch,  near  Salisbury.  Until  the  end 
he  was  able  to  identify  by  its  botanical  or 
common  name  any  plant  which  was  brought  in 
from  the  garden. 

[D.  A.J.  Tyrrell  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  rxxvii,  199 1;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  D.  A.  J.  Tyrrell 

ANDREWS,  Eamonn  (1922-1987),  radio  and 
television  broadcaster,  was  born  19  December 
1922  at  11  Synge  Street,  Dublin,  Ireland,  the 
second  of  five  children  and  elder  son  of  William 
Andrews,  carpenter,  and  his  wife,  Margaret  Far- 
rell.  He  was  educated  at  a  Dublin  convent  and 
the  Synge  Street  Christian  Brothers  School, 
where  he  became  an  altar  boy.  In  spite  of  being 
tall  for  his  age  (he  was  later  over  six  feet  and 
fourteen  stones)  he  was  bullied  at  school  and  to 
overcome  this  he  started  taking  boxing  lessons. 
He  was  so  successful  that  he  became  the  all- 
Ireland  juvenile  middleweight  boxing  cham- 
pion. 

His  first  job  was  as  a  clerk  with  the  Hibernian 
Insurance  Company,  from  which  he  was  dis- 
missed when  he  was  discovered  doing  a  boxing 
commentary  for  Radio  Eireann.  After  many 
applications  he  was  finally  given  more  broad- 
casting work  for  Irish  radio.  In  1948  he  compered 
the  stage  show  Double  or  Nothing  from  the 
Theatre  Royal,  Dublin.  The  show  was  seen  by 


the  English  bandleader,  Joe  *Loss,  who  liked 
Andrews's  voice  and  personality  and  invited  him 
to  take  the  programme  on  tour  with  the  band  in 
England. 

In  1949,  when  Stewart  MacPherson  gave  up 
his  job  as  compere  on  a  BBC  radio  programme, 
Ignorance  Is  Bliss,  Andrews  wrote  to  the  BBC 
stating  his  experience  with  Irish  radio  and  asked 
to  be  considered  for  the  job,  which  he  got.  The 
programme  was  a  great  success  and  Andrews's 
distinctive  voice  became  known  to  his  English 
audience.  He  was  then  asked  to  present  the  live 
weekly  BBC  radio  programme,  Sports  Report. 
Although  he  was  badly  paid  for  this,  Andrews 
undertook  the  programme  in  order  to  consolidate 
his  position  with  the  BBC,  and  he  went  on  to 
present  many  successful  worldwide  boxing 
commentaries. 

In  195 1  a  chairman  was  needed  for  a  new  BBC 
television  panel  game  called  Whats  My  Line?  and 
two  people  were  considered  for  the  job — 
Andrews  and  Gilbert  'Harding.  As  it  happened, 
Harding  joined  the  game's  panel  and  Andrews 
became  its  chairman.  The  programme  was  such  a 
national  success  that  Andrews  gained  first-class 
status  in  television,  being  voted  the  top  television 
personality  of  the  year  for  four  years  running 
from  1956.  He  also  appeared  on  a  children's 
programme,  Crackerjaek. 

The  BBC  bought  a  new  American  television 
programme.  This  Is  Your  Life,  in  1955,  even 
though  there  was  some  doubt  about  its  intrusive 
nature,  which  was  not  in  the  BBC  style.  Andrews 
presented  the  programme,  which  became  an 
instant  success  and  lasted  until  1964,  when  for 
internal  BBC  reasons  it  was  dropped.  Greatly 
concerned,  he  accepted  the  chance  to  change 
channels  to  the  new  independent  television  sta- 
tion, ABC  TV.  In  1964  he  presented  a  late-night 
live  talk  programme,  featuring  five  guests  at  the 
same  time.  Thus  The  Eamonn  Andrews  Show,  live 
from  London,  became  the  first  television  pro- 
gramme to  broadcast  at  eleven  o'clock  at  night 
and  get  into  the  top  twenty  television  ratings. 

One  of  Andrews's  biggest  challenges  was  to 
bring  back  his  favourite  programme,  This  Is  Your 
Life,  on  Thames  Television  in  1969.  However,  it 
became  an  even  greater  success,  rising  to  the 
number  one  position  in  the  national  television 
ratings.  It  remained  in  the  top  ten  programme 
lists  and  was  watched  by  over  fourteen  million 
people  weekly.  Andrews  continued  to  present  it 
until  he  died.  The  current  affairs  programme, 
Today,  was  also  presented  by  Andrews  on  three 
nights  a  week,  which  meant  that  at  some  part  of 
the  year  he  was  on  television  for  four  nights 
every  week.  In  spite  of  this  schedule,  he  found 
time  to  write  for  Punch  magazine  and  was  a 
member  of  the  exclusive  Punch  lunch  club.  He 
was  also  (from  i960)  chairman  of  the  Irish 
independent    television    service,    Telefis.     He 


Andrews 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


became  one  of  the  highest  paid  entertainers  on 
British  television,  and  was  reputed  to  be  a 
millionaire  when  some  of  his  business  activities 
failed  towards  his  later  years. 

In  1964  he  became  a  papal  knight  of  St 
Gregory  (an  honour  given  to  him  personally  by 
the  pope),  and  in  1970  he  was  appointed  hon- 
orary CBE.  Even  at  the  height  of  his  success  he 
was  always  shy  and  reticent  with  strangers. 
Andrews,  who  never  lost  his  Irish  brogue,  had  an 
open  face,  with  brown  eyes,  a  broad  smile,  and  a 
large  chin.  When  he  was  at  the  Theatre  Royal, 
Dublin,  he  met  Grace  (who  was  always  known  by 
the  Gaelic  version  of  her  name,  Grainne),  daugh- 
ter of  Lorcan  Bourke,  a  Dublin  impresario.  They 
married  in  195 1  and  had  two  daughters  and  a 
son.  Andrews  died  from  heart  failure  in  Crom- 
well Road  Hospital,  London,  5  November  1987. 
His  memorial  service  at  Westminster  Cathedral 
attracted  over  three  thousand  people. 

[Eamonn  Andrews,  This  Is  My  Life,  1963;  Gus  Smith, 
Eamonn  Andrews:  his  Life,  1989;  personal  knowledge.] 

Malcolm  Morris 

ANSTEY,  Edgar  Harold  Macfarlane  (1907- 
1987),  documentary  film-maker,  was  born  in 
Watford  16  February  1907,  the  younger  child 
and  only  son  of  Percy  Edgar  Macfarlane  Anstey 
and  his  wife,  Kate  Clowes.  His  father  was  a  chef, 
distinguished  in  his  occupation.  He  was  able  to 
attend  Watford  Grammar  School  and  Birkbeck 
College,  London  University,  graduating  in  sci- 
ences. In  June  1926  he  was  appointed  junior 
scientific  assistant  at  the  Building  Research 
Establishment,  Department  of  Scientific  and 
Industrial  Research,  where  he  served  for  five 
years,  'eagerly  looking  for  something  more  crea- 
tive to  do',  developing  a  keen  interest  in  film,  and 
joining  the  London  Film  Society,  where  he  had 
an  opportunity  to  see  films  of  the  Soviet  and 
continental  avant-garde  directors.  In  193 1  he  left 
the  security  of  the  Civil  Service  to  join  the 
nascent  documentary  film  unit  at  the  Empire 
Marketing  Board  under  John  *Grierson. 

Anstey's  creative  career  fell  into  two  phases. 
Until  1949  he  followed  the  mercurial  path  of 
John  Grierson,  making  the  types  of  documenta- 
ries which  Grierson  was  currently  championing, 
and  moving  posts  in  accordance  with  Grierson's 
wishes.  Housing  Problems  (1935)  and  Enough  To 
Eat?  (1936),  both  made  jointly  with  (Sir)  Arthur 
*Elton,  were  landmarks  in  the  development  of 
the  documentary,  being  the  first  (and  effectively 
the  only)  Griersonian  documentaries  addressing 
social  issues  with  party  political  implications. 
They  employed  the  starkly  pedagogical,  unvisual 
style,  deliberately  devoid  of  aesthetically  pleasing 
features,  which  Grierson  argued  for  at  the  time. 
Following  Grierson's  interest  in  the  kind  of 
screen  journalism  developed  by  the  American 
March  of  Time  series,  designed  not  so  much  to 


report  but  to  editorialize  about  contemporary 
issues,  Anstey  became  March  of  Time's  London 
editor  and  then  went  to  the  USA  as  foreign 
editor  (1936—8).  March  of  Time  issues  touching 
on  British  concerns,  such  as  appeasement,  were 
banned  in  Britain,  much  to  the  regret  of  (Sir) 
Winston  *Churchill. 

Always  a  patriot  and  a  family  man  first,  Anstey 
returned  to  Britain  as  war  was  approaching, 
although  he  loved  America  and  was  set  fair  for  a 
career  there  offering  both  greater  scope  and 
better  financial  prospects.  He  was  turned  down 
for  military  service,  much  to  his  anger,  because 
he  was  more  useful  to  the  war  effort  as  a  film- 
maker. Between  1940  and  1945  he  directed, 
produced,  or  supervised  the  making  of  some 
seventy  films,  concentrating  on  instructional 
films,  the  most  unglamorous  but  most  useful 
type  of  film  during  the  war. 

After  the  war  something  went  wrong  with  the 
documentary  movement.  There  was  a  loss  of 
purpose,  creative  development,  and  young  tal- 
ent— Grierson  called  it  'the  dereliction'.  Some  of 
the  leading  figures — such  as  Harry  Watt  and 
Paul  *Rotha — tried  their  hands,  with  varying 
success,  at  feature  films  and  television;  others, 
such  as  Stuart  Legg  and  Basil  *Wright,  gradually 
gave  up  film-making  altogether,  and  Grierson 
himself  took  charge  of  a  feature-film  studio 
(Group  Three)  and  never  returned  to  documen- 
tary production.  Anstey  turned  to  writing  in 
1947,  publishing  a  book  on  The  Development  of 
Film  Techniques  in  Britain,  and  worked  as  film 
critic  for  the  Spectator  (1946-9),  but  unlike  the 
others  he  then  returned  to  production,  with  drive 
and  purpose  undimmed.  In  1949  he  became  films 
officer  for  the  British  Transport  Commission  and 
established  there  a  new  documentary  film  unit, 
British  Transport  Films,  which  he  headed  until 
his  retirement  in  1974. 

Thus  began  the  second  phase  of  Anstey's 
creative  career.  His  unit  succeeded  in  attracting 
young  talent,  such  as  that  of  John  Schlesinger, 
and  adopted  new  technologies  and  creative  ideas 
as  they  came  along.  In  addition  to  making  many 
instructional,  informational,  and  public  relations 
films  of  impeccable  technical  standards  as  well  as 
cost  efficiency,  it  produced  a  regular  flow  of 
documentaries,  gaining  some  of  the  highest 
awards  nationally  and  internationally,  including 
those  of  the  British  Film  Academy,  the  Venice 
Film  Festival,  and  the  Hollywood  Oscar.  Anstey 
showed  that  the  solution  to  the  'dereliction'  of 
the  documentary  was  to  give  the  audience  aes- 
thetic enjoyment  as  well  as  ideas,  and  that  those 
'arty'  and  'commercial'  techniques  which  make 
films  attractive  need  not  be  incompatible,  as 
Grierson  had  so  disastrously  argued,  with  the 
documentary  purpose.  Journey  into  Spring 
(1957),  Between  the  Tides  (1958),  Under  Night 
Streets  (1958),  Terminus  (1961),  and  Wild  Wings 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Armstrong 


(1965)  are  some  of  the  most  mature  and  flawless 
manifestations  of  the  British  documentary  film 
genre.  As  Anstey  later  put  it  with  characteristic 
simplicity:  'Without  art  there  is  no  effective 
communication,  anyway.' 

Anstey  was  also  an  outstanding  manager,  of 
people  as  well  as  organizations,  a  much  liked  and 
effective  committee  man,  lecturer,  and  public 
speaker.  He  served  as  chairman  of  the  British 
Film  Academy  (1956  and  1967),  president  of  the 
British  and  the  International  Scientific  Film 
Associations  (1961-3),  governor  of  the  British 
Film  Institute  (1965-75),  and  adjunct  professor 
at  Temple  University,  Philadelphia  (from  1982). 
He  was  appointed  OBE  in  1969,  but  it  pleased 
him  particularly  to  have  been  made  an  honorary 
member  of  the  Association  of  Cinematographic 
and  Television  Technicians  and  of  the  Retired 
Railway  Officers. 

In  appearance  he  was  the  image  of  the  tall, 
slim  Englishman,  with  a  small  moustache  and 
regular  features,  made  for  the  classic  Savile  Row 
suit;  in  manner  he  was  courteous,  rather  formal 
at  first,  but  with  great  warmth  and  charm.  His 
private  life  was  entirely  devoid  of  the  eccentric 
preferences,  tastes,  and  lifestyles  common  in  the 
film  world.  In  1949  he  married  (Marjorie) 
Daphne,  who  worked  with  Grierson  at  the 
National  Film  Board  of  Canada,  the  daughter  of 
Leslie  Dalrymple  Lilly,  of  the  Canadian  Bank  of 
Commerce  and  the  Lilly  Adjustment  Agency. 
They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Anstey  died 
suddenly  26  September  1987,  in  the  Royal  Free 
Hospital,  London.  He  had  been  suffering  from 
leukaemia,  which  sapped  his  physical  energies, 
but  his  intellectual  zest  and  vigour  remained 
unimpaired  to  the  last. 

[Elizabeth  Sussex,  The  Rise  and  Fall  of  the  British 
Documentary,  1975;  G.  Roy  Levin,  Documentary 
Explorations,  1971;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Nicholas  Pronay 

ARMSTRONG,  John  Ward  (191 5-1987),  arch- 
bishop of  Armagh  and  Anglican  primate  of  all 
Ireland,  was  born  in  Belfast  30  September  1915, 
the  eldest  of  four  sons  (there  were  no  daughters) 
of  John  Armstrong,  Belfast  corporation  official, 
and  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Ward.  While  attending 
Belfast  Royal  Academy  he  became  a  chorister  of 
St  Anne's  Cathedral,  Belfast,  and  developed  an 
interest  in  church  music,  which  was  to  be  a 
lifelong  passion.  At  an  early  age  he  became  an 
accomplished  pianist  and  organist  and  at  one 
time  gave  serious  consideration  to  a  career  as  a 
musician.  However,  largely  because  of  his  fam- 
ily's strong  church  involvement  (his  father  was 
organist  of  St  Simon's  parish  church  in  Belfast), 
he  decided  to  seek  ordination  in  the  Church  of 
Ireland.  He  went  to  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
where  he  won  the  Toplady,  pastoral  theology, 
Archbishop  King's  biblical  Greek,  and  Downes 


prizes.  He  obtained  first-class  honours  in 
Hebrew  (1936  and  1937)  and  a  first  class  in 
divinity  testimonium  (1938).  In  1945  he  became 
BD  and  in  1957  MA. 

He  was  ordained  deacon  for  the  diocese  of 
Dublin  and  Glendalough  in  1938  and  became  a 
priest  on  24  December  1939.  His  first  curacy  was 
in  the  Dublin  suburban  parish  of  Grangegorman, 
from  1938  to  1944.  He  was  appointed  honorary 
clerical  vicar  of  Christ  Church  Cathedral,  Dub- 
lin, in  1940  and  became  dean's  vicar  on  the  staff 
of  St  Patrick's  Cathedral,  Dublin,  in  1944.  In 

1950  he  was  elected  prebendary  of  Tassagard  on 
the  chapter  of  St  Patrick's.  He  was  appointed 
rector  of  Christ  Church,  Leeson  Park,  Dublin,  in 

195 1  and  in  1958  took  up  the  important  position 
of  dean  of  St  Patrick's  Cathedral.  He  encouraged 
good  music  in  all  his  churches,  arranging  the 
restoration  of  St  Patrick's  organ,  and  used  his 
fine  speaking  voice  to  good  effect  in  his  sermons. 
As  dean  and  ordinary  of  the  national  cathedral 
he  was  to  become  a  most  influential  and  pop- 
ular churchman  in  Dublin  and  throughout  the 
Republic  of  Ireland.  During  that  period  he  com- 
bined the  duties  of  the  deanery  with  that  of 
Wallace  lecturer  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin 
(1954-63),  and  lecturer  in  liturgy  at  the  Divinity 
Hostel,  which  at  that  period  was  the  centre  for 
training  Anglican  ordinands  in  Ireland. 

On  2  May  1968  he  was  elected  bishop  of 
Cashel,  Emly,  Waterford,  and  Lismore  and  was 
consecrated  bishop  in  his  own  cathedral  of  St 
Patrick  on  21  September  1968.  Following  the 
amalgamation  of  southern  dioceses  in  1977,  he 
became  bishop  also  of  Ossory,  Ferns,  and  Leigh- 
lin  from  29  April  1977.  On  the  retirement  of 
George  Otto  Sims,  Armstrong  was  elected  arch- 
bishop of  Armagh  and  primate  of  all  Ireland,  on 
25  February  1980.  He  was  enthroned  in  St 
Patrick's  Cathedral,  Armagh,  on  7  May  1980  and 
led  the  Church  of  Ireland  as  primate  until  his 
retirement,  due  to  ill  health,  on  1  February  1986. 
This  was  a  period  of  intense  violence  and  divi- 
sion in  Northern  Ireland  and  his  leadership  was 
often  tested  in  an  atmosphere  of  inseparable 
religious  and  political  allegiances.  He  challenged 
recalcitrant  elements  on  both  sides  of  the  con- 
flict, condemning  murder  and  attempting  to 
effect  reconciliation.  In  108 1  he  was  awarded  an 
honorary  DD  by  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  He 
was  a  trustee  of  the  National  Library  of  Ireland 
(1964-74). 

Although  such  people  were  almost  unknown 
among  Irish  Protestants  until  the  1960s,  he  was  a 
committed  ecumenist  throughout  his  ministry 
and  in  1980  acted  as  co-chairman,  with  the 
Roman  Catholic  primate,  Cardinal  Tomas 
O'Fiaich,  of  the  Ballymascanlan  inter-church 
talks.  He  was  a  member  of  the  British  Council  of 
Churches  from  1966  to  1980  and  in  November 
1979  became  chairman  of  the  Irish  Council  of 


Armstrong 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Churches,  to  which  he  gave  courageous  leader- 
ship during  years  when  the  churches  of  Northern 
Ireland  faced  immense  challenge  through  grow- 
ing sectarianism.  Within  the  Anglican  commun- 
ion Armstrong  was  an  elected  member  of  the 
Anglican  Consultative  Council  (i 971-81)  and 
attended  meetings  at  Limuru,  Kenya,  in  1971, 
Dublin  in  1973,  Trinidad  in  1976,  and  Canada  in 
1979.  He  was  a  good  administrator  and  in  his 
hands  meetings  were  effective  and  businesslike. 
He  was  essentially  an  ecumenical  pastor  who  felt 
grieved  by  the  divisions  of  the  Northern  Ireland 
community  and  based  his  sincere  love  for  Angli- 
canism on  an  abiding  affection  for  all  things 
liturgical. 

Armstrong,  whose  hobbies  were  carpentry  and 
bird-watching,  was  of  average  height  and  stature, 
with  irrepressible  good  humour  and  an  engaging 
smile.  In  later  years  he  had  a  slight  limp.  In  1941 
he  married  Doris  Winifred,  daughter  of  William 
James  Harrison,  chief  clerk  of  the  Dublin  circuit 
court.  They  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters,  the 
younger  of  whom  died  in  1950  at  the  age  of 
eighteen  months.  Typically,  during  the  last  six 
months  of  his  retirement,  Armstrong  was  in 
charge  of  the  little  parish  at  Skerries,  twenty 
miles  north  of  Dublin,  during  a  vacancy  in  the 
rectory.  He  died  at  his  home  in  Swords,  county 
Dublin,  21  July  1987,  and  was  buried  in  the 
grounds  of  his  beloved  St  Patrick's  Cathedral. 

[Records  at  the  Representative  Church  Body  library, 
Dublin;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  H.  A.  Eames 

ARNOLD,  Denis  Midgley  (1926-1986),  musi- 
cologist, was  born  15  December  1926  in  Shef- 
field, the  only  son  and  younger  child  of  Charles 
Arnold,  company  director,  and  his  wife,  Bertha 
Ball.  He  was  educated  at  High  Storrs  Grammar 
School  in  Sheffield,  and  Sheffield  University.  He 
graduated  BA  in  1947  and  B.Mus.  in  1948,  and 
received  an  MA  in  1950  for  a  dissertation  on 
Thomas  *Weelkes,  partly  written  during  service 
in  the  Royal  Air  Force. 

The  orientation  of  his  life's  work  as  a  musico- 
logist was  determined  by  the  award  in  1950  of  an 
Italian  government  scholarship  enabling  him  to 
go  to  Bologna  to  study  Italian  music  of  the  years 
around  1600.  In  1951  he  was  appointed  lecturer 
(reader,  i960)  in  music  in  the  department  of 
adult  education  at  the  Queen's  University,  Bel- 
fast; he  also  worked  for  the  music  department. 
His  experience  in  adult  education  confirmed 
another  of  Arnold's  conspicuous  qualities:  his 
powers  as  an  educator  and  communicator, 
addressing  widely  varying  audiences  in  plain 
language  and  with  engaging  enthusiasm.  This 
stance,  moreover,  informs  all  his  writings,  even 
the  most  specialized.  It  was  during  his  Belfast 
years  that  he  began  publishing  the  stream  of 
articles  in  learned  journals  that  continued  up  to 


his  death.  Through  them  he  quickly  made  a 
name  as  a  major  scholar  on  the  music,  mainly 
secular  vocal,  of  late  Renaissance  and  early 
baroque  Italy,  and  as  one  of  Britain's  leading 
musicologists,  a  reputation  reinforced  by  his 
many  editions  of  the  music  itself. 

In  1964  Arnold  moved  as  senior  lecturer  in 
music  to  the  University  of  Hull  at  about  the  time 
he  published  his  first  book,  the  'Master  Musi- 
cians' volume  on  Monteverdi (1963).  He  was  joint 
editor  of,  and  a  contributor  to,  the  Monteverdi 
Companion  (1968;  new  edition  as  The  New  Mon- 
teverdi Companion,  1985)  and,  perhaps  surpris- 
ingly, the  Beethoven  Companion  (1971).  It  was 
natural  that  he  should  welcome  the  chance  to 
communicate  with  a  potentially  larger  readership 
through  a  series  of  short  studies  of  composers 
with  whom  he  was  particularly  identified:  Mar- 
enzio  (1965),  Monteverdi  Madrigals  (1967),  Gio- 
vanni Gabrieli  (1974),  Monteverdi  Church  Music 
(1982),  and  Gesualdo  (1984),  as  well  as  Bach 
(1984). 

In  1969  Arnold  became  professor  of  music  at 
the  University  of  Nottingham  and  from  1975  to 
his  death  was  Heather  professor  of  music  at  the 
University  of  Oxford.  He  had  always  been  a  keen 
conductor,  and  he  threw  himself  into  perform- 
ance at  both  universities  with  renewed  zeal.  He 
increasingly  became  a  public  figure  on  a  wider 
scale  too.  For  many  years  he  toiled  as  editor  of, 
and  contributor  to,  The  New  Oxford  Companion 
to  Music  (1983);  he  was  president  of  the  Royal 
Musical  Association  (1978-83)  and  British  repre- 
sentative on  the  directorium  of  the  International 
Musicological  Society  (IMS)  from  1978  to  his 
death;  and  he  served  as  chairman  of  the  Oxford 
Playhouse  and  the  music  panel  of  Southern  Arts. 
Amid  this  activity  he  wrote  his  largest  study, 
Giovanni  Gabrieli  and  the  Music  of  the  Venetian 
High  Renaissance  (1979)  and,  with  his  wife,  The 
Oratorio  in  Venice  (1986),  the  fruit  of  an  increas- 
ing interest  in  his  later  years  in  Italian,  especially 
Venetian,  music  of  the  century  and  a  half  after 
the  period  on  which  he  concentrated  for  much  of 
his  career. 

Arnold  was  short  of  stature  but  in  every  other 
respect  a  'big'  man:  ebullient,  generous,  and 
gregarious,  as  well  as  informal  and  unpreten- 
tious; an  industrious  scholar  who  produced  emi- 
nently approachable  books  and  practical  editions 
that  helped  transform  the  general  view  of  music 
and  its  contexts  in  Italy  in  the  age  of  Gabrieli  and 
Monteverdi.  All  were  based  on  solid  research:  a 
public  figure  in  his  element  as  lecturer,  con- 
ductor, or  conference-goer,  he  was  perhaps  never 
happier  than  when  working  in  libraries  and 
archives,  especially  in  his  beloved  Venice. 

Arnold  was  appointed  CBE  in  1983.  In  1980 
the  honorary  degree  of  D.Mus.  was  conferred  on 
him  by  two  universities,  Sheffield  and  Queen's, 
Belfast.  He  was  an  honorary  fellow  of  the  Royal 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Arup 


Academy  of  Music  (1971)  and  Royal  College  of 
Music  (1981).  He  became  FBA  and  an  honorary 
foreign  member  of  the  Accademia  Nazionale  dei 
Lincei,  Rome  (both  1976),  and  in  1977  was 
awarded  the  Premio  Internazionale  Galileo  Gali- 
lei dei  Rotary  Italiani  at  Pisa  University  for 
services  to  the  study  of  Italian  music. 

In  1 95 1  Arnold  married  Elsie  Millicent,  a 
trained  musicologist,  daughter  of  John  William 
Dawrant,  schoolmaster,  of  Liverpool.  They  had 
two  sons.  Arnold  died  suddenly,  of  a  heart  attack, 
28  April  1986  in  Budapest  while  representing 
Britain  at  a  meeting  of  the  directorium  of  the 
IMS. 

[Nigel  Fortune  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  lxxiii,  1087;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Nigel  Fortune 

ARUP,  Sir  Ove  Nyquist  (1895- 1988),  civil  engi- 
neer, was  born  16  April  1895  in  Newcastle  upon 
Tyne,  the  elder  son  and  second  of  three  children 
of  (Jens  Simon)  Johannes  Arup  and  his  wife, 
Mathilde  Bolette  Nyquist.  Johannes  Arup  was 
Danish  veterinary  consul  in  Newcastle  upon 
Tyne  at  the  time  but  was  shortly  afterwards 
transferred  to  Hamburg,  Germany,  as  Danish 
consul  there.  Ove  Amp's  early  schooling  was  in 
Hamburg,  but  he  received  his  secondary  educa- 
tion at  Sore  Academy  in  Denmark  and  in  19 13 
went  to  the  University  of  Copenhagen,  where  he 
studied  mathematics  and  philosophy.  He  then 
moved  to  the  Polyteknisk  Laereanstalt  (later  the 
Technical  University  of  Denmark,  DTH)  to 
study  engineering.  He  graduated  in  1922  with  a 
first-class  honours  degree. 

He  joined,  as  an  engineer  in  their  Hamburg 
office,  the  Danish  international  firm  of  civil 
engineers,  Christiani  &  Nielsen.  In  1923  he 
transferred  to  their  London  office,  for  the  firm 
was  one  of  a  number  of  Danish-led  civil  engi- 
neering contractors  carrying  out  novel  and  major 
works  in  Britain,  especially  in  reinforced  con- 
crete, which  at  that  time  was  a  little-used 
material. 

In  1925  he  became  the  firm's  chief  designer,  a 
post  he  held  until  1934.  His  main  activity  was  the 
design  of  harbours  and  jetties,  but  it  was  during 
this  period  that  he  became  actively  interested  in 
architecture,  and  particularly  in  what  became 
known  as  the  Modern  movement.  He  did  not, 
however,  become  professionally  involved  with 
architectural  projects  until  1933,  when  he  was 
invited  to  collaborate  in  the  design  and  construc- 
tion in  Highgate  village  of  a  block  of  apartments 
which  became  known  as  Highpoint.  This  gave 
Ove  Arup  the  opportunity  to  apply  to  a  major 
building  the  techniques  of  reinforced  concrete, 
which  he  had  used  in  many  civil  engineering 
projects.  As  a  consequence  in  1934  he  accepted 
the  post  of  chief  designer  and  director  with  J.  L. 


Kier  &  Co.,  another  London  firm  with  Danish 
roots. 

Ove  Arup's  interest  in  what  he  later  called 
'total  architecture'  developed  and  grew,  and  he 
became  associated  with  most  of  the  significant 
architects  in  Britain  and  in  Europe.  He  became  a 
leading  figure  in  the  MARS  (Modern  Archi- 
tectural Research  Society)  group  and  he  was 
active  in  the  Architectural  Association.  He 
designed  and  built  with  the  architectural  group 
Tecton,  one  of  whose  partners  was  Berthold 
•Lubetkin,  a  number  of  projects,  notably  the 
penguin  pool  at  London  Zoo. 

In  1938  he  left  Kier  to  form,  together  with  his 
cousin  Arne  Arup,  the  firm  of  Arup  &  Arup, 
engineers  and  contractors.  During  World  War  II 
his  inventive  mind  turned  to  the  design  of  air- 
raid shelters,  which  he  felt  could  be  converted 
into  underground  car  parks  after  the  war,  but  he 
invariably  experienced  great  frustration  in  pro- 
moting his  novel  ideas.  He  also  designed  and 
built  parts  for  Mulberry  harbour,  which  in  1944 
helped  make  the  Normandy  landing  possible. 

For  some  years  Arup  felt  torn  between  con- 
tracting and  design,  but  in  1946  he  set  up 
practice  as  a  consulting  engineer;  the  firm 
became  Ove  Arup  &  Partners  in  the  same  year. 
Its  subsequent  expansion  and  diversification 
resulted  in  a  practice  which  became  one  of  the 
largest  and  most  important  in  the  world.  In  1978 
the  firm  was  transformed  from  a  partnership,  in 
which  Ove  Arup  was  still  a  partner,  into  a 
company,  Ove  Arup  Partnership,  owned  by  a 
trust  for  the  purpose  of  making  it  independent — 
financially  and  professionally — of  outside  influ- 
ence. The  projects  which  gave  Arup  personally 
the  greatest  pleasure  were  those  in  which  essen- 
tially simple  structural  concepts  were  elegantly 
expressed.  An  outstanding  example  is  the  Kings- 
gate  footbridge  over  the  river  Wear  at  Durham, 
which  was  completed  in  1963.  Other  projects  for 
which  Arup  and  his  partners  will  be  remembered 
include  the  Sydney  Opera  House,  the  Makings 
at  Snape,  Coventry  Cathedral,  and  the  Centre 
Pompidou  in  Paris. 

Physically  tall  and  lean,  though  somewhat 
stooped  in  old  age,  he  remained  active  almost  till 
his  death.  His  face  was  warm,  intelligent,  and 
quizzical,  his  well-known  inability  to  finish  a 
sentence  marking  a  constant  search  for  exactness 
and  truth,  rather  than  vagueness.  This,  as  well  as 
the  strong  Danish  accent  he  always  retained 
despite  decades  of  residence  in  Britain,  made  any 
encounter  or  conversation  with  him  a  memorable 
experience. 

Ove  Arup  was  always  a  visionary  and  an 
idealist  who  hated  compromise.  He  worked  for 
greater  understanding  between  the  professions, 
particularly  between  architects  and  engineers. 
This  found  its  most  visible  embodiment  with  the 
formation  in  1963  of  Arup  Associates,  a  practice 


13 


Amp 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


of  architects,  engineers,  and  quantity  surveyors. 
Arup  was  fortunate  in  attracting  talented  collab- 
orators, but  all  those  who  worked  with  him  were 
deeply  influenced  and  inspired  by  him.  He  stood 
for  both  quality  and  excellence,  professionally 
and  personally.  At  the  same  time  he  enjoyed  life 
in  all  its  aspects. 

He  did  not  involve  himself  with  professional 
institutions,  though  he  belonged  to  and  was 
honoured  by  many.  He  was  eventually  persuaded 
to  become  a  vice-president  of  the  Institution  of 
Civil  Engineers  (1968-71).  Appointed  CBE  in 
1953  and  knighted  in  1971,  he  was  made  a 
chevalier  of  the  Order  of  Dannebrog  (Denmark) 
in  1965  and  a  commander  (first  class)  in  1975.  He 
received  the  RIBA  gold  medal  for  architecture 
(1966)  and  the  Institution  of  Structural  Engi- 
neers' gold  medal  (1973).  Universities  honoured 
him  with  doctorates:  Durham  (1967),  East 
Anglia  (1968),  the  Technical  University  of  Den- 
mark (DTH)  (1974),  Heriot-Watt  (1976),  and 
City  University  (1979).  In  1976  he  became  one  of 
the  original  fellows  of  the  Fellowship  of  Engi- 
neering (from  1992  the  Royal  Academy  of  Engi- 
neering). He  was  a  member  of  the  Danish 
Academy  for  Technical  Sciences  (1956),  and  in 
1986  he  was  elected  to  the  Royal  Academy. 

In  1925  he  married  Ruth,  daughter  of  Poul 
Sorensen,  managing  director  of  the  Danish 
Water  Authority  and  an  eminent  engineer.  They 
had  one  son  and  two  daughters.  Arup  died 
5  February  1988  at  his  home  in  Highgate, 
London. 

[Ove  Arup  Partnership  archives;  personal  knowledge.] 

Povl  Ahm 

ASHMOLE,  Bernard  (1 894-1 988),  classical 
archaeologist  and  art  historian,  was  born  22  June 
1894  in  Ilford,  Essex,  the  youngest  in  the  family 
of  two  sons  and  three  daughters  of  William 
Ashmole,  auctioneer  and  estate  agent,  and  his 
wife,  Sarah  Caroline  Wharton  Tiver.  Both  his 
parents  had  strong  literary  and  religious  inter- 
ests. He  was  educated  at  Forest  School  (1 903-1 1) 
and  in  1913  went  to  Hertford  College,  Oxford, 
with  a  classics  scholarship.  In  19 14,  having  taken 
pass  moderations,  he  was  commissioned  in  the 
nth  Royal  Fusiliers,  served  in  France,  and  was 
severely  wounded  on  the  Somme.  He  was 
awarded  the  MC  in  1917.  Back  in  Oxford,  he 
obtained  an  ordinary  pass  degree  and  went  on  to 
study  for  the  diploma  in  classical  archaeology 
under  the  guidance  of  Percy  *Gardner  and  (Sir) 
John  *Beazley.  He  developed  an  interest  in 
numismatics,  but  classical  sculpture  was  to  be  his 
main  interest  for  the  rest  of  his  academic  career 
and  he  helped  catalogue  the  collection  in  the 
Palazzo  dei  Conservatori  in  Rome  and,  later,  that 
in  Ince  Blundell  Hall  (1929). 

In  1923  he  had  taken  his  B.Litt.  at  Oxford  and 


joined  the  staff  of  the  coin  room  in  the  Ashmo- 
lean  Museum  there  (he  was  a  collateral  descen- 
dant of  the  founder).  He  was  persuaded  in  1925 
to  take  up  the  directorship  of  the  British  School 
at  Rome,  which  he  held  until  1928.  He  was  then 
appointed  (1929)  to  the  Yates  chair  of  classical 
archaeology  at  University  College  London,  add- 
ing to  this  the  part-time  keepership  of  the  Greek 
and  Roman  department  in  the  British  Museum 
in  1939.  Here  he  had  to  supervise  the  packing  of 
its  treasures  on  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939. 

He  was  commissioned  as  a  pilot  officer  in  the 
Royal  Air  Force  Volunteer  Reserve,  serving  in 
Britain,  Greece,  and  the  Middle  and  Far  East, 
and  returning  as  a  wing  commander.  He  was 
twice  mentioned  in  dispatches.  After  the  war 
ended  in  1945,  he  supervised  the  reinstallation  of 
his  department  in  the  British  Museum,  giving  up 
his  chair  in  1948  to  become  a  full-time  keeper.  In 
1956  he  was  persuaded  to  succeed  Beazley  to  the 
Lincoln  chair  of  classical  archaeology  and  art  at 
Oxford,  where,  as  a  fellow  of  Lincoln  College,  he 
served  until  his  retirement  in  1961.  This  was 
followed  by  busy  travelling  and  visiting  appoint- 
ments at  Aberdeen,  Yale,  Cincinnati,  and 
Malibu,  where  he  advised  J.  Paul  Getty  on  the 
purchase  of  antiquities,  and  also  by  field  work,  at 
the  mausoleum  of  Halicarnassus  in  Turkey. 

Ashmole  was  not  a  prolific  scholar,  but  all  his 
writing  was  characterized  by  a  precision  of  learn- 
ing and  perceptivity  that  made  him  an  unrivalled 
and  internationally  recognized  authority  on  clas- 
sical sculpture.  This  was  displayed  by  concise 
articles,  not  without  some  acidity  when  dealing 
with  the  inadequacy  of  others,  and  perhaps  best 
enjoyed  in  his  lectures,  notably  the  Semple 
lectures  (The  Classical  Ideal  in  Greek  Sculpture, 
1964),  and  the  books  Olympia  (with  N.  Yalouris, 
1967)  and  Architect  and  Sculptor  in  Classical 
Greece  (1972).  By  looking  beyond  connoisseur- 
ship  of  Greek  sculpture  to  the  problems  of  its 
context  and  logistics  of  its  creation  he  demon- 
strated the  value  of  the  study  to  many  other 
fields  of  classical  archaeology.  His  memorable 
lecturing  style  was  quiet  yet  dominating,  but  as  a 
teacher  he  was  probably  most  influential  through 
the  example  he  set.  He  had  a  remarkable  organiz- 
ing skill,  which  showed  in  his  scholarship  no  less 
than  in  his  work  on  the  British  Museum  collec- 
tions before  and  after  the  war,  in  his  installation 
of  the  cast  collections  in  University  College 
London,  and  in  Oxford  in  the  Ashmolean's  new 
building  in  1961. 

His  interest  in  art  did  not  stop  with  antiquity 
but  he  was  the  friend  of  contemporary  artists, 
even  adviser  to  the  fated  /,  Claudius  film  with 
Charles  *Laughton,  and  in  the  late  1920s  com- 
missioned from  the  architect  A.  D.  *Connell  one 
of  the  first  concrete-frame  houses  in  Britain, 
High  and  Over,  near  Amersham.  His  practicality 


M 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ashton 


ranged  from  the  design  of  garden  fountains  cast 
in  concrete  in  upturned  umbrellas  to  a  rare  skill 
with  the  camera  which  he  employed  to  good 
effect  on  ancient  sculpture.  His  collection  of 
sculpture  photographs  was  given  to  King's  Col- 
lege London  (the  Ashmole  archive),  with  copies 
in  the  cast  gallery  at  the  Ashmolean.  He  was  in 
many  respects  not  the  last  of  an  older  generation 
of  scholars  but  the  first  of  the  new,  displaying  in 
his  work  and  life  the  finer  standards  of  his 
predecessors  and  adding  an  almost  non-academic 
breadth  and  originality. 

He  was  made  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy 
in  1938,  was  appointed  CBE  in  1957,  and  became 
honorary  ARIBA  in  1928.  He  was  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Hertford  (1061)  and  Lincoln  (1980) 
colleges,  Oxford,  and  of  University  College  Lon- 
don (1974).  Aberdeen  awarded  him  an  honorary 
LL  D  (1968).  He  was  an  honorary  member  of  the 
Archeological  Institute  of  America  (1940)  and 
the  Archaeological  Society  of  Athens  (1978),  and 
was  awarded  the  Kenyon  medal  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1979. 

Ashmole  was  a  tall,  slim  man;  his  bearing  was 
almost  military  but  tempered  by  a  sprightliness 
of  step  and  unforced  charm.  In  1920  he  married 
Dorothy  Irene,  daughter  of  Everard  de  Peyer, 
chartered  accountant.  She  survived  him  by  three 
years;  a  biographer  remarked  that  'anyone  who 
knew  the  couple  finds  it  hard  to  think  of  them 
apart'.  They  had  two  daughters  and  a  son.  In 
1972  Ashmole  and  his  wife  moved  to  Peebles,  to 
be  near  their  son,  and  there  he  died  25  February 
1988. 

[Bernard  Ashmole,  One  Man  in  his  Time,  1993;  Martin 
Robertson  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol. 
btxv,  1989;  persona]  knowledge.]      John  Boardman 

ASHTON,   Sir  Frederick  William   Mallan- 

daine  (1904- 1988),  dancer,  and  founder  and 
choreographer,  with  (Dame)  Ninette  de  Yalois, 
of  the  Royal  Ballet,  was  born  17  September  1904 
in  Guayaquil,  Ecuador,  the  youngest  of  four  sons 
of  George  Ashton,  a  minor  diplomat  working  for 
a  cable  company,  and  his  wife,  Georgiana 
Fulcher,  who  came  from  a  Suffolk  family.  Later 
there  was  a  much-loved  younger  sister,  Edith. 
The  family  moved  to  Peru,  where  Ashton 
attended  the  Dominican  School  in  Lima.  In  191 7 
he  was  taken  to  see  a  performance  by  Anna 
•Pavlova — 'she  injected  me  with  her  poison' — 
and  resolved  to  make  dancing  his  life.  In  19 19  he 
was  sent  to  England,  to  Dover  College,  which  he 
hated,  and  to  spend  holidays  in  London  with 
family  friends.  With  them  he  saw  Isadora  Dun- 
can and  many  dance  companies,  including  that  of 
Sergei  Diaghilev  in  his  disastrous  production  of 
The  Sleeping  Princess  in  1921. 

In  1922,  aged  eighteen,  he  began  dance  lessons 
with  Leonide  Massine  and,  later,  with  (Dame) 


Marie  *Rambert.  Lacking  height,  he  was  never- 
theless slim  and  elegant  with  a  long,  large- 
featured  face  and  melancholy  eyes,  which  would 
be  effective  in  his  future  stage  career.  His  dan- 
cing talent  was  not  great,  and  his  'passionate 
laziness'  was  noted  by  Rambert,  but  this  percep- 
tive woman  already  sensed  choreographic  talent 
in  the  young  man.  The  suicide  of  Ashton's  father 
in  South  America  brought  his  impoverished 
mother  to  England  to  join  her  son.  They  shared 
a  series  of  inadequate  lodgings  while  Ashton 
attended  Pavlova's  London  performances  and 
the  last  seasons  of  Diaghilev's  Ballets  Russes.  At 
one  of  these  he  met  the  Russian  designer,  Sophie 
Fedorovitch,  who  would  become  his  lifelong 
friend  and  collaborator. 

Rambert,  with  her  group  of  pupils,  gave  Ash- 
ton an  enviable  springboard  as  a  budding  choreo- 
grapher; her  generous  encouragement  launched 
his  future  career.  He  composed  solos,  pas  de  deux, 
and  short  ballets  for  revues,  musical  shows,  the 
Camargo  Society,  and  the  Ballet  Club,  which 
later  became  the  Ballet  Rambert.  His  first  work 
of  importance  was  A  Tragedy  of  Fashion  in  1926 
for  the  revue,  Riverside  Nights.  In  the  thirty  years 
which  followed,  Ashton  choreographed  many  of 
his  best  ballets:  Facade  for  the  Camargo  Society 
(1931);  Les  Rendezvous,  Vic- Wells  Ballet  for 
Ninette  de  Valois  (1933);  an  American  interlude 
to  arrange  dances  for  the  Virgil  Thomson/ 
Gertrude  Stein  opera,  Four  Saints  in  Three  Acts 
(1934);  and  Le  Baiser  de  la  Fee  at  Sadler's  Wells 
in  1935,  which  inaugurated  his  long  partnership 
with  (Dame)  Margot  Fonteyn.  Leaving  Rambert 
for  the  larger  stage  of  de  Valois'  company,  his 
most  successful  works  were  Apparitions  and  Noc- 
turne (1936),  Les  Patineurs  and  A  Wedding  Bou- 
quet (1937),  Horoscope  (1938),  and  Dante  Sonata 
and  The  Wise  Virgins  (1 940-1). 

Ashton  served  with  RAF  intelligence  during 
World  Wrar  II,  but  was  given  leave  in  1943  to 
choreograph  a  new  ballet,  The  Quest,  with  a  score 
by  (Sir)  William  *Walton.  After  the  war,  with 
the  Sadler's  Wells  company  resident  at  the 
reopened  Royal  Opera  House,  Covent  Garden, 
Ashton  choreographed  the  ballet  considered  by 
many  his  most  perfect — Cesar  Franck's  Sym- 
phonic Variations  (1946).  He  ventured  into  opera 
production  in  1947,  at  Covent  Garden  and 
Glyndebourne,  and  in  1948  choreographed  two 
short  works,  Scenes  de  Ballet  and  Don  Juan,  and 
Sergei  Prokofiev's  Cinderella,  the  first  three-act 
British  ballet.  In  1949  and  1950  ballets  in  Paris 
and  New  York  were  less  successful.  In  195 1 
Ashton  also  choreographed  his  first  film,  The 
Tales  of  Hoffmann,  and  this  was  followed  in  1952 
by  The  Story  of  Three  Loves.  At  Covent  Garden 
his  highly  successful  ballet  Daphms  and  Chloe 
was  performed  in  195 1,  to  be  followed  in  1952  by 
Leo  Delibes'  three-act  Sylvia. 


15 


Ashton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ashton's  entire  life  was  lived  in  the  ballet 
world.  From  1953  until  the  late  1970s  he  con- 
tinued to  invent  and  produce  work  of  varying 
shades  and  character.  Among  his  notable 
achievements  were  Homage  to  the  Queen  (1953); 
Romeo  and  Juliet  for  the  Royal  Danish  Ballet 
(1955);  Ondine  (1958);  La  Fille  Mai  Gardee 
(i960);  Marguerite  and  Armand  (1963);  The 
Dream  (1964);  Enigma  Variations  (1968);  and  A 
Month  in  the  Country  (1976).  He  may  have 
reached  his  largest  public  with  the  charming 
dances  for  the  1970  film,  Tales  of  Beatrix  Potter, 
in  which  he  appeared  as  Mrs  Tiggywinkle.  He 
was  both  principal  choreographer  (1933-70)  and 
director  (1963-70)  of  the  Royal  Ballet. 

Ashton  was  a  lyrical  choreographer,  consid- 
ered by  many  to  be  peerless  in  this  field,  though 
his  approach  to  choreography  was  idiosyncratic. 
He  seemed  to  plan  little  in  advance,  to  arrive  for 
first  rehearsals  without  original  ideas,  and  to  use 
music  suggested,  occasionally  even  chosen,  by 
friends.  He  would  ask  dancers  to  invent  steps  to 
musical  phrases,  sometimes  selecting  ones  he 
liked  and  discarding  others,  sometimes  discard- 
ing everything  and  commanding  new  inventions. 
In  this  unorthodox  manner  many  of  his  best- 
known  ballets  were  built;  the  original  cast  of 
dancers  in  each  production  took  a  considerable 
part  in  its  creation,  the  resulting  choreography 
reflecting  their  particular  talents  and  style.  Mar- 
got  Fonteyn,  for  whom  he  made  the  majority  of 
his  ballets,  brought  into  every  Ashton  role  her 
love  of  floating,  aerial  movements  while  carried 
by  her  partner. 

Ashton  was  homosexual  and  had  several 
enduring  relationships  during  his  long  life.  Over 
the  years  he  lived  in  charming,  comfortable 
apartments  and  small  houses  in  London  and  in  a 
large  country  house  at  Eye  in  Suffolk,  with  ten 
acres,  a  lake,  and  a  terraced  room  filled  with  his 
collection  of  Wemyss  pottery,  vividly  displayed 
in  well-lit  glass  cabinets.  He  was  a  supreme 
socialite,  loving  gossip  and  good  living,  which 
caused  a  certain  florid  portliness  in  his  later 
years.  His  sense  of  humour  was  delightful  and  he 
was  an  amusing,  often  witty,  companion.  He 
adored  everything  connected  with  royalty  and 
became  a  particular  friend  of  his  near  contempo- 
rary, the  queen  mother.  He  was  much  honoured, 
receiving  the  CBE  (1950),  a  knighthood  (1962), 
CH  (1970),  and  the  OM  (1977).  He  was  given  the 
freedom  of  the  City  of  London  (1981)  and  the 
Legion  of  Honour  (i960).  He  had  honorary 
degrees  from  Durham  (1962),  East  Anglia 
(1967),  London  (1970),  Hull  (1971),  and  Oxford 
(1976).  He  died  18  August  1988  at  his  house  in 
Eye. 

[Z.  Dominic  and  J.  S.  Gilbert,  Frederick  Ashton,  a 
Choreographer  and  his  Ballets,  1977;  David  Vaughan, 
Frederick  Ashton,  1977;  personal  knowledge.] 

Moira  Shearer 


ATKINS,     Sir     William     Sydney     Albert 

(1902- 1 989),  engineer,  was  born  6  February 
1902  in  Bow,  east  London,  the  second  of  three 
sons  (there  was  also  a  daughter,  who  died  at  the 
age  of  eight)  of  Robert  Edward  Atkins  and  his 
wife,  Martha  Mary  Ann  Sully,  who,  when  her 
husband  died  in  1908,  set  up  a  millinery  business 
to  support  her  family.  He  was  educated  at  the 
Coopers'  Company  School,  where  he  won  a 
competition  to  become  an  articled  pupil  to  (Sir) 
E.  Graham  Wood's  firm  of  structural  engineers. 
Wood  paid  the  fees  for  Atkins  to  attend  evening 
classes,  enabling  him  to  become  a  fully  qualified 
draughtsman  after  three  years.  During  the  final 
two  years  of  his  apprenticeship  he  gained  experi- 
ence of  practical  work  on  construction  sites  and 
in  workshops;  at  the  same  time  he  attended 
further  evening  classes  at  Manchester  College  of 
Technology  and  took  an  external  London  degree 
at  intermediate  B.Sc.  level.  At  the  age  of  nineteen 
he  began  a  two-year  degree  course  in  engineering 
at  University  College  London,  from  where  he 
obtained  second-class  honours  in  1923. 

During  the  next  five  years  he  undertook  a 
variety  of  jobs — with  Dr  Oscar  Faber,  Dorman 
Long,  and  the  Foundation  Company,  which  was 
building  the  Deptford  power  station.  The  chief 
engineer  responsible  for  this  major  job  died 
suddenly  and,  at  the  age  of  twenty-six,  Atkins 
was  appointed  in  his  place.  After  completion  of 
the  power  station,  he  moved  to  Smith  Walker 
Ltd.  as  structural  designer  and  rose  rapidly  to 
become  chief  engineer  in  1928. 

Soon  after  this,  Atkins  started  his  own  busi- 
ness by  buying  out  a  Smith  Walker  subsidiary 
company,  specializing  in  reinforced  concrete, 
which  he  had  helped  to  form.  His  new  company, 
London  Ferro-Concrete,  prospered  and  attracted 
more  and  more  work,  as  the  recession  of  the  early 
1930s  gave  place  to  activity  in  preparation  for  the 
coming  World  War  II.  His  policy  of  employing 
the  best  people  he  could  get  was  a  major  factor  in 
building  up  this  successful  design  and  building 
firm  and  in  the  growth  of  the  international 
engineering  consultancy,  W.  S.  Atkins  &  Part- 
ners, which  he  set  up  in  1938.  During  the  war 
'London  Ferro'  made  a  major  contribution  to  the 
war  effort  by  constructing  a  wide  variety  of 
defence  works,  including  part  of  the  Mulberry 
harbour  used  in  the  Normandy  landings. 

At  the  end  of  the  war  Atkins  arranged  another 
management  buy-out  by  the  directors  of  London 
Ferro,  and  in  1950  he  severed  his  connections 
with  the  firm  to  concentrate  all  his  energy  on 
W.  S.  Atkins  &  Partners.  The  next  few  years  saw 
the  start  of  the  rapid  growth  of  the  firm,  which 
formed  the  heart  of  the  later  international  com- 
pany, W.  S.  Atkins  Ltd.  In  1945  Atkins  had  been 
invited  to  discuss  the  appointment  of  his  firm  as 
consulting  structural  engineers  for  a  major  new 
steel  works  at  Port  Talbot  (the  Abbey  works). 


16 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Aves 


With  characteristic  honesty,  he  pointed  out  that 
he  was  virtually  the  whole  staff  of  W.  S.  Atkins  & 
Partners.  Notwithstanding,  Atkins  got  this  huge 
job.  The  works,  which  became  the  Steel  Com- 
pany of  Wales,  were  opened  in  1951  by  Hugh 
•Gaitskell,  the  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  who 
said:  'There  has  been  no  single  project  of  this 
size  in  the  British  Isles  since  the  great  days  of  the 
railway  age.' 

The  Abbey  works  project,  with  the  special 
skills  it  required  in  project  management  over  a 
wide  field,  provided  the  basis  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  later  multi-disciplinary  international 
business.  Atkins  was  associated  with  most  of  the 
large  steelworks  developments  in  Britain  and 
many  overseas.  Other  projects  included  Berkeley 
and  Drax  power  station,  Selby  coalfield,  the 
Channel  tunnel,  and  major  parts  of  motorway 
construction.  In  1986  Atkins  decided  to  stand 
down  as  chairman  of  his  company.  He  did  not 
find  this  easy  but,  with  characteristic  generosity, 
he  arranged  to  transfer  a  substantial  part  of  the 
equity  to  the  staff  on  advantageous  terms. 

Atkins,  a  well-built  short  man,  achieved  his 
success  through  strongly  held  opinions  and  inno- 
vative ideas,  combined  with  determination  and 
toughness  to  earn  them  through.  He  was  never 
arrogant  or  pompous,  and  his  toughness  was  not 
unkind.  Occasionally  he  could  seem  hard  when 
dealing  with  people,  but  only  because  of  the  high 
standards  which  he  himself  maintained  and 
expected  others  to  follow.  The  moment  of  hard- 
ness quickly  passed,  often  to  be  followed  by 
words  of  encouragement  and  a  twinkle  in  his  eye, 
preserved  to  the  last.  His  innovation  inevitably 
led  to  some  mistakes,  towards  which  he  had  a 
rare  and  very  constructive  attitude.  He  freely- 
admitted  errors,  and  often  wrote  a  paper  on  them 
to  prevent  their  repetition,  whether  in  his  own 
organization  or  elsewhere.  He  thrived  on  com- 
petition, but  never  descended  to  vilifying  his 
rivals,  often  giving  them  unstinting  praise.  His 
work  absorbed  much  of  his  energy  and  there  was 
little  time  left  for  recreation  and  hobbies, 
although  he  was  a  keen  gardener  and  founded  in 

1965  the  Round  Pond  Nurseries  on  his  estate 
near  Chobham,  Surrey. 

For  his  work  Atkins  was  appointed  CBE  in 

1966  and  knighted  in  1976.  His  company  twice 
won  the  Queen's  award  for  industry.  He  was 
a  fellow  of  the  Fellowship  of  Engineering  (later 
the  Royal  Academy  of  Engineering),  and  was 
awarded  the  Sir  William  Larke  medal  and  Tel- 
ford premium  prize  by  the  Institution  of  Civil 
Engineering,  of  which  he  was  also  a  fellow.  In 
1982  he  became  an  honorary  freeman  of  Epsom 
and  Ewell. 

In  1928  he  married  Elsie  Jessie,  daughter  of 
Alfred  Edward  Barrow,  police  officer,  of  Hock- 
ley, Essex.  They  had  two  daughters.  Atkins  died 


in  Woking,  after  a  short  illness,  15  August 
1989. 

[Sir  William  Atkins,  Partners  (autobiography,  privately 
published),  1088;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Caldecote 

AVES,  Dame  Geraldine  Maitland  (1898-1986), 
public  servant  and  social  reformer,  was  born 
22  August  1898  at  Jay's  Hatch,  a  gamekeeper's 
cottage  in  a  wood  near  the  village  of  Bovenden, 
Hertfordshire,  because  her  mother  wanted  her 
first  child  to  be  born  in  the  depths  of  the  country. 
She  was  the  elder  daughter  (there  were  no  sons) 
of  Ernest  Harry  Aves,  social  investigator  (and 
collaborator  of  Charles  *Booth),  who  later,  as  an 
expert  on  minimum  wage  rates  and  working 
conditions,  became  first  chairman  of  the  trades 
boards  set  up  in  1909.  His  wife,  Eva  Mary,  the 
youngest  of  the  six  children  of  Frederick  Mait- 
land, of  the  East  India  Company,  was  politically 
active,  a  suffragist  and  one  of  the  first  women 
members  elected  to  the  London  School  Board. 
Geraldine  and  her  sister  attended  Frognal,  a 
small  private  school  in  Hampstead.  In  March 
1917  their  father  unexpectedly  died.  It  was  a 
blow  that  Geraldine  Aves  described  even  in  old 
age  as  'the  worst  of  my  life'. 

She  went  to  Newnham  College,  Cambridge 
(1917-20),  and  obtained  a  third  class  in  both 
parts  of  the  economics  tripos  (1919  and  1920). 
While  at  Cambridge  she  became  president  of  the 
Women's  University  Settlement  Society  and  this 
helped  her  to  decide  that  'doing  something  with 
and  for  people  was  how  I  should  spend  my  days'. 
She  was  appointed  in  early  1924  as  a  'temporary 
assistant  organizer'  in  the  care  committee  sen  ice 
of  the  London  county  council's  education 
department.  By  1938,  under  the  threat  of  World 
War  II,  she  was  engaged  at  County  Hall  in  the 
complex  plans  for  the  evacuation  of  London 
schoolchildren.  In  1941  she  was  seconded  to  the 
Ministry  of  Health  as  chief  welfare  officer 
responsible  for  the  general  co-ordination  of  evac- 
uation and  wartime  welfare  senices,  including 
the  recruitment  of  social  workers.  Drawn  into  the 
plans  for  postwar  reconstruction,  in  June  1945 
she  served  as  the  United  Nations  Relief  and 
Rehabilitation  Administration's  chief  child-care 
consultant  in  Europe,  returning  to  the  Ministry 
in  1946  to  become  the  established  head  of  a 
permanent  welfare  division,  where,  apart  from 
undertaking  various  short-term  assignments  to 
the  United  Nations,  she  remained  until  retiring 
in  1963.  She  played  a  key  part  in  developing  the 
postwar  reforms  in  welfare  senices,  the  sub- 
sequent development  of  personal  social  senices, 
and  social  work  training. 

Her  retirement  from  the  Ministry  of  Health 
was  the  beginning  of  a  second  career  in  the 
voluntary  sector.  She  was  fully  occupied  in 
promoting,  enabling,  and  chairing  (at  which  she 


17 


Aves 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


excelled)  numerous  projects  and  organizations 
that  were  eager  for  her  support.  She  served  on 
the  National  Institute  of  Social  Work  Training 
(board  of  governors,  1 961  -71),  the  Council  for 
Training  in  Social  Work  (member,  1962-72),  the 
London  Diocesan  Synod  and  Bishop's  Council 
(member,  1971-9),  the  London  Diocesan  Board 
for  Social  Responsibility  (vice-chairman,  1979- 
84),  the  North  London  Hospice  (founder- 
president,  1986),  the  Harington  scheme  (a  horti- 
cultural training  scheme  for  young  people  with 
learning  difficulties,  of  which  she  became  chair- 
man in  1980  and  later  vice-president  in  1984), 
and  many  other  organizations. 

Amongst  the  achievements  in  which  she  took 
most  pride  in  this  second  career  was  that  of 
chairing  the  independent  committee  of  inquiry 
into  the  place  of  and  scope  for  voluntary  workers 
in  the  social  services,  which  was  set  up  in  1966. 
Following  vigorous  campaigning  under  her  lead- 
ership, the  committee's  report,  The  Voluntary 
Worker  in  the  Social  Services  (1969),  led  to  the 
creation  of  The  Volunteer  Centre,  a  national 
organization  which  aimed  to  promote  and 
encourage  volunteering  at  all  levels  and  in  all 
spheres  of  society.  She  became  a  founder  mem- 
ber of  its  board  of  governors  and,  from  1974, 
vice-president.  It  was  this  work  that  led  to  her 
appointment  as  DBE  in  1977 — an  honour  she 
had  long  coveted  and,  rightly,  felt  she  deserved. 
She  had  been  appointed  OBE  in  1946  for  her 
contribution  to  wartime  social  services,  and  CBE 
in  1963.  All  through  her  working  life  she  main- 
tained close  links  with  Newnham  College.  In 
1956  she  was  elected  associate,  in  1962  associate 
fellow,  and  in  1981  honorary  fellow. 

Geraldine  Aves  was  one  of  that  band  of 
educated  single  women  who,  following  World 
War  I,  looked  for  personal  fulfilment  in  a  pro- 
fessional career.  She  found  it  in  a  lifetime 
devoted  to  the  common  good.  A  handsome 
woman,  of  regal  appearance,  she  charmed  many 
and  overawed — on  occasion  bullied — some  oth- 
ers, although  her  authoritarian  manner  softened 
in  later  years.  From  the  age  of  thirty-four,  when 
she  was  baptized,  her  Christian  faith  meant  a 
great  deal  to  her.  She  never  married,  but  enjoyed 
a  rich  private  life  of  travels  and  companionship 
with  close  friends  and  relatives.  It  was  while 
visiting,  in  Swanage,  Dorset,  a  former  colleague, 
Sibyl  Clement  Brown  (who  in  1927  became 
Britain's  first  qualified  psychiatric  social  worker) 
that  she  was  taken  ill,  entered  a  nursing  home, 
and  died  23  June  1986. 

[Dame  Geraldine  Aves,  IQ24  to  1983:  Commentary  by  a 
Social  Servant,  1983;  Phyllis  Willmott,  A  Singular 
Woman:  the  Life  of  Geraldine  Aves  i8g8-ig86,  1992; 
personal  knowledge.]  Phyllis  Willmott 

AYER,  Sir  Alfred  Jules  (1910-1989),  philoso- 
pher, was  born  29  October  1910  at  Neville  Court, 


Abbey  Road,  north-west  London,  the  only  child 
of  Jules  Louis  Cyprien  Ayer,  financier,  later  in 
the  timber  trade,  who  came  from  a  Swiss  Calvin- 
ist  family,  and  his  Jewish  wife,  Reine  Citroen, 
who  came  from  the  Citroen  car  family  and 
ultimately  from  Holland.  He  had  no  religious 
upbringing,  and  his  childhood  years,  which  he 
described  as  lonely,  were  spent  in  London.  At 
the  age  of  seven  he  was  sent  to  Ascham,  at 
Eastbourne,  and  from  there  went  on,  first  to  Eton 
as  a  scholar,  and  then,  with  an  open  scholarship 
in  classics,  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford.  Choosing 
not  to  read  classical  honour  moderations,  he 
obtained  in  1932  a  first  in  literae  humaniores, 
which,  so  out  of  sympathy  was  he  with  the 
prevailing  tone  of  Oxford  philosophy,  he  owed 
entirely  to  his  marks  in  ancient  history. 

On  the  advice  of  his  tutor,  Gilbert  *Ryle,  who 
had  already  introduced  him  to  the  ideas  of 
Bertrand  (third  Earl)  *Russell  and  Ludwig 
*Wittgenstein — and  to  the  latter  personally — 
Ayer  spent  the  winter  of  1932-3  in  Vienna, 
attending  Moritz  Schlick's  lectures  and  the 
meetings  of  the  Vienna  Circle,  and  then  returned 
to  a  lectureship  at  Christ  Church,  to  which  he 
had  been  elected  while  still  an  undergraduate, 
and  which  he  held  until  1939. 

In  1936  Ayer  published  his  most  famous  book, 
Language,  Truth  and  Logic,  written  at  the  age  at 
which  (as  he  liked  to  recall)  David  *Hume  had 
written  his  Treatise  of  Human  Nature  (1739).  It 
was  his  version  of  Viennese  logical  positivism, 
though  he  also  saw  it  as  a  recasting  of  the 
traditional  theses  of  British  empiricism  into  lin- 
guistic terms.  The  book  is  full  of  passionate 
iconoclasm,  expressed  in  a  fine  cadenced  prose. 
Its  central  thesis  is  the  verification  principle, 
which  divided  all  statements  into  the  verifiable  or 
the  unverifiable.  Verifiable  statements  were  either 
reducible  to  observation  statements  (everyday 
beliefs,  science)  or  transformable  by  means  of 
definitions  into  tautologies  (logic,  mathematics), 
and  only  they  were  meaningful.  Unverifiable 
statements  (metaphysics,  ethics,  religion)  were 
literally  nonsense.  Difficulties  found  in  formulat- 
ing the  principle  were  treated  as  comparatively 
insubstantial,  though,  when  the  book  was  reissued 
in  1946,  the  new  thirty-six-page  introduction, 
itself  a  model  of  philosophical  frankness,  gave 
them  much  greater  weight. 

Ayer's  ideas  scandalized  established  philo- 
sophy, not  least  through  their  self-assurance,  and 
they  infiltrated  pre-war  Oxford  mainly  through  a 
discussion  group  of  younger  dons  that  met  in 
(Sir)  Isaiah  Berlin's  rooms  in  All  Souls  College. 
The  young  J.  L.  *Austin  was  an  early  convert, 
but  only  briefly,  and  was  then,  for  over  twenty- 
five  years,  Ayer's  relentless  critic.  The  more 
open-minded  of  the  older  philosophers,  such  as 
William  Kneale  and  H.  H.  Price,  regarded  Ayer's 
impact  on  Oxford  philosophy  as  salutary. 


18 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ayer 


Ayer's  next  book,  The  Foundations  of  Empirical 
Knowledge,  philosophically  his  most  refined 
work,  supplemented  the  earlier  attempt  to  set  the 
limits  of  human  knowledge  with  an  account, 
based  on  sense-data,  of  how  we  attain  this 
knowledge.  The  book  appeared  in  1040,  by 
which  time  Aver  was  in  the  army.  He  was 
commissioned  in  the  Welsh  Guards,  but  mostly 
served  in  the  Special  Operations  Executive.  He 
ended  the  war  as  a  captain,  attached  to  the 
British  embassy  in  Paris. 

In  1945  Aver  went  to  Wadham  College, 
Oxford,  as  philosophy  tutor,  a  post  to  which  he 
had  been  appointed  in  1944,  but  in  1046  he 
obtained  the  Grote  chair  of  the  philosophy  of 
mind  and  logic  at  University  College  London. 
Here  Ayer's  charismatic  powers  as  a  teacher, 
enhanced  by  his  swiftness  in  discussion,  and  his 
broad  and  growing  fame  as  the  author  of  Lan- 
guage, Truth  and  Logic,  came  into  their  own,  and 
he  converted  a  run-down  department  into  the 
rival  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  This  was  the 
happiest  period  of  his  career.  In  1956  he  pub- 
lished The  Problem  of  Knowledge,  in  which, 
abandoning  reductionism,  he  justified  our  every- 
day beliefs  by  their  power  to  explain  our  sense- 
experience.  This  line  of  argument  was  developed 
in  such  later  works  as  The  Origins  of  Pragmatism 
(1968)  and  Russell  and  Moore  (1971),  in  which  the 
history  of  philosophy  was  defdy  blended  with 
philosophical  argument,  and  The  Central  Ques- 
tions of  Philosophy  (1973),  which  aimed  at  updat- 
ing Russell's  The  Problems  of  Philosophy  (1912). 

In  1959  Ayer  had  accepted  the  YYykeham  chair 
of  logic  at  Oxford,  which  was  held  at  New 
College,  partly  to  continue  his  polemic  with 
Austin,  who  died  the  following  year.  Ayer  always 
held  that  philosophy,  to  be  worth  while,  must 
aim  at  generality :  Austin  saw  no  reason  to  believe 
this.  Though  perhaps  no  longer  at  the  epicentre 
of  debate,  Ayer  fought  with  immense  skill  and 
undiminished  speed  and  agility  against  such 
developments  as  ordinary-language  philosophy, 
Wittgensteinianism,  and  the  new  essentialism. 
He  liked  philosophy  to  be  high-spirited  as  well  as 
serious.  He  remained  a  great  and  generous 
teacher,  and  a  prolific  writer,  with  twenty-six 
publications  before  his  death  and  one  after.  He 
shone  at  international  conferences.  He  retired  in 
1978  and  was  a  fellow  of  Wolfson  College, 
Oxford,  from  1978  to  1983. 

Like  his  friend  and  hero,  Bertrand  Russell, 
Ayer  did  not  treat  philosophy  as  a  cloistered 
enterprise.  In  the  postwar  years  he  reached  a 


wide  audience  through  the  BBC  Brains  Trust, 
and  later  was  active  against  anti-homosexual 
legislation. 

'Freddie',  as  he  was  known,  was  highly  gregar- 
ious, elegant,  and  an  animated  conversationalist. 
He  was  short,  with  large,  dark  brown  eyes,  and  a 
sudden  smile  which  irradiated  his  fine,  slightly 
simian  features.  He  spoke  very  fast,  and  to  the 
accompaniment  of  quick,  fluent  gestures.  His 
friends  included  writers,  painters,  politicians, 
and  journalists.  He  hated  religion,  and  followed 
competitive  sport,  particularly  football,  avidly. 
He  loved  the  company  of  women,  and  was  much 
loved  in  turn.  Vanity  was  in  his  nature,  but  he 
combined  this  with  great  charm  and  total  loyalty 
to  his  friends. 

Ayer  was  made  FBA  in  1952,  and  a  foreign 
honorary  member  of  the  American  Academy  of 
Arts  and  Sciences  in  1963:  he  was  knighted  in 
1970,  and  became  a  chevalier  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour  in  1977.  He  received  honorary  degrees 
from  Brussels  (1962),  East  Anglia  (1972),  Lon- 
don (1978),  Trent  in  Canada  (1980),  Bard  in  the 
USA  (1983),  and  Durham  (1986).  He  became  an 
honorary  fellow  of  New  College  (1980). 

Ayer  was  married  four  times:  first,  in  1932  to 
(Grace  Isabel)  Renee,  daughter  of  Colonel  Tho- 
mas Orde-Lees,  explorer,  of  the  Royal  Marines; 
there  was  one  son  and  one  daughter.  The  mar- 
riage was  dissolved  in  1941  and  in  i960  he 
married  Alberta  Constance  ('Dee'),  former  wife 
of  Alfred  Wells,  American  diplomat,  and  daugh- 
ter of  John  Chapman,  business  executive,  from 
the  local  newspaper-owning  family  in  Provi- 
dence, Rhode  Island:  they  had  one  son.  The 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1983  and  in  the  same 
year  he  married  Vanessa  Mary  Addison,  former 
wife  of  Nigel  Lawson  MP  (later  Baron  Lawson  of 
Blaby),  and  daughter  of  Felix  Salmon,  business- 
man. She  died  in  1985  and  in  1989  he  remarried 
Alberta  Ayer,  who  survived  him.  Ayer  also  had  a 
daughter  with  Sheilah  Graham,  the  Hollywood 
columnist  (see  Wendy  W.  Fairey,  One  of  the 
Family,  1993).  When  Ayer  died  in  University 
College  Hospital,  London,  27  June  1989,  the 
event  received  much  publicity  in  the  press, 
serious  and  popular,  and  it  was  seen  as  bringing 
to  an  end  a  long  line  of  outspoken  arbiters  of 
liberal  or  secular  opinion. 

[A.  J.  Ayer,  Part  of  My  Life,  1977,  and  More  of  My  Life, 
1984;  A.  Phillips  Griffiths  (ed.),  A.  J.  Ayer,  Memorial 
Essays,  1992;  information  from  friends;  personal 
knowledge.]  Richard  Wollheim 


19 


B 


BADDELEY,  Hermione  Youlanda  Ruby 
Clinton  (1906- 1986),  actress,  was  born  13 
November  1906  in  Broseley,  Shropshire,  the 
youngest  of  four  daughters  (there  were  no  sons) 
of  William  Herman  Clinton-Baddeley,  com- 
poser, and  his  wife,  Louise  Bourdin.  A  descen- 
dant both  of  Sir  Henry  *Clinton,  a  British 
general  in  the  American  War  of  Independence, 
and  Robert  Baddeley,  the  actor  and  pastry-cook 
who  bequeathed  the  annual  fruit  cake  to  the  cast 
playing  at  Drury  Lane,  she  combined  aspects  of 
both  these  ancestors  in  her  long  and  eventful 
career.  Her  immediate  senior  sister,  Angela  Bad- 
deley, was  also  a  successful  actress.  Their  theatri- 
cal education  was  at  the  Margaret  Morris  School 
of  Dancing  in  Chelsea,  where  the  pupils  con- 
sidered themselves  vastly  superior  to  the  more 
competitive  Italia  Conti  children. 

Hermione's  first  great  success  was  under  Basil 
•Dean's  management,  playing  a  badly  behaved 
waif  from  the  slums  with  a  famous  plate-smash- 
ing scene  in  Charles  McEvoy's  The  Likes  of  Her 
at  the  St  Martin's  theatre  (1923).  The  next  year 
Dean  cast  her  as  a  murderous  Arab  urchin  in  The 
Forest,  by  John  *Galsworthy.  Having  established 
a  career  as  a  dramatic  actress  she  switched  to 
comedy  in  The  Punch  Bowl  (1924),  a  revue  at  the 
Duke  of  York's,  where  she  danced  with  Sonny 
Hale  and  credited  her  formidable  comic  tech- 
nique to  lessons  learned  from  the  comedian 
Alfred  Lester.  She  joined  The  Co-optimists,  at  the 
Palace  theatre,  in  the  same  year.  In  On  with  the 
Dance  (1925),  (Sir)  Noel  *Coward's  revue  for 
(Sir)  Charles  *Cochran,  she  created  (with  Alice 
Delysia)  Coward's  topically  satirical  'poor  little 
rich  girl'.  This  was  the  first  of  four  productions 
for  Cochran  and  then,  among  a  number  of 
undistinguished  comedies,  farces,  and  musicals, 
she  also  played  Sara  in  Tobias  and  the  Angel  by 
James  *Bridie  (Westminster,  1932).  She  had  a 
long  run  in  The  Greeks  Had  a  Word  for  It,  which 
transferred  from  Robert  Newton's  Shilling  thea- 
tre in  Fulham  to  the  Duke  of  York's  in  1934. 

With  Floodlight  by  Beverley  *Nichols  (Saville, 
1937)  she  began  a  long  period  as  a  queen  of 
revue,  having  also  plunged  into  an  increasing 
social  whirl  with  her  husband,  David  Tennant, 
for  whom  she  often  performed  in  cabaret  at  his 
club,  the  Gargoyle.  Herbert  Farjeon's  wit  in 
Nine  Sharp  (subsequently  The  Little  Revue,  1940) 


provided  the  perfect  launching-pad  for  her 
inspired  clowning,  bravura  characterization,  and 
skill  at  quick  costume  and  make-up  changes.  Her 
most  popular  characters  included  an  old  girl  at 
Torquay,  a  Windmill  girl  in  'Voila  les  Non-Stop 
Nudes',  and  her  prototype  funny  ballerina, 
Madame  Allover.  When  she  was  ill,  five  under- 
studies barely  kept  the  curtain  up. 

In  her  autobiography  she  suggests  that  she 
recruited  Hermione  *Gingold  to  Rise  Above  It  at 
the  Comedy  (1941).  It  was  a  legendary,  explosive 
partnership,  with  Gingold's  daunting  control  of 
laughter  and  Baddeley's  penchant  for  wild 
improvisation.  They  were  reunited  less  success- 
fully in  Sky  High  at  the  Phoenix  the  next  year. 
Their  final  joint  venture,  Noel  Coward's  Fallen 
Angels  at  the  Ambassador's  in  1949,  inspired  the 
fury  of  the  author  at  the  liberties  they  took.  He 
was  mollified  when  the  show  became  a  fashion- 
able success.  Meanwhile,  as  a  dramatic  actress 
Hermione  Baddeley's  two  outstanding  successes 
were  as  Ida  in  Graham  Greene's  Brighton  Rock 
(Garrick,  1943),  which  she  repeated  in  the  Boult- 
ing  Brothers'  film  (1947),  and  in  Grand  National 
Night  (Apollo,  1946),  by  Dorothy  and  Campbell 
Christie.  Her  American  debut  in  A  Taste  of 
Honey  (1 961)  led  to  an  invitation  from  Tennessee 
Williams  to  create  the  role  of  Flora  Goforth  in 
The  Milk  Train  Doesn  7  Stop  Here  Anymore  at  the 
Spoleto  festival  (1962)  and  on  Broadway  a  year 
later.  A  newspaper  strike  killed  the  play  but 
Williams  greatly  admired  her  performance. 

In  England  she  played  in  many  films  from 
1926  (A  Daughter  in  Revolt) — most  notably  in 
Kipps  (1941),  //  Always  Rains  On  Sunday  (1947), 
Quartet  (1948),  Passport  to  Pimlico  (1949),  and 
The  Pickwick  Papers  (1952).  She  was  nominated 
for  an  Oscar  in  1959  for  Room  at  the  Top  (1958) 
and  had  a  Hollywood  success  as  the  housekeeper, 
Ellen,  in  Mary  Poppins  (1964).  For  the  last 
twenty  years  she  lived  mainly  in  Los  Angeles  and 
became  a  familiar  face  on  television  in  situation 
comedies,  especially  Bewitched  and  Maude. 

Always  known  as  'Totie',  and  originally  a 
petite  and  delicate  gamine,  Hermione  Baddeley 
grew  into  a  still  small,  but  fuller  figured  beauty 
and  this  lent  authority  to  her  later  blowsier 
characterizations.  In  1928  she  married  David  Pax 
Tennant,  son  of  Edward  Priaulx  Tennant,  first 
Baron  Glenconner,  MP  for  Salisbury.  They  had 


20 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Baird 


a  son  and  a  daughter.  The  marriage  was  dis- 
solved in  1937  and  in  1941  she  married  Captain 
J.  H.  ('Dozey')  Willis,  MC,  of  the  12th  Lancers, 
the  son  of  Major-General  Edward  Henry-  Willis, 
of  the  Royal  Artillery.  This  marriage  was  later 
dissolved.  She  enjoyed  a  stormy  romance  with 
the  actor  Laurence  Harvey,  but  they  did  not 
marry.  She  died  in  Los  Angeles,  at  the  Cedars 
Sinai  Hospital,  19  August  1986. 

[Hermione  Baddeley,  The  Lnstnkable  Hermione  Badde- 
ley (autobiography),  1984;  The  Times,  22  and  27  August 
1086;  Contemporary  Theatre,  Film  and  Television,  vol. 
iv,  1087;  Phyllis  HartnoU  (ed.),  The  Oxford  Companion 
to  the  Theatre,  1983;  Ephraim  Katz,  The  International 
Film  Encyclopaedia,  1980;  David  Quinlan,  The  Illus- 
trated Directory  of  Film  Character  Actors,  1985;  personal 
knowledge.]  Ned  Sherrin 

BAIRD,  Sir  Dugald  (1899-1986),  professor  of 

midwifery,  was  born  16  November  1899  in  Beith, 
Ayrshire,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of  three  sons 
and  one  daughter  of  David  Baird,  head  of  the 
science  department  at  Greenock  Academy,  and 
his  wife  May,  daughter  of  John  Allan,  farmer,  of 
Alloway.  He  was  educated  at  Greenock  Academy 
and  then  studied  science  and  medicine  at  Glas- 
gow University,  graduating  MB,  Ch.B.  in  1922. 
He  proceeded  MD  with  honours  and  was 
awarded  the  Bellahouston  gold  medal  in  1934. 
He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Obstetricians  and  Gynaecologists  in  1935.  After 
he  qualified  he  worked  in  Glasgow  Royal  Mater- 
nity and  Women's  Hospital  and  Glasgow  Royal 
Infirmary. 

His  experiences  as  a  medical  student  and 
junior  doctor  in  Glasgow,  where  he  attended 
home  births,  had  a  fundamental  effect  on  his 
career.  He  was  appalled  at  the  conditions  in 
which  women  had  their  confinements  and  the 
lack  of  concern  about  them  among  his  senior 
colleagues.  During  his  term  as  senior  lecturer  in 
the  University  of  Glasgow  (193 1-7)  he  intro- 
duced sterilization  for  the  many  women  who  had 
had  several  children  that  he  attended  and  also,  in 
some  cases,  performed  abortions  for  social  rea- 
sons. He  was  shocked  by  the  high  maternal  and 
infant  mortality  rates  in  the  Glasgow  Royal 
Maternity  Hospital,  where  two  mothers  died 
each  week  from  complications  of  childbirth. 
Baird  became  aware  of  the  wide  discrepancy  in 
the  health  and  reproductive  efficiency  of  women 
in  different  socio-economic  groups  and  quickly 
realized  the  importance  of  social  factors  in 
obstetrics. 

When  he  moved  to  Aberdeen  in  1937,  as 
regius  professor  of  midwifery,  he  saw  opportuni- 
ties for  research  in  this  field.  Since  the  popula- 
tion was  relatively  stable  and  not  too  large, 
proper  arrangements  could  be  made  for  obstetric 
care  and  the  keeping  of  statistics.  Baird  set  up  a 
records  system  based  on  good  data  and  accurate 
measurements  and  introduced  epidemiology  into 


obstetric  practice.  Initially  in  Aberdeen  he  had 
conducted  a  thriving  private  practice  in  addition 
to  his  hospital  work,  but  when  the  National 
Health  Service  was  introduced  in  1948  he  gave 
up  private  practice  to  concentrate  on  his  aca- 
demic work  and  research. 

Realizing  that  a  multi-disciplinary  approach 
was  most  likely  to  succeed  in  improving  obstetric 
care  and  reproductive  performance,  Baird  per- 
suaded the  Medical  Research  Council  to  support 
this  type  of  research.  In  1955  the  Obstetric 
Medicine  Research  Unit  was  established,  with 
himself  as  the  honorary  director.  It  consisted 
of  dietitians,  sociologists,  physiologists,  endo- 
crinologists, statisticians,  and  obstetricians,  who 
worked  together  to  elucidate  the  factors  affecting 
reproduction  in  women.  Baird  was  thus  the 
instigator  of  social  obstetrics.  Much  of  what  he 
pioneered  later  became  commonly  accepted 
practice. 

He  was  also  instrumental  in  altering  the  pat- 
tern of  reproduction  in  Britain.  He  lectured  on 
the  fifth  freedom — freedom  from  the  tyranny  of 
excessive  fertility.  He  introduced  the  first  free 
family  planning  clinic  in  Britain  in  Aberdeen, 
and  offered  abortion  to  Aberdeen  women.  This 
was  very  important  in  influencing  the  reform  of 
the  abortion  law  in  1967.  Baird  also  encouraged 
women  who  had  completed  their  family  to  be 
sterilized. 

Baird  was  concerned  with  long-term  effects  in 
obstetrics.  Because  of  the  excellent  record  system 
in  the  Aberdeen  Maternity  Hospital  he  was  able 
to  study  generations  of  women  and  the  influence 
on  daughters  of  their  mothers'  pregnancies.  He 
saw  deaths  from  cervical  cancer  as  avoidable  and 
instituted  the  first  screening  programme,  the 
results  of  which  showed  that  mortality  could  be 
reduced  by  this  method. 

Baird,  who  retired  from  his  chair  in  1965,  sat 
on  many  local,  national,  and  international  com- 
mittees and  was  a  consultant  to  the  World  Health 
Authority.  He  was  knighted  in  1959  and  received 
honorary  degrees  from  Glasgow  (1959),  Man- 
chester (1962),  Aberdeen  and  Wales  (both  1966), 
and  Newcastle  and  Stirling  (both  1974).  He 
became  honorary  FRCOG  in  1986. 

Baird  was  a  big  man  with  a  strong  physical 
presence.  He  had  a  quizzical  face  and  the  smile 
on  his  lips  illustrated  his  marked  sense  of 
humour.  In  his  earlier  years  he  was  a  fine  rugby 
football  player  and  had  a  trial  for  the  Scottish 
international  team.  In  later  life  he  played  a  good 
game  of  golf.  In  1928  he  married  May  Deans 
(died  1983),  daughter  of  Matthew  Brown  Ten- 
nent,  grocer,  of  Newton,  Lanarkshire.  She  was 
also  a  doctor  and  was  involved  in  local  and 
national  politics.  She  was  appointed  CBE  (1962) 
and  both  she  and  her  husband  were  made  free- 
men of  Aberdeen  (1966).  There  were  two  sons 


Baird 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


and  two  daughters  of  the  marriage.  Baird  died  in 

Edinburgh  7  November  1986. 

[Personal  knowledge.]        Malcolm  Macnaughton 

BALFOUR,  Harold  Harington,  first  Baron 
Balfour  of  Inchrye  (1 897-1 988),  airman,  busi- 
nessman, and  politician,  was  born  1  November 
1897  in  Farnham,  Surrey,  the  younger  son  and 
second  of  three  children  of  Colonel  Nigel  Har- 
ington Balfour,  OBE,  a  serving  officer,  of  Belton, 
Camberley,  Surrey,  and  his  wife  Grace  Annette 
Marie,  youngest  daughter  of  Henry  Robarts 
Madocks  and  granddaughter  of  Field-Marshal 
Baron  *Napier  of  Magdala.  His  elder  brother  was 
killed  in  January  1941  when  his  ship,  HMS 
Southampton,  was  sunk  in  the  Mediterranean. 
Balfour  was  educated  at  Chilverton  Elms,  Dover, 
and  the  Royal  Naval  College,  Osborne. 

Soon  after  the  outbreak  of  World  War  I  in 
1914,  he  volunteered  for  service  with  the  60th 
Rifles,  but  his  urge  to  fly  encouraged  him  to 
transfer  to  the  Royal  Flying  Corps  when  a  chance 
was  offered  the  next  year.  There  then  began  a 
distinguished,  yet  hazardous  spell  as  a  fighter 
pilot  on  the  western  front,  which  culminated  in 
his  promotion,  in  191 7,  to  command  a  flight  in 
the  famous  No.  43  (Fighter)  Squadron,  in  which 
he  had  served  earlier  under  the  command  of 
Major  William  Sholto  *Douglas  (later  Marshal  of 
the  Royal  Air  Force  Baron  Douglas  of  Kirtle- 
side).  Once  wounded  in  action  and,  by  tempera- 
ment, by  no  means  fitted  for  war,  he  was  awarded 
the  MC  and  bar  for  gallantry.  He  remained  with 
the  newly  formed  Royal  Air  Force  until  1923. 

Faced  with  a  continuing  need  to  earn  a  living, 
he  became,  initially,  a  news  reporter  on  the  Daily 
Mail  before  joining  Whitehall  Securities  in  the 
Pearson  Group  in  1925,  when  the  organization 
was  then  entering  the  field  of  commercial  avia- 
tion. Politics  also  beckoned  and,  after  standing 
unsuccessfully  as  the  Conservative  candidate  for 
the  Stratford  division  of  West  Ham  in  1924, 
Balfour  was  elected  to  the  House  of  Commons  in 
1929  as  the  member  for  the  Isle  of  Thanet,  which 
he  represented  until  1945,  when  he  was  created 
Baron  Balfour  of  Inchrye,  of  Shefford,  in  the 
county  of  Berkshire. 

In  1938,  as  the  Royal  Air  Force  was  rearming 
for  war,  he  accepted  Neville  *Chamberlain's 
invitation  to  join  the  government  as  parliamen- 
tary under-secretary  of  state  for  air,  first,  under 
Sir  H.  Kingsley  *Wood,  and  later  in  (Sir)  Win- 
ston *Churchill's  national  government,  under  Sir 
Archibald  *Sinclair  (later  first  Viscount  Thurso). 
It  was  an  inspired  appointment  in  which  he 
served  with  signal  ability  until  1944,  often  flying 
himself  about  in  a  Spitfire  and  forming  a  first- 
hand judgement  of  Fighter  Command's  'big 
wing'  controversy  in  the  Battle  of  Britain. 

Balfour  adorned  the  office  which  he  was  to 
hold  for  six-and-a-half  years,  always  champion- 


ing the  cause  of  the  Service  he  loved.  His 
achievements  at  the  Air  Ministry  were  many. 
Outstanding  among  them  was  the  establishment, 
in  the  spring  of  1940,  of  the  great  Empire  Air 
Training  Scheme  of  which  he  was  a  prime 
instigator  and  which,  in  the  next  five  years,  was 
responsible  for  training  more  than  130,000 
aircrew  in  countries  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  empire.  Its  contribution  to  victory  was 
undoubted.  Moreover,  his  relationship  with  the 
Royal  Air  Force's  senior  officers,  from  the  chief 
of  the  air  staff,  Sir  Charles  *Portal  (later  Vis- 
count Portal  of  Hungerford),  and  the  air  staff,  to 
the  heads  of  operational  commands,  was  both 
effective  and  forthright,  not  least  because  they 
respected  his  knowledge  of  aviation  and  his  own 
Service  record  in  World  War  I. 

Eventually  Churchill,  having  earlier  failed  to 
persuade  him  to  accept,  first,  the  office  of  finan- 
cial secretary  to  the  Treasury  and,  later,  a  civil 
department  of  state  (Balfour  refused  each  to 
remain  loyal  to  the  Royal  Air  Force),  appointed 
him  resident  minister  in  West  Africa  until  the 
dissolution  of  the  national  coalition  in  1945. 

Senior  privy  councillor  (sworn  on  5  August 
1 941),  Balfour  remained  active  in  politics  for 
much  of  his  life,  speaking  frequently  for  Tory 
friends  in  the  country  and  often  intervening  in 
House  of  Lords  debates.  This  he  combined  with 
his  business  interests,  which  included  a  director- 
ship of  British  European  Airways  from  1955  to 
1966  and  chairmanship  of  BE  A  Helicopters  Ltd. 
in  1964-6.  He  also  held  the  presidency  of  the 
Chambers  of  Commerce  of  the  British  Empire 
from  1946  to  1949  and  of  the  Commonwealth 
and  Empire  Industries  Association  from  1956  to 
i960.  His  autobiography,  Wings  Over  Westminster 
(1973),  one  of  his  three  published  works,  was 
well  received,  reflecting  his  early  training  as  a 
Fleet  Street  journalist  and  his  feeling  for  words. 
He  wrote  touching  little  stanzas  and  verses  on 
the  back  of  old  envelopes. 

An  upstanding  and  attractive  man,  who  was 
intensely  loyal,  Balfour  was  a  persuasive  speaker 
on  a  public  platform,  his  sensitivity  and  humour 
enabling  him  quickly  to  catch  the  mood  of  an 
audience.  His  all-round  judgement  was  acute. 
Although  he  lived  happily  in  London  at  End 
House,  St  Mary  Abbot's  Place,  Kensington,  with 
his  family  often  around  him,  his  love  of  fishing 
and  shooting  took  him  regularly  to  Scotland. 
There,  in  his  contented  twilight  years,  he  once 
confided  in  a  member  of  his  family:  'You  know, 
I  would  sooner  be  stone  deaf  on  a  grouse  moor 
than  able  to  hear  a  pin  drop  in  a  bath  chair.' 

Balfour  married,  first,  in  1921  Diana  Blanche 
(died  1982),  daughter  of  Sir  Robert  Grenville 
Harvey,  second  baronet;  they  had  one  son.  The 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1946  and  he  married, 
secondly,  in  1947  Mary  Ainslie,  daughter  of 
Albert  Peter  Anthony  Profumo,  barrister;  they 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Banham 


had  one  daughter.  Balfour  died  21  September 
1988  in  King  Edward  VII  Hospital,  London.  He 
was  succeeded  in  the  barony  by  his  son  Ian  (bom 

1924). 

[Harold  Balfour,  Wings  Cher  Westminster  (autobiog- 
raphy), 1973;  family  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

P.  B.  Lucas 

BALL,  Sir  George  Thomas  Thalben-  (1896- 
1987),  organist.  [See  Thalben-Ball,  Sir 
George  Thomas.] 

BANHAM,  (Peter)  Reyner  (1922-1988),  archi- 
tectural critic  and  historian,  was  born  2  March 
1922  in  Norwich,  the  elder  son  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Percy  Banham,  gas  engineer,  and 
his  wife,  Violet  Frances  Maud  Reyner.  Reyner 
Banham  (Peter  only  to  his  close  friends)  had  a 
typical  Norfolk  upbringing  in  the  Nonconformist 
and  Labour  tradition,  in  which  education  was 
highly  valued.  His  father's  family  had  been 
Primitive  Methodists  and  an  influential  maternal 
uncle  was  Edwin  George  Gooch,  a  Labour  MP. 
His  parents  were  not  well  off  and  he  had  a 
scholarship  at  the  local  public  school.  King 
Edward  VI  School  in  Norwich,  which  wanted 
him  to  go  to  Cambridge  to  read  French.  But 
Banham,  whose  interest  in  technology  had  been 
formed  early,  won  a  national  scholarship  to  train 
as  an  engineer  with  the  Bristol  Aeroplane  Com- 
pany, with  which  he  spent  much  of  the  war 
(1939-45).  Back  in  Norwich  he  became  involved 
with  the  Maddermarket  theatre,  lecturing  on  art 
and  writing  arts  reviews  in  the  local  Norwich 
paper. 

In  the  late  1940s,  now  married,  he  enrolled  at 
the  Courtauld  Institute  in  London.  Having  grad- 
uated BA  in  1952  and  commenced  a  Ph.D.,  he 
joined  the  staff  of  the  Architectural  Review,  where 
his  doctoral  supervisor,  (Sir)  Nikolaus  *Pevsner, 
was  an  editor.  Already  Banham  and  his  wife  had 
instigated  weekly  open  houses  to  study  contem- 
porary art  and  design  and  he  soon  became  a 
prominent  member  of  the  Independent  Group  of 
the  Institute  of  Contemporary  Art,  whose  fellow 
members  were  the  leading  figures  of  the  postwar 
revolt  against  Modernism  in  art  and  architecture. 
Its  major  outcomes  were  the  New  Brutalism  in 
architecture  and  Pop  Art — of  which  Banham  was 
the  leading  proselytizer  and  chronicler. 

His  incisive  writing  in  the  influential  Archi- 
tectural Review  established  him  as  a  major  com- 
mentator on  contemporary  architecture  and 
design.  His  reputation  was  confirmed  by  the 
publication  of  his  doctoral  thesis,  Theory  and 
Design  tn  the  First  Machine  Age  (i960).  This 
dazzling,  densely  argued,  and  meticulously 
researched  work  became  the  seminal  reassess- 
ment of  the  history  of  the  Modem  movement  in 
architecture. 

In  1964  Banham  became  a  senior  lecturer  at 


the  Bartlett  School  of  Architecture,  University 
College  London.  He  became  a  reader  in  1967  and 
in  1969  was  given  a  personal  chair  in  the  history 
of  architecture  at  the  Bartlett.  Meanwhile  he  had 
published  The  New  Brutalism  (1966),  a  history  of 
the  movement  which  he  had  espoused  from  the 
late  1950s  onwards  and  which  he  felt  had  run  its 
natural  course.  After  The  Architecture  of  the  Well- 
tempered  Environment  (1969),  about  architecture 
as  determined  by  its  mechanical  services,  he 
published  three  books,  the  most  successful  of 
which,  especially  among  the  locals,  was  Los 
Angeles:    the    Architecture    of   Four    Ecologies 

(i97i)- 

In  1976,  tired  of  the  post- 1968  gloom  which 
had  settled  on  British  architectural  academic  life, 
he  took  up  the  post  of  chairman  of  the  depart- 
ment of  design  studies  at  the  University  of  New 
York  at  Buffalo.  This  turned  out  to  be  a  dis- 
appointment and  in  1980  he  moved  to  a  chair  in 
art  history  at  the  University  of  California,  Santa 
Cruz,  where  his  wife  became  director  of  the 
Eloise  Pickard  Smith  Gallery.  A  powerful  figure 
in  her  own  right,  she  was  an  essential  part  of 
Banhanrs  life  and  career.  Happy  living  in  a 
house  overlooking  the  sea  at  Santa  Cruz,  cycling 
up  to  the  university,  where  he  taught  art  history 
as  well  as  architectural  history,  and  travelling 
widely,  Banham  published  the  lyrical  Scenes  in 
America  Deserta  (1982)  about  the  great  American 
deserts  in  whose  thrall  he  had  been  since  the 
early  1960s.  He  became  honorary  FRIBA  in  1983 
and  was  awarded  an  honorary  D.Litt.  by  East 
Anglia  University  in  1986. 

Tall,  well  built,  a  prodigious  conversationalist, 
and,  from  the  early  1960s  onwards,  patriarchally 
bearded,  he  had  a  penchant  for  string  ties,  silver 
belt  buckles,  unexpected  headgear,  and  the 
small-wheeled  Moulton  bicycle. 

Banham  was  the  towering  architecture  and 
design  critic  and  polemicist  of  the  postwar  era. 
His  great  gift  was  in  looking  at  major  issues  from 
vantage  points  which  nobody  else  had  thought  of 
occupying.  Last  in  the  line  of  that  school  of 
German  art  history  which  placed  primary  valua- 
tion on  meticulousness  in  dealing  with  source 
material,  Banham's  point  of  departure  from  this 
tradition  was  only  in  the  subjects  to  which  he 
applied  it.  His  position  was  that  the  design  of  a 
new  refrigerator,  automobile,  or  the  latest  film 
could  and  should  be  analysed  with  the  same 
rigour  and  methodology  as  a  painting  by  Piero 
della  Francesca. 

In  1987  he  was  appointed  to  the  Sheldon  H. 
Solow  chair  at  the  Institute  of  Fine  Arts,  New 
York  University.  Before  he  could  take  up  this 
prestigious  post  it  was  found  he  had  cancer. 
After  returning  to  London  for  his  final  months 
he  wrote  the  text  of  a  book  about  his  old  friend 
and  Archigram  member,  Ron  Herron. 


23 


Banham 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


On  1 6  August  1946  he  married  Mary,  daugh- 
ter of  John  Mullett,  park-keeper  in  south  Lon- 
don. They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Banham 
died  18  March  1988  in  University  College  Hos- 
pital, London,  with  this  and  the  inaugural  lec- 
ture, which  he  knew  he  could  never  deliver  in 
person,  just  completed. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  Sutherland  Lyall 

BARLOW,  Harold  Everard  Monteagle  (1899- 
1989),  professor  of  electrical  engineering,  was 
born  15  November  1899  at  45  Balfour  Road, 
Islington,  London,  the  second  child  in  the  family 
of  four  sons  and  two  daughters  of  Leonard 
Barlow,  professional  electrical  engineer,  and  his 
wife,  Katharine  Monteagle,  of  Glasgow.  After 
Wallington  Grammar  School,  at  the  age  of  fif- 
teen he  entered  the  City  and  Guilds  College  at 
Finsbury,  and  in  June  19 17  obtained  the  college 
certificate  in  electrical  engineering.  He  then 
wanted  to  follow  his  elder  brother  Leonard  into 
the  Royal  Flying  Corps,  but  was  persuaded  to 
make  better  use  of  his  training  in  experimental 
work  with  the  Signal  School  at  Portsmouth,  as  a 
sub-lieutenant  in  the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer 
Reserve  (1917-19). 

After  the  war  he  studied  electrical  engineering 
at  University  College  London,  graduating  with 
first-class  honours  in  1920.  Research  under  Pro- 
fessor Sir  Ambrose  Fleming,  FRS,  led  to  a  Ph.D. 
three  years  later.  He  then  joined  his  father's 
electrical  engineering  consulting  firm,  but  was 
not  altogether  happy  with  the  work.  So  when 
Fleming  offered  him  an  assistant  lectureship,  he 
gladly  returned  to  UCL  in  1925.  He  soon  became 
an  excellent  all-round  academic,  producing  a 
substantial  research  output,  seeming  equally  at 
home  in  power  and  communications.  His 
research  included  a  fundamental  experimental 
study  of  Ohm's  law  at  high  current  densities.  He 
also  invented  a  valve  ammeter  and  a  protective 
system  for  fluorescent  tubes. 

With  war  again  threatening,  the  Air  Ministry 
was  selecting  suitable  academics  to  be  told  the 
secrets  of  radar.  Barlow,  by  now  a  reader,  was  a 
natural  choice,  and  when  war  broke  out  in  1939 
he  was  deeply  involved.  He  eventually  became 
superintendent  of  the  radio  department  at  the 
Royal  Aircraft  Establishment  (1943-5),  w'tn 
about  800  staff.  During  this  time  he  realized  that 
microwave  techniques,  essential  to  radar,  could 
also  be  important  in  civil  applications. 

On  his  return  to  UCL  after  the  war  as 
professor  of  electrical  engineering  (1945-50)  and 
Pender  professor  (1950-67),  he  built  up  a  strong 
research  school  in  microwaves,  and  an  under- 
graduate course  with  a  firm  foundation  of  elec- 
tromagnetic theory.  His  principal  research 
interest  now  was  in  the  use  of  millimetre-wave 
waveguides  for  telecommunications,  and  he  was 
influential  in  persuading  the  Post  Office  to  initi- 


ate a  major  programme  of  research  and  develop- 
ment in  this  area,  to  which  UCL  made 
considerable  contributions.  Barlow  was  a  strong 
advocate  of  the  use  of  guided  waves  wherever 
possible,  so  releasing  frequency  bands  for  mobile 
services,  for  which  free-wave  communication 
was  imperative.  He  was  also  very  active  in 
surface-wave  research,  and  in  the  application  of 
electromagnetic  forces  and  the  Hall  effect  to  the 
measurement  of  microwave  power. 

He  was  a  regular  and  always  welcome  partici- 
pant in  scientific  conferences,  especially  those  of 
the  International  Union  of  Radio  Science,  from 
which  in  1969  he  received  the  Dellinger  gold 
medal.  His  other  honours  included:  FRS  (1961), 
honorary  doctorates  of  Heriot-Watt  (1971)  and 
Sheffield  (1973),  foreign  membership  of  the 
Polish  Academy  of  Sciences  (1966),  foreign 
associateship  of  the  US  National  Academy  of 
Engineering  (1979),  the  Microwave  Career  award 
of  the  (American)  Institute  of  Electrical  and 
Electronics  Engineers  (1985),  and  a  Royal  medal 
of  the  Royal  Society  (1988). 

Barlow  retired  from  the  UCL  Pender  chair  in 
1967,  but  remained  in  the  department  as  an 
honorary  research  fellow.  Optical  fibres  were 
then  emerging  as  an  alternative  to  waveguides  for 
telecommunications.  It  was  characteristic  of  Bar- 
low that,  once  convinced  of  the  superiority  of 
optical  fibres,  he  switched  his  own  research  in 
that  direction.  He  had  a  delightful  personality, 
with  a  characteristic  and  infectious  laugh,  fre- 
quently heard  in  the  laboratory.  He  was  inter- 
ested in  everything  that  was  going  on  in  the 
department,  and  retained  this  interest  to  the  end 
of  his  life.  In  his  last  few  years  illness  prevented 
him  from  getting  up  to  his  beloved  University 
College,  but  it  did  not  stop  him  working  on 
optical  fibres. 

Barlow  was  of  average  height  and  build,  with 
clear  blue  eyes,  a  healthy  complexion,  and  a 
ready  smile.  He  had  a  forward-looking  attitude, 
an  enthusiasm  for  research,  and  a  zest  for  life.  In 
1 93 1  he  married  Janet  Hastings,  daughter  of  the 
Revd  Hastings  Eastwood,  minister  at  Christ 
Church  (Presbyterian),  Wallington,  Surrey,  and 
the  marriage  was  a  very  happy  one.  They  had 
three  sons  and  a  daughter.  Barlow's  own  modest 
comment  on  his  career  was:  'Finally,  I  regard 
such  success  as  I  have  been  able  to  achieve  as 
largely  dependent  upon  my  good  fortune  in 
having  a  happy  home  and  a  healthy  life.'  He  died 
at  his  home  in  Epsom  20  April  1989,  after  a  long 
and  painful  period  of  suffering,  first  with  arthri- 
tis, and  later  also  cancer. 

[Alex  L.  Cullen  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvi,  1900;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Alex  Cullen 

BASNETT,  David,  Baron  Basnett  (1924- 
1989),     general     secretary     of    the     General 


24 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Basnett 


and  Municipal  Workers'  Union  (GMWU),  was 
born  9  February  1924  in  Liverpool,  the  son  of 
Andrew  Basnett,  regional  secretary  of  the 
GMVV'U,  and  his  wife,  (Man)  Charlotte  Kerr. 
His  mother  died  when  he  was  six.  After  attend- 
ing a  local  elementary  school  he  won  a  scholar- 
ship to  Quarry  Bank  High  School  in  Liverpool. 
His  first  job  after  leaving  school  was  as  a  bank 
clerk.  During  World  War  II  he  served  as  a  pilot 
in  the  Royal  Air  Force,  in  Sunderland  flying 
boats  involved  in  reconnaissance  missions  over 
the  Atlantic. 

Basnett  joined  the  GMWU  as  a  Liverpool 
regional  official  in  1948  and  was  appointed  as  the 
union's  first  national  education  officer  in  1955. 
Five  years  later  he  was  promoted  to  the  post  of 
national  industrial  officer,  with  responsibility  for 
negotiations  in  the  chemicals  and  glass  indus- 
tries. He  gained  a  reputation  as  one  of  the  most 
intelligent  and  progressive  of  the  new  generation 
of  union  officials,  not  least  through  his  active 
participation  in  the  innovative  phase  of  pro- 
ductivity bargaining  at  ICI  and  elsewhere  in  the 
chemicals  industry.  He  was  a  tall,  thin,  and 
quietly  spoken  man,  whose  demeanour  was  more 
like  that  of  an  academic  or  civil  servant  than  of  a 
manual  workers'  trade-union  official. 

Basnett  achieved  wider  public  recognition 
during  the  dramatic  seven-week  strike  at  the 
Pilkington  Glass  Company  in  St  Helens  in  1970. 
The  dispute  exposed  chronic  weaknesses  in 
union,  organization  and  in  union-management 
relations.  The  closed-shop  agreement  covering 
nearly  8,000  workers  had  produced  complacency 
on  the  part  of  local  union  officials  and  manage- 
ment, the  virtual  collapse  of  union  membership 
participation,  and  the  absence  of  effective  joint 
procedures.  Within  a  few  days  the  strike  became 
a  national  cause  celebre,  and  Basnett  was  subjected 
to  intense  public  scrutiny  as  he  struggled  to 
defeat  a  putative  'breakaway  union',  to  negotiate 
an  end  to  the  bitter  dispute,  and  thereafter  to 
reconstruct  the  credibility  of  the  GMWU  in  St 
Helens. 

The  courage  and  expertise  shown  by  Basnett 
at  Pilkington  undoubtedly  contributed  to  his 
success  in  the  election  for  the  post  of  GMWU 
general  secretary  in  1973.  The  dispute  confirmed 
also  that  the  union  required  substantial  reorga- 
nization and  improved  services  in  order  to 
encourage  growth  and  effective  membership  par- 
ticipation. Basnett  was  not  wholly  successful  in 
his  attempts  to  reform  the  GMWU.  In  the 
thirteen  years  before  he  retired  in  1986,  he  was 
able  to  conclude  mergers  with  several  unions, 
most  notably  with  the  Boilermakers  to  form  the 
General,  Municipal,  Boilermakers,  and  Allied 
Trades  Unions  (GMBATU)  in  1982.  The  tradi- 
tion and  practices  of  regional  autonomy,  how- 
ever, impeded  the  implementation  of  other 
reforms  that  might  have  allowed  the  union  to 


benefit  more  from  the  growth  of  overall  union 
membership  in  the  1970s  and  strengthen  it  for 
the  more  difficult  challenges  of  the  1980s. 

Basnett  was  appointed  to  the  general  council 
of  the  Trades  Union  Congress  (TUC)  in  1966 
and  became  one  of  its  most  prominent  members 
during  the  following  twenty  years.  He  served  as 
chairman  of  the  finance  and  general  purposes 
committee  and  the  economic  committee.  He 
represented  the  TUC  on  the  National  Economic 
Development  Council  from  1973  to  1986,  as  a 
founder  member  of  the  National  Enterprise 
Board  (1975-9),  an^  &  a  member  of  several 
committees  of  inquiry  and  three  royal  commis- 
sions— most  notably  the  1974-7  royal  commis- 
sion on  the  press,  for  which  he  co-authored  a 
minority  report. 

Basnett's  contribution  to  the  trade-union 
movement  can  be  divided  into  two  distinct  peri- 
ods, separated  by  the  year  when  he  was  chairman 
of  the  TUC  in  1977-8.  Throughout  the  1970s  he 
worked  closely  with  Jack  Jones  of  the  TGWU  in 
the  'inner  cabinet'  of  the  TUC,  negotiating  with 
the  Heath,  Wilson,  and  Callaghan  governments 
on  a  wide  range  of  economic,  industrial,  and 
social  policies.  In  his  1978  presidential  address  to 
Congress,  Basnett  outlined  his  strong  commit- 
ment to  the  view  that  union  leaders  had  a  right 
and  a  duty  to  participate  with  government  in 
developing  policies  designed  to  improve  eco- 
nomic performance  and  reduce  social  inequality. 
A  few  days  later,  James  Callaghan  (later  Baron 
Callaghan  of  Cardiff)  astonished  the  TUC  by  his 
decision  to  delay  the  expected  general  election. 
Over  the  following  six  months,  the  widespread 
industrial  disruption  of  the  'winter  of  discontent' 
buried  what  was  left  of  the  'social  contract'  with 
the  Labour  government,  contributed  to  its  elec- 
toral defeat  in  the  spring  of  1979,  and  ended  the 
first,  most  successful,  phase  of  Basnett's  career. 

The  Conservative  governments  of  the  1980s 
were  determined  to  weaken  the  power  of  trade 
unions,  and  to  exclude  their  leaders  from  any 
involvement  in  policy-making.  The  focus  of 
Basnett's  activity  therefore  shifted  to  the  rela- 
tionship between  unions  and  the  Labour  parry; 
he  helped  to  create  a  new  organization  in  1979, 
Trade  Unionists  for  a  Labour  Victory  (TULV), 
promoted  conferences  between  union  and 
Labour  party  leaders,  and  pressed  for  reforms  in 
the  party's  structure  and  organization.  The  fail- 
ure of  many  of  these  initiatives  and  the  weakness 
of  trade  unions  throughout  the  1980s  may  have 
contributed  to  Basnett's  decision  to  retire  early  in 
1986.  More  important,  one  of  his  two  sons,  Ian, 
a  doctor,  had  suffered  serious  neck  and  spinal 
injuries  on  a  rugby  field  in  1984.  Basnett  chose  to 
strengthen  further  the  close  family  life  that  he 
shared  with  his  wife,  Kathleen  Joan  Molyneaux, 
whom  he  had  married  in  1956,  Ian,  and  his  other 
son,  Paul.  Kathleen  was  the  daughter  of  John 


25 


Basnett 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Joseph  Molyneaux,  general  practitioner.  Basnett 
was  made  a  life  peer  in  1987  and  derived  con- 
siderable satisfaction  from  his  contributions  to 
the  House  of  Lords.  He  died  of  cancer,  at  home 
in  Leatherhead,  25  January  1989. 

[TUC  annual  reports  1978  and  1989;  Independent,  27 
January  1989;  personal  knowledge.] 

David  Winchester 

BAWDEN,  Edward  (1903-1989),  draughtsman, 
painter,  and  designer,  was  born  10  March  1903 
in  Braintree,  Essex,  the  only  child  of  Edward 
Bawden,  a  Braintree  ironmonger  of  Cornish 
stock,  and  his  wife,  Eleanor  Game,  the  daughter 
of  a  Suffolk  gamekeeper.  He  went  to  Braintree 
High  School,  to  the  Friends'  School  in  Saffron 
Walden,  and  to  the  Cambridge  Art  School,  and 
then — on  a  Royal  Exhibition  scholarship — to  the 
Royal  College  of  Art.  Here  he  studied  writing 
and  illumination,  but  took  his  diploma  in  book 
illustration.  His  design  tutor  was  the  painter  Paul 
*Nash;  other  RCA  contemporaries  were  Barnett 
*Freedman,  Henry  *Moore,  and  Douglas  Percy 
Bliss,  his  future  biographer.  But  his  closest 
student  friendship,  and  the  most  fruitful  artisti- 
cally, was  with  someone  who  was  in  many  ways 
his  opposite,  Eric  *Ravilious. 

Paul  Nash  helped  Bawden  to  get  his  earliest 
commissions — posters  for  London  Transport 
and  designs  for  the  Curwen  Press.  In  1928 
Bawden  and  Ravilious  worked  together  on  a  large 
mural  in  Morley  College,  London,  the  first  of 
many  mural  designs;  while  Bawden's  line  draw- 
ings of  English  place-names  for  petrol  advertise- 
ments— 'Stow-on-the-Wold  but  Shell  on  the 
Road' — made  him  familiar  to  a  wider  audience. 

In  1932  Bawden  married  his  RCA  contempo- 
rary Charlotte  Epton,  the  daughter  of  Robert 
Epton,  solicitor,  of  Lincoln.  They  had  a  son  and 
a  daughter,  both  of  whom  became  artists.  In  the 
same  year,  the  Bawdens  and  Eric  and  Eileen 
('Tirzah')  Ravilious  moved  to  Brick  House  in 
Great  Bardfield,  Essex,  which  they  had  pre- 
viously visited  at  weekends.  Here  Bawden  began 
painting  the  local  Essex  landscapes;  and  in  1933 
he  held  his  first  one-man  show  at  the  Zwemmer 
Gallery. 

In  1940  Bawden  was  appointed  an  official  war 
artist.  He  went  to  France,  where  he  drew  the 
evacuation  from  Dunkirk;  he  was  among  the  last 
to  leave;  and  then  to  the  Middle  East  and  Africa: 
Egypt,  the  Sudan,  Ethiopia,  Eritrea,  and  Libya. 
He  made  many  fine  water-colours  both  of  the 
fighting  and  of  the  historic  background,  land- 
scape and  architectural,  against  which  it  took 
place.  Returning  by  sea  from  Africa  in  1942,  he 
was  torpedoed;  after  five  days  in  an  open  boat,  he 
was  rescued  by  a  Vichy  French  warship  and 
interned  for  two  months  in  Casablanca.  But  he 
returned  to  the  war,  to  Arabia,  Egypt,   Iraq, 


Persia,  and  Italy.  Much  of  his  war  work  is  in  the 
Imperial  War  Museum. 

After  the  war  Bawden  lived  in  Bardfield  and 
taught  part-time  at  the  RCA  under  (Sir)  Robin 
*Darwin;  he  was  an  excellent  teacher.  Although 
in  the  postwar  climate  his  work  now  seemed  less 
fashionable  than  it  had  before  the  war,  he  was 
always  busy.  His  dexterity  was  not  impaired  by 
an  operation  he  had  in  1946  to  remove  the 
poisoned  top  joint  of  his  index  finger.  He  worked 
industriously  on  book  illustrations — for  Life  in 
an  English  Village  (King  Penguin  Books,  1949), 
The  Arabs  (Puffin  Picture  Books,  1947)  by 
Richard  B.  Serjeant,  and  for  Faber  &  Faber,  the 
Kynock  Press,  the  Nonesuch  Press,  and  the 
Limited  Editions  Club  of  New  York— and  lino- 
cutting,  of  which  seemingly  humble  yet  intract- 
able craft  he  was  a  master.  'Liverpool  Street 
Station'  and  'Brighton  Pier'  are  outstandingly 
original  among  many  fine  prints.  He  also  made 
several  mural  designs — that  for  the  Lion  and 
Unicorn  Press  pavilion  in  the  Festival  of  Britain 
was  perhaps  the  most  notable,  and  there  is  a 
striking  example  in  Blackwells  bookshop  in 
Oxford.  But  it  was  his  landscape  water-colours, 
technically  adventurous  and  highly  individual, 
that  he  always  considered  his  central  activity. 

Photographs,  self-portraits,  and  the  early 
Ravilious  portrait  at  the  RCA  show  him  as  tall, 
spare,  and  serious;  his  expression  sharp-eyed, 
ironic,  and  humorous.  In  character,  he  was 
paradoxical:  not  strong  as  a  child,  but  a  tenacious 
survivor  as  an  adult;  shy  and  diffident  but 
unstoppable;  insecure  and  highly  self-critical,  yet 
self-reliant;  imaginative  yet  very  organized;  pos- 
sessing curious  blind  spots,  like  his  inability  to 
drive  or  enjoy  music,  yet  extraordinarily  versatile 
and  capable  of  learning  anything  he  set  his  hand 
to — from  engraving  on  copper  to  designing  a 
cast-iron  garden  seat.  He  was  not  an  easy  man  to 
get  on  with  and  his  ruthless  determination  to 
work  bore  heavily  on  his  family.  Shyness  some- 
times made  him  seem  dry,  mocking,  and  con- 
trary, and  he  hated  sentimentality. 

Bawden's  style  was  individual,  clear,  and  eco- 
nomical; people,  landscapes,  and  buildings  were 
simply  and  unambiguously  delineated.  He  drew 
animate  and  inanimate  subjects  with  equal  ease, 
simplifying  complicated  subject-matter  and  mak- 
ing epigrammatic  or  decorative  images  out  of 
seemingly  unlikely  material,  and  he  was  as  skilful 
with  a  fine  pen  as  with  the  thick,  solid  technique 
of  linocutting.  Although  he  abhorred  influences, 
Bawden  has  been  likened  to  Edward  *Lear, 
whose  work  he  admired  and  who  in  some 
respects — shyness,  solitariness,  and  precision — 
he  resembled.  He  was  a  skilful  and  resourceful 
designer,  a  brilliant  creator  of  pattern  when  this 
skill  was  out  of  fashion,  and  a  draughtsman  of  wit 
and  individuality.  His  life's  work  reveals  him  also 
as  a  serious  artist  whose  vision  of  the  world 


26 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Baxter 


around  him  was  personal  and  comprehensive. 
His  clarity  may  have  been  for  him  a  mixed 
blessing;  for  by  removing  ambivalence  and  leav- 
ing the  observer  with  little  to  puzzle  over,  it 
made  Bawden  seem  simpler  and  less  profound 
than  other  artists  whose  work  is  harder  to 
fathom.  That,  and  the  fact  that  he  did  many 
different  things,  meant  that  Bawden's  work  was 
accorded  respect  and  admiration,  rather  than  the 
renown  it  merited. 

He  became  CBE  in  1946,  ARA  in  1047,  RDI 
in  1949,  and  RA  in  1956,  and  received  honorary 
doctorates  from  the  RCA  and  Essex  University. 
From  1951  to  1958  he  was  a  trustee  of  the  Tate 
Gallery.  His  work  was  given  a  retrospective 
exhibition  at  the  Victoria  and  Albert  Museum  in 
1989.  When  his  wife  died  in  1970  he  moved  to 
Saffron  Walden,  where  he  worked  steadily  and 
fruitfully  to  the  end  of  his  days.  On  21  Novem- 
ber 1989,  after  a  morning  spent  working  on  a 
linocut,  he  had  a  stroke  and  died  later  that  day  at 
home  in  Saffron  Walden. 

(J.  M.  Richards,  Edward  Bawden,  Penguin  Modern 
Painters,  1946;  Douglas  Percy  Bliss,  Edward  Bawden, 
1980;  Robert  Harling,  Edward  Bawden,  1950;  Justin 
Howes,  Edward  Bawden,  a  Retrospective  Survey,  1988; 
work  in  Cecil  Higgins  Museum,  Bath;  personal  know- 
ledge.] David  Gentleman 

BAXTER,  (Mary)  Kathleen  (1901-1988),  advo- 
cate of  women's  rights,  was  born  30  May  1901  to 
a  Roman  Catholic  family  in  Bradford,  Yorkshire, 
the  eighth  child  in  the  family  of  three  daughters 
and  five  sons  (one  of  whom  died  in  infancy)  of 
Richard  Aloysius  Young,  woollen-manufacturer, 
and  his  wife,  (Mary)  Ann  Barker.  Her  father  died 
during  her  infancy.  She  was  educated  at  St 
Joseph's  College,  Bradford,  and  won  an  open 
scholarship  to  the  Society  of  Oxford  Home 
Students  (later  St  Anne's  College),  Oxford, 
where  she  obtained  a  third  class  in  modern 
history  in  1922  and  a  second  in  philosophy, 
politics,  and  economics  in  1923. 

She  entered  the  Department  of  Inland  Reve- 
nue and  was  inspector  of  taxes  in  Bradford  and 
Leeds  until  her  marriage  in  Westminster  Cathe- 
dral on  12  September  1931  to  Herbert  James 
('H.  J.')  Baxter,  barrister,  who  later  became  a 
county  court  judge.  He  was  the  son  of  James 
Baxter,  whose  career  was  in  the  army  and  Civil 
Service.  There  were  two  daughters  of  the  mar- 
riage, and  a  son,  who  became  a  Roman  Catholic 
priest.  When  she  married  she  was  obliged  by  the 
Income  Tax  Act  to  resign  from  the  DIR.  She 
became  a  tax  consultant  to  a  London  firm  of 
chartered  accountants.  During  World  War  II  she 
worked  in  the  Ministry  of  Supply  at  the  wool 
control  in  Ilkley. 

After  the  war  the  family  moved  from  London 
to  a  house  in  Bessel's  Green,  Kent,  which 
remained  their  home  for  forty  years.  Kathleen 


Baxter  used  her  intellectual  and  analytical  abili- 
ties to  further  causes  she  believed  in.  In  her 
career  she  had  experienced  discrimination 
against  women.  She  worked  for  equal  rights, 
better  education,  and  better  job  opportunities  for 
women,  to  enable  them  to  take  their  place  in 
decision-making  and  become  an  effective  voice 
for  the  improvement  of  society . 

In  1 95 1  she  joined  the  National  Council  of 
Women,  founded  in  1895,  a  non-party-political 
organization  affiliated  to  the  International  Coun- 
cil of  Women.  She  held  high  office  on  many  of 
the  Council's  specialist  committees.  In  the  1950s 
she  led  a  campaign,  with  their  education  commit- 
tee, which  achieved  improvement  in  the  uni- 
versity grants  system.  She  also  founded  the 
Council's  science  and  technology  committee, 
w  hich  pressed  for  better  education  in  science  and 
mathematics  for  girls,  and  inaugurated  a  status- 
of-women  committee,  which  submitted  impor- 
tant points  for  incorporation  into  the  1975  Sex 
Equality  Act.  She  was  elected  vice-president 
(1961-4),  and  subsequently,  as  president 
(1964-6),  she  was  involved  with  national  and 
international  issues.  In  1966,  as  vice-chairman  of 
the  European  Centre  of  the  International  Coun- 
cil of  Women,  she  led  the  British  women's 
delegation  to  the  international  conference  in 
Tehran,  at  which  Britain's  resolution  on  slavery 
was  passed  unanimously.  She  served  on  the  UK 
Human  Rights  Year  national  executive  in  1968. 
As  a  governor  of  the  British  Institute  of  Human 
Rights  she  was  asked  by  the  United  Nations' 
secretary -general  to  write  a  background  paper  on 
the  advancement  of  women's  rights  for  the  1968 
international  conference  on  human  rights,  and 
she  gave  evidence  to  the  UN  session  on  human 
rights  in  Geneva.  At  the  time  of  Britain's  appli- 
cation for  membership  of  the  European  Eco- 
nomic Community,  she  successfully  pressed  the 
gov  eminent  to  consult  the  major  women's  organ- 
izations and  was  largely  responsible  for  the 
establishment  of  the  Women's  Consultative 
Council  (renamed  in  1969  the  Women's  National 
Commission):  its  first  co-chairmen  were  herself 
and  a  government  minister. 

In  late  middle  age  she  studied  law,  from  both 
interest  in  her  husband's  profession  and  know- 
ledge that  it  would  further  her  own  work;  she 
was  called  to  the  bar  (Inner  Temple)  in  1971,  but 
ceased  taking  cases  when  her  husband  became 
gravely  ill  in  1974.  After  his  death  in  the  same 
year,  she  was  appointed  honorary  legal  adv iser  to 
the  National  Council  of  Women,  while  still 
continuing  to  serve  on  the  executive  of  the 
Women's  National  Commission.  In  her  dual 
capacity  she  chaired  working  parties  commenting 
on  documents  from  the  Law  Commission  and 
the  criminal  law  revision  committee  relating  to 
women,  children,  and  the  family. 


27 


Baxter 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


In  1978  she  was  awarded  the  papal  cross  'pro 
ecclesia  et  pontifice'  for  outstanding  service  to 
the  church.  She  was  president  of  the  National 
Board  of  Catholic  Women  (1974-7),  a  founder- 
member  of  the  Catholic  bishops'  conference 
legislation  committee,  and  a  member  of  their 
bio-ethical  advisory  committee  on  artificial 
insemination,  in  vitro  fertilization,  and  genetic 
engineering,  helping  to  foster  a  broad  social 
concern  in  these  Catholic  circles.  In  Kent  she 
served  on  the  hospital,  maternity  wing,  and  old 
people's  home  committees,  and  as  a  governor  of 
four  schools.  She  was  devoted  to  her  family  and 
four  grandsons,  and  greatly  enjoyed  music  and 
tennis. 

Kathleen  Baxter  combined  high  intelligence 
with  an  affectionate  nature.  She  was  a  good- 
looking  woman  with  an  appearance  of  natural 
dignity  and  authority;  silver  hair  framed  a  broad 
forehead,  beneath  which  strikingly  blue  eyes 
claimed  attention,  and  a  smile  of  warmth  and 
charm  promised  interest  and  encouragement. 
She  died  25  October  1988  in  hospital  in  Bromley, 
Kent. 

[National  Council  of  Women  archives  at  NCW  head- 
quarters, London;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Diana  Grantham  Reid 

BEER,  Esmond  Samuel  de  (1895-1990),  histo- 
rian and  benefactor.  [See  De  Beer,  Esmond 
Samuel.] 

BELL,  John  Stewart  (1928- 1990),  theoretical 
physicist,  was  born  into  a  Protestant  working- 
class  family  in  Belfast  28  July  1928,  the  eldest  of 
three  sons  and  second  of  four  children  of  John 
Bell.  The  latter  worked  as  a  horse  dealer,  but  his 
health  was  poor  and  after  army  service  he  had  no 
real  job,  and  his  wife,  (Elizabeth  Mary)  Ann 
Brownlee,  did  some  casual  sewing  work.  After 
leaving  the  Belfast  Technical  High  School  at 
sixteen,  he  worked  for  a  year  as  a  laboratory 
assistant  in  the  physics  department  of  the 
Queen's  University,  Belfast  (1944-5);  his  super- 
visors gave  him  physics  books  to  read  and  he  was 
able  to  skip  a  year  after  he  entered  the  university 
in  1946.  He  graduated  with  first-class  honours  in 
experimental  physics  in  1948  and  in  mathemat- 
ical physics  in  1949. 

Bell  worked  for  the  Atomic  Energy  Research 
Establishment  at  Malvern  and  Harwell  from 
1949  to  1953  on  the  theory  of  particle  accel- 
erators; he  applied  Hamiltonian  dynamics  to 
develop  various  analytical  approaches,  and  dis- 
covered the  'Courant-Snyder'  invariant.  He 
spent  1953  on  leave  working  for  a  Ph.D.  in 
Birmingham  under  P.  T.  Matthews  and  (Sir) 
Rudolf  Peierls.  Returning  to  Harwell,  he  com- 
pleted his  thesis  in  1956  and  began  to  work  on 
many  body  problems  and  quantum  field  theory, 
with  particular  reference  to  atomic  nuclei.  His 


thesis  contains  a  proof  of  the  profound  and 
fundamental  parity-charge  conjugation-time 
reversal  (PCT)  theorem,  although  his  discovery 
of  this  theorem  was  anticipated  by  G.  Liiders. 

In  i960  Bell  moved  to  the  theoretical  studies 
division  at  CERN,  the  European  particle  physics 
laboratory  near  Geneva,  where  he  stayed  until  his 
death,  apart  from  one  year's  leave  in  1963-4  at 
the  Stanford  Linear  Accelerator  Center  in  Cali- 
fornia. He  published  a  large  number  of  important 
papers  on  particle  physics,  his  contributions 
including  articles  on  CP  (charge  conjugation- 
parity)  violation,  the  discovery  that,  despite  hav- 
ing a  mean  free  path  of  millions  of  miles  in 
matter,  neutrinos  are  'shadowed'  in  nuclei,  the 
observation  that  the  algebra  of  electroweak 
charges  is  strongly  suggestive  of  a  gauge  theory, 
and  an  illuminating  explanation  of  the  upper 
limit  on  the  polarization  of  particles  in  storage 
rings  as  a  manifestation  of  interaction  with  the 
black  body  radiation  experienced  by  accelerated 
observers.  The  best  known  of  his  'conventional' 
contributions  was  his  discovery  (with  R.  Jackiw) 
of  the  'Alder-Bell-Jackiw'  anomaly,  which  leads 
not  only  to  constraints  on  models  of  elementary 
particles,  but  also  to  surprising  and  deep  connec- 
tions between  physics  and  geometry. 

Bell  was  best  known  for  work  on  what  he 
described  as  'his  hobby — the  problem  of  quan- 
tum mechanics'.  His  first  contribution  was  to 
demolish  John  von  Neumann's  celebrated  theo- 
rem that  purported  to  show  that  'quantum 
mechanics  would  have  to  be  objectively  false  in 
order  that  another  description  of  the  elementary 
process  than  the  statistical  one  be  possible'.  He 
then  showed  (Bell's  Theorem)  that  certain  pre- 
dictions of  quantum  mechanics  cannot  be  repro- 
duced by  any  'local'  theory  in  which  the  results 
of  a  measurement,  or  experiment  as  he  preferred 
to  call  it,  on  one  system  are  unaffected  by 
operations  on  a  distant  system  with  which  it 
interacted  in  the  past.  The  subsequent  verifica- 
tions of  these  predictions  were  of  fundamental 
importance. 

His  masterly  expositions  of  the  'rotten'  state  of 
the  foundations  of  quantum  mechanics  (collected 
in  Speakable  and  Unspeakable  in  Quantum 
Mechanics,  1987),  in  which  he  stressed  that 
without  a  definition  of  a  'measurement'  the 
predictions  are  in  principle  ambiguous,  did  much 
to  shake  the  'complacent'  views  of  other  phys- 
icists. He  made  the  most  important  contribution 
to  'quantum  philosophy'  since  the  birth  of  quan- 
tum mechanics,  although — by  exposing  its 
essential  non-locality — he  only  deepened  the 
fundamental  mysteries  of  the  subject.  He  also 
had  a  profound  knowledge  of  the  foundations  of 
other  pillars  of  theoretical  physics,  especially 
classical  electromagnetism. 

Bell's  work  was  recognized  by  his  election  as  a 
fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1972  and  as  a 


28 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Bennett 


foreign  honorary  member  of  the  American  Acad- 
emy of  Arts  and  Sciences  in  1987;  the  award  of 
the  Reality  Foundation  prize  in  1982;  the  Dirac 
medal  of  the  British  Institute  of  Physics,  an 
honorary  D.Sc.  from  Queen's  University,  Bel- 
fast, and  an  honorary  Sc.D.  from  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Dublin  (all  1988);  and  the  Dannie 
Heineman  prize  of  the  American  Physical  Soci- 
ety and  the  Hughes  medal  of  the  Royal  Society  in 
1989. 

John  Bell  had  red  hair  and  a  beard  and  spoke 
with  a  lilting  Ulster  accent.  He  generally  dressed 
informally  and  was  a  vegetarian.  He  and  his  wife 
were  a  rather  private  couple,  but  excellent  corn- 
pan)  for  those  who  got  to  know  them.  He  was  a 
brilliant  writer  and  teacher,  both  in  formal  lec- 
tures and  in  private  discussions,  delighting  in 
teasing  out  the  truth  by  means  of  Socratic 
dialogue  and  paradox.  He  was  amused  by  the 
widespread  publicity  that  his  theorem  attracted, 
although  perhaps  also  mildly  resentful  that  it 
tended  to  obscure  his  other  contributions.  He 
enjoyed  the  encounters  it  generated  with  people 
such  as  the  Dalai  Lama,  which  he  described  in  an 
amused  and  sceptical  manner  (Bernstein — see 
bibliography). 

He  married  Man',  daughter  of  Alexander 
Munro  Ross,  a  shipyard  commercial  manager  in 
Glasgow,  in  1954.  They  met  when  both  were 
working  for  AERE  on  accelerator  theory,  pub- 
lishing a  joint  report  in  1952,  and  Man-  joined 
CERN'  as  an  accelerator  physicist  when  they 
moved  there.  They  published  several  joint 
papers  on  electron  cooling  in  storage  rings  and 
quantum  beam-  and  brems-strahlung  in  the 
1980s.  Man  Bell's  comments  on  the  drafts  of  her 
husband's  papers  on  quantum  mechanics  helped 
improve  their  clarity;  he  wrote  that  in  them  kI  see 
her  everywhere'.  The  Bells  had  no  children.  John 
Bell  died  suddenly  and  unexpectedly  of  a  cere- 
bral haemorrhage  in  Geneva,  1  October  1990. 

[Europkystcs  Sews,  vol.  xxii,  no.  4,  1991;  Physics  Today, 
August  1 09 1,  p.  82;  Jeremy  Bernstein,  Quantum  Pro- 
files, 1991;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 
C.  H.  Llewellyn  Smith 

BENNETT,  Donald  Clifford  Tyndall  (1910- 
1986),  air  vice-marshal  and  member  of  Parlia- 
ment, was  born  14  September  19 10  in  Too- 
woomba,  Queensland,  Australia,  the  fourth  and 
youngest  son  and  youngest  of  five  children  of 
George  Thomas  Bennett,  cattle  estate  owner,  of 
Brisbane,  and  his  wife,  Celia  Juliana  Lucas.  His 
sister  died  in  early  childhood.  He  was  educated  at 
Brisbane  Grammar  School  and  enlisted  in  the 
Royal  Australian  Air  Force. 

In  193 1  he  was  posted  to  England  on  a  short- 
senice  commission  in  the  Royal  Air  Force.  He 
resigned  in  1935  to  join  Imperial  Airways,  having 
successfully  passed  the  examinations  for  a  civil 
navigator's  licence,  first  class,  and  both  wireless 


operator's  and  ground  engineer's  licences.  In 
1938  he  gained  the  world's  long-distance  record 
for  seaplanes  in  a  flight  from  Dundee  in  Scotland 
to  Alexandra  Bay  in  South  West  Africa. 

In  1940,  as  flight  superintendent  of  the  Atlan- 
tic Ferry  senice,  he  flew  the  first  of  thousands  of 
American-built  aircraft  to  the  British  Isles,  a  feat 
never  before  attempted  in  winter.  Despite  his 
technical  brilliance  and  outstanding  capacity  for 
work,  his  relationship  with  his  civilian  masters 
was  difficult  and  he  returned  to  the  RAF  in  1941. 
He  was  posted  to  Leeming,  Yorkshire,  to  com- 
mand No.  77  Squadron  operating  Whitley 
bombers  and  in  April  1942  to  No.  10  Squadron, 
also  at  Leeming.  During  an  attack  on  the  Tirpitz 
in  a  Norwegian  fiord  his  Halifax  was  shot  down. 
After  bailing  out  he  escaped  on  foot  to  Sweden  to 
be  repatriated  and  to  receive  immediate  appoint- 
ment to  the  DSO. 

When  the  Air  Ministry  ordered  Bomber  Com- 
mand to  create  an  elite  target-finding  force  he 
was  the  obvious  choice  to  command  it.  Pro- 
motion followed  swiftly  and  as  air  officer  com- 
manding No.  8  Group  his  Pathfinder  Force 
successfully  mastered  the  identification  and 
marking  of  chosen  targets.  In  1943  he  was 
accorded  the  rank  of  air  vice-marshal.  Although 
regarded  by  many  as  the  architect  of  the  effi- 
ciency of  Bomber  Command  his  relationship 
with  other  long-sening  bomber  group  com- 
manders was  not  without  friction.  Few  had  any 
recent  operational  experience  and  most  were 
reluctant  to  release  their  best  crews  to  No.  8 
Group. 

In  1945,  having  resigned  his  commission,  he 
was  appointed  chief  executive  of  British  South 
American  Airways,  a  new  airline  founded  by 
shipping  interests.  His  policy  of  operating  only 
British  aircraft  involved  dependence  upon  a  con- 
verted bomber,  the  Lancastrian,  until  the  Avro 
Tudor  was  ready  for  sen  ice.  The  deficiencies  of 
the  airport  facilities,  together  with  the  inex- 
perience of  the  youthful  crews,  took  their  toll  in 
accidents.  In  1948,  following  the  unexplained 
disappearance  of  a  Tudor  en  route  to  Bermuda, 
the  minister  for  civil  aviation,  the  first  Baron 
•Nathan,  grounded  the  remainder,  pending  an 
investigation.  Convinced  that  the  Tudor  was 
perfectly  airworthy,  Bennett  angrily  denounced 
the  minister  to  the  national  press.  In  the  ensuing 
furore  he  refused  to  resign  and  was  dismissed. 

Almost  at  once  the  Russian  blockade  of  road, 
rail,  and  river  routes  to  West  Berlin  provided 
him  with  an  opportunity  to  prove  the  Tudor's 
merits.  He  founded  Airflight,  based  at  Langley, 
near  Slough,  equipping  two  Tudors  as  oil-tank- 
ers and  personally  flying  250  sorties  to  Berlin.  In 
May  1949  he  registered  a  new  company,  Fair- 
flight,  based  at  Blackbushe,  Hampshire.  Charter 
flights  to  the  Middle  and  Far  East  were  carried 
out  before  the  company  was  sold  in  1951. 


29 


Bennett 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


At  the  invitation  of  Sir  Archibald  *Sinclair, 
leader  of  the  Liberal  party,  he  had  accepted  the 
vacant  seat  of  Middlesbrough  West  in  1945.  In 
the  general  election  later  that  year  he  lost  it  to  the 
Labour  candidate.  In  1948  he  unsuccessfully 
contended  North  Croydon  and,  in  1950,  Nor- 
wich North.  Thereafter  the  Liberal  party's 
enthusiasm  for  the  European  Economic  Commu- 
nity and  its  posture  on  defence  alienated  Bennett, 
whose  upbringing  was  founded  on  pride  in  the 
empire  and  the  merits  of  imperial  preference.  He 
left  the  Liberal  party  in  1962  and  five  years  later 
polled  about  500  votes  as  a  National  party 
candidate  at  a  by-election  in  Nuneaton.  Although 
not  a  member  of  the  National  Front,  he  sup- 
ported some  of  its  policies,  such  as  the  voluntary 
repatriation  of  immigrants,  when  he  organized, 
in  1969,  the  Association  of  Political  Independ- 
ents, and,  later,  the  Independent  Democratic 
Movement.  He  joined  the  National  Council  of 
Anti-Common  Market  Organizations,  being  its 
chairman  from  1973  to  1976.  From  1946  to  1949 
he  was  chairman  of  the  executive  committee  of 
the  United  Nations  Association  of  Great  Britain 
and  Northern  Ireland.  His  most  notable  publica- 
tion, The  Complete  Air  Navigator  (1931),  ran 
through  many  editions  until  1967.  He  also  wrote 
The  Air  Mariner  (1938)  and  Pathfinder  (1958), 
among  other  books. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  (1943)  and  CB  (1944). 
The  Russian  government  awarded  him  the  Order 
of  Alexander  Nevsky  in  1944.  For  services  to 
aviation,  he  was  awarded  the  Johnston  memorial 
trophy  in  1937  and  1938,  and  the  Oswald  Watt 
medal  in  1938  and  1946.  In  1935  he  married  Elsa, 
daughter  of  Charles  Gubler,  jeweller,  of  Zurich. 
They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Bennett  died  15 
September  1986  at  Wexham  Hospital,  Buck- 
inghamshire. 

[D.  C.  T.  Bennett,  Pathfinder  (war  memoirs),  1958; 
personal  knowledge.]         Archie  Stewart  Jackson 

BENNETT,  (Nora  Noel)  Jill  (i929?-i99o), 
actress,  was  born  possibly  24  December  1929  in 
Penang,  Malaya,  the  only  child  of  (James)  Randle 
Bennett,  owner  of  rubber  plantations,  and  his 
wife,  Nora  Adeline  Beckett.  Her  death  certificate 
claims  that  she  was  born  in  1931,  but  she  was 
reticent  about  her  date  of  birth.  In  Who's  Who 
she  said  she  was  born  in  1929.  When  war  broke 
out  in  1939  her  mother  took  her  to  England.  Her 
father  was  taken  prisoner  by  the  Japanese,  and 
neither  Jill  nor  her  mother  saw  him  again  for  five 
years.  In  England  she  attended  several  boarding 
schools,  including  Priors  Field,  Godalming, 
where,  she  claimed,  she  was  good  at  games, 
French,  riding,  and  the  history  of  art.  She  was 
expelled  at  the  age  of  fourteen.  She  showed  an 
early  talent  for  ballet  too,  but  at  fifteen  decided  to 
be  an  actress,  and  was  accepted  by  the  Royal 
Academy  of  Dramatic  Art  (1944-6).  She  made 


her  stage  debut  in  1947  in  Now  Barabbas  (Bol- 
ton's theatre,  and,  later,  Vaudeville  theatre). 

In  1949  she  was  given  one  speaking  part  and 
walk-ons  with  the  Shakespeare  Memorial  Thea- 
tre Company  at  Stratford-upon-Avon,  where  she 
met  (Sir)  Godfrey  *Tearle,  a  fine  actor,  who  was 
over  forty  years  her  senior.  Until  he  died  in  1953, 
they  had  what  she  called  'a  passionate  friend- 
ship'. In  her  book,  Godfrey:  a  Special  Time 
Remembered  (written  with  Suzanne  Goodwin  in 
1983),  she  makes  it  clear  that  he  was  the  great 
love  of  her  life.  She  was  later  married  twice,  both 
times  to  playwrights.  In  1962  she  married  Willis 
Hall,  the  son  of  Walter  Hall.  This  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1965  and  in  1968  she  married  John 
James  Osborne,  the  son  of  Thomas  Godfrey 
Osborne,  copywriter  in  an  advertising  agency. 
They  were  divorced  in  1977.  There  were  no 
children  of  either  marriage,  although  she  had  two 
miscarriages  when  married  to  John  Osborne. 
Osborne's  hostile  picture  of  her  in  Almost  a 
Gentleman  (1 991)  is  unrecognizable  to  those  who 
knew  her  well. 

She  had  a  long  and  successful  career  in  thea- 
tre, films,  television,  and  radio.  Her  first  parts  in 
London  were  Anni  in  Captain  Carvallo,  directed 
by  Sir  Laurence  (later  Baron)  *01ivier  (St  Jam- 
es's, 1950)  and  Iras  in  both  Antony  and  Cleopatra 
and  Caesar  and  Cleopatra  in  the  Sir  Laurence 
Olivier  season,  also  at  the  St  James's  (1951). 
From  1955  she  was  much  in  demand,  mostly  in 
the  West  End,  notably  as  Helen  Eliot  in  The 
Night  of  the  Ball  (New  theatre,  1955),  Masha  in 
The  Seagull  (Saville,  1956),  and  Isabelle  in  Dinner 
with  the  Family  (New,  1957).  In  December  1962 
she  began  her  important  association  with  the 
Royal  Court  theatre,  as  Hilary  in  The  Sponge 
Room,  and  Elizabeth  Mintey  in  Squat  Betty.  In 
1965  she  made  the  first  of  her  three  appearances 
there  in  a  play  by  her  future  husband  John 
Osborne,  as  Countess  Sophia  Delyanoff  in  A 
Patriot  for  Me.  She  was  also  in  the  film  versions 
of  Osborne's  Inadmissible  Evidence  and  The 
Charge  of  the  Light  Brigade  (both  1968).  Osborne 
wrote  Time  Present — based  on  her  relationship 
with  Godfrey  Tearle — for  her  in  1968,  and  in  it, 
as  Pamela,  she  won  the  Evening  Standard  and 
Variety  Club  awards  for  best  actress.  Her  final 
Osborne  play  (also  at  the  Royal  Court,  and 
subsequently  at  the  Cambridge  theatre)  was  West 
of  Suez  (197 1 ). 

She  was  a  memorable  Hedda  Gabler  in  1972, 
and  Fay,  in  Joe  Orton's  Loot  in  1975  (both  back 
at  the  Royal  Court)  and  was  highly  successful  in 
a  revival  of  Sir  Terence  *Rattigan's  Separate 
Tables,  in  which  she  played  the  contrasting 
emotional  cripples  Mrs  Shankland  and  Miss 
Railton  Bell  (Apollo,  1977).  This  was  followed  by 
leading  parts  in  successive  Chichester  seasons  in 
1978  and  1979,  which  included  Miss  Tina  in  The 
Aspern  Papers.  Other  personal  successes  included 


30 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Bentinck 


Gertrude  in  Hamlet — in  the  opinion  of  the 
director,  Anthony  Page,  the  best  Gertrude  he 
ever  saw  (Royal  Court,  1980) — and  the  wife  in 
August  Strindberg's  Dance  of  Death  (Manchester 
Royal  Exchange,  1981). 

Her  films  included  Lust  for  Life  (1956),  Joseph 
Losey's  The  Criminal  (i960),  The  Nanny  (with 
Bette  Davis,  1965),  Britannia  Hospital  (1982), 
and  Bernardo  Bertolucci's  Sheltering  Sky  (1990). 
Her  many  television  credits  included  The  Heiress, 
The  Three  Sisters,  Design  for  Living,  Rembrandt 
(all  1970),  Alan  Bennett's  The  Old  Crowd  (1979), 
and  John  Mortimer's  Paradise  Postponed  (1986). 

No  conventional  beauty,  she  considered  her- 
self ugly.  She  was  in  fact  extremely  attractive, 
elegant,  petite,  blonde,  and  blue-eyed,  with  a 
distinctively  turned-up  nose,  flared  nostrils, 
strong  teeth,  and  a  small,  amusingly  jutting  chin. 
She  had  quick  intelligence  and  wit,  and  her 
laughter  was  companionable  and  infectious,  but 
needed  to  be  won.  She  often  indulged  in  extrava- 
gant behaviour,  which  could  be  embarrassing. 
She  wrongly  believed  that  she  was  a  failure  in  her 
relationships  with  men.  Her  friendships  were 
many  and  long  lasting.  For  instance,  Anthony 
Page  was  a  friend  and  colleague  for  over  thirty 
years,  and  Lindsay  Anderson,  the  film  director, 
for  longer  still — as  was  her  loving  and  much- 
loved  secretary,  Linda  Drew. 

She  adored  acting,  but,  being  sensitive  and 
nervous,  preferred  the  cloistered  security  of 
rehearsal,  the  passionate  search  for  character  and 
motive,  and  the  trusting  relationship  with  her 
directors  to  the  exposure  of  performance.  When, 
however,  she  felt  utterly  secure  in  her  part,  in  the 
play,  and  in  her  colleagues,  she  could  be 
superb. 

She  committed  suicide  at  home  at  23  Glou- 
cester Walk,  London,  by  taking  an  overdose 
of  sleeping  pills  5  October  1990,  having  tried 
unsuccessfully  to  do  so  a  month  previously.  Her 
relationship  with  a  Swiss  businessman,  Thomas 
Schoch,  had  foundered  and  her  ever-present 
sense  of  failure  had  finally  overcome  her. 

[Jill  Bennett  and  Suzanne  Goodwin,  Godfrey:  a  Spe- 
cial Time  Remembered,  1983;  John  Osborne,  Almost  a 
Gentleman,  109 1;  information  from  Linda  Drew  and 
Anthony  Page;  personal  knowledge.]      Dllcie  Gray 

BENTINCK,  Victor  Frederick  William 
Cavendish-,  ninth  Duke  of  Portland 
( 1 897-1990),  diplomat  and  international  busi- 
nessman, was  born  18  June  1897  at  16  Mansfield 
Street,  London  Wi,  the  younger  son  and  third  of 
four  children  of  Frederick  Cavendish-Bentinck, 
barrister,  who  managed  the  ducal  family's  Mary- 
lebone  estate,  and  his  wife,  Ruth  Mary,  who  was 
the  illegitimate  daughter  of  Earl  St  Maur,  a  son 
of  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  and  was  reputed  to 
have  gypsy  blood.  'Bill'  Bentinck  was  educated  at 
Wellington  College,  but  left  at  seventeen  without 


making  a  mark  and  was  appointed  in  August 
191 6  honorary  attache  at  the  British  legation  at 
Christiania  (later  Oslo).  In  191 8  he  enlisted  and 
trained  with  the  Household  Brigade,  but  saw  no 
active  service.  He  entered  the  Diplomatic  Service 
in  1919,  missing  the  chance  of  university  educa- 
tion, and  was  posted  as  third  secretary  to  the 
legation  at  Warsaw.  It  was  as  ambassador  at 
Warsaw  twenty-seven  years  later  that  he  ended  a 
diplomatic  career  in  which  he  achieved  special 
distinction  as  chairman  of  the  wartime  Joint 
Intelligence  Committee  (1939-45).  1°  I922  ne 
began  work  in  the  Foreign  Office  and  took  charge 
of  administrative  arrangements  for  the  Lausanne 
conference  before  moving  to  the  embassy  in  Paris 
as  second  secretary.  There  in  1924  he  contracted 
a  marriage  that  soon  cast  a  shadow  over  a  very 
promising  career.  His  wife,  Qothilde,  was  the 
daughter  of  James  Bruce  Quigley,  a  Kentucky 
lawyer;  her  lifestyle  was  extravagant  and  she  had 
a  talent  for  quarrelling  with  other  diplomatic 
wives.  Bentinck  was  a  conciliator  by  nature, 
though  well  able  to  fight  his  corner.  His  tall, 
stooping  figure  and  rather  myopic  look  belied  the 
resolution  he  displayed  in  a  crisis. 

Back  in  the  Foreign  Office  in  1925,  he  served 
in  the  League  of  Nations  department  and  had  a 
useful  role  at  the  Locarno  conference.  He  was 
promoted  first  secretary  and  sent  back  to  Paris  in 
1928;  but,  as  his  domestic  problems  worsened, 
assignments  grew  shorter  and  further  from  the 
'inner  circle':  Athens  in  1932  was  followed  by 
Santiago  in  1933.  In  1937,  however,  he  was 
recalled  to  the  FO  as  assistant  in  the  Egyptian 
department  and  there  acquired  experience  of 
handling  military  matters.  In  the  summer  of  1939 
his  wife  left  without  warning  for  the  USA,  taking 
the  two  children,  a  boy  and  a  girl.  Her  departure 
coincided  with  the  high  point  of  his  diplomatic 
career,  when  the  FO,  which  had  been  reluctant 
to  pool  intelligence  with  the  armed  services, 
appointed  him  chairman  of  the  JIC  and  he  found 
himself,  as  a  civilian  and  relatively  junior,  report- 
ing to  the  chiefs  of  staff.  His  perceptiveness  and 
tact  enabled  him  to  overcome  service  rivalries 
and  weld  the  JIC  into  a  highly  effective  instru- 
ment. He  was  appointed  CMG  in  1942  and 
promoted  counsellor  to  head  the  newly  created 
services  liaison  department  of  the  FO. 

Despite  wartime  success,  his  diplomatic  career 
was  doomed.  He  had  formed  a  close  friendship 
with  a  Canadian,  Kathleen  Elsie,  widow  of 
Arthur  Richie  Tillotson  and  daughter  of  Arthur 
Barry  of  Montreal,  but  his  absent  wife  refused  to 
divorce  him.  He  explained  his  difficulties  to  the 
FO,  which  persuaded  him  in  July  1945  to  take 
the  key  post  of  ambassador  to  Poland,  which  had 
fallen  under  Soviet  control.  The  communist- 
dominated  government  did  its  utmost  to  sabo- 
tage his  mission  and  in  February  1947  the  FO 
withdrew  him  and   applied   to  Brazil  for  his 


3i 


Bentinck 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


agrement  as  ambassador.  In  March  his  suit  for 
divorce  came  before  the  court  and  was  exploited 
by  his  wife  to  discredit  him.  The  resultant 
publicity  obliged  the  FO  to  withdraw  the  request 
for  agrement.  He  then  resigned,  thus  forfeiting 
his  pension  under  Treasury  regulations.  The 
Court  of  Appeal  finally  granted  his  divorce  and 
in  July  1948  he  married  Kathleen. 

He  had  lost  no  time  in  finding  remunerative 
work  as  vice-chairman  of  the  Committee  of 
Industrial  Interests  in  Germany,  becoming  chair- 
man in  1949.  In  addition  to  advancing  the 
interests  of  major  British  companies,  such  as 
Unilever,  he  formed  close  connections  with  lead- 
ing German  companies,  such  as  Bayer  AG.  He 
promoted  the  German  and  Belgian  nuclear 
industries  and  was  awarded  a  high  German 
decoration  {Bundesverdienstkreuz).  On  the  death 
of  his  elder  brother  in  1979,  he  became  the  ninth 
Duke  of  Portland,  Marquess  of  Titchfield,  Vis- 
count Woodstock,  and  Baron  Cirencester;  but  he 
inherited  neither  land  nor  capital,  since  the  entail 
had  been  broken  eight  years  previously  by  the 
seventh  duke.  His  son,  William,  had  died  of 
heart  failure  in  1966,  leaving  no  children.  When 
he  himself  died  at  his  home,  21  Carlyle  Square, 
London,  30  July  1990,  the  dukedom  created  in 
17 1 6  was  extinguished. 

[Patrick  Howarth,  Intelligence  Chief  Extraordinary:  the 
Life  of  the  Ninth  Duke  of  Portland,  1986;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]         Robert  Cecil 

BERGEL,  Franz  (1900-1987),  biochemist,  was 
born  13  February  1900  in  the  Alsergrund  quarter 
of  Vienna,  the  younger  child  and  second  son  of 
Moritz  Martin  Bergel,  a  Hungarian  immigrant 
and  wine  merchant,  and  his  wife,  Barbara  Betty 
Spitz,  daughter  of  a  carpet  manufacturer.  He  was 
educated  at  a  Realgymnasium  in  Vienna  and  was 
called  up  into  a  cavalry  regiment  at  the  beginning 
of  191 8.  At  the  end  of  the  war  he  returned  to 
school,  from  which  he  went  to  the  universities  of 
Wiirzburg  and  Freiburg  to  study  chemistry.  He 
obtained  his  Ph.D.  in  1924  and  published  some 
first-class  work  on  amino-acid  oxidation. 

In  1928,  having  begun  a  whirlwind  affair  with 
Niddy  Impekoven,  a  popular  solo  dancer  and 
wife  of  a  Freiburg  University  professor,  he 
eloped  with  her  following  her  divorce.  They 
married  in  1930.  From  then  until  he  went  to 
Edinburgh  in  1933  he  was  mainly  occupied  as  a 
kind  of  manager-impresario  for  his  wife  in  dance 
tours  all  over  Europe,  and  in  1932-3  he  acted  in 
this  capacity  in  an  extended  tour  of  Ceylon  and 
Indonesia.  There  was  one  daughter  of  this  mar- 
riage, which  ended  in  divorce  in  1933,  after 
which  the  child  lived  with  her  mother  in  Swit- 
zerland. 

On  Bergel's  return  to  Freiburg  in  1933  the 
National  Socialists  were  already  in  power.  He 
was  totally  opposed  to  National  Socialism  and 


immediately  decided  to  leave  Germany,  although 
at  that  time  he  was  under  no  necessity  to  do  so, 
since  although  he  was  of  Jewish  descent  he  was 
an  Austrian  citizen  and  not,  therefore,  subject  to 
persecution.  Bergel  went  from  Freiburg  to  Edin- 
burgh, where,  thanks  to  financial  support  from 
Hoffmann  La  Roche  &  Co.  of  Basle,  he  joined 
the  laboratory  of  George  *Barger,  professor  of 
medical  chemistry  in  the  university.  He  did  not 
at  first  find  this  very  congenial,  but  in  the 
summer  of  1934  he  was  joined  by  A.  R.  (later 
Baron)  Todd,  who  had  been  brought  to  Edin- 
burgh from  Oxford  to  carry  out  research  on  the 
structure  (and  eventual  synthesis)  of  vitamin  Bi, 
of  which  a  very  small  quantity  was  in  Barger's 
possession.  Todd  and  Bergel  struck  up  an 
immediate  and  lasting  friendship  and  worked 
together  on  vitamin  Bi,  for  which,  in  1936,  they 
developed  an  effective  synthesis  which  permitted 
the  commercial  development  of  the  vitamin  by 
Hoffmann  La  Roche. 

When,  in  1936,  Todd  moved  to  the  Lister 
Institute  of  Preventive  Medicine  in  London, 
Bergel  moved  with  him  (still  supported  by  Hoff- 
mann La  Roche)  and  the  two  continued  their 
joint  work  on  vitamin  E  and  the  active  principle 
of  Cannabis  resin.  Bergel  was  naturalized  in 
about  1938.  Todd  moved  to  Manchester  in  1938 
as  professor  of  chemistry  and  Bergel  to  Welwyn 
Garden  City  as  director  of  the  new  research 
laboratories  of  Roche  Products  Ltd.  There  he 
worked  on  synthetic  analgesics,  cannabinoids, 
antibacterials,  and  vitamins.  With  the  enforced 
wartime  separation  of  Roche  Products  from  the 
mother  firm  in  Basle,  Bergel  had  to  devote  much 
time  to  the  process  control  and  development  of 
vitamins  and  to  the  study  of  the  various  new 
vitamins  that  had  been  discovered. 

He  remained  at  Welwyn  Garden  City  until 
1952,  when  he  succeeded  G.  A.  R.  Kon  as 
professor  of  chemistry  in  the  Chester  Beatty 
Research  Institute  at  the  Royal  Cancer  Hospital, 
London,  a  post  which  he  filled  with  great  distinc- 
tion until  his  retirement  in  1966.  He  concen- 
trated on  cancer  chemotherapy,  enlarging  Kon's 
programme  of  work  on  derivatives  of  'nitrogen 
mustard'  as  possible  chemotherapeutic  agents. 
He  also  initiated  and  developed  a  substantial 
programme  of  research  on  the  biochemical  prop- 
erties of  tumours.  He  sought  to  exploit  the 
emphasis  of  tumours  on  anabolic  rather  than 
catabolic  pathways,  and  also  to  use  enzyme 
therapy  to  deprive  particular  tumours  of  essential 
nutrients.  In  1961  he  published  a  comprehensive 
monograph,  Chemistry  of  Enzymes  in  Cancer,  in 
which  he  reviewed  all  that  was  known  about  the 
role  of  enzymes  in  cancer  and  the  potential  of 
some  of  them  as  therapeutic  agents. 

Bergel's  outstanding  contributions  to  cancer 
research  are  the  more  remarkable  since  he  under- 
went a  major  operation  for  rectal  cancer  in  1957 


32 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Berkeley 


which  involved  a  colostomy;  despite  this  handi- 
cap he  continued  his  work  and  lived  an  active 
life.  He  was  deputy  director  of  the  Chester 
Beatty  Institute,  serving  on  all  its  major  commit- 
tees and  acting  as  dean  from  1963  to  1966.  He 
was  an  honorary  lecturer  at  University  College 
London  (1946-72),  served  on  the  council  of  both 
the  Chemical  Society  and  the  Society  of  the 
Chemical  Industry,  and  was  chairman  of  the 
Co-ordinating  Committee  for  Symposia  on  Drug 
Action.  He  was  elected  FRS  in  1959. 

Bergel  was  a  kind,  compassionate,  and  gentle 
man.  Widely  read,  with  an  active  interest  in 
European  languages,  he  was  an  engaging  con- 
versationalist and  a  talented  amateur  artist.  Tall, 
dark,  and  handsome,  he  was  very  much  a  'ladies' 
man',  similar  to  the  typical  Austrian  aristocrats 
of  Franz  Lehar's  operettas.  In  1939  he  married 
for  the  second  time.  His  wife  was  Phyllis  Edith, 
divorced  wife  of  John  Shuell  (otherwise  Shaw), 
daughter  of  John  Thomas,  of  independent 
means.  There  were  no  children.  He  retired  to  Bel 
Royal  in  Jersey,  where  he  died  1  January  1987. 

[Lord  Todd  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxriv,  1988]  A.  R.  Todd 

C.  S.  Nicholls 

BERKELEY,  Sir  Lennox  Randal  Francis 
(1903-1989),  composer,  was  born  12  May  1903 
at  Melford  Cottage,  Boar's  Hill,  near  Oxford,  the 
younger  child  and  only  son  of  Captain  Hastings 
George  FitzHardinge  Berkeley,  of  the  Royal 
Navy  (the  eldest  son  of  George  Lennox  Rawdon 
Berkeley,  seventh  Earl  of  Berkeley),  and  his  wife 
Aline  Carla,  daughter  of  Sir  James  Charles  Har- 
ris, KCVO,  former  British  consul  in  Monaco. 
His  father  did  not  succeed  as  eighth  Earl  of 
Berkeley  because  Captain  Berkeley's  parents 
were  unmarried  until  prior  to  the  birth  of  their 
third  son,  who  succeeded  to  the  earldom.  After 
early  schooling  in  Oxford,  he  was  educated  at 
Gresham's  School  in  Holt,  St  George's  School  in 
Harpenden,  and  Merton  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  coxed  the  college  rowing  VIII  and  took  a 
fourth  class  in  French  (1926).  He  became  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Merton  in  1974. 

He  had  shown  no  outstanding  musical  abilities 
at  school  (though  a  contemporary  remembers 
him  playing  the  piano  with  much  flourishing  of 
hands),  but  while  at  Oxford  he  had  several  of  his 
compositions  performed  and  eventually  made  up 
his  mind  to  be  a  composer.  In  this  he  was 
supported  by  the  young  British  conductor 
Anthony  Bernard,  who  was  to  conduct  first 
performances  of  a  number  of  Berkeley's  early 
works. 

On  advice  from  Maurice  Ravel,  he  went  to 
Paris  in  the  autumn  of  1926  to  study  with  Nadia 
Boulanger,  and  stayed  with  her  for  six  years.  For 
the  first  of  these  she  allowed  him  to  do  nothing 
but  counterpoint  exercises,  a  discipline  which 


often  reduced  him  to  tears  at  the  time,  but  for 
which  he  was  to  remain  grateful  all  his  life.  He 
had  works  performed  in  Paris  and  London  and 
his  'Polka  for  Two  Pianos'  (1934)  was  a  notable 
success,  inaugurating  his  ties  with  the  publishers 
J.  &  W.  Chester.  But  the  BBC  broadcast  of  his 
oratorio  Jonah  (1935)  in  1936  and  the  Leeds 
festival  performance  of  it  the  following  year  led 
many  critics  to  look  at  him  askance  as  a  purveyor 
of  modernism.  From  1932  to  1934  he  lived  on  the 
Riviera  with  his  invalid  mother. 

In  1936  he  met  Benjamin  (later  Baron)  •Brit- 
ten and  the  two  became  close  friends,  sharing  a 
house  in  Snape  just  before  World  War  II. 
Although  rather  daunted  by  what  he  felt  to  be 
Britten's  superior  talent,  Berkeley  was  able  to 
find  a  distinctive  voice  in  the  'Serenade  for 
Strings'  (1939),  the  First  Symphony  (1940),  and 
the  'Divertimento'  (1043).  From  1042  to  1945  he 
worked  for  the  BBC,  first  in  Bedford  and  then  in 
London,  as  an  orchestral  programme  planner. 
The  authorities  noted  with  dismay  that  when 
Berkeley  was  labouring  on  a  commission  his  BBC 
work  suffered,  and  he  was  happy  to  accept  an 
appointment  as  professor  of  composition  at  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Music  in  1946.  He  remained 
in  the  post  until  1968  and  numbered  many  of  the 
country's  best  composers  among  his  pupils, 
including  David  Bedford,  Peter  Dickinson,  Wil- 
liam Mathias,  (J.)  Nicholas  Maw,  and  John 
Tavener. 

Until  he  succumbed  to  Alzheimer's  disease  in 
the  early  1980s,  he  produced  a  succession  of 
works  which  made  him  many  friends  and  admir- 
ers in  the  musical  community,  even  if  he  never 
became  famous  outside  it.  He  wrote  for  perform- 
ers such  as  the  pianist  Colin  Horsley,  the  oboist 
Janet  Craxton,  and  the  guitarist  Julian  Bream, 
and  produced  a  considerable  body  of  fine  cham- 
ber music.  He  was  particularly  at  home  with  the 
voice,  and  his  vocal  and  choral  works,  such  as  the 
Four  Poems  of  St  Teresa  of  Avila  (1947),  the 
Stabat  Mater  (1947),  and  The  Hill  of  the  Graces 
(1975),  show  a  love  and  understanding  of  words 
at  least  equal  to  Britten's.  His  four  operas — A 
Dinner  Engagement  (1954),  Nelson  (1954),  Ruth 
(1956),  and  Castaway  (1967) — display  at  times  an 
individual  view  of  what  constitutes  opera,  and 
one  which  critics  and  impresarios  have  not 
always  shared;  certainly  he  was  not  always  for- 
tunate with  his  librettists.  But  Nelson  suffered 
from  less  than  adequate  London  performances 
and  deserves  to  be  revived.  From  the  late  1960s 
Berkeley,  like  many  composers,  experimented 
with  serial  techniques  and,  though  they  never 
took  over  his  music,  he  admitted  that  thanks  to 
them  his  musical  language  had  expanded.  The 
Third  Symphony  (1969)  is  perhaps  his  most 
impressive  exercise  in  this  new  vein.  The  1970s 
found  Berkeley  still  true  to  his  principles  of 
writing  with  performance  in  mind  and  never  in 


33 


Berkeley 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


vacuo.  At  the  time  his  last  illness  struck  he  was 
working  on  a  fifth  opera,  'Faldon  Park'. 

In  1959  he  said,  'I  know  quite  well  I'm  a  minor 
composer,  and  I  don't  mind  that.'  It  is  true  that 
he  was  not  an  Arnold  Schoenberg  or  an  Igor 
Stravinsky.  His  music  made  no  revolutionary 
claims,  partly  because  revolutionaries  have  to  be 
destroyers  and  Berkeley  was  too  respectful  of 
tradition  to  set  about  it  with  a  hatchet.  If  his 
studies  with  Boulanger  taught  him  to  be  at  ease 
with  counterpoint,  they  also  inculcated  a  love  of 
ia  grande  ligne',  which  Boulanger  had  inherited 
from  Gabriel  Faure.  Berkeley's  music,  like 
Faure's,  eschews  surprises  and,  for  the  most  part, 
grand  gestures  (though,  again,  Nelson  showed 
what  he  could  achieve  in  this  more  public, 
extrovert  manner).  His  colleague  Edmund  *Rub- 
bra  referred  to  his  work  as  offering  'so  much  in 
sanity  and  honesty  of  purpose'.  These  attributes 
have  in  general  been  misprized  in  the  twentieth 
century  and  Berkeley's  refusal  to  jettison  them 
meant  that  his  reputation  likewise  matured  with- 
out sudden  surprises.  He  was  notable  for  attend- 
ing to  the  needs  of  the  amateur:  it  is  unusual,  for 
example,  to  come  across  a  flautist  who  has  not  at 
some  time  played  his  Sonatina.  But  his  larger 
works,  though  always  expertly  written,  demand 
patience  and  close  attention  to  be  fully  appre- 
ciated. Even  if  his  music  always  remains  basically 
tonal,  it  can  sometimes  be  fierce  and  gritty,  very 
often  as  a  result  of  his  essentially  linear  thinking. 
Perhaps  too  much  has  been  made  of  his  music's 
Frenchness,  and  too  often  critics  have  used  this 
as  an  excuse  to  deny  his  work  profundity,  but  at 
the  very  least  he  managed  to  avoid  the  vapid 
pastoral  meanderings  of  some  of  his  English 
predecessors.  The  history  of  twentieth-century 
music  may  not  have  been  greatly  changed  by  his 
passing  across  it,  but  without  him  it  would  have 
been  immeasurably  the  poorer.  He  was  a  man 
dedicated,  as  his  pupil  Peter  Dickinson  has  said, 
to  'passing  on  the  love  of  music  as  a  spiritual 
imperative  in  a  foreign,  material  age'. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1957  and  knighted 
in  1974.  Among  many  other  honours  were  the 
papal  knighthood  of  St  Gregory  (1973),  honorary 
membership  of  the  American  Academy  and 
Institute  of  Arts  and  Letters  (1980),  honorary 
doctorates  of  music  from  City  University  (1983) 
and  Oxford  (1970),  and  an  honorary  fellowship 
of  the  Royal  Northern  College  of  Music  (1976). 
He  also  served  as  president  of  the  Performing 
Right  Society  (1975-83),  the  Composers'  Guild 
of  Great  Britain  (from  1975),  and  the  Chelten- 
ham festival  (1977-83). 

Berkeley  was,  above  all,  graceful:  he  had  been 
a  good  tennis  player  in  his  youth  and  remained 
all  his  life  a  tireless  walker.  As  with  his  music, 
there  was  no  hint  of  otiose  flesh,  rather  of  a 
strength  which  he  was  careful  to  hide  beneath 
beautiful  manners.  As  well  as  being  a  kind  and 


approachable  man,  he  was  always  quick  to  see  the 
funny  side  of  things.  During  his  time  with 
Boulanger,  he  and  Igor  Markevitch  were  mem- 
bers of  a  mildly  disruptive  'back  row',  while  in 
later  life  an  eye  would  twinkle  in  response  to 
persons  on  committees  who  treated  'criteria'  as  a 
singular  noun  or  interposed  with,  'Mr  Chairman, 
I  have  a  trepidation  about  that  one.'  Although 
determined  to  do  what  he  saw  as  his  civic  duty, 
he  never  courted  public  notice  unless  forced  by 
the  strength  of  his  own  opinions.  He  had  become 
a  Roman  Catholic  in  1928  (when  he  took  the 
name  Francis),  and,  in  the  wake  of  the  second 
Vatican  council,  wrote  in  the  press  urging  the 
retention  of  the  tridentine  mass,  since  he 
believed  the  authorities  were  ignoring  a  legit- 
imate desire  expressed  by  a  large  body  of  Roman 
Catholic  laymen.  In  private  he  wrote  of  those  'for 
whom  the  overthrow  of  the  old  tradition  appears 
to  be  an  end  in  itself,  an  end  which,  in  religion 
as  in  music,  he  was  unable  to  approve. 

In  1946  he  married  Elizabeth  Freda,  daughter 
of  Isaac  Bernstein,  a  retired  shopkeeper.  They 
had  three  sons,  of  whom  the  eldest,  Michael, 
became  a  composer.  Berkeley  died  in  St  Char- 
les's Hospital,  Ladbroke  Grove,  London,  26 
December  1989. 

[Peter  Dickinson,  The  Music  of  Lennox  Berkeley,  1988; 
BBC  archives;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Roger  Nichols 

BERNEY,  Margery  (1913-1989),  recruitment 
agency  founder.  [See  Hurst,  Margery.] 

BERTHOUD,  Sir  Eric  Alfred  (1900-1989),  oil 
executive,  public  servant,  and  diplomat,  was 
born  10  December  1900  in  Kensington,  London, 
the  second  son  and  third  child  in  a  family  of  four 
sons  and  two  daughters  of  Alfred  Edward  Ber- 
thoud,  of  the  private  merchant  bank  Coulon, 
Berthoud  &  Co.,  and  his  wife,  Helene  Christ, 
who  came  from  a  Swiss- Alsatian  banking  family. 
As  a  boy  at  Gresham's  School,  Holt,  Berthoud 
was  greatly  helped  by  his  headmaster,  G.  W.  S. 
Howson,  who  in  1914  found  ways  to  keep  him  at 
the  school  when  his  father's  bank  collapsed  and 
his  relations  proposed  moving  him  to  Switzer- 
land. In  191 8  Berthoud  went  up  to  Magdalen 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  played  hockey  for  the 
university,  did  well  at  other  sports,  and  took  his 
degree  in  chemistry  in  1922,  paying  his  way  with 
vacation  tutoring  and  further  help  from  Howson. 
His  father,  an  alcoholic,  died  in  1920. 

After  four  years  with  the  Anglo-Austrian  bank 
in  Vienna  and  Milan  (1922-6),  Berthoud  joined 
the  Anglo-Persian  Oil  Co.  (later  BP),  serving  in 
Paris  (1926-9),  Berlin  (1929-35),  and  again  in 
Paris  (1935-8).  On  leaving  Germany  he  sent  a 
detailed  memorandum  to  the  director  of  military 
intelligence  in  London  on  Hitler's  military  build- 
up. When  war  began  he  joined  the  petroleum 


34 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Bishop 


division  of  the  Ministry  of  Fuel  and  Power,  and 
by  November  1939  he  was  installed  at  the  British 
legation  in  Bucharest.  His  colleagues  included 
the  eccentric  (Sir)  Edmund  *Hall-Patch,  who 
was  later  helpful  to  his  career.  Berthoud's 
instructions  were  to  impede  the  supply  of  Roma- 
nian oil  to  Germany  by  non-violent  means  such 
as  diplomatic  pressure,  pre-emptive  buying, 
manipulating  prices,  and  cornering  railcars, 
barges,  and  tankers  on  the  Danube.  These  and 
other  British  activities  in  Romania  worried  the 
Germans  for  a  time,  but  both  German  vulnera- 
bility and  British  ability  to  exploit  it  were  exag- 
gerated in  London;  Berthoud  himself  was  in 
agreement  with  the  policy,  but  realistic  as  to  its 
effectiveness,  compared  with  other  factors  out- 
side British  control.  In  January  1941,  by  which 
time  Romania  had  effectively  thrown  in  its  lot 
with  German),  Britain  broke  off  relations  and 
the  legation  in  Bucharest  was  closed. 

Berthoud  spent  the  next  four  years  in  a  variety 
of  countries  and  tasks,  all  related  to  the  objective 
of  securing  oil  for  the  Allies  and  denying  it  to  the 
Axis  powers.  One  sensitive  mission  was  to  the 
Soviet  Union,  to  which  he  travelled  three  times 
by  adventurous  routes  in  1941-2.  He  soon 
became  convinced  of  the  need  to  support  the 
Soviet  Union  by  all  possible  means — this  at  a 
rime  when  many  in  London  were  disinclined  to 
spend  scarce  resources  on  what  they  saw  as  a 
hopeless  cause. 

The  year  1945  found  Berthoud  in  charge  of 
the  economic  division  of  the  British  element  of 
the  Control  Commission  for  Austria.  Next  he 
worked  on  east  European  peace  treaties,  on 
problems  affecting  the  Anglo-Persian  Oil  Com- 
pany, and  finally  on  the  Marshall  plan,  where  his 
superiors  valued  his  hard  work  and  negotiating 
skill.  After  a  long  spell  as  assistant  under-secre- 
tary  in  the  Foreign  Office  (1948-52)  he  could 
have  moved  up  to  the  deputy  under-secretary's 
seat,  but  preferred  to  go  as  ambassador  to  Den- 
mark (1952-6),  where  he  made  many  friends.  As 
ambassador  in  Warsaw  (1956-60)  he  sympa- 
thized with  the  strivings  of  the  ordinary  Polish 
people,  while  unconditionally  condemning  the 
regime.  He  was  appointed  CMG  in  1945  and 
KCMG  in  1954,  and  retired  in  May  i960.  From 
1969  he  was  deputy  lieutenant  of  Essex.  In 
retirement  BP  made  him  a  non-executive  direc- 
tor on  certain  of  its  regional  boards.  Among  other 
things  he  was  deeply  involved  in  the  United 
World  Colleges,  the  new  University  of  Essex, 
and  the  Anglo-Polish  round  table  conferences. 

With  his  athletic  build,  countryman's  face, 
and  ready  smile,  Berthoud  was  a  more  complex 
character  than  he  looked.  Only  one-quarter  Brit- 
ish by  blood,  he  was  as  proud  of  his  continental 
connections  as  of  his  own  compensating  'British- 
ness'.  As  an  ambassador  he  exacted  a  degree  of 
deference  (and  punctuality)  which  some  found 


excessive.  He  could  be  thick-skinned  and  over- 
bearing, but  there  was  a  vein  of  sensitivity  in  him 
too,  nourished  by  a  Protestant  faith  which 
strengthened  as  he  grew  older.  In  1927  he 
married  Ruth  Tilston,  daughter  of  Sir  Charles 
Bright,  electrical  engineer  and  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  of  Edinburgh,  and  granddaughter 
of  Sir  Charles  Tilston  *Bright,  electrical  engi- 
neer. A  son  who  died  in  infancy-  was  followed  by 
two  more  sons  and  two  daughters.  They  lived  in 
a  series  of  houses  in  Essex  and  finally  in  Suffolk, 
where  Berthoud  enjoyed  cricket  and  country 
sports  to  the  full.  He  died  in  Tunbridge  Wells, 
Kent,  29  April  1989,  his  wife  having  predeceased 
him  by  a  year. 

[Sir  Eric  Berthoud,  An  Unexpected  Life  (privately 
printed),  1980;  W.  N.  Medlicott,  The  Economic  Block- 
ade, 2  vols.,  1952;  Documents  on  German  Foreign  Policy, 
series  D,  vol.  viii,  pp.  502  ff.;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Julian  Blllard 

BISHOP,  Richard  Evelyn  Donohue  (1925- 
1989),  mechanical  engineer  and  naval  architect, 
was  born  1  January  1925  in  Lewisham,  London, 
the  elder  son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of 
Norman  Richard  Bishop,  chief  accountant  and 
director  of  Tar  Residuals  Ltd.,  and  his  wife, 
Dorothy  Man  Wood,  teacher  of  French.  His 
father,  through  self-education,  obtained  the  Lon- 
don external  degrees  of  Bachelor  of  Commerce 
and  Ph.D.  (1944)  and  in  1949  was  ordained  a 
priest  in  the  Church  of  England.  'Dick'  Bishop's 
early  years  were  spent  in  Catford,  London,  in  a 
family  whose  main  interests  were  music  and  the 
church.  He  attended  Roan  School  for  Boys, 
Greenwich,  leaving  in  1043  with  a  burning  desire 
to  join  the  Royal  Navy,  but  no  great  ambition  to 
go  to  university. 

He  volunteered  as  an  ordinary  seaman  in  the 
Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve,  and  impressed 
the  authorities  by  the  results  of  examinations 
taken  while  he  was  training.  Subsequently  a 
series  of  psychology  tests  indicated  that  he  would 
make  an  engineer  in  the  Fleet  Air  Arm.  In  mid- 
1944  ne  emerged  from  training  with  a  first-class 
certificate  of  competency,  as  an  air  engineering 
officer,  and  was  posted  to  a  squadron. 

Having  become  an  engineer  by  accident  and 
acquired  a  great  interest  in  technology-,  after 
leaving  the  navy  in  1046  he  entered  University 
College  London,  graduating  with  a  first-class 
honours  B.Sc.  (Eng.)  and  a  diploma  with  distinc- 
tion in  1049.  Before  leaving  in  1949  for  Stanford 
University,  California,  as  a  Commonwealth 
Fund  fellow  to  work  under  the  supervision  of  J. 
N.  Goodier,  he  married  Jean  ('Liz'),  elder 
daughter  of  Hector  Cross  Buchanan  Paterson, 
bank  clerk;  they  had  a  daughter  and  a  son. 
Bishop  obtained  his  Ph.D.  in  195 1  with  a  thesis 
entitled  'The  Analysis  of  Elastic  Wave  Propa- 
gation'. 


35 


Bishop 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Returning  to  England,  he  was  employed  as  a 
senior  scientific  officer  by  the  Ministry  of  Supply 
(1951-2)  and  then  moved  to  the  University  of 
Cambridge  on  his  appointment  as  an  engineering 
demonstrator  in  1952.  He  became  a  fellow  of 
Pembroke  College  (1954)  and  a  university  lec- 
turer (1955).  His  lifelong  fascination  for  engi- 
neering and  vibration,  rather  than  his  earlier 
commitment  to  applied  mechanics  and  wave 
motions,  were  fostered  in  the  Cambridge  engin- 
eering laboratory.  Returning  to  his  old  depart- 
ment in  UCL  as  departmental  head  (1957-77), 
Kennedy  professor  of  mechanical  engineering 
(1957-81),  and  research  professor  (1977-81),  he 
laid  the  foundations  of  modern  rotor  dynamics 
theory,  devised  the  first  successful  method  of 
balancing  flexible  shafts,  and  made  significant 
advances  in  knowledge  about  the  instability  of 
high-speed  rolling  stock;  aircraft  resonance  test- 
ing; torsional  oscillating  of  rotating  machinery 
caused  by  gear  eccentricity;  structural  self-exci- 
tation by  shedding  of  entrained  vortices;  meas- 
urement of  forces  transmitted  by  the  human 
knee;  and  various  aspects  of  ships'  structural 
behaviour  in  waves  based  on  hydroelasticity  the- 
ory. In  technical  matters  he  was  a  man  of  vision, 
having  the  ability  to  simplify  a  complex  dynam- 
ics problem  to  a  discussion  of  fundamental  prin- 
ciples. An  excellent  communicator,  he  wrote 
seven  books  and  well  over  200  papers. 

In  1 98 1,  surprisingly,  he  moved  from  research 
into  administration,  as  vice-chancellor  and  prin- 
cipal of  Brunei  University.  Through  his  stress  on 
academic  excellence  and  scholarship,  he  success- 
fully reorganized  the  apparatus  and  changed  the 
culture  of  Brunei,  laying  the  foundation  of  a 
flourishing  university. 

Bishop's  fine  clear  mind  brought  him  sig- 
nificant achievements  and  honours  in  the  scien- 
tific world.  He  was  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society 
(1980)  and  appointed  a  vice-president  and  mem- 
ber of  its  council  (1986-8).  He  was  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Engineering  (1977)  and  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1979.  He  received  the  Thomas 
Hawksley  (I.Mech.E.,  1965),  Krizik  (Czechoslo- 
vak Academy  of  Science,  1969),  Rayleigh  (British 
Acoustical  Society,  1972),  and  the  William 
Froude  (RINA,  1988)  gold  medals;  the  Skoda 
silver  (1967)  and  Anniversary  (1980)  medals;  the 
Archibald  Head  (UCL,  1948)  and  Royal  Institu- 
tion of  Naval  Architects  (1980)  bronze  medals; 
and  the  George  Stephenson  (1959)  and  Clayton 
(1972)  prizes  of  the  I.Mech.E. 

Bishop  was  a  severe  critic  and  yet  the  staunch- 
est  of  supporters.  He  thrived  on  technical  discus- 
sion and  debate — not  argument — though  at 
times  this  fine  distinction  depended  on  the  sensi- 
tivity of  the  listener/combatant.  By  his  probing 
he  stimulated  others,  but  he  caused  resentment 
in  many,  especially  when  he  questioned  the 
professionalism   of  engineers   and    engineering 


practices.  He  was  an  independent,  innovative 
research  engineer,  who  spoke  his  mind  on  tech- 
nical matters.  An  earnest  man  crowned  by  distin- 
guishing white  hair  since  his  late  twenties,  he 
loved  sailing  and  was  always  active.  He  died  in 
Portsmouth  12  September  1989,  from  the  effects 
of  a  hepatic  abscess  and  septicaemia. 

[W.  Geraint  Price  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xl,  1094;  personal  knowledge.] 
W.  Geraint  Price 


BLACK,  Dora  Winifred  (1894- 1986),  feminist 
writer  and  campaigner.  [See  Russell,  Dora 
Winifred.] 

BLACKING,  John  Anthony  Randoll  (1928- 
1990),  social  anthropologist  and  ethnomusicolo- 
gist,  was  born  22  October  1928  in  Guildford, 
Surrey,  the  elder  child  and  only  son  of  William 
Henry  Randoll  Blacking,  ecclesiastical  architect, 
and  his  wife,  (Josephine)  Margaret  (Newcombe) 
Waymouth.  The  family  moved  to  21  The  Close, 
Salisbury,  in  1930.  Blacking  attended  Salisbury 
Cathedral  School  (1934-42)  where,  as  a  chorister 
and  pianist,  he  showed  early  musical  promise. 
Attendance  at  Sherborne  School  (1942-7)  was 
followed  by  a  commission  in  the  Coldstream 
Guards  and  active  service  in  Malaya  (1947-9). 
The  plight  of  the  aboriginal  peoples  caught  up  in 
the  conflict  moved  him  deeply,  and  on  his  release 
from  national  service  he  went  to  King's  College, 
Cambridge,  to  read  archaeology  and  anthro- 
pology. While  there,  he  was  active  in  artistic  life 
as  a  pianist  and  actor,  and  as  a  performer  and 
promoter  of  contemporary  music.  He  obtained 
second  classes  (division  I  in  part  i  and  division  II 
in  part  ii)  in  his  tripos  (1952  and  1953). 

He  began  to  use  his  musical  and  anthropo- 
logical talents  in  a  variety  of  ways.  For  a  time  he 
considered  becoming  a  professional  pianist,  he 
worked  as  a  social  worker  in  the  East  End,  and  he 
spent  a  summer  studying  ethnomusicology  in 
Paris.  In  October  1953  he  was  invited  by  the 
Colonial  Office  to  return  to  Malaya  as  assistant 
adviser  on  aborigines,  which  he  did,  only  then  to 
learn  that  his  role  was  to  provide  the  intelligence 
that  would  enable  the  forced  removal  of  the 
forest  peoples,  all  of  whom  were  apparently 
suspected  of  being  (or  harbouring)  terrorists.  He 
refused,  resigning  after  only  six  days. 

He  took  a  post  as  a  musicologist  at  the 
International  Library  of  African  Music  at  Roode- 
port,  South  Africa,  in  1954.  In  this  capacity  he 
carried  out  field  studies  in  Zululand  and  Mozam- 
bique, and  among  the  Venda  and  Gwembe 
Tonga  peoples.  In  1955  he  married  Brenda 
Eleonora,  daughter  of  Herman  Wilhelm  Frie- 
drich  Gebers,  farmer.  They  had  a  son  and  four 
daughters,  two  of  whom  died  in  childhood  (1956 
and  1963).  In  1959  Blacking  took  up  a  lectureship 


36 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Bliss 


in  social  anthropology  and  African  government 
at  the  University  of  Witwatersrand,  becoming 
professor  and  head  of  the  department  in  1965. 
Witwatersrand  awarded  him  a  Ph.D.  in  1965  and 
a  D.Litt.  in  1972.  His  principal  publications 
during  this  period  included  (as  editor)  Black 
Background:  the  Childhood  of  a  South  African  Girl 
(1964)  and  (as  author)  Venda  Children's  Songs:  a 
Study  in  Ethnomusicological  Analysis  (1967).  A 
man  of  forceful  personality  and  an  enthusiastic 
evangelist  in  promoting  understandings  between 
people,  and  between  people  and  the  institutions 
they  create.  Blacking  set  up  courses  in  African 
music  and  Asian  studies,  and  took  an  increas- 
ingly outspoken  role  in  anti-apartheid  politics, 
which  eventually  led  him  to  clash  with  the 
authorities.  He  was  prosecuted  under  the  notori- 
ous Immorality  Act,  which  forbade  sexual  rela- 
tions between  people  of  different  colours. 

He  left  South  Africa  in  1969  with  his  second 
wife-to-be,  Zureena  Rukshana  Desai,  medical 
doctor,  with  whom  he  was  later  to  have  four 
daughters.  After  his  divorce  in  1975,  they  were 
married  in  1978.  She  was  the  daughter  of 
Suliman  Mohamed  Desai,  company  director. 
Offered  a  choice  of  chairs  in  Britain  and  the 
United  States,  he  chose,  after  a  short  spell  as 
professor  of  anthropology  at  Western  Michigan 
University,  to  take  up  in  1970  the  first  appoint- 
ment to  the  chair  of  social  anthropology  at  the 
Queen's  University  of  Belfast.  This  was  at  the 
very  height  of  'the  troubles'  in  Northern  Ireland, 
in  w  hich  he  saw  many  parallels  with  Malaya  and 
South  Africa.  It  was  w  ith  a  sense  of  mission  that 
he  guided  the  department  from  modest  begin- 
nings in  1970  to  become  one  of  the  largest  in  the 
British  Isles  and  an  internationally  recognized 
centre  of  ethnomusicology.  His  most  influential 
book,  How  Musical  is  Man?  (1974),  stressed  the 
importance  of  identifying  the  structural  relation- 
ships between  patterns  of  musical  organization 
and  those  of  social  life.  It  argued  that  the  human 
potential  for  musical  creativity  had  been  stifled  in 
the  West  by  an  elitist  conception  of  musical 
ability,  whereas  in  pre-industrial  societies  every- 
one was  an  active  musician.  The  book  was  soon 
in  paperback  and  was  translated  into  several 
languages.  It  brought  students  of  ethnomusico- 
logy from  all  over  the  world  to  Belfast. 

Blacking  was  a  handsome  man,  tall  and  fair 
with  clear  blue  eyes  and  the  lean,  broad-shoul- 
dered frame  of  a  rugby  player.  He  frequently 
wore  his  Regiment  of  Guards  tie,  which  gave  him 
a  rather  formal  and  military  air  that  contrasted 
with  the  rebellious  and  iconoclastic  things  he 
often  said.  His  impact  upon  an  audience  was 
both  physical  and  intellectual.  A  gifted  lecturer, 
always  at  his  best  playing  to  an  audience,  Black- 
ing could,  and  did,  teach  anything  in  the  syllabus 
with  authority  and  flair.  He  served  in  various 
capacities  on  the  committees  of  the  International 


Folk  Music  Council,  the  Royal  Anthropological 
Institute,  the  Social  Science  Research  Council, 
the  Council  for  National  Academic  Awards,  and 
the  British  Council,  gave  dozens  of  guest  lectures 
and  addresses,  and  yet  still  found  the  time  to  do 
voluntary  work  for  the  homeless,  handicapped, 
and  unemployed  as  a  council  member  in  local 
charitable  organizations.  He  regularly  gave  solo 
piano  recitals  at  the  university's  lunchtime  con- 
certs. A  man  of  great  verve,  wide  interests,  and 
an  abiding  belief  in  the  creative  genius  of  all 
humanity,  he  was  constantly  active.  He  believed 
that  human  beings  were  inherendy  musical  and 
that  music  was  an  important  means  of  commu- 
nication across  cultural  boundaries. 

In  1984  he  was  elected  to  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy.  He  was  awarded  the  Rivers  memorial 
medal  of  the  Royal  Anthropological  Institute 
(1986),  and  the  Koizumi  Fumio  prize  in  Tokyo 
(1989).  His  last  works  included  a  six-part  series, 
Dancing,  for  Independent  Television,  and  a  book 
on  the  ethnomusicological  work  of  the  Australian 
composer  Percy  Grainger,  A  Commonsense  View 
of  All  Music  (1987).  Blacking  died  of  cancer  in 
Belfast  24  January  1990. 

[Obituaries  in  Queen's  University  Semsletter,  March 
1990;  Annals  of  the  Association  of  Social  Anthropologists 
of  the  Commonwealth,  1990;  Guardian,  30  January  1990; 
journal  of  Comparative  Family  Studies,  vol.  xxii,  no.  3, 
autumn  1991;  Blacking's  notes  and  letters  in  the 
department  of  social  anthropology,  Queen's  University, 
Belfast;  personal  knowledge.]  Reginald  Byron 

BLISS,  Kathleen  Mary  Amelia  (1908-1989), 
Christian  thinker  and  ecumenist,  was  born  5  July 
1908  in  Fulham,  London,  the  elder  child  and 
only  daughter  of  Thomas  Henry  Moore,  local 
government  officer,  and  his  wife,  Ethel  Steward. 
She  was  educated  at  Fulham  County  High 
School  before  winning  a  scholarship  to  Girton 
College,  Cambridge,  where  she  obtained  a  sec- 
ond class  (division  II)  in  part  i  of  the  history 
tripos  (1929)  and  a  first  class  in  part  i  of  the 
theology  tripos  (1931).  She  was  also  active  in  the 
Student  Christian  Movement,  widening  her 
Congregational  inheritance.  After  temporary 
posts  teaching  religious  education,  in  1932  she 
married  Rupert  Geoffrey  Bliss,  marine  engineer. 
He  w  as  the  son  of  Arthur  Harold  Antonio  Bliss, 
traveller  and  big-game  hunter.  Sixteen  years  later 
her  husband  inherited  the  Portuguese  barony  of 
de  Barreto  and  in  1950  he  was  ordained  in  the 
Church  of  England,  but  from  1932  to  1939  the 
young  couple  w  ere  missionaries  with  the  London 
Missionary  Society  (mainly  Congregational)  in 
south  India.  Later  Rupert  Bliss  became  a  teacher, 
administrator,  and  marriage  consultant. 

Kathleen  Bliss's  missionary  experience  devel- 
oped her  interests  in  education,  in  the  problems 
of  society  at  large,  and  in  the  possibilities  of 
drawing  Christians  together  in  response  to  them. 
After  a  year's  leave  back  in  England  she  became 


37 


Bliss 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


assistant  to  J.  H.  *01dham,  the  editor  of  the 
influential  Christian  News  Letter.  Her  own  con- 
tributions were  recognized  by  her  appointment 
as  assistant  editor  (1942)  and  editor  (1945),  until 
the  journal  had  to  close  in  1949,  when  the  time 
had  passed  for  its  sophisticated  discussion  of 
Christian  values  amid  wartime  hatreds  and  post- 
war reconstruction.  For  four  years  from  1945  she 
also  served  on  the  staff  of  the  British  Council  of 
Churches,  organizing  'Religion  and  Life'  weeks 
and  local  councils  of  churches.  Having  moved 
into  the  Church  of  England,  she  was  in  1948  a 
delegate  to  the  first  assembly  of  the  World 
Council  of  Churches.  In  the  WCC  she  made 
such  a  mark  that  she  was  entrusted  with  drafting 
(she  originated  the  unforgotten  phrase  'we  intend 
to  stay  together'),  was  appointed  the  part-time 
secretary  of  a  commission  on  women  in  the 
churches,  and  was  elected  to  serve  energetically 
on  the  central  and  executive  committees  in  1954. 
In  1949  Aberdeen  gave  her  an  honorary  DD. 

For  five  years  from  1950  she  was  a  producer 
with  the  BBC.  The  discussions  which  she  organ- 
ized for  the  Third  Programme,  between  Chris- 
tians of  various  shades  and  non-believers,  broke 
the  Corporation's  previous  caution  in  presenting 
alternatives  to  Christianity.  In  1958  she  began 
her  major  work.  In  a  time  of  optimism  and  new 
activity  she  was  the  first  general  secretary  of  the 
new  board  of  education  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, charged  with  the  co-ordination  of  work 
from  primary  schools  through  teacher  training 
colleges  to  university  chaplaincies,  and  from 
Sunday  schools  to  the  educational  activities  of 
the  Mothers'  Union.  She  resigned  in  1966, 
exhausted  and  somewhat  disillusioned. 

A  less  complicated  job  awaited  her  after  a  rest, 
and  her  time  as  senior  lecturer  in  religious 
studies  in  the  University  of  Sussex  (1967-72) 
brought  fulfilment  to  her  academic  gifts  as  well 
as  yet  another  pioneering  opportunity:  to  develop 
theological  (not  only  Christian)  interests  in  a 
university  excitingly  new  and  not  ecclesiastical. 
She  continued  to  be  an  active  participant  in,  and 
commentator  on,  religious  and  ecological  move- 
ments in  her  retirement  to  the  countryside  near 
Shaftesbury,  Dorset,  and  then  to  London.  The 
admiration  of  many  for  her  abilities  and  energies 
meant  that  invitations  to  preach,  speak,  or  advise 
continued  throughout  her  life.  She  was,  for 
example,  a  member  of  the  Public  Schools  Com- 
mission (1967-70)  and  was  select  preacher  at 
Cambridge  in  1967. 

Her  domestic  background  was  unusual,  but 
for  her  essential  (she  was  thoroughly  feminine) 
and  fortunate.  Her  husband,  a  priest  with  inde- 
pendent means  and  part-time  pastoral  duties, 
was  responsible  for  much  of  the  upbringing  of 
their  three  daughters,  who  like  her  were  red- 
heads with  clear-cut  features  and  opinions 
(Deborah  was  to  become  a  distinguished  sur- 


geon). A  highly  strung,  incisively  critical,  often 
overworking  intellectual,  she  could  show  the 
strain  of  her  life  when  her  wider  commitments 
allowed  her  time  at  home,  but  from  1946  to  1974 
she  was  supported  by  a  Cambridge  friend,  Mar- 
garet Bryan,  who  lived  in  the  family  and  was  glad 
to  absorb  any  outbursts.  Family  life  was  also 
helped  by  shared  interests  in  music,  reading, 
current  affairs,  and  dressmaking. 

She  articulated  and  organized  a  phase  in  the 
ecumenical  movement  (for  Christian  renewal  and 
reunion),  when  a  definitely  lay  approach,  which 
underplayed  denominational  customs,  was  not 
detached  from  academic  standards  or  the  routine 
of  the  churches.  Being  a  perfectionist,  she  wrote 
fewer  and  shorter  books  than  was  to  be  expected 
and  never  completed  her  biography  of  her  men- 
tor J.  H.  Oldham,  but  she  was  for  many  years  a 
director  of  the  SCM  Press.  Her  own  publications 
put  on  record  her  most  passionate  interests:  The 
Service  and  Status  of  Women  in  the  Churches 
(arising  out  of  the  World  Council  of  Churches, 
1952),  We  the  People  (about  the  Christian  laity, 
1963),  and  The  Future  of  Religion  (about  the 
response  to  secularization,  1969).  She  died  of 
cancer  13  September  1989  in  the  King  Edward 
VII  Hospital,  Midhurst. 

[Susannah  Herzel,  A  Voice  for  Women:  the  Women's 
Department  of  the  World  Council  of  Churches,  1981; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

David  L.  Edwards 

BLUMENFELD,  John  Elliot  (1898-1988),  rail- 
way manager  and  chief  of  London  Transport. 
[See  Elliot,  Sir  John.] 

BLUNT,  Christopher  Evelyn  (1904- 1987), 
merchant  banker  and  numismatist,  was  born  16 
July  1904  at  the  Vicarage,  Ham  Common,  Sur- 
rey, the  second  of  the  three  remarkable  sons 
(there  were  no  daughters)  of  the  Revd  (Arthur) 
Stanley  (Vaughan)  Blunt  and  his  wife  Hilda 
Violet,  daughter  of  John  Henry  Master,  of  Mon- 
trose House,  Petersham.  He  was  educated  at 
Marlborough  but,  unlike  his  brothers,  Wilfrid, 
writer  and  artist,  and  Anthony  *Blunt,  art  histo- 
rian and  Soviet  agent,  who  were  destined  for 
academic  careers,  he  did  not  go  to  university. 
After  a  year  in  Germany  and  Spain  and  two  as  a 
trainee  accountant,  in  1924  he  joined  the  small 
banking  house  of  Higginson  &  Co.,  which  later 
became  part  of  Hill  Samuel.  There  he  ultimately 
became  head  of  corporate  finance.  Tall,  fair,  and 
patrician,  he  was  a  distinguished  figure  in  the 
City  for  many  years. 

In  1930  Blunt  married  Elisabeth  Rachel, 
daughter  of  Gardner  Sebastian  Bazley,  barrister, 
of  Hatherop  Castle,  Gloucestershire.  They  had 
one  son  and  two  daughters.  The  family  moved 
from  London  to  Hungerford  in  1944,  and  in 
1952  to  Ramsbury  Hill,  near  Marlborough.  For 
most  of  the  war  Blunt  had  worked  for  Supreme 


38 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Boothby 


Headquarters,  Allied  Expeditionary  Force 
(SHAEF),  being  mentioned  in  dispatches  for  his 
liaison  work  in  the  evacuation  from  Bordeaux  in 
1940,  and  later  engaged  in  preparations  for  the 
Normandy  invasion.  He  was  demobilized  as 
colonel,  with  the  OBE  and  the  US  Legion  of 
Merit  (both  1945). 

While  at  Marlborough  Blunt  had  met  John 
Shirley  Fox,  a  leading  student  of  medieval  Eng- 
lish coins,  a  subject  to  which  Blunt  himself  was 
to  devote  the  greater  part  of  his  leisure  for  the 
rest  of  his  life.  In  1935  Blunt  became  director  of 
the  British  Numismatic  Society  and  from  1946  to 
1950  he  was  its  president.  The  Society,  which 
had  acrimoniously  spun  off  in  1903  from  the 
Royal  Numismatic  Society,  in  order  to  give  more 
attention  to  British  coins,  had  lost  momentum. 
Under  Blum's  leadership  its  finances  were 
strengthened,  its  membership  increased,  and  its 
academic  standing  established. 

From  1956  to  1961  Blunt  served  as  president 
of  the  Royal  Numismatic  Society,  finally  laying 
to  rest  the  lingering  tensions  between  the  two 
societies.  In  1965  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy,  an  exceptional  distinction  for 
an  amateur  scholar  without  formal  education 
after  school,  and  one  that  recognized  his  leading 
role  in  establishing  the  Sylloge  of  Coins  of  the 
British  Isles,  a  project  for  publishing  fully  illus- 
trated catalogues  of  English  coins  in  major  col- 
lections in  Britain  and  abroad.  A  committee  was 
set  up  in  1953  with  Sir  Frank  *Stenton  as 
chairman,  the  first  volume  appeared  in  1958,  and 
when  Blunt  died  the  fortieth  was  in  course  of 
preparation. 

Blunt's  early  numismatic  work  was  devoted  to 
the  later  middle  ages,  but  after  the  war  his 
interests  turned  towards  the  Anglo-Saxon  series, 
largely  neglected  in  the  previous  generation. 
Although  increased  responsibility  in  the  City  and 
his  editorial  duties  with  the  British  Numismatic 
Journal  and  the  Sylloge  left  relatively  little  time 
for  his  own  research,  in  conjunction  with  R.  H. 
('Michael')  Dolley,  appointed  to  the  British 
Museum  coin  room  in  195 1,  Blunt  soon  brought 
about  a  fundamental  reappraisal  of  the  early 
English  coinage.  After  retirement  from  Hill 
Samuel  in  1964,  he  remained  a  director  of 
Eucalyptus  Pulp  Mills  Ltd.  and  as  chairman 
guided  it  through  the  difficulties  of  the  political 
revolution  in  Portugal.  But  he  was  now  able  to 
devote  most  of  his  time  to  numismatics,  moving 
on  from  the  Heptarchic  period  between  *Offa 
and  *Alfred,  on  which  he  had  previously  concen- 
trated, to  the  tenth  century,  during  which  pre- 
viously fragmented  English  coinage  gradually 
became  unified.  This  work  culminated  in  three 
seminal  publications,  a  magisterial  monograph 
on  *Athelstan  (1974)  and,  in  collaboration,  Brit- 
ish Museum:  Anglo-Saxon  Coins,  vol.  v,  Athelstan 
to  the  Reform  of  Edgar  (with  Marion  M.  Archi- 


bald, 1986),  and  Coinage  in  Tenth-Century  Eng- 
land(with  B.  H.  I.  H.  Stewart  and  C.  S.  S.  Lvon, 
1989). 

Blunt's  contribution  to  English  numismatics 
was  exceptional.  In  addition  to  his  own  scholarly 
achievement,  his  judgement  and  diligence  as 
editor  had  a  pervasive  influence  on  the  standards 
of  English  numismatic  literature  for  half  a  cen- 
tury. Through  hospitality  at  Ramsbury  and 
extensive  correspondence  Blunt  was  able  to  pro- 
vide a  focus  and  continuity  for  a  subject  in  which 
professional  scholars  have  always  been  in  a 
minority.  Although  distressed  by  revelations 
about  his  brother  Anthony  in  1979  and  by  the 
loss  of  Elisabeth  in  1980,  he  continued  to  work 
productively  until  a  few  weeks  before  his  death  at 
home  at  Ramsbury  Hill,  20  November  1987. 
With  the  needs  of  future  students  in  mind,  one  of 
his  last  acts  was  to  provide  for  his  magnificent 
coin  collection  (incorporating  that  of  Shirley- 
Fox,  which  he  inherited  in  1939)  to  be  offered  to 
the  Fitzwilliam  Museum,  Cambridge,  in  lieu  of 
estate  duty. 

[D.  F.  Allen,  British  Numismatic  Journal,  vol.  xlii,  1974, 
pp.  1-9;  H.  E.  Pagan,  Numismatic  Circular,  1988,  pp. 
3-4;  Ian  Stewart  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  Ixxvi,  1990.]  Stewartby 

BOOTH,  Catherine  Bramwell-  (1 883-1987), 
Salvation  Army  commissioner.  [See  Bramwell- 
Booth,  Catherine.] 

BOOTHBY,  Robert  John  Graham,  Baron 
Boothby  (1 900-1 986),  politician,  was  born  12 
February  1900  at  5  Ainslie  Place,  Edinburgh,  the 
only  child  of  (Sir)  Robert  Tuite  Boothby,  man- 
ager of  the  Scottish  Provident  Institution  and  a 
director  of  the  Royal  Bank  of  Scotland,  and  his 
wife  Mabel  Augusta,  daughter  of  Henry  Hill 
Lancaster,  Edinburgh  advocate.  Robert,  known 
throughout  his  life  as  Bob,  was  educated  at 
Eton  and  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
enjoyed  himself  and  made  many  friends,  but 
secured  only  a  pass  degree  in  modern  history 
(1921).  Between  Eton  and  Oxford  he  trained  as  a 
Guards  officer,  but  was  too  young  to  take  an 
active  part  in  World  War  I. 

In  1923  he  contested  Orkney  and  Shetland  on 
behalf  of  the  Conservative  parry,  whose  new 
leader,  Stanley  *Baldwin  (later  first  Earl  Baldwin 
of  Bewdley),  was  a  friend  of  his  father.  Though 
he  did  not  win  there,  his  campaign  provided 
ample  evidence  of  his  political  assets,  which 
included  dark  and  dramatic  looks,  a  lively  and 
independent  mind,  an  easy  way  with  people, 
and  the  ability"  to  make  compelling  speeches 
enhanced  by  humour,  wit,  and  a  voice  well 
described  as  'of  golden  gravel'.  He  was  soon 
selected  as  the  Conservative  candidate  for 
another  seat.  East  Aberdeenshire,  which  he  won 
in  1924  and  held  for  nearly  thirty-four  years, 
until  he  left  of  his  own  accord.  He  gave  his 


39 


Boothby 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


constituents,  mainly  fishermen  and  farmers, 
superb  service  as  their  MP,  and  they  showed 
their  gratitude  by  backing  him  loyally  through 
the  many  vicissitudes  of  his  career. 

In  Parliament  he  at  once  made  his  mark  with  a 
successful  maiden  speech  and  was  soon  regarded 
as  a  rising  star.  But  some  of  his  views  were 
unorthodox,  notably  on  economics — he  was  an 
early  Keynesian — and  his  sympathies,  personal 
and  political,  were  by  no  means  confined  to  his 
own  party.  He  was  quick  to  denounce  the  deci- 
sion by  the  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer,  (Sir) 
Winston  *Churchill,  to  return  Britain  to  the  gold 
standard  at  the  pre-war  parity.  Nevertheless, 
Churchill  chose  him  as  his  parliamentary  private 
secretary  in  1926,  and  he  held  the  post  until  the 
government  fell  at  the  next  election,  in  1929. 
Over  the  years  his  relations  with  Churchill, 
though  intermittently  close,  were  scarred  by 
differences  of  opinion,  for  instance  on  India  and 
the  abdication  of  *Edward  VIII,  and  above  all  by 
Boothby's  natural  incapacity  to  be  a  disciple  or 
courtier. 

From  his  position  on  the  left  of  the  party  he 
contributed  to  the  publication  Industry  and  the 
State,  a  Conservative  View  (R.  Boothby  et  al., 
1927),  to  which  another  contributor  was  Harold 
•Macmillan  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Stockton),  his 
closest  associate  in  politics.  In  1929  he  began  an 
affair  with  Macmillan's  wife,  Lady  Dorothy, 
which  lasted,  on  and  off,  until  her  death  in  1966. 
The  affair  was  soon  well  known  in  political 
circles  and  was  used  by  Boothby's  enemies  to 
discredit  him,  though  Macmillan  himself 
remained  ostensibly  friendly.  Lady  Dorothy 
claimed  that  Boothby  was  the  father  of  one  of  her 
daughters,  Sarah,  but  there  are  grounds  for 
doubting  this;  she  may  have  been  making  the 
claim  in  the  vain  hope  of  provoking  Macmillan 
into  divorcing  her.  Boothby  himself  was  doubt- 
ful, but  nevertheless  accepted  responsibility  and 
treated  Sarah  with  much  kindness  and  affec- 
tion. 

The  liaison  with  Dorothy  Macmillan  added  to 
the  impression  that  Boothby  was  a  raffish  adven- 
turer, while  his  attempts  to  make  money  in  the 
City,  necessitated  by  his  extravagant  and  gen- 
erous habits,  earned  him  the  reputation  of  a 
gambler,  which  was  equally  damaging  to  him 
politically.  Yet  he  deserved  to  be  taken  seriously, 
not  least  because  he  was  one  of  the  very  few  MPs 
with  a  consistent  anti-appeasement  record  in  the 
1930s.  He  took  a  stronger  line  than  Churchill  on 
Hitler's  reoccupation  of  the  Rhineland  and  on 
the  Hoare-Laval  pact,  and  he  was  among  the 
thirty  Conservatives,  including  Churchill,  who 
refused  to  support  the  government  over  Munich. 
In  May  1940  he  was  among  the  forty-one  who 
voted  against  the  government  at  the  end  of  the 
Norway  debate,  with  the  result  that  Neville 
•Chamberlain  resigned  and  Churchill  came  to 


power.  In  the  coalition  then  formed  he  was 
appointed  under-secretary  at  the  Ministry  of 
Food.  Since  the  minister,  the  first  Earl  of  •Wool- 
ton,  was  in  the  House  of  Lords,  Boothby  was 
spokesman  for  the  department  in  the  House  of 
Commons. 

He  proved  an  excellent  minister.  The  national 
milk  scheme  that  he  worked  out  was  widely 
praised,  and  he  reacted  imaginatively  to  the 
problems  created  by  the  blitz.  His  regular  broad- 
casts were  practical  and  inspiring.  He  gained 
Woolton's  warm  confidence.  Then  suddenly,  in 
October  1940,  he  was  suspended  from  his  duties 
while  a  select  committee  investigated  his  activ- 
ities the  previous  year  in  connection  with  emigre 
Czech  financial  claims.  When  the  committee 
reported  that  his  conduct  had  been  'contrary  to 
the  usage  and  derogatory  to  the  dignity  of  the 
House',  he  resigned.  The  verdict  of  (Sir)  Robert 
Rhodes  James,  after  careful  analysis  of  the  com- 
mittee's report,  is  that  it  was  'heavily,  and 
unfairly,  loaded  against  Boothby'.  Though  he 
was  not  quite  blameless  in  the  matter,  the  penalty 
he  paid  was  out  of  all  proportion  to  his  offence. 
After  delivering  a  resignation  speech  (January 
1 941),  which  won  him  much  support,  he  served 
for  a  time  as  a  junior  staff  officer  with  RAF 
Bomber  Command.  Later  in  the  war  he  worked 
with  the  Fighting  F>ench,  and  after  it  his  ser- 
vices to  France  were  recognized  by  his  appoint- 
ment as  an  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour 
(1950). 

In  the  late  1940s  he  worked  enthusiastically  in 
Churchill's  movement  for  a  United  Europe,  but 
when  Churchill  became  prime  minister  again  in 

195 1  there  was  no  post  for  him.  He  had  to  be 
content  with  the  award  of  the  KBE  in  the 
coronation  honours  (1953).  From  1949  to  1957 
he  was  a  British  delegate  to  the  consultative 
assembly  of  the  Council  of  Europe,  and  from 

1952  to  1956  vice-chairman  of  the  committee  on 
economic  affairs.  He  opposed  the  Suez  adventure 
in  1956,  though  he  was  a  fervent  Zionist.  Mac- 
millan's advent  to  the  premiership  brought  him 
no  office,  perhaps  understandably,  but  when  a 
heart  attack  forced  him  to  give  up  his  seat, 
Macmillan  recommended  him,  in  1958,  for  a  life 
peerage.  In  the  House  of  Lords  he  sat  on  the 
cross  benches  and  was  a  frequent  contributor  to 
debates. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  1950s,  his  appearances  in 
current  affairs  programmes  on  television  and 
radio  had  made  him  a  household  name,  which 
did  not  endear  him  to  colleagues  lacking  his 
eloquence  and  engaging  personality.  At  the  end 
of  the  decade  he  was  elected  rector  of  St 
Andrews  University  (1958-61),  where  he  was 
immensely  popular  with  the  students.  Music 
played  a  great  part  in  his  life;  he  was  chairman  of 
the  Royal  Philharmonic  Orchestra  (196 1-3)  and 
a  founder  member  of  the  RPO  Society. 


40 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Bowden 


In  July  1964  the  Sunday  Mirror  ran  a  story 
linking  him  with  the  gangster  Ronald  Kray.  A 
photograph  was  published  of  the  two  men 
together  at  Boothby 's  flat,  and  the  police  were 
said  to  be  investigating  a  homosexual  relationship 
between  them.  Scotland  Yard  issued  a  denial, 
and  Boothby  wrote  a  powerful  letter  to  The 
Times,  in  which  he  denied  being  a  homosexual 
but  admitted  having  met  Kray  three  times  at  his 
flat  to  discuss  a  business  proposal  which  he  had 
turned  down.  He  was  quite  unaware  of  the 
criminal  activities  for  which  Kray  and  his  brother 
were  later  imprisoned.  The  Mirror  management 
apologized  unreservedly  and  made  Boothby  a 
voluntary  payment  of  £40,000  as  compensation. 
After  his  death,  however,  further  evidence  sug- 
gested that  his  Times  letter  had  not  been  wholly 
candid.  Boothby  was,  in  fact,  bisexual,  and  it 
seems  possible  that  his  connection  with  Kray 
involved  some  homosexual  activity  (then  still 
criminal)  with  youths  procured  by  Kray;  but 
nothing  worse.  It  is  fair  to  assume  that,  if  he  had 
known  what  later  came  to  light  about  Kray,  he 
would  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  him. 

He  published  a  volume  of  autobiography,  / 
Fight  to  Live,  in  1047,  and  another,  Boothby, 
Recollections  of  a  Rebel,  in  1978.  He  also  pub- 
lished The  .\ea>  Economy  in  1943,  and  a  collection 
of  articles  and  speeches,  My  Yesterday,  Your 
Tomorrow,  in  1962.  Boothby's  ambition  was 
insufficiently  concentrated,  and  his  temperament 
too  reckless,  for  complete  worldly  success.  Yet  he 
was  right  on  most  of  the  major  issues  of  his 
career,  and  showed  outstanding  promise  during 
his  brief  innings  as  a  minister.  He  was  also,  as 
Queen  Elizabeth  the  queen  mother  said,  ''such  a 
jolly  man'. 

He  was  twice  married.  In  1935  he  married 
Diana,  daughter  of  Lord  Richard  Cavendish, 
landowner  and  former  politician.  The  marriage 
ended  in  amicable  divorce  in  1937.  In  1967  he 
married  Wanda,  daughter  of  Giuseppe  Sanna,  a 
Sardinian  import-export  wholesaler.  She  gave 
him  nearly  twenty  years  of  comfort  and  security 
at  the  end  of  his  life.  There  were  no  children  of 
either  marriage.  Boothby  died  in  Westminster 
Hospital,  London,  16  July  1086,  and  his  ashes 
were  scattered  at  sea  off  the  coast  of  his  old 
constituency. 

[Robert  Rhodes  James,  Bob  Boothby:  a  Portrait,  1991; 
Robert  Boothby,  /  Fight  to  Live,  1947,  and  Boothby, 
Recollections  of  a  Rebel,  1078;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  John  Grigg 

BOWDEN,  (Bertram)  Vivian,  Baron  Bowden 
(1910-1989),  scientist,  educationist,  and  politi- 
cian, was  born  18  January  1910  in  Chesterfield, 
Derbyshire,  the  elder  child  and  only  son  of 
Bertram  Caleb  Bowden,  primary  school  head- 
master in  Chesterfield,  and  his  wife  Sarah  Eliz- 
abeth, daughter  of  John  Thomas  Moulton,  of 


Throwley  Hall,  Staffordshire.  He  was  educated 
at  Chesterfield  Grammar  School  and  became  a 
scholar  at  Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  where 
he  was  awarded  first-class  honours  in  both  parts 
of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1930  and  1931).  He 
was  awarded  a  Ph.D.  at  Cambridge  for  a  thesis 
on  the  structure  of  radioactive  nuclei. 

He  then  became  an  Imperial  Chemical  Indus- 
tries fellow  at  the  University  of  Amsterdam 
(1934-5),  sixth-form  master  at  Liverpool  Colle- 
giate School  (1935-7),  and  chief  physics  master 
at  Oundle  School  (1937-40),  before  moving  to 
the  Ministry  of  Defence  Telecommunications 
Research  Establishment,  initially  at  Swanage  and 
then  in  Malvern  (1940-3).  Here  he  investigated 
the  use  of  radar  to  detect  aircraft  and  precisely 
position  them.  This  work  began  in  Malvern  and 
in  May  1943  moved  to  Washington,  where  Bow- 
den led  a  British  team  working  with  the  Amer- 
icans at  the  naval  research  laboratories.  He 
showed  his  capacity  to  earn  the  trust  of  people  at 
all  levels  in  an  organization  and  to  cut  through 
delaying  bureaucracy  to  get  things  done.  In  1973 
he  was  given  the  Pioneer  award  by  the  American 
Institution  of  Electrical  and  Electronic  Engi- 
neers. The  citation,  which  recognized  'work  done 
at  least  20  years  before  but  which  remains 
important  and  in  use',  applauded  Bowden's  'war- 
rime  radar  identification  system  that  has  become 
an  essential  aid  for  modern  air  traffic  control'. 

After  the  war  he  had  a  brief  period  at  the 
Atomic  Energy  Research  Establishment  at  Har- 
well (July-December  1946)  before  becoming  a 
partner  with  Sir  Robert  Watson- Watt  &  Partners 
(1947-50).  He  left  the  partnership  when  Sir 
Robert  *Watson-Watt  moved  to  Canada,  and 
joined  Ferranti  (Digital  Computers)  Ltd.  to 
attempt  to  sell  digital  computers  at  a  profit.  He 
thought  it  a  most  peculiar  job  until  he  met  a  man 
on  the  Queen  Mary  who  sold  lighthouses  on 
commission.  In  the  brief  period  of  this  appoint- 
ment (1950-3)  he  successfully  applied  his  great 
energy.  He  was  particularly  effective  in  explain- 
ing, with  uncanny  prescience,  the  dramatic  effect 
that  the  digital  computer  was  destined  to  have. 
Some  of  these  thoughts  he  gathered  together  in 
his  book  Faster  than  Thought  (1953). 

In  1953  he  became  principal  of  the  Man- 
chester College  of  Science  and  Technology.  At 
that  time  it  taught  a  modest  number  of  students 
on  degree  courses  of  the  University  of  Man- 
chester and  a  large  number  of  part-time  students, 
who  studied  for  the  National  Certificate  and 
other  qualifications.  Shortly  after  Bowden 
arrived,  a  period  of  rapid  national  expansion  in 
higher  education  was  launched,  and  he  exploited 
this  to  the  full.  He  attracted  substantial 
resources,  which  transformed  what  he  referred  to 
as  the  surrounding  dereliction  and  slums  into  an 
attractive  campus  with  fine  buildings.  The  uni- 
versity numbers  expanded  by  a  factor  of  about 


4i 


Bowden 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


ten  to  the  point  where  the  city  decided  to  transfer 
the  non-university  work  to  another  college,  much 
to  Bowden's  regret.  The  Manchester  College 
then  became  an  independent  chartered  body,  the 
University  of  Manchester  Institute  of  Science 
and  Technology  (UMIST),  and  was  put  on  the 
University  Grants  Committee's  list. 

The  development  of  UMIST  was  Bowden's 
great  achivement.  He  had  drive  and  energy,  and 
a  clear  vision  of  what  he  wished  to  achieve.  He 
did  things  by  impulse,  offering  chairs  to  out- 
standing candidates  at  chance  meetings  in  airport 
lounges  and  leaving  his  efficient  and  supportive 
registrar,  Joe  Burgess,  to  tidy  up  the  legal  proc- 
esses afterwards.  He  made  UMIST  visible  to  the 
media  by  his  public  statements,  in  which  he 
generated  quotable  aphorisms.  He  employed 
striking  statistics  to  back  his  arguments.  In  these 
he  often  used  the  truth  with  some  economy,  but 
his  conclusions  were  powerful.  His  national  visi- 
bility led  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of 
Rievaulx)  to  make  him  a  life  peer  (1963)  and  to 
appoint  him  minister  for  education  and  science 
(1964).  Wilson  hoped  that  Bowden  would  assist 
the  development  of  the  white-hot  technological 
revolution,  but  it  was  not  to  be.  Bowden  has  been 
described,  accurately,  as  a  man  possessing  can- 
dour without  guile.  This  is  not  a  quality  that 
promises  success  in  dealing  with  permanent  civil 
servants,  his  relationship  with  whom  Bowden 
described  as  'like  fighting  a  feather  bed;  you  meet 
no  resistance  but  you  cannot  get  through  it'.  So 
he  left  the  ministry  in  1965,  after  having  set  up 
the  Industrial  Training  Boards,  which  was  a 
brave  attempt  to  persuade  industry  to  contribute 
to  the  cost  of  training  the  skills  it  needed.  He 
returned  to  UMIST. 

Here  he  continued  to  twinge  consciences.  He 
criticized  the  government  for  a  fiscal  policy  that 
deterred  industrial  investment  in  new  plant  and 
processes.  He  counselled  against  the  bifurcation 
of  higher  education.  He  despaired  of  the  inade- 
quate number  of  engineering  and  technology 
graduates  entering  British  industry,  and  he  was 
forever  petitioning  the  city  to  act  to  reduce  the 
'decaying  slums  around  the  UMIST  campus'. 
He  retired  in  1976. 

He  was  a  mixture  of  the  ruthless  and  the 
humane.  He  had  a  portly  figure  which  could  be 
recognized  at  some  distance  by  its  rolling  gait.  As 
he  said,  'I  walk  as  if  one  leg  is  always  shorter  than 
the  next  one.'  His  door  was  always  open.  He  was 
continually  visible  around  the  campus  and  took  a 
keen  interest  in  the  problems  and  successes  of  all 
his  staff,  from  the  humble  to  the  great.  His 
concern  with  staff  morale  led  him  to  pioneer  the 
involvement  of  students  in  the  decision-making 
bodies  of  UMIST.  For  this  he  was  roundly 
criticized  by  the  traditionalists,  but  later  UMIST 
was  to  avoid  the  excesses  of  the  student  unrest  of 
the  1960s.  He  was  honorary  FICE  (1975)  and 


had  honorary  degrees  from  Rensellaer  Poly- 
technic, USA  (1974),  Manchester  (1976),  and 
Kumasi,  Ghana  (1977). 

He  married  in  1939  Marjorie  Mary  (died 
1957),  daughter  of  William  G.  H.  Browne,  chief 
government  sanitary  inspector  in  British  Guiana. 
They  had  a  son  and  two  daughters.  The  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1954.  In  1955  he  married  Diana 
Stewart.  They  were  divorced  in  1961  and  in  1967 
he  married  Mary  Maltby,  who  died  in  1971.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  Bernard  W.  Maltby,  of 
Ilkeston,  Derbyshire.  In  1974  he  married  Phyllis, 
former  wife  of  John  Henry  Lewis  James,  and 
daughter  of  Stanley  Ernest  Myson,  postman. 
This  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1983.  Bowden 
died  28  July  1989  in  a  nursing  home  in  Bowdon, 
Cheshire. 

[Citations  presented  at  the  'Commemoration  of  the 
Life  of  Lord  Bowden  of  Chesterfield'  at  UMIST,  13 
October  1989;  personal  knowledge.] 

K.  M.  Entwistle 

BOWLBY,  (Edward)  John  (Mostyn)  (1907- 
1990),  psychiatrist,  was  born  26  February  1907  at 
24  Manchester  Square,  London,  the  fourth  child 
and  second  son  in  the  family  of  three  daughters 
and  three  sons  of  Major-General  (Sir)  Anthony 
Alfred  *Bowlby,  later  first  baronet,  surgeon,  and 
his  wife  Maria  Bridget,  daughter  of  the  Revd 
Canon  the  Hon.  Hugh  Wynne  Lloyd  Mostyn, 
rector  of  Buckworth,  Huntingdonshire.  Bowlby 
was  educated  at  the  Royal  Naval  College,  Dart- 
mouth. He  then  read  medicine  at  Trinity  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  gaining  first-class  honours  in 
part  i  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1927),  and  a 
second  class  in  part  ii  of  the  moral  sciences  tripos 
(psychology,  1932).  He  went  on  to  qualify  in 
medicine  (MB,  B.Chir.,  1933)  at  University 
College  Hospital,  London,  proceeding  to  MD 
(Cambridge,  1939).  Upon  qualification,  he  began 
to  specialize  in  psychiatry  by  becoming  a  clinical 
assistant  at  the  Maudsley  Hospital. 

He  was  on  the  staff  of  the  London  Child 
Guidance  Clinic  from  1936  to  1940,  and  from 
1940  to  1945  he  served  as  a  specialist  psychiatrist 
in  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps,  attaining  the 
rank  of  temporary  lieutenant-colonel  in  1944. 
From  1946  until  his  retirement  in  1972  he  was  on 
the  staff  of  the  Tavistock  Clinic,  where  he  was 
director  of  the  department  for  children  and 
parents  (1946-68).  From  1962  to  1966  he  was 
president  of  the  International  Association  of 
Child  Psychiatrists  and  Allied  Professions.  He 
was  also  consultant  in  mental  health  to  the  World 
Health  Organization  (1950-72),  and  a  part-time 
member  of  the  external  scientific  staff  of  the 
Medical  Research  Council  (1963-72).  Bowlby 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians,  London  (1964),  and  a  foundation 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Boxer 


fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of  Psychiatrists 
(1971).  He  held  several  visiting  chairs  abroad. 

In  1 946  he  published  a  study  of  delinquent 
children:  Forty-Four  Juvenile  Thieves:  their  Char- 
acters and  Home-Life.  The  work  which  estab- 
lished his  reputation  began  with  an  invitation 
from  the  World  Health  Organization  in  1950  to 
advise  on  the  mental  health  of  homeless  children. 
This  led  to  the  publication  of  Maternal  Care  and 
Mental  Health  (1951).  Attachment,  the  first  vol- 
ume of  Bowlby's  massive  trilogy  Attachment  and 
Loss,  was  published  in  1969.  Volume  ii,  Separ- 
ation: Anxiety  and  Anger,  followed  in  1973.  The 
trilogy  was  completed  by  the  publication  of  Loss: 
Sadness  and  Depression  (1980).  Briefer,  more 
popular  expositions  of  Bowlby's  views  were  The 
Making  and  Breaking  of  Affectional  Bonds  (1979) 
and  A  Secure  Base  (1988). 

Bowlby  was  the  originator  of  what  later 
became  known  as  'attachment  theory'.  Having 
established  that  separation  from  the  mother  or 
mother-substitute  in  early  childhood  often  had 
dire  results,  Bowlby  set  about  investigating  the 
way  in  which  human  beings  establish  ties  of 
attachment  with  one  another,  and  what  conse- 
quences follow  when  these  ties  are  severed.  His 
conclusions  were  invariably  backed  up  by  objec- 
tive research  and  extensive  references.  His  inter- 
est led  him  to  study  ethology,  and  he  became 
acquainted  with,  and  indebted  to,  Konrad  Lor- 
enz,  Nikolaas  *Tinbergen,  and  Robert  Hinde. 
Bowlby's  studies  of  attachment  in  other  species 
led  him  to  conclude  that  the  biological  roots  of 
attachment  originated  in  the  need  to  protect  the 
young  from  predators.  His  interest  in  biological 
theory  led  to  his  last  book,  a  biography  of  Charles 
•Darwin  (1990). 

Bowlby's  studies  of  attachment  had  two  main 
consequences.  First,  his  theories  prompted  a 
large  body  of  research,  ranging  from  studies  of 
attachment  between  infants  and  their  mothers  to 
the  effects  of  bereavement  and  the  severance  of 
social  ties  in  adult  life.  Second,  his  demonstra- 
tion that  even  brief  periods  of  separation  of  small 
children  from  their  mothers  can  have  serious 
emotional  consequences  led  to  important 
changes  in  hospital  practice.  It  is  because  of 
Bowlby's  research  that  it  was  later  taken  for 
granted  that  parents  should  be  allowed  free 
access  to  their  sick  children  in  hospital  (and  vice 
versa).  Bowlby  reinforced  his  case  that  such 
separations  were  traumatic  by  making  a  series  of 
films  with  James  Robertson,  of  which  A  Two- 
Year-Old  Goes  to  Hospital  (1952)  is  the  best 
known.  Bowlby  saved  hundreds  of  small  children 
from  unnecessary  emotional  distress. 

Where  most  psychoanalysts  assume  that  neu- 
rotic symptoms  originate  from  the  patient's  inner 
world  of  fantasy,  Bowlby  remained  firmly  con- 
vinced that  traumatic  events  in  real  life  were 
more  significant — not  only  actual  separation  and 


loss,  but  also  parental  threats  of  abandonment 
and  other  cruelties. 

As  a  psychiatrist,  Bowlby  was  a  warm,  caring 
human  being  who  always  remained  entirely 
approachable.  He  was  an  excellent  teacher  and 
lecturer.  His  contributions  to  psychiatric  know- 
ledge and  the  care  of  children  mark  him  as  one  of 
the  three  or  four  most  important  psychiatrists  of 
the  twentieth  century.  Underestimated  by  both 
biological  scientists  and  psychoanalysts,  his 
recognition  was  delayed.  He  was  appointed  CBE 
in  1972,  and  received  honorary  doctorates  from 
Leicester  (1971),  Cambridge  (1977),  and  Regens- 
burg  (1989).  He  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Psychiatrists  (1980)  and 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Medicine  (1987).  The 
British  Paediatric  Association  gave  him  the  Sir 
James  Spence  medal  (1974)  and  he  was  elected  a 
senior  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1989. 

Tall  and  courteous,  with  the  manners  of 
an  old-fashioned  English  gentleman,  Bowlby 
appeared  reserved,  but  was  never  pompous.  In 
1938  he  married  Ursula,  daughter  of  Dr  Tom 
George  *Longstaff,  mountain  explorer  and  presi- 
dent of  the  Alpine  Club  in  1947-9.  They  had  two 
daughters  and  two  sons.  Bowlby  died  of  a  stroke 
while  on  holiday  on  the  Isle  of  Skye,  2  Sep- 
tember 1990. 

[Bowlby  papers  in  the  Wellcome  Institute,  London; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Anthony  Storr 

BOXER,  (Charles)  Mark  (Edward)  (1931- 
1988),  caricaturist  and  cartoonist  with  the  pseu- 
donym 'Marc',  and  magazine  editor,  was  born  19 
May  193 1  in  Chorley  Wood,  Hertfordshire,  the 
only  son  and  younger  child  of  Lieutenant-Colo- 
nel (Harold)  Stephen  Boxer,  garage  owner  and 
car  salesman,  and  his  wife,  Isobel  Victoria 
Hughlings  Jackson.  He  was  educated  at  Boar- 
sted,  Berkhamsted  School,  and  King's  College, 
Cambridge. 

He  cut  an  immediate  dash.  To  contemporaries 
his  slender  elegance,  charm,  and  wit  seemed 
immensely  sophisticated,  even  intimidating.  As  a 
youth  he  appeared  mature,  as  an  adult  boyish.  In 
his  first  term  he  acted  as  Tybalt,  all  in  white,  for 
the  Marlowe  Society,  and  also  drew  for  a  comic 
magazine,  Granta.  He  became  editor  the  next 
year  (1952),  and  took  more  interest  in  style  than 
content;  the  content  undid  him.  A  poem  con- 
tained the  lines:  'You  drunken  gluttonous  seedy 
God/  You  son  of  a  bitch,  you  snotty  old  sod.' 
This  was  deemed  blasphemous  and  he  was  sent 
down  for  a  week.  Though  he  could  have  taken 
finals,  he  chose  not  to  do  so  and  left  Cambridge 
in  a  hearse,  followed  by  a  crowd  of  perhaps  a 
thousand  protesters. 

In  London  he  worked  briefly  on  the  Sunday 
Express,  a  fashion  export  magazine  called  Ambas- 
sador, and  Lilliput,  and  drew  for  the  Taller.  In 


43 


Boxer 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


1957  Jocelyn  Stevens,  a  Cambridge  friend, 
bought  Queen  and  made  him  art  director.  Boxer 
hired  the  best  photographers,  displayed  their 
work  to  maximum  advantage,  and  was  a  large 
contributor  to  the  magazine's  conspicuous  suc- 
cess. In  1962  he  was  the  editor  who  launched  the 
Sunday  Times  Magazine.  Of  the  first  issue  Roy 
•Thomson  (later  first  Baron  Thomson  of  Fleet), 
who  was  paying  for  it,  commented  'This  is  awful, 
absolutely  awful',  but  though  the  losses  con- 
tinued for  months,  he  held  on  and  it  became  one 
of  the  major  developments  in  British  journalism 
of  its  time,  much  copied  but  rarely  equalled. 
Boxer  remained  as  editor  until  1965  and  stayed 
on  as  assistant  editor  until  1979.  He  was  a 
director  of  the  Sunday  Times  in  1964-6.  In  1965 
a  listings  magazine,  London  Life,  of  which  he  was 
editorial  director,  came  and  went,  his  only  spec- 
tacular failure. 

Over  the  same  years  'Marc'  had  become 
famous  as  the  outstanding  pocket  cartoonist  of 
his  time.  His  reputation  was  made  at  The  Times 
(1969-83),  where  his  work  showed  to  best  advan- 
tage, but  he  later  worked  for  the  Guardian.  He 
had  a  detailed  knowledge  of  the  manners  and 
customs  of  the  establishment,  the  upper  classes, 
and  newly  fashionable  'swinging  London'.  His 
own  background  and  his  left-wing  views,  con- 
ventional at  the  time,  gave  him  the  necessary 
distance.  He  did  not  deal  directly  with  political 
issues,  but  reported  what  certain  types  would 
(revealingly)  say  about  them.  He  also  had  an 
extraordinary  eye  for  details  of  dress.  He  was 
Cartoonist  of  the  Year  in  1972.  His  caricatures, 
for  profiles  in  the  New  Statesman,  Observer, 
London  Review  of  Books,  and,  after  1987,  the 
Sunday  Telegraph,  were  witty.  Immediately 
pleasing  because  of  his  skill  at  catching  a  slightly 
distorted  likeness,  they  were  often  sharp,  even 
wounding.  He  said  himself  that  the  best  compli- 
ment was  when  the  subject  asked  if  he  could  buy 
the  original  and  then  after  a  day  or  two  recon- 
sidered. He  also  developed,  from  one  of  Alan 
Bennett's  ideas,  the  Stringalongs,  who  first 
appeared  in  a  strip  cartoon  in  the  Listener.  Based 
on  friends,  they  were  viewed  without  affection 
and  with  merciless  accuracy. 

Among  his  most  effective  illustrations  for 
books  were  those  which  appeared  in  Clive  Jam- 
es's The  Fate  of  Felicity  Fark  (1975)  and  Britan- 
nia Bright 's  Bewilderment  (1976)  and  in  Alan 
Watkins's  Brief  Lives  (1982),  and  on  the  jackets 
of  the  novels  of  Anthony  Powell.  In  1980  he 
became  a  director  of  the  publisher  Weidenfeld  & 
Nicolson,  but  he  returned  to  magazines  to  edit 
the  Tatler  in  1983-6.  This  time  a  dowdy  maga- 
zine had  already  been  livened  up  by  Tina  Brown, 
and  his  job,  successfully  carried  out,  was  to 
maintain  its  vitality  and  widen  its  appeal.  In  1986 
he  was  made  editorial  director  of  Conde  Nast  in 
Europe,  and  in  1987  editor-in-chief  of  Vogue. 


Thus  he  ended  as  he  had  begun;  if  he  ever 
wished  for  a  more  serious  role,  there  was  no  sign 
of  it  in  his  career.  A  stylish  cricketer,  he  did 
everything  that  he  did  exceptionally  well  and  left 
a  precise  and  amusing  portrait  of  the  world  he 
lived  in. 

In  1956  he  married  Lady  Arabella  Stuart, 
youngest  daughter  of  Francis  Douglas  Stuart, 
eighteenth  Earl  of  Moray;  they  had  a  daughter 
and  a  son.  In  1982  they  were  divorced  and  in  the 
same  year  Boxer  married  the  television  news- 
caster Anna  Ford,  daughter  of  John  Ford, 
Church  of  England  clergyman.  They  had  two 
daughters.  Boxer  died  20  July  1988  of  a  brain 
tumour  at  his  home  in  Brentford,  London. 

[The  Times  We  Live  In:  the  Cartoons  of  Marc,  intro- 
duced by  James  Fenton,  1978;  Mark  Boxer,  The  Trendy 
Ape,  1968,  and  Marc  Time,  1984;  Mark  Amory  (ed.), 
The  Collected  and  Recollected  Marc,  1993;  private  infor- 
mation; personal  knowledge.]  Mark  Amory 

BOYD,  Sir  John  McFarlane  (19 17-1989), 
trade-union  official  and  Salvationist,  was  born  8 
October  1917  in  Motherwell,  Lanarkshire,  the 
only  child  of  James  Boyd,  butcher,  who  died  in 
the  influenza  epidemic  of  the  following  year,  and 
his  wife,  Mary  Marshall,  who  in  1920  married 
John  Burns,  collier,  with  whom  she  had  two 
further  sons.  John  was  welcomed  by  his  step- 
father as  his  own  son,  but  John  Burns's  earnings 
were  irregular  and  after  the  1926  general  strike 
he  had  no  work  until  the  outbreak  of  World  War 
II  in  1939.  Boyd  was  therefore  brought  up  in 
considerable  poverty  and  later  recalled  that  until 
he  was  fourteen  the  only  boots  he  possessed  were 
supplied  by  the  parish.  He  attended  Hamilton 
Street  Elementary  School  and  Motherwell  and 
Glencairn  Secondary  School,  earning  money  for 
the  family  by  delivering  newspapers  and  milk.  In 
1932  he  left  school  early  to  take  up  one  of  the  few 
engineering  apprenticeships  at  the  Lanarkshire 
Steel  Company  and  at  the  same  time  joined  the 
apprentices'  section  of  the  Amalgamated  Engi- 
neering Union.  He  thus  added  a  second  element 
to  his  future  career,  for  he  had  at  the  age  of  ten 
joined  the  Salvation  Army.  In  1932  he  signed  the 
Salvationist  articles  of  war,  was  sworn  in  as  a 
senior  soldier,  and  graduated  to  a  BBk  bass  in  the 
Motherwell  Corps;  his  tuba,  he  noted,  was  'easy 
to  play  but  heavy'. 

It  was  with  a  reputation  as  an  open-air  'boy 
preacher'  that  in  1937  he  took  up  the  cause  of 
junior  workers  at  the  Lanarkshire  mill,  on  the 
claim  of  the  AEU  for  the  right  to  negotiate  on 
their  behalf.  He  found  himself  as  one  of  the 
youthful  leaders  of  a  strike,  which  spread  coun- 
trywide and  achieved  the  union's  objective  on  the 
apprenticeship  question.  After  nine  years  as  a 
craftsman  and  shop  steward  he  was  elected 
assistant  divisional  organizer  in  1946,  divisional 
organizer  in  1949,  and  executive  councillor  for 


44 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Braine 


division  i  (Scotland)  in  1953,  the  youngest 
member  of  the  union  ever  to  attain  that  office.  He 
retained  this  post  until  1975  when,  following  the 
untimely  death  of  Jim  Conway  in  an  aeroplane 
crash,  he  was  elected  general  secretary  of  the 
AEU  until  his  retirement  in  1982. 

During  almost  three  decades  of  working  from 
AEU  headquarters  in  London,  Boyd  held  almost 
every  post  in  the  Labour  movement  available  to 
him:  president  of  the  Confederation  of  Ship- 
building and  Engineering  Unions  in  1964;  mem- 
ber of  the  general  council  of  the  Trades  Union 
Congress  in  1967-75  and  1978-82;  and  chairman 
of  the  Labour  party  in  1967.  He  was  also  his 
union's  chief  negotiator  in  a  number  of  industries 
including  shipbuilding,  atomic  energy,  electricity 
supply,  paper-making,  iron  and  steel,  and  alu- 
minium. He  was  a  member  of  the  council  of  the 
Advisory,  Conciliation  and  Arbitration  Service 
(1978-82);  a  director  of  the  British  Steel  Cor- 
poration (1981-6),  of  the  United  Kingdom 
Atomic  Energy  Authority  (1980-5),  of  Industrial 
Training  Services  Ltd.  from  1980,  and  of  Inter- 
national Computers  Ltd.  (UK)  from  1984;  and  a 
governor  of  the  BBC  (1982-7).  He  was  appointed 
CBE  in  1974,  knighted  in  1979,  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts  in  1982,  and  in  1981, 
perhaps  to  his  greatest  satisfaction,  received  the 
Salvation  Army's  OF  (Order  of  the  Founder). 

John  Boyd  was  a  tall,  well-built,  kindly  man, 
craggy  of  face  and  rich  in  the  intonations  of  the 
Clydesider.  His  devotion  to  the  Salvation  Army 
never  faltered,  nor  his  sincerity  in  combining  this 
with  his  role  as  a  trade  unionist.  To  him  they 
both  were  aspects  of  his  mission  of  service. 
'Yours,  in  the  Joys  of  Service',  the  words  with 
which  he  ended  his  address  to  members  urging 
them  to  elect  him  as  general  secretary  of  the 
AEU  in  1974,  was  to  him  no  cant  phrase.  It  was 
the  expression  of  a  form  of  Christian  socialism 
pursued  at  a  time  when  this  had  ceased  to  be 
fashionable,  but  recognizable  as  a  creed  which 
had  inspired  many  of  his  forebears  in  the  trade- 
union  movement. 

Much  of  his  time  within  the  AEU  was  spent 
weaning  it  away  from  communist  and  extreme 
left-wing  influence.  When  he  retired  in  1982  the 
committed  left  had  only  two  seats  on  the  seven- 
man  AEU  executive.  His  hand  was  behind  the 
introduction  of  the  secret  postal  ballot  for  the 
election  of  AEU  full-time  officials,  which  was 
regarded  with  disfavour  by  many  unions  at  the 
time,  but  later  universally  accepted.  He  was  a 
doughty  negotiator,  persistent,  fair,  but  some- 
times tetchy,  who  sought  to  update  his  own 
organization.  In  this  he  did  not  wholly  succeed 
before  his  retirement  and  he  left  much  still  to  be 
done.  His  efforts  to  absorb  the  draughtsmen  into 
the  AUEW  (as  it  was  then  called)  proved,  for 
both  organizational  and  political  reasons,  to  be  an 
exercise  in  sentiment  rather  than  realitv.  But  he 


did  much  to  leave  his  union  in  better  condition 
than  he  found  it.  Above  all,  Boyd  laid  great 
emphasis  on  decency  and  trust;  'ye  can'na,'  he 
commented  in  disgust  with  an  employers'  repre- 
sentative who  had  abused  his  confidence,  'nego- 
tiate with  liars'. 

In  1940  he  married  a  fellow  Salvationist, 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  James  Mclntyre,  steel- 
worker.  They  had  two  daughters.  Boyd  died  30 
April  1989  at  his  home  at  24  Pearl  Court, 
Cornfield  Terrace,  Eastbourne,  Sussex. 

[Gordon  Sharp,  Sir  John  Boyd,  Salvationist  Publishing 
and  Supplies  Ltd.,  1983;  Militant  Moderate  (video, 
r.1980),  Salvation  Army  Film  and  Video  Unit;  Gavin 
Laird,  'Sir  John  Boyd:  a  Tribute',  AEU  Journal,  June 
1989;  J.  B.  Jefferys,  The  Story  of  the  Engineers,  1946; 
personal  knowledge.]  Arthur  Marsh 

BRAINE,  John  Gerard  (1922-1986),  writer,  was 
born  13  April  1922  in  Bradford,  the  elder  child 
and  only  son  of  Fred  Braine,  a  sewage-works 
inspector,  and  his  wife,  Katherine  Josephine 
Henry.  By  religion  his  father  was  a  Methodist, 
his  mother  a  Roman  Catholic;  he  was  brought  up 
in  the  latter  faith.  He  was  educated  at  St  Bede's 
(RC)  Grammar  School,  Bradford,  and  attended 
the  Leeds  School  of  Librarianship — his  mother 
had  worked  as  a  librarian.  In  1938-40  he  was  in 
rapid  succession  a  furniture-shop  assistant,  book- 
shop assistant,  laboratory  assistant,  and  progress 
chaser.  Between  1940  and  195 1  he  was  an  assis- 
tant librarian  at  Bingley  public  library,  becoming 
chief  assistant  in  1949.  This  part  of  his  career  was 
interrupted  in  1942-3  by  service  in  the  Royal 
Navy,  from  which  he  was  invalided  out.  In  195 1 
tuberculosis  necessitated  a  long  spell  in  hospital, 
from  which  he  did  not  emerge  till  1954.  Over  the 
next  three  years  he  worked  as  branch  librarian 
successively  at  Northumberland  and  West  Rid- 
ing of  Yorkshire  county  libraries.  He  had  been 
writing  various  items,  including  a  verse  play, 
without  much  success  for  some  time,  and  now,  in 
1957,  published  his  first  novel,  Room  at  the 
Top. 

Although  earlier  rejected  by  four  publishers, 
this  book  immediately  took  its  place  as  one  of  the 
significant  novels  of  the  postwar  period.  Its 
author's  lack  of  a  conventionally  prolonged  edu- 
cation may  well  have  contributed  to  its  freshness 
and  vigour,  and  its  story,  of  the  material  ascent 
and  emotional  coarsening  of  Joe  Lampton,  a 
northern  working-class  lad,  owed  something  to  a 
tradition  of  provincial  writing  that  had  become 
weakened.  Before  long  its  sales  reached  100,000 
in  hardback  and  the  film  rights  had  been  sold 
before  publication.  Within  four  months  Braine 
was  able  to  give  up  his  career  as  a  librarian  and 
devote  himself  to  writing.  The  film  appeared  in 
1958. 

His  second  novel.  The  Vodi  (1959),  an  excur- 
sion  into   the   supernatural   influenced   by   his 


45 


Braine 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


hospital  experiences,  has  never  done  anything 
like  so  well  either  commercially  or  in  esteem,  but 
in  his  third,  Life  at  the  Top  (1962,  filmed  1965) 
he  returned  to  Joe  Lampton,  now  a  capable  but 
disaffected  executive,  and  to  commercial  success. 
None  of  Braine's  later  novels,  of  which  the  last, 
These  Golden  Days,  appeared  in  1985,  attracted 
the  attention  the  Lampton  books  received.  Joe 
enjoyed  a  kind  of  resurrection  as  the  protagonist 
of  two  television  series,  Man  at  the  Top  (1970  and 
1972),  and  several  of  Braine's  other  novels  were 
effectively  adapted  for  TV. 

It  is  difficult  not  to  see  in  his  career  after  1962 
a  decline  in  literary  standards  of  performance  as 
well  as  of  popularity  and  standing  with  the 
public.  Inexorably  he  came  to  be  seen  as  a  man, 
if  not  of  one  book,  then  of  one  character,  the 
uncertainly  attractive  and  far  from  inexhaustible 
Lampton.  What  at  one  stage  had  passed  as  a 
harsh  northern  critique  of  the  affluent  south 
seemed  more  and  more  to  slide  into  tolerance  at 
best.  More  than  this,  in  the  absence  of  the 
narrative  thrust  of  the  earlier  novels,  the  general 
treatment  and  style  was  revealed  as  flatly  pedes- 
trian. Autobiography  or  wish-fulfilment  took  the 
place  of  invention,  to  the  point  of  occasional 
embarrassment  in  late  works  like  One  and  Last 
Love  (1981). 

Besides  fiction,  he  published  a  critical  study, 
J.  B.  Priestley  (1978),  and  a  handbook  called 
Writing  a  Novel  (1974),  which,  together  with 
much  sound  practical  advice  to  the  tyro,  includes 
a  heartfelt  warning,  poignant  in  retrospect,  of  the 
dangers  of  success.  He  pursued  a  more  ephem- 
eral calling  as  a  political  polemicist  in  writing  and 
in  public  appearances.  At  first  a  supporter  of 
unilateral  nuclear  disarmament  and  other  left- 
wing  causes,  he  moved  suddenly  and  spectac- 
ularly to  the  right,  calling  for  the  return  of 
hanging  and  the  ending  of  all  foreign  aid. 

Though  possessing  strong  views  and  vocifer- 
ous dislikes,  he  showed  no  animosity  towards 
anyone.  He  was  indeed  a  man  of  great  natural 
sweetness.  Pale,  chubby,  bespectacled,  a  serious 
cigarette-smoker  and  drinker  with  a  perpetual 
look  of  being  out  of  condition,  he  had  an  expres- 
sion of  settled  gloom  that  easily  lightened  into  a 
genial  smile.  He  showed  an  endearing  pleasure  in 
his  prosperity  and  no  resentment  when  his  star 
began  to  fade. 

In  1955  he  married  Helen  Patricia,  daughter  of 
William  Selby  Wood,  engineering  fitter.  They 
had  a  son  and  three  daughters.  The  family 
moved  from  Bingley  to  Woking  in  1966.  Braine 
died  of  a  gastric  haemorrhage  28  October  1986, 
in  a  Hampstead  hospital. 

[Dale  Salwak,  John  Braine  and  John  Wain,  a  Reference 
Guide,  1980;  The  Times,  30  October  1986;  New  States- 
man, 21  March  1975;  information  from  family;  personal 
knowledge.]  Kingsley  Amis 


BRAITHWAITE,  Richard  Bevan  (1900- 1990), 
philosopher,  was  born  15  January  1900  in  Ban- 
bury, Oxfordshire,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of 
three  sons  and  one  daughter  of  William  Charles 
Braithwaite,  of  Banbury,  barrister,  banker,  and 
historian  of  Quakerism,  and  his  wife  Janet, 
daughter  of  Charles  C.  Morland,  of  Croydon. 
He  was  educated  at  Sidcot  School,  Somerset 
(1911-14),  Hoot  ham  School,  York  (1914-18), 
and  as  a  scholar  at  King's  College,  Cambridge 
(1919-23),  where  he  became  a  wrangler  in  part  ii 
of  the  mathematical  tripos  (1922)  and  gained  a 
first  class  in  part  ii  of  the  moral  sciences  tripos 

(1923)- 

In  1924  he  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at 
King's  College,  which  he  retained  until  his 
death.  He  was  successively  a  university  lecturer 
in  moral  sciences  (later  called  philosophy) 
(1928-34),  Sidgwick  lecturer  (1934-53),  ar>d 
Knightbridge  professor  of  moral  philosophy 
(1953-67).  He  did  much  to  foster  the  philosophy 
of  science  in  Cambridge,  lecturing  on  it  regularly 
for  the  philosophy  tripos  (his  lectures  on  prob- 
ability being  particularly  memorable).  He  also 
brought  it  into  the  natural  sciences  tripos,  work- 
ing with  the  historian  (Sir)  Herbert  *Butterfield 
to  found  the  department  of  history  and  philo- 
sophy of  science. 

His  own  work  was  in  the  Cambridge  tradition 
of  scientifically  informed  philosophy  exemplified 
by  Bertrand  (third  Earl)  *Russell,  J.  Maynard 
*Keynes,  Frank  *Ramsey,  and  C.  D.  *Broad.  His 
mathematical  training  showed  most  clearly  in  his 
philosophy  of  science,  notably  in  his  explication 
of  the  concept  of  probability  invoked  in  modern 
science.  This  culminated  in  Scientific  Explanation 
(!953)»  tne  published  version  of  his  Trinity 
College  Tarner  lectures  of  1945-6,  a  classic  work 
whose  influence  ranks  him  as  a  methodologist  of 
science  with  Sir  Karl  Popper  and  Carl  Hem  pel. 

His  philosophy  ranged  far  wider  than  the 
philosophy  of  science.  His  1955  inaugural  lec- 
ture, Theory  of  Games  as  a  Tool  for  the  Moral 
Philosopher,  showed  the  significance  for  moral 
and  political  philosophy  of  modern  theories  of 
games  and  decisions.  His  1955  Eddington  lec- 
ture, An  Empiricist's  View  of  the  Nature  of  Reli- 
gious Belief,  showed  his  long-standing  concern 
with  religion.  In  this  he  was  greatly  influenced  by 
his  Quaker  upbringing,  as  in  the  pacifism,  later 
rejected,  that  made  him  serve  in  the  Friends' 
Ambulance  Unit  in  World  War  I.  He  eventually 
joined  the  Church  of  England,  being  baptized 
and  confirmed  in  King's  College  chapel  in 
1948. 

He  took  a  keen  interest  in  public  affairs,  and 
was  active  in  college  and  university  politics.  He 
took  especial  satisfaction  in  helping  to  promote 
the  grace  admitting  women  to  membership  of 
Cambridge  University  and  thus  to  its  degrees. 
His  principal  recreation  was  reading  novels. 


46 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Bramwell-Booth 


It  was  the  way  he  philosophized  that  most 
inspired  his  students,  colleagues,  and  friends.  In 
height  and  weight  he  may  have  resembled  the 
average  Englishman,  but  not  in  his  intellectual 
exuberance.  In  discussion,  even  in  old  age,  deaf, 
with  spectacles  and  thinning  hair,  sometimes 
apparendy  asleep,  his  attention  rarely  flagged; 
and  the  intensity  of  his  contributions — often 
prefaced  with  roars  of  'Now  look  here,  I'm 
sorry...' — was  a  continual  refutation  of  the  pop- 
ular dichotomy  of  reason  and  passion.  His  curi- 
osity was  boundless,  his  grasp  of  issues  quick  and 
complete,  his  comments  clear,  forceful,  and  ori- 
ginal. No  one  could  be  more  passionate  in  the 
rational  pursuit  of  truth,  nor  less  concerned  to 
impress,  dominate,  preach,  or  be  taken  for  a 
guru.  He  was  a  great  scourge  of  the  obscure,  the 
portentous,  the  complacent,  and  the  slapdash — 
diseases  to  which  philosophy  is  always  prone  and 
to  which  his  incisive  irreverence  was  the  perfect 
antidote. 

He  received  an  honorary  D.Litt.  from  Bristol 
University  in  1963,  and  was  visiting  professor  of 
philosophy  at  Johns  Hopkins  University  in  1968, 
the  University  of  Western  Ontario  in  1969,  and 
the  City  University  of  New  York  in  1970.  He  was 
president  of  the  Mind  Association  in  1946  and  of 
the  Aristotelian  Society  in  1946-7.  In  1957  he 
became  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  and  in 
1986  a  foreign  honorary  member  of  the  American 
Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences.  In  1948  he 
helped  to  found  what  later  became  the  British 
Society  for  the  Philosophy  of  Science,  of  which 
he  was  president  from  1961  to  1963. 

In  1925  he  married  Dorothea  Cotter,  daughter 
of  Sir  Theodore  *Morison,  principal  of  Arm- 
strong College,  Newcastle  upon  Tyne,  which 
later  became  Newcastle  University.  She  died  in 
1928,  and  in  1932  he  married  Margaret  Mary 
(died  1986),  daughter  of  Charles  Frederick  Gur- 
ney  *Masterman,  a  noted  Liberal  MP  and  mem- 
ber of  the  1 9 14  cabinet.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  Braithwaite  died  of  pneumonia  21 
April  1990  at  The  Grange,  a  nursing  home  in 
Bottisham,  near  Cambridge. 

[Mary  Hesse  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol. 
lxxxii,  1092;  King's  College  Cambridge  Annual  Report, 
October  1900;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  D.  H.  Mellor 

BRAMWELL-BOOTH,  Catherine  (1883- 
1987),  Salvation  Army  commissioner,  was  born 
20  July  1883  at  Hadley  Wood,  Hertfordshire,  the 
eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  five  daugh- 
ters of  (William)  Bramwell  *Booth,  Salvation 
Army  general,  and  his  wife,  Florence  Eleanor 
Soper.  Bramwell  was  the  eldest  son  of  General 
William  *Booth,  the  founder  of  the  Salvation 
Army,  and  both  he  and  his  wife  became  Salvation 
Army  leaders.  Catherine  spent  all  her  childhood 
at  Hadley  Wood,  which  was  'so  perfect  that  I 


have  never  written  about  it,  as  no-one  would 
believe  me'.  Her  mother  disapproved  of  outside 
influences  acting  on  the  tender  minds  of  her 
children  and  taught  them  all  herself  for  two 
hours  every  morning. 

At  the  age  of  eighteen  Catherine  left  her  idyllic 
family  life  to  become  a  full-time  Salvation  Army 
officer,  an  occupation  she  never  left  until  her 
retirement.  She  added  her  father's  forename  to 
her  surname.  Following  a  period  of  study  at  the 
Salvation  Army  Training  College,  her  first  post- 
ing, in  1904,  was  as  a  captain  in  Bath.  The  pay 
was  7S.6d.  a  week  and  the  duties,  which  started  at 
6  a.m.,  meant  providing  some  counter-attraction 
to  the  pubs  and  gin  houses  every  night  of  the 
week.  She  then  held  appointments  in  a  number 
of  important  provincial  centres,  in  charge  of  the 
Salvation  Army's  evangelical  work,  before  com- 
mencing, in  1907,  a  period  often  years  assisting 
with  the  training  of  women  officers  at  the  Army's 
International  Training  College.  In  19 13  she 
preached  in  Tsarist  Russia  and  in  19 17  made 
headlines  when  she  led  a  rescue  team  into  the 
area  devastated  by  the  Silvertown  munitions 
factor)-  explosion  in  West  Ham,  in  which  sixty 
people  were  killed.  Later,  she  was  involved  with 
relief  work  in  Europe  after  both  world  wars. 

She  vacated  her  post  at  the  International 
Training  College  in  1917,  to  assume  responsibil- 
ity as  international  secretary  for  Salvation  Army 
work  in  Europe,  attached  to  the  international 
headquarters  in  London.  She  was  subsequently 
(1926-46)  in  charge  of  the  movement's  social 
work  among  women  in  Great  Britain.  In  1927  she 
was  appointed  a  commissioner,  concerned  with 
all  the  Salvation  Army's  social  welfare  activities, 
meeting  the  needs  of  all  types  of  people,  from 
orphaned  children  to  the  elderly  residents  of 
Salvation  Army  eventide  homes.  From  1946  she 
was  international  secretary  for  Europe  until  she 
retired  in  1948. 

She  was  nominated  three  times  for  the  gen- 
eralship of  the  Salvation  Army.  On  each  occa- 
sion, in  1934,  1939,  and  1946,  the  election 
resulted  in  one  of  the  other  candidates  assuming 
the  mantle  of  international  leader.  Possibly  it  was 
felt  that  the  movement,  at  that  stage,  should  not 
appear  to  be  dependent  on  the  Booth  'dynasty'. 
Certainly  'Commissioner  Catherine',  as  she 
became  affectionately  known,  was  firmly  in  the 
Booth  mould  of  charismatic  leadership. 

Throughout  her  life  she  remained  true  to  the 
evangelical  driving  force  of  her  parents  and 
grandparents.  Everyone  confronted  by  her,  from 
local  tradesmen  to  distinguished  national  jour- 
nalists, could  expect  a  fearless  cross-examination 
of  their  spiritual  state  and  a  presentation  of  the 
claims  of  her  beloved  Jesus  Christ.  She  was  a 
Salvation  Army  officer  who  never  strayed  from 
her  roots  and  never  lost  her  pioneering  zeal.  She 


47 


Bramwell-Booth 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


had  a  keen  analytical  mind  and  a  fund  of  know- 
ledge which  made  her  public  addresses  dynamic 
and  inspiring,  as  well  as  informative. 

She  wrote  several  books,  her  best  being  a 
biography  of  her  grandmother,  Catherine  Booth, 
the  Story  of  her  Loves.  Published  in  1970,  this 
book  brought  her  public  recognition  late  in  life, 
which  resulted  in  her  becoming  something  of  a 
media  personality,  with  a  chirpy,  engaging  man- 
ner. During  the  last  decade  of  her  life  she  made 
frequent  appearances  as  a  stimulating  guest  on 
many  radio  and  television  programmes. 

In  1 97 1  she  was  appointed  CBE.  Six  years 
later,  at  the  age  of  ninety-three,  she  received  the 
Guild  of  Professional  Toastmasters  best  speaker 
award — to  her  own  amusement  because  she  was 
a  lifelong  teetotaller.  In  1983  she  was  honoured 
with  the  Salvation  Army's  Order  of  the  Founder. 
She  died,  unmarried,  at  the  age  of  104,  4  October 
1987  at  her  home  in  Finchampstead,  Berkshire, 
where  she  lived  with  two  of  her  sisters. 

[Mary  Batchelor,  Catherine  Bramwell-Booth,  1987; 
Catherine  Bramwell-Booth  (with  Ted  Harrison),  Com- 
missioner Catherine,  1983;  Salvation  Army  archives; 
personal  knowledge.]  Eva  Burrows 

BRENAN,  (Edward  Fitz)Gerald  (1894-1987), 
writer  and  Hispanist,  was  born  7  April  1894  at 
Sliema,  Malta,  the  elder  son  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Hugh  Brenan,  subaltern  in  the 
Royal  Irish  Rifles,  and  his  wife  Helen,  daughter 
of  Sir  Ogilvie  Graham,  cotton  and  linen  mer- 
chant. Gerald,  as  he  was  always  called,  spent  the 
first  seven  years  of  his  childhood  either  travelling 
with  the  regiment  in  South  Africa  and  India,  or 
living  in  the  family  home  of  the  Grahams, 
Larchfield,  near  Belfast.  However,  in  1901  Hugh 
Brenan  became  almost  stone  deaf  as  a  result  of 
malaria,  and  had  to  leave  the  army.  Gerald  was  a 
precocious,  imaginative  little  boy,  and  devoted  to 
his  mother,  who  stimulated  his  love  of  books  and 
his  interest  in  history,  travel,  and  especially 
botany.  He  won  an  exhibition  to  Radley,  where 
he  was  extremely  unhappy,  and  was  awarded  the 
Scott  essay  prize  every  year. 

In  obedience  to  his  father's  wishes,  he  passed 
into  Sandhurst.  Detesting  this  prospect,  at  sev- 
enteen he  concocted  and  carried  out  a  wildly 
romantic  scheme  to  escape  with  an  older  friend, 
a  donkey,  and  very  little  money,  and  walk  to 
Asia.  His  friend  got  no  further  than  Venice,  but 
Gerald  plodded  on  alone,  braving  wolves  and 
snowstorms  until  he  gave  up  in  the  Balkans,  after 
having  covered  over  1,500  miles.  His  parents 
were  relieved  at  the  return  of  the  prodigal,  and 
— a  year  later — the  outbreak  of  World  War  I 
temporarily  settled  his  future.  He  was  com- 
missioned into  the  5th  Gloucesters  and  in  due 
course  was  sent  to  France,  serving  first  with  the 
Cyclist  Corps,  and  later  in  charge  of  observation 
posts,  fighting  at  Ypres,  Passchendaele,  and  the 


Somme,  and  gaining  the  MC  (191 8)  and  the 
croix  de  guerre.  It  was  in  the  army  that  he  met 
Ralph  Partridge  and  made  the  greatest  friendship 
of  his  life,  lasting  as  it  did  until  Partridge's  death 
in  i960,  despite  a  violent  breach  over  an  affair 
with  Partridge's  first  wife,  Dora  *Carrington. 

Demobilized  in  19 19,  Brenan  was  eager  to  get 
away  from  England,  and  acquire  the  education  he 
felt  Radley  had  failed  to  supply.  With  little 
equipment  except  his  war  gratuity  and  some 
2,000  books  in  various  languages,  including  the 
classics,  he  embarked  for  Spain,  thinking  his  war 
gratuity  would  last  longer  there,  and  rented  a 
little  house  in  the  village  of  Yegen  on  the 
beautiful  slopes  of  the  Sierra  Nevada.  Here  he 
began  life  in  his  adopted  country,  devoting 
himself  to  reading,  walking  immense  distances  in 
the  mountains,  and  writing  quantities  of  long  and 
brilliant  letters.  He  considered  himself  a  'writer' 
from  the  first,  though  he  never  finished  his 
projected  life  of  Santa  Teresa,  and  his  first 
publication  was  a  picaresque  novel  called  Jack 
Robinson  by  'George  Beaton'  (1933),  which 
received  elitist  rather  than  wide  acclaim. 

During  his  visits  to  London  he  made  many 
literary  friends,  and  when  in  Spain  he  was  visited 
by  Lytton  *Strachey,  Virginia  *Woolf,  Bertrand 
*Russell,  Roger  *Fry,  David  *Garnett,  and  (Sir) 
V.  S.  Pritchett,  with  their  consorts.  At  his  best  a 
brilliant  and  amusing  talker,  Brenan's  character 
was  full  of  contradictions:  he  had  a  great  capacity 
for  prolonged  and  concentrated  study,  as  well  as 
outstanding  intelligence  and  originality  in  the 
interpretation  of  its  results;  he  would  often  work 
far  into  the  night,  but  he  might  collapse  many 
times  in  a  month  with  what  he  called  'flu'.  Jack 
Robinson  was  followed  by  an  unceasing  output 
until  the  book  of  aphorisms  in  his  eighties.  The 
Spanish  Labyrinth  (1943),  a  penetrating  study  of 
the  history  of  modern  Spain,  and  The  Literature 
of  the  Spanish  People  (1951)  were  much  admired 
in  academic  circles,  while  Brenan's  knowledge  of 
Spain  took  a  form  designed  to  appeal  to  the 
general  reader  in  The  Face  of  Spain  (1950)  and 
South  from  Granada  (1957).  The  latter  was  one  of 
his  most  successful  and  often  reprinted  books. 
Two  volumes  of  autobiography,  A  Life  of  One's 
Own  and  Personal  Record,  followed  in  1962  and 
1974;  two  more  novels,  and  a  life  of  St  John  of 
the  Cross  in  1973. 

As  a  young  man  Brenan  was  tall,  sparely  built, 
and  agile;  he  had  straight  fair  hair  and  small, 
nearly  black  eyes  set  wide  apart  in  a  face  that  was 
expressive  and  charming  rather  than  good-look- 
ing. He  kept  his  agility  until  his  seventies.  In 
comparison  with  all  his  intellectual  activity  his 
emotional  life  ran  an  uneasy  course.  His  love 
affair  with  Dora  Carrington  was  far  the  most 
serious  in  his  life,  producing  as  it  did  an  enor- 
mous two-way  correspondence,  some  ecstasy, 
and   considerable  unhappiness  on  both  sides. 


48 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Brockway 


Otherwise  he  was  obsessed  by  sex,  and  inhibited 
by  fears  of  impotence.  A  stream  of  prostitutes, 
hippies,  and  peasant  girls  occupied  his  agitated 
thoughts  and  feelings  and  directed  his  travels.  In 
1930,  while  in  Dorset,  he  met  the  American 
poetess  and  novelist,  (Elisabeth)  Gamel  Woolsey, 
who  was  then  involved  with  the  literary  Powys 
family,  especially  Llewelyn.  She  was  the  daugh- 
ter of  William  Walton  Woolsey,  plantation 
owner,  of  South  Carolina.  She  and  Gerald 
drifted  into  a  relationship,  and  although  their 
temperaments  differed  greatly — between  his 
nervous  excitability  and  her  dreamy  melan- 
choly— they  grew  very  close.  In  1931  they  went 
through  a  pseudo-marriage  in  Rome,  ratified 
later  in  London.  Gamel  died  of  cancer  in  1968. 
Brenan  had  one  child,  a  daughter  Miranda, 
whose  mother  was  Juliana  Pellegrino,  an  unmar- 
ried girl  from  Yegen  village.  She  was  born  in 
193 1  and  later  legally  adopted  by  her  father  and 
Gamel,  who  took  her  to  England  to  be  educated. 
She  died  of  cancer  in  1980. 

After  the  end  of  Franco's  regime  most  of 
Brenan's  books  were  translated,  and  he  became  a 
hero  in  Spain,  receiving  the  Pablo  Iglesias  award. 
He  was  also  appointed  CBE  (1982).  In  1970 
Brenan  moved  inland  to  a  smaller  house  built  to 
his  own  design,  and  here  he  spent  his  last 
seventeen  years,  while  his  eyesight  and  health 
gradually  declined.  He  was  cared  for  by  Lynda 
Price  and  her  husband,  Lars  Pranger.  In  1984  the 
burden  of  his  rapidly  declining  state  led  to  his 
consenting  to  be  taken  by  Lars  to  a  home  in 
Pinner,  near  London,  to  the  great  indignation  of 
his  Spanish  admirers.  This  resulted  in  the 
extraordinary  and  much  publicized  sequel  when 
two  members  of  the  Junta  de  Andalucia  flew  to 
London,  kidnapped  Brenan,  and  took  him  back 
to  Alhaurin,  where  they  arranged  for  him  to  be 
nursed  and  cared  for  at  his  home.  He  died  there 
19  January  1987. 

[Xan  Fielding  (ed.),  Best  of  Friends,  the  Brenan-Par- 
tridge  Letters,  1986;  Jonathan  Gathorne-Hardy,  The 
Interior  Castle:  a  Life  of  Gerald  Brenan,  1092;  personal 
knowledge.]  Frances  Partridge 

BROCKWAY,  (Archibald)  Fenner,  Baron 
Brockway  (1888-1988),  socialist  campaigner 
and  parliamentarian,  was  born  1  November  1888 
in  Calcutta,  the  only  son  and  eldest  of  three 
children  of  the  Revd  William  George  Brockway, 
London  Missionary  Society  missionary,  and  his 
wife,  Frances  Elizabeth,  daughter  of  William 
Abbey.  His  mother  died  when  he  was  fourteen. 
Educated  at  the  School  for  the  Sons  of  Mission- 
aries at  Blackheath  (subsequently  Eltham  Col- 
lege), he  became  a  journalist.  He  moved  from 
Liberalism  to  the  Independent  Labour  party  and 
by  191 2  was  editor  of  the  ILP  newspaper,  the 
Labour  Leader.  Still  in  his  twenties,  he  worked 
closely  with  leading  figures  on  the  British  left. 


He  played  a  heroic  role  in  the  ILP's  opposition 
to  the  war  of  1 914-18,  as  a  journalist,  and  then 
through  the  No-Conscription  Fellowship  as  an 
opponent  of  military  conscription.  On  four 
occasions  he  was  sentenced  to  gaol — the  last  time 
in  July  19 1 7  to  two  years'  hard  labour.  When 
released  in  April  19 19,  he  had  served  a  total  of 
twenty-eight  months,  the  last  eight  in  solitary 
confinement.  His  war  record  increased  his  status 
in  several  sections  of  the  Labour  movement  and 
in  the  election  of  1929  he  was  returned  as  the 
Labour  member  for  East  Leyton.  In  1919  he 
became  editor  of  India  and  joint  secretary  of  the 
British  committee  of  the  Indian  National  Con- 
gress. From  1926  to  1929  he  was  editor  of  the 
New  Leader,  the  renamed  organ  of  the  ILP,  of 
which  he  had  become  organizing  secretary  in 
1922. 

Brockway's  continuing  involvement  in  the 
ILP  section  of  the  wider  Labour  party  made  him 
an  increasingly  controversial  figure.  From  1926 
the  ILP  moved  to  the  left  under  the  leadership  of 
James  *Maxton,  and  called  for  'socialism  in  our 
time',  a  radicalization  backed  enthusiastically  by 
Brockway.  With  the  1929  Labour  government 
proving  helpless  in  the  face  of  rocketing  unem- 
ployment, Brockway  was  prominent  amongst  a 
small  group  of  ILP  rebel  members.  This  small 
section  of  left-wingers  refused  to  accept  the 
party's  disciplinary  guidelines,  and  were  denied 
endorsement  for  the  1931  election.  Like  most 
Labour  MPs,  Brockway  lost  his  seat.  The  dis- 
pute over  discipline  was  symbolic  of  a  much 
more  fundamental  division  over  policy.  In  July 
1932,  with  Brockway  in  the  chair,  the  ILP  voted 
to  disaffiliate  from  the  Labour  party. 

There  followed  the  most  radical  period  of 
Brockway's  career  as  he  sought  to  articulate  a 
socialism  distinct  from  the  pragmatism  of 
Labour  and  the  Stalinism  of  the  Communist 
party.  But  the  ILP's  membership  dwindled,  and 
it  was  squeezed  between  its  rivals.  The  Spanish 
civil  war  modified  his  pacifism  and  deepened  his 
suspicion  of  the  Communist  party.  In  1937  he 
visited  Spain  and  observed  the  repression  of  the 
ILP's  Spanish  equivalent  by  the  Communist 
party.  During  the  war  of  1939-45,  he  felt  cross- 
pressured  between  his  distaste  for  militarism  and 
his  thorough  antipathy  to  fascism.  In  wartime 
by-elections  he  argued  for  socialism  as  a  means  of 
ending  the  war.  After  Labour's  1945  electoral 
success,  he  decided  that  the  ILP  offered  no 
distinctive  way  forward  and  rejoined  the  Labour 
party.  From  1942  to  1947  he  was  chairman  of  the 
British  Centre  for  Colonial  Freedom  and  in  1945 
he  helped  establish  the  Congress  of  Peoples 
against  Imperialism. 

In  February  1950  he  returned  to  the  Com- 
mons as  the  member  for  Eton  and  Slough.  He 
remained  firmly  on  the  left,  participating  in  the 
faction  centred  around  Aneurin  *Bevan,  but  his 


49 


Brockway 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


radicalism  was  always  tempered  by  a  concern  not 
to  reproduce  what  he  had  come  to  see  as  the 
disastrous  split  of  1932.  His  strong  anti-milita- 
rism was  expressed  in  his  involvement  with  the 
Campaign  for  Nuclear  Disarmament.  His  princi- 
pal fame  came  from  his  championing  of  anti- 
colonial  movements.  His  interest  in  Indian 
independence  had  been  long-standing  and  from 
1950  he  began  to  visit  Africa  regularly.  Some 
called  him  the  member  for  Africa  and  he  knew 
several  of  the  first  generation  post-independence 
African  leaders.  From  1954  he  was  chairman  of 
the  Movement  for  Colonial  Freedom.  His  anti- 
colonialism  was  reflected  in  a  thorough  opposi- 
tion to  racism  in  Britain.  In  nine  successive 
sessions  he  introduced  Bills  into  the  Commons 
aimed  at  outlawing  discrimination.  Ironically, 
when  the  1964  Labour  government  embarked  on 
such  legislation,  Brockway  had  just  lost  his 
parliamentary  seat.  The  margin  was  eleven  votes 
and  some  commentators  ascribed  his  defeat  to 
the  race  issue.  Despite  misgivings,  he  accepted  a 
life  peerage  (1964)  and  campaigned  for  his  causes 
within  the  traditionalism  of  the  upper  house.  His 
radicalism  remained  vibrant  in  his  new  environ- 
ment. Brockway  was  a  prolific  writer,  of  books, 
pamphlets,  and  articles.  These  included  four 
volumes  of  autobiography  and  major  studies  of 
two  ILP  contemporaries,  Fred  Jowett  (Socialism 
over  Sixty  Years,  1946)  and  Alfred  Salter  (Ber- 
mondsey  Story,  1949). 

In  19 14  he  married  Lilla,  daughter  of  the  Revd 
William  Harvey-Smith.  They  had  four  daugh- 
ters, two  of  whom  predeceased  him  (1941  and 
1974).  As  Brockway  acknowledged  later,  the 
marriage  was  not  a  success  and  he  had  several, 
often  short-lived,  affairs  in  the  interwar  years. 
After  a  divorce  in  1945,  in  1946  he  married  Edith 
Violet,  daughter  of  Archibald  Herbert  King, 
electrician;  they  had  one  son.  Both  his  wives 
shared  many  of  his  political  views. 

Many  found  Brockway  to  be  highly  principled 
and  warmly  sympathetic.  His  style  inherited 
something  of  his  missionary  background  and  his 
socialist  politics  owed  much  to  a  broader  tradi- 
tion of  English  radicalism.  Not  an  intellectual,  he 
was  yet  an  independent  thinker.  Born  in  the  age 
of  *Gladstone,  he  died  in  the  age  of  Thatcher  28 
April  1988,  at  Watford  General  Hospital,  Hert- 
fordshire. 

[Guardian,  29  April  1988;  The  Times,  30  April  1988; 
Independent,  2  May  1988;  Fenner  Brockway,  Inside  the 
Left,  1942,  Outside  the  Right,  1963,  Towards  Tomorrow, 
1977,  and  98  Not  Out,  1986;  personal  knowledge.] 

David  Howell 

BUHLER,  Robert  (191 6-1 989),  painter,  was 
born  23  November  191 6  at  the  French  Hospital, 
Shaftesbury  Avenue,  London,  the  only  son  and 
elder  child  of  Robert  Buhler,  a  Swiss  aircraft 
designer  with  Handley  Page,  who  later  became  a 


journalist,  and  his  wife,  Lucy  Kronig,  who  came 
from  the  village  of  Tasch  in  the  Valais.  He  held 
Swiss-British  nationality  all  his  life.  He  attended 
Westbourne  Park  Grammar  School  in  1926-9, 
and  was  then  further  educated  in  Switzerland  for 
a  short  time,  before  leaving  school  in  his  early 
teens  to  study  commercial  art  at  the  Kunstge- 
werbeschule  in  Zurich  and  then  at  that  in  Basle. 

In  1933  he  returned  to  London,  where  he 
spent  two  terms  at  Bolt  Court  School  of  Photo- 
Engraving  and  Lithography.  There  he  met  (J.) 
Keith  *Vaughan,  who  encouraged  him  to  take  up 
fine  art.  In  1934  he  became  a  painting  student  at 
St  Martin's  School  of  Art,  where  he  was  taught 
by  (R.)  Vivian  Pitchforth,  (G.  C.)  Leon  •Under- 
wood, and  Harry  Morley.  In  1935  he  won  a 
senior  county  scholarship  to  the  Royal  College  of 
Art.  He  responded  to  the  teaching  of  Barnett 
*Freedman  and  John  *Nash,  but  only  stayed 
there  for  six  weeks. 

Having  inherited  a  little  money,  he  relin- 
quished his  scholarship,  and  rented  a  studio  in 
Camden  Town.  He  made  an  income  from  teach- 
ing at  Wimbledon  School  of  Art  and  from 
illustrating  for  various  newspapers.  He  was  also 
commissioned  by  Jack  Beddington  of  Shell  to 
design  a  very  successful  poster  depicting  Hawker 
Hurricane  fighter  aircraft.  He  began  to  exhibit  in 
1936,  and  showed  at  the  first  British  Artists' 
Congress  (1937),  organized  by  the  Artists'  Inter- 
national Association.  His  work  attracted  the 
attention  of  the  collector  and  patron  Sir  Edward 
*Marsh,  and  his  'Portrait  of  Dickie  Green'  was 
illustrated  in  (Sir)  Herbert  *Read's  review  of  the 
exhibition  in  the  Listener. 

His  mother,  by  then  separated  from  his  father, 
ran  a  bookshop  and  cafe  in  Charlotte  Street, 
which  was  frequented  by  staff  and  students  of  the 
nearby  Euston  Road  School;  from  1937  Robert 
Buhler  became  acquainted  with  them,  but  did 
not  attend  the  school  himself.  He  was,  however, 
influenced  by  their  approach  to  painting,  using 
restrained  colour  and  close  tones  for  the  compo- 
sition of  soberly  executed  portraits,  still  lifes, 
landscapes,  and  urban  scenes.  The  Contem- 
porary Art  Society  bought  his  portrait  of  (Sir) 
Stephen  Spender,  then  a  student  at  the  Euston 
Road  School,  in  1938. 

Buhler  shared  exhibitions  with  Vivian  Pitch- 
forth  and  also  with  (Sir)  Lawrence  Gowing  in  the 
early  1940s,  whilst  serving  in  the  Auxiliary  Fire 
Service  during  World  War  II.  In  1945  he  began 
teaching  at  the  Central  School  of  Arts  and  Crafts 
in  London,  and  also  at  the  Chelsea  School  of  Art. 
He  exhibited  at  the  Royal  Academy  in  1945,  at 
the  New  English  Art  Club  (becoming  a  member 
in  1946),  and  at  the  Royal  Society  of  British 
Artists.  In  1947  he  was  elected  ARA  and  the 
following  year  joined  the  London  Group.  He  was 
invited  in  1948  by  (Sir)  Robert  ('Robin')  •Dar- 
win to  teach  at  the  Royal  College  of  Art.  He  was 


50 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Biilbring 


an  intelligent  and  sensitive  teacher,  who  encour- 
aged students  of  very  varied  talents.  His  first 
one-man  show  was  at  the  Leicester  Galleries  in 

1950,  and  in  1956  he  was  made  an  RA,  one  of  the 
youngest  until  then  to  achieve  that  distinction. 

In  1975  he  became  a  trustee  of  the  Royal 
Academy.  In  that  year  he  resigned  from  the  staff 
of  the  RCA,  and  travelled  very  widely  in  Europe 
and  the  United  States  over  the  next  few  years.  In 
1982  he  won  the  Wollaston  award  for  the  most 
distinguished  exhibit  at  the  RA,  'Water-Meadow 
Dusk',  and  in  1984  he  won  the  Hunting  Group 
prize  for  'Vineyards,  Neufchatel'.  His  work  is  in 
the  permanent  collections  of  national  and  provin- 
cial galleries  all  over  the  world.  In  addition  to  his 
many  commissioned  portraits,  Buhler  painted  a 
number  of  portraits  of  his  friends  and  fellow 
artists  for  his  own  satisfaction.  In  his  later  work 
he  tended  to  seek  an  underlying  geometry  or 
pattern  in  nature.  His  oil  paintings  were  matt  in 
texture,  brush  strokes  were  almost  suppressed, 
and  detail  was  all  but  eliminated  in  favour  of 
muted  but  luminous  blocks  of  colour. 

(H.  G.)  Rodrigo  *Moynihan's  group  portrait, 
'The  Painting  School  Teaching  Staff  of  the 
RCA'  (1949-52),  depicts  Buhler,  of  average 
height,  dark-haired,  and  handsome,  with  dark 
eyebrows  and  a  markedly  cleft  chin,  wearing  a 
dark  suit,  standing  at  the  centre  of  the  composi- 
tion with  his  hand  on  the  back  of  a  chair.  A 
sophisticated  man  of  cosmopolitan  background, 
he  was  a  sociable  and  witty  person.  In  1938  he 
married  Eveline  Mary,  daughter  of  William 
Gadsby  Rowell,  joiner.  They  were  divorced  in 

195 1.  They  had  one  son,  and  Buhler  was  also  the 
father  of  a  daughter,  the  mother  of  whom  he  did 
not  mam.  In  1962  he  married  Prudence  Mary 
Brochocka,  whose  previous  marriage  was  dis- 
solved, daughter  of  Hubert  William  Hastings 
Beaumont,  solicitor.  They  had  two  sons,  and 
were  divorced  in  1971.  Buhler  died  at  his  home 
in  Chelsea  20  June  1989. 

[Colin  Hayes,  Robert  Buhler,  1986;  'Robert  Buhler,  in 
Conversation  with  Mervyn  Levy',  September  1984, 
National  Sound  Archives,  29  Exhibition  Road,  Lon- 
don; private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alan  Windsor 

BCLBRLNG,  Edith  (1903-1990),  pharmacolo- 
gist and  smooth  muscle  physiologist,  was  born  27 
December  1903  in  Bonn,  Germany,  the  youngest 
of  four  children  and  third  daughter  of  Karl 
Daniel  Biilbring,  professor  of  English  at  Bonn 
University,  and  his  wife  Hortense  Leonore 
Kann,  a  Dutch  woman,  daughter  of  a  Jewish 
banker's  family  in  The  Hague.  Edith's  father 
died  prematurely  in  1917,  and  his  eldest  child,  a 
son,  was  killed  in  action  in  1918.  Edith  was 
educated  at  the  KJostermann  Lyzeum,  Bonn. 
Her  father's  death  and  the  hyper-inflation  of  the 
postwar  years  caused  a  financial  strain,  but  her 


mother's  brothers  set  up  accounts  for  the  three 
girls,  giving  each  a  modest  income  for  life.  After 
a  period  of  private  tuition  she  entered  Bonn 
Gymnasium  in  1922  to  study  chemistry,  physics, 
and  mathematics  for  the  municipal  examinations, 
which  she  passed  at  Easter  1923,  entitling  her  to 
enter  Bonn  University,  where  she  started  pre- 
clinical studies  for  medicine. 

Her  decision  to  read  medicine  at  university 
was  a  surprise  and  perhaps  a  disappointment  to 
her  mother,  since  she  had  early  shown  excep- 
tional talent  as  a  pianist,  an  accomplishment  that 
gave  her  and  her  friends  considerable  pleasure  in 
later  life  (she  had  two  grand  pianos  in  Oxford). 
Her  clinical  training  was  undertaken  in  Munich, 
Freiburg,  and  Bonn,  and  she  qualified  in  May 
1928.  She  then  moved  to  Berlin,  where  she  spent 
a  year  as  house  physician  and  two  years  as 
research  assistant  to  Paul  Trendelenburg,  an 
eminent  professor  of  pharmacology  and  an  old 
family  friend,  who  thought  she  was  wasting  her 
talents  as  a  physician.  Unfortunately,  he  died  of 
tuberculosis  before  Edith  had  become  suffi- 
ciently confident  to  decide  on  a  research  career, 
and  she  returned  to  medicine  in  1931,  as  a 
paediatrician  for  a  year  in  Jena  (Germany).  This 
seems  to  have  been  her  first  paid  position.  She 
then  returned  to  Berlin,  to  the  infectious  disease 
unit  of  the  Yirchow  Krankenhaus.  This  was 
during  the  rise  of  Adolf  Hitler  and  National 
Socialism,  and,  when  citizens  were  required  by- 
law to  declare  their  ancestry,  the  fact  that  she  was 
half  Jewish  caused  her  dismissal.  She  returned 
home  to  Bonn,  in  late  1933. 

Intending  to  go  to  Holland  to  practise  medi- 
cine, Edith  Biilbring  first  joined  a  sister  and  a 
friend  on  a  holiday  in  England.  Whilst  there,  she 
visited  her  old  chief  at  the  Yirchow  Kranken- 
haus, Ulrich  Friedemann,  from  Berlin,  a  refugee 
working  in  Sir  Henry  *Dale's  laboratory  in 
Hampstead.  Dale  assumed  she  also  was  looking 
for  a  job,  and  contacted  J.  H.  Burn,  who  was 
setting  up  a  biological  standardization  laboratory 
for  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  in  Bloomsbury 
Square,  London;  he  offered  her  a  post.  Thus 
began  her  scientific  career.  When  Burn  was 
appointed  to  the  Oxford  chair  of  pharmacology 
in  1937,  she  moved  to  Oxford,  where  she  became 
successively  a  departmental  demonstrator  (1937), 
university  demonstrator  and  lecturer  (1946),  ad 
hominem  reader  (i960),  and  finally,  in  1967,  ad 
hominem  professor.  She  was  elected  to  a  pro- 
fessorial fellowship  at  Lady  Margaret  Hall  in 
i960.  She  had  been  naturalized  in  1948. 

Initially  Edith  Biilbring  worked  in  collabora- 
tion with  Burn  on  the  autonomic  nervous  sys- 
tem, and  the  effects  of  catecholamines  and 
acetylcholine  and  their  interactions.  She  acted  as 
Burn's  research  assistant  for  some  fifteen  years, 
but  in  her  early  forties  began  more  independent 


5i 


Bulbring 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


research.  She  decided  to  concentrate  on  trying  to 
unravel  the  physiology  of  smooth  muscle,  a  tissue 
that  had  previously  always  irritated  her  by  its 
unpredictability.  It  was  here  that  she  made  the 
greatest  impact,  and  she  will  be  remembered  as 
one  of  the  world's  most  influential  scientists  in 
this  field.  Under  her  influence,  the  study  of 
smooth  muscles  became  first  respectable,  and 
then  increasingly  important.  She  published 
Smooth  Muscle  in  1970.  The  techniques  devel- 
oped in  her  laboratory  led  to  increasing  know- 
ledge of  the  physiology  of  smooth  muscle,  and 
the  activities  of  the  many  scientists  who  spent 
time  working  with  her  spread  her  interest  and 
enthusiasm  for  these  tissues  throughout  the 
world.  Her  influence  and  scientific  skills  were 
recognized  in  her  election  as  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1958,  by  the  conferment  on  her  of 
honorary  degrees  from  Groningen,  Leuven,  and 
Homburg  (Saar),  and  by  the  award  of  the 
Schmiedeberg-Plakette  of  the  Deutsche  Pharma- 
kologische  Gesellschaft  in  1974  and  of  the  Well- 
come gold  medal  in  pharmacology  in  1985. 

Edith  Bulbring's  friends  and  close  colleagues 
remember  her  with  great  affection  for  the 
warmth,  keen  interest,  and  whole-hearted  gen- 
erosity with  which  she  treated  them.  She  never 
married,  but  in  Oxford  lived  first  with  her 
younger  sister,  Maud,  in  Cumnor,  and  then 
finally  built  a  house  at  15  Northmoor  Road, 
where  after  Maud's  death  she  lived  with  her 
elder  sister  Lucy.  In  appearance  Edith  was  not 
distinguished,  being  of  medium  height  and 
build.  In  early  photographs  she  looked  decidedly 
plain,  and  one  would  have  guessed  that  she  was 
quiet  and  unassuming,  but  her  contemporaries 
do  not  remember  her  that  way.  Her  vivacity  and 
enthusiasm  are  what  is  remembered,  not  what 
she  looked  like.  Later  in  life  she  became  pro- 
gressively more  attractive  and  feminine  in 
appearance.  Her  health  was  good  and  she  con- 
tinued active  work  well  after  her  official  retire- 
ment. Eventually  atherosclerosis  led  to 
amputation  of  one  leg  below  the  knee  when  she 
was  in  her  seventies.  She  did  not  allow  this  to 
handicap  her,  but  she  had  progressive  loss  of 
circulation  in  her  other  leg,  and  could  not  toler- 
ate the  thought  of  a  second  amputation.  Instead, 
she  spent  much  of  her  last  two  years  trying 
different  treatments,  culminating  in  her  final 
operation,  an  attempt  at  a  venous  graft  which  she 
knew  would  be  highly  risky.  The  graft  was 
probably  a  success,  but  there  were  multiple 
emboli  which  affected  her  heart  and  probably 
caused  her  minor  strokes.  She  died  three  days 
later,  5  July  1990  in  the  John  Radcliffe  Hospital, 
Oxford. 

[T.  B.  Bolton  and  A.  F.  Brading  in  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxviii, 
1992;  personal  knowledge.]  A.  F.  Brading 


BULL,  Sir  Graham  MacGregor  (1918-1987), 
physician,  was  born  30  January  1918  in 
Nyaunghla,  upper  Burma,  the  eldest  in  the 
family  of  two  sons  and  one  daughter  of  Arthur 
Barclay  Bull,  medical  practitioner  to  an  oil  com- 
pany and  later  in  practice  in  Simonstown,  and  his 
wife,  Margaret  Petrie  MacGregor.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Diocesan  College,  Rondebosch,  Cape 
Province,  South  Africa,  and  the  University  of 
Cape  Town,  where  he  obtained  his  MB,  Ch.B. 
with  distinction  in  1939.  He  worked  in  the 
department  of  medicine  at  the  University  of 
Cape  Town  at  Groote  Schuur  Hospital  from 
1940  to  1946,  gaining  an  MD  degree  in  1947  on 
the  subject  of  postural  proteinuria.  As  a  result  of 
this  work  he  was  awarded  a  fellowship  by  the 
South  African  Council  for  Scientific  and  Indus- 
trial Research  to  continue  his  research  at  the 
Postgraduate  Medical  School  in  Hammersmith, 
London,  the  postwar  Mecca  of  most  Common- 
wealth medical  academics. 

Under  the  direction  of  (Sir)  John  McMichael, 
the  Postgraduate  Medical  School  provided  an 
exciting  environment  in  which  bright  young 
people  were  encouraged  to  think  critically  and 
pursue  novel  and  intellectually  challenging 
research.  Bull  thrived  in  this  environment  and  in 
1947  was  appointed  to  a  lectureship  in  the 
School.  His  research  concerned  the  management 
of  acute  kidney  failure,  for  which  he  devised  a 
treatment  that  became  internationally  known  as 
the  'Bull  regime'.  The  basis  of  the  regime  was 
simplicity  itself.  Bull  argued  from  the  analog}'  of 
a  blocked  lavatory.  One's  natural  reaction  was  to 
pull  the  chain,  so  that  more  water  flowed  into  the 
basin,  which  then  overflowed;  it  would  be  better 
to  leave  things  as  they  were  until  the  blockage 
was  relieved.  For  patients  who  were  unable  to 
pass  urine,  Bull  recommended  replacement  only 
of  the  fluid  and  electrolytes  they  lost.  In  this  way 
they  were  not  overloaded  and  were  kept  in 
balance  until  kidney  function  returned  sponta- 
neously. The  Bull  regime  saved  countless  lives 
by  preventing  over-enthusiastic  attempts  to 
'flush  out'  the  kidneys,  but  was  eventually  super- 
seded by  dialysis  techniques,  through  which  a 
similar  balance  could  be  maintained. 

The  recognition  of  Bull's  work  soon  led  to  his 
appointment  in  1952  to  a  chair  of  medicine  at 
Queen's  University,  Belfast,  where  he  gained  an 
immense  reputation  as  an  all-round  clinician  and 
teacher.  A  paper  he  published  from  Belfast 
examined  marking  systems  applied  to  essay  ques- 
tions in  medical  examinations  and  he  was  able  to 
demonstrate  that  individual  variability  led  to 
highly  discrepant  and  irreproducible  outcomes. 
More  than  anyone  else  Bull  was  responsible  for 
the  switch  from  essays  to  multiple-choice  ques- 
tions, which  later  became  the  basis  of  most 
written  examinations  in  medicine.  He  became 
FRCP  (Lond.)  in  1954. 


52 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Burn 


Following  the  untimely  death  of  the  director 
designate,  John  Squire,  Bull  was  asked  in  1966  to 
become  the  director  of  the  new  Medical  Research 
Council  Clinical  Research  Centre  at  Northwick 
Park,  Harrow.  Squire's  was  a  difficult  place  to 
fill,  but  Bull  did  so  superbly,  displaying  the  tact, 
wisdom,  and  concern  for  high  standards  that 
eased  the  centre  into  its  role  as  a  world-class 
clinical  and  investigative  institution,  despite 
many  difficulties  that  stood  in  its  path.  His  novel 
idea  was  to  integrate  a  clinical  research  centre 
and  a  general  district  hospital,  and,  by  the  time 
he  retired  in  1978,  he  was  in  charge  of  an 
800-bed  hospital  (Northwick  Park  Hospital)  and 
a  clinical  research  centre,  designed  as  a  single 
unit.  His  own  research  activity  had,  not  unex- 
pectedly, diminished  over  the  years,  but  he 
remained  abreast  of  the  latest  scientific  advances 
and  encouraged  the  excellent  medical  and  scien- 
tific personnel  at  the  centre  to  tackle  big  and 
exciting  research  problems — much  in  the  same 
way  as  John  McMichael  had  lent  support  to  his 
young  people  some  twenty  to  thirty  years  ear- 
lier. 

Bull  was  a  member  of  the  Medical  Research 
Council  from  1962  to  1966,  and  for  many  years 
chairman  of  its  tropical  medicine  research  board. 
From  1970  to  1983  he  was  a  member  of  the 
executive  committee  of  the  CIBA  Foundation, 
serving  as  its  chairman  from  1977  to  1983.  He 
was  also  vice-president  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  of  London  in  1978-9,  and  in  1988  the 
Sir  Graham  Bull  memorial  prize  was  founded 
there,  to  be  awarded  annually  for  meritorious 
research  carried  out  by  a  scientist  under  the  age 
of  forty-five  in  the  broad  field  of  clinical  research, 
in  which  Bull  personally  had  excelled  and  guided 
so  many  young  doctors.  He  had  been  knighted  in 
1976. 

Bull  was  a  kind  and  humane  man,  greatly- 
respected  and  liked  by  patients,  students,  and 
colleagues.  He  was  an  excellent  institutional 
head,  always  willing  to  listen  sympathetically  to 
peopie's  ideas  or  problems  and  to  offer  sensible 
and  helpful  advice.  He  had  many  outside  inter- 
ests^— travel,  cooking,  wine-making — and  he  and 
his  wife  were  exceptional  and  popular  hosts.  A 
little  above  average  height,  he  was  of  solid  build 
and  tended  to  put  on  weight  latterly.  His  brown 
hair  fell  over  his  forehead;  in  later  years  it 
silvered  and  thinned  and,  with  his  rather  aquiline 
nose,  this  gave  him  a  distinguished,  almost  patri- 
cian appearance.  His  eyes  were  strikingly  direct 
and  penetrating.  In  1947  he  married  Megan 
Patricia,  daughter  of  Thomas  Jones,  doctor  of 
medicine,  of  South  Africa.  She  had  been  a  fellow 
medical  student  of  his  at  Cape  Town  and  became 
governor  of  Holloway  prison  in  1973,  having 
previously  served  as  its  medical  officer.  The 
Bulls  had  three  sons  and  a  daughter,  whose 
occupations — doctor,  accountant,  biologist,  and 


musician — reflected  the  wide  interests  of  their 
parents.  Bull  died  suddenly  14  November  1987 
after  surgery,  at  the  National  Heart  Hospital, 
London. 

[The  Times,  18  November  1987;  Independent,  4  Decem- 
ber 1987;  Lancet,  vol.  ii,  5  December  1987;  MRC  News, 
March  1988;  Munk's  Roll,  vol.  viii,  1989;  personal 
knowledge.]  Raymond  Hoffenberg 

BURN,  Duncan  Lyall  (1902-1988),  economist, 
was  born  10  August  1902  in  Holloway,  London, 
the  younger  child  and  younger  son  of  Archibald 
William  Burn,  engineer,  and  his  wife,  Margaret 
Anne  Mead,  who,  prior  to  her  marriage,  worked 
as  a  nanny.  He  was  taught  history  at  Holloway 
County  School  by  (Sir)  Arthur  *Bry  ant  and  won 
a  scholarship  to  Christ's  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  took  a  first  class  (division  II)  in  both 
parts  of  the  history  tripos  (1923  and  1924).  On 
graduation  he  won  a  Wrenbury  scholarship, 
which  enabled  him  to  spend  a  year  (1924)  as  a 
bachelor  research  scholar  at  Christ's.  After  two 
years  at  Liverpool  as  a  university  lecturer  in 
economic  history  (1925-6)  he  returned  to  Cam- 
bridge in  1927  in  the  same  capacity.  There  he 
remained  until  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  in 
1939,  living  out  of  Cambridge  and  with  no 
college  attachment.  During  that  rime  he  com- 
pleted his  authoritative  study  of  the  British  steel 
industry,  The  Economic  History  of  Steelmakmg 
1867-1939  (1940).  He  was  also  a  kindly  and 
rigorous  supervisor,  some  of  whose  students 
maintained  a  lifelong  friendship  with  him. 

A  self-taught  economist,  he  never  ceased  to  be 
basically  an  academic,  pursuing  research  in 
industrial  economics  throughout  his  life.  He  was 
not  much  interested  in  macroeconomics,  dis- 
missing demand  management  after  the  war  as 
'penny-in-the-slot-economics'. 

Throughout  the  war  he  served  with  (Sir) 
Robert  Shone  in  the  iron  and  steel  control  of  the 
Ministry  of  Supply,  taking  part  in  the  later  stages 
in  government  planning  for  the  postwar  steel 
industry.  In  1946  he  did  not  return  to  Cambridge 
but  joined  The  Times  as  leader-writer  and  indus- 
trial correspondent,  continuing  in  that  capacity 
for  the  next  sixteen  years  and  displaying  an 
impressive  knowledge  of  industry  in  Britain  and 
abroad.  He  won  a  high  reputation  in  the  main 
industrial  countries  and  maintained  close  and 
frequent  contact  with  Jean  Monnet,  the  French 
economist  and  politician.  He  was  a  natural  choice 
to  edit  a  two-volume  study  of  British  industry 
(The  Structure  of  British  Industry,  1958),  and 
contributed  to  it  chapters  on  oil  and  steel,  as  well 
as  an  analytical  survey.  He  continued  to  write  on 
the  steel  industry,  producing  in  196 1  a  sequel  to 
his  earlier  book,  The  Steel  Industry  1939-59. 
When  re-nationalization  was  under  debate  he 
argued  (in  The  Future  of  Steel,  1965),  that  the 
proposal    misconceived    the    problems    of   the 


53 


Burn 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


industry  and  misjudged  the  likely  effects.  'More 
scope,'  he  maintained,  'must  be  given  to  rebels  in 
management'  who  backed  far-sighted  but  unfash- 
ionable or  unpopular  projects. 

In  1962  Burn  left  The  Times  and  adopted  a 
third  career  as  an  industrial  consultant,  acting  for 
three  years  as  director  of  the  economic  develop- 
ment office  set  up  by  four  leading  manufacturers 
of  heavy  electric  generators.  This  increased  his 
interest  in  nuclear  energy,  on  which  he  wrote 
extensively  over  the  next  fifteen  years,  beginning 
with  a  lengthy  study  in  1965,  after  a  visit  to 
America,  of  'The  Significance  of  Oyster  Creek', 
the  first  large  boiling  water  reactor  to  be  ordered. 
He  also  acted  as  consultant  to  firms  in  the  aircraft 
and  chemical  industries,  producing  in  1971  a 
study  of  the  chemical  industry,  Chemicals  under 
Free  Trade.  He  served  on  a  number  of  official  and 
academic  committees  such  as  the  economic  com- 
mittee of  the  Department  of  Scientific  and 
Industrial  Research  (1963-5)  and  had  two  fur- 
ther spells  of  academic  life  as  visiting  professor  at 
the  universities  of  Manchester  (1967-9)  and 
Bombay  (1 971).  At  his  death  he  had  been  work- 
ing for  a  number  of  years  on  a  book  on  'The 
Public  Interest'. 

In  1967  Burn  developed  his  criticisms  of 
British  plans  for  a  programme  of  gas-cooled 
reactors  (AGRs)  in  The  Political  Economy  of 
Nuclear  Energy,  maintaining  that  the  AGR  was 
well  behind  light  water  reactors  in  performance 
and  likely  to  fall  further  behind.  By  the  time  he 
published  Nuclear  Power  and  the  Energy  Crisis  in 
1978  it  was  apparent  that,  instead  of  Britain 
leading  the  world  in  nuclear  energy  as  ministers 
claimed  even  in  the  mid-1960s,  no  British 
nuclear  reactors  had  ever  been  built  abroad.  Burn 
continued  to  interest  himself  in  nuclear  energy, 
acting  from  1980  until  his  death  as  specialist 
adviser  to  the  House  of  Commons  select  commit- 
tee on  energy. 

The  distinguishing  feature  of  Burn's  work  was 
his  deep  interest  in  what  made  for  successful 
industrial  and  technological  development.  He 
stressed  the  contribution  made  by  competition  in 
encouraging  a  variety  of  approaches  and  allowing 
scope  for  differences  of  opinion.  His  research  was 
meticulous  and  quantitative,  and  aimed  to  single 
out  the  key  elements  in  competitive  success.  He 
had  many  contacts  in  industry  and,  as  he  was  a 
good  listener  with  a  retentive  memory,  he  came 
to  have  a  rare  knowledge  of  expert  industrial 
opinion  as  well  as  its  divisions  and  weaknesses.  In 
expressing  his  own  views  he  was  never  daunted 
by  the  authority  or  eminence  of  those  from 
whom  he  differed.  He  could  be  scathing  in  his 
criticisms,  but  his  views  were  well  documented 
and  carefully  argued. 

Burn  was  short  in  stature,  clean-shaven,  with 
blue  eyes  and  a  slightly  puckered  face.  He  spoke 
slowly  and  quietly,  but  with  assurance,  and  he 


enjoyed  an  argument.  Normally  serious-minded, 
he  did  not  lack  a  sly  humour  and  was  given  to  an 
occasional  quip  and  twinkle  of  the  eye.  On  30 
December  1930  he  married  Jessie  Mabel  ('Mol- 
lie'),  daughter  of  William  Louis  White,  a  chemist 
who  worked  in  a  retail  pharmacy.  It  was  an 
extremely  happy  marriage  that  lasted  for  nearly 
sixty  years  until  his  death  from  heart  failure  9 
January  1988  in  the  Royal  Free  Hospital,  Lon- 
don. She  was  four  years  his  senior.  They  had  two 
daughters. 

[Personal  knowledge.]  Alec  Cairncross 

BURROW,  Thomas  (1909-1986),  professor  of 
Sanskrit  at  the  University  of  Oxford,  was  born  29 
June  1909  in  Leek,  north  Lancashire,  the  eldest 
in  the  family  of  five  sons  and  one  daughter  of 
Joshua  Burrow,  farmer,  and  his  wife,  Frances 
Eleanor  Carter.  He  was  educated  at  Queen  Eliz- 
abeth's School,  Kirkby  Lonsdale,  and  won  a 
scholarship  to  Christ's  College,  Cambridge.  He 
first  read  classics,  specializing  in  comparative 
philology,  and  obtained  first  classes  in  both  parts 
i  and  ii  of  the  tripos  (1929  and  1930).  He  then 
went  on  to  study  oriental  languages,  in  which  he 
also  got  firsts  in  both  parts  of  the  tripos  (1931 
and  1932).  He  began  research  for  a  year  at  the 
School  of  Oriental  Studies,  London  University, 
and  continued  in  Cambridge,  where  after  two 
more  years  he  was  awarded  the  Ph.D.  He  became 
a  research  fellow  of  Christ's  College  (1935-7). 

His  first  book,  The  Language  of  the  Kharosthi, 
Documents  from  Chinese  Turkestan  (1937),  was 
based  on  his  doctoral  thesis.  The  language  in 
question,  sometimes  known  as  Niya  Prakrit,  was 
an  official  language  in  central  Asia  after  the 
Kushan  dynasty;  the  documents  had  been  dis- 
covered and  brought  to  Europe  by  Sir  (M.)  Aurel 
*Stein.  Burrow  published  his  translation  of  them 
in  1940. 

Burrow  was  assistant  keeper  in  the  department 
of  oriental  printed  books  and  manuscripts  at  the 
British  Museum  from  1937  to  1944.  During  this 
period  he  mainly  devoted  himself  to  studying 
Dravidian  languages.  In  1944  he  was  appointed 
Boden  professor  of  Sanskrit  at  Oxford  University 
and  professorial  fellow  of  Balliol  College,  posi- 
tions which  he  held  until  his  retirement  in  1976. 
Until  1965  he  was  the  university's  sole  teacher  in 
classical  Indology.  Besides  Sanskrit  he  had  to 
teach  Pali  and  Prakrit.  His  practice  was  to  read  a 
set  Sanskrit  text  with  a  BA  student  (or  students, 
on  the  rare  occasions  when  there  was  more  than 
one  in  a  year)  for  three  hours  a  week;  those  texts 
not  covered  in  class  the  students  read  unaided  in 
the  vacations.  He  gave  some  extra  classes  in  Pali 
or  Prakrit  and  in  Sanskrit  composition,  but  he 
may  never  have  set  an  essay. 

Of  Burrow's  many  publications  on  Sanskrit, 


54 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Butler 


the  best  known  are  The  Sanskrit  Language  (1955, 
revised  edn.  1973)  and  The  Problem  of  Shwa  in 
Sanskrit  (1979).  His  views  on  the  development  of 
the  Sanskrit  vowel  system  were  at  odds  with 
those  of  most  Indo-Europeanists,  but  otherwise 
his  exposition  of  Sanskrit  was  orthodox  in  the 
mainstream  of  comparative  philology-.  His  early 
interest  in  Prakrit  did  not  develop  further. 

Burrow  was  happiest  as  a  Dravidologist  and 
did  his  most  important  work  in  Dravidian  lin- 
guistics. In  1949  he  began  to  collaborate  with 
Professor  Murray  B.  Emeneau  of  Berkeley. 
Together  they  published  A  Dravidian  Etymologi- 
cal Dictionary  (1961)  and  Dravidian  Borrowings 
from  Indo-Aryan  (1962).  After  retirement  Bur- 
row gave  most  of  his  energy  to  producing  the 
second  edition  of  the  Dictionary  (1984);  it  was,  as 
he  intended,  his  last  book. 

This  work  on  comparative  Dravidian  linguis- 
tics was  complemented  by  Burrow's  research  on 
hitherto  unrecorded  Dravidian  languages  which 
survive  in  small  linguistic  communities  in  central 
India.  To  record  them,  he  undertook  field  trips 
with  S.  Bhattacharya  of  the  Anthropological 
Survey  of  India;  together  they  published  The 
Parji  Language  ( 1953),  A  Comparative  Vocabulary 
of  the  Gondi  Dialects  (i960),  and  The  Pengo 
Language  (1970).  Further  fruits  of  Burrow's 
research  in  this  field  are  gathered  in  Collected 
Papers  in  Dravidian  Linguistics  (1968). 

Burrow  was  widely  respected  as  a  single- 
minded  scholar  of  great  learning.  A  Sanskrit 
panegyric  was  presented  to  him  by  the  Sanskrit 
College,  Calcutta.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1970.  In  1974  he  became  a 
fellow  of  the  School  of  Oriental  and  African 
Studies  of  London  University  and  in  1979  a 
number  of  the  Bulletin  of  the  School  of  Oriental 
and  African  Studies  (vol.  xlii,  no.  2)  was  devoted 
to  articles  in  honour  of  his  seventieth  birthday. 

In  build  Burrow  was  rather  over  middle  size 
and  his  appearance,  at  least  in  later  life,  was 
somewhat  lumbering,  but  he  moved  quietly.  His 
habitual  expression  was  mild,  even  vague.  He 
had  very  short  sight  and  blinked  frequently.  To 
his  colleagues  and  students  he  was  amiable  but 
socially  passive  and  taciturn.  There  were  reports 
that  of  an  evening  he  would  visit  his  local  pub  in 
Kidlington,  the  village  outside  Oxford  where  he 
lived,  and  entertain  companions  with  lively  con- 
versation; but  in  Oxford  he  was  reticent  about  his 
private  life  to  the  point  of  secrecy.  In  1941  he 
married  Inez  Mary,  daughter  of  Herbert  John 
Haley;  but  when  she  died  at  their  home  in  1976 
it  came  as  a  surprise  to  his  Oxford  acquaintances, 
who  believed  him  to  be  living  alone.  He  never 
brought  his  wife  into  college,  and  explained  after 
her  death  that  her  health  was  poor.  It  may  be  that 
she  suffered  from  depression  after  their  only 
child  died  in  earlv  infancv. 


Burrow  died  of  a  heart  attack  in  Oxford  8  June 
1986. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Richard  Gombrich 

BUTLER,     Basil     Edward     ('Christopher') 

(1902- 1 986),  monk  and  theologian,  was  born  in 
Reading  7  May  1902,  the  second  of  four  sons  and 
third  of  five  children  of  William  Edward  Butler, 
wine  merchant,  and  his  wife,  Bertha  Alice  Bow- 
man, a  schoolteacher  originally  from  Suffolk.  His 
intellectual  gifts  revealed  themselves  early  and  he 
proceeded  from  Reading  School  to  St  John's 
College,  Oxford,  on  a  scholarship.  At  Oxford  he 
received  the  Craven  scholarship  and  Gaisford 
Greek  prose  prize  and  was  proxime  accessit  for  the 
Hertford  scholarship,  as  well  as  taking  first 
classes  in  classical  honour  moderations  (1922), 
literae  humaniores  (1924),  and  theology  (1925). 

In  1925  he  began  his  life  as  a  clerical  don  with 
a  tutorship  at  Keble  College,  and  the  following 
year  was  ordained  an  Anglican  deacon.  His  High 
Church  upbringing  came  to  maturity  at  uni- 
versity, but  he  was  becoming  increasingly  con- 
vinced by  Catholicism.  He  taught  classics  at 
Brighton  College  in  1927-8  and  (after  his  recep- 
tion into  the  Roman  communion  in  1928)  at 
Downside  School,  Somerset,  in  1928-9.  Down- 
side was  to  be  his  home  until  1966.  He  entered 
the  Benedictine  community  there  in  1929, 
assuming  the  religious  name  Christopher,  and 
was  ordained  priest  in  1933.  He  was  head  master 
of  Downside  from  Jan uary  1940  until  his  election 
as  seventh  abbot  of  Downside  on  12  September 
1946.  He  was  re-elected  in  1954  and  1962, 
remaining  abbot  until  1966,  and  he  presided  over 
the  extensive  building  programme  which  fol- 
lowed the  great  fire  at  Downside  in  1955.  In 
August  1 96 1  he  was  elected  president  of  the 
English  Benedictine  congregation,  a  post  he  held 
until  1966. 

It  was  in  this  capacity  that  he  attended  all  four 
sessions  of  the  second  Vatican  Council  from  1962 
to  1965,  during  which  he  emerged  as  perhaps  the 
leading  English-speaking  participant.  His  flu- 
ency in  Latin,  and  his  wide  theological  learning, 
neither  shared  by  many  of  the  anglophones  at  the 
Council,  gave  him  great  authority.  He  was  also 
assisted  by  his  independence  from  local  episcopal 
concerns.  He  was  present  as  a  major  religious 
superior,  not  as  a  bishop.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  commission  for  doctrine  and  contributed  to 
the  chapter  on  the  Virgin  Mary,  which  was 
included  (principally,  it  is  said,  at  his  instigation) 
in  the  decree  on  the  church.  Lumen  Gentium, 
rather  than  appearing  as  a  separate  document.  He 
also  interested  himself  in  the  discussions  on  war 
and  peace,  with  particular  reference  to  nuclear 
deterrence.  If  Cardinal  J.  H.  *N'ewTnan  was  'the 
invisible  father'  of  the  second  Vatican  Council, 


55 


Butler 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


then  no  one  was  better  suited  to  be  his  spokes- 
man than  Christopher  Butler.  His  Sarum  lec- 
tures at  Oxford  in  1966  (published  in  1967) 
presented  his  thoughts  on  The  Theology  of  Vati- 
can II  and  he  was  made  an  honorary  fellow  of  St 
John's,  the  first  Catholic  priest  to  be  so  honoured 
by  an  Oxford  college  since  Newman. 

The  Vatican  Council  made  him  a  public  figure 
and  in  1966  he  left  Downside  to  go  to  West- 
minster as  auxiliary  bishop  to  Cardinal  J.  C. 
*Heenan.  He  was  consecrated  with  the  title  of 
bishop  of  Nova  Barbara  in  Westminster  Cathe- 
dral on  21  December  1966.  As  auxiliary  he 
became  the  first  area  bishop  of  Hertfordshire,  last 
resident  president  of  St  Edmund's  College, 
Ware,  and  vicar  capitular  of  the  archdiocese  in 
the  interregnum  between  Cardinals  Heenan  and 
Basil  Hume.  He  became  an  elder  statesman 
among  the  English  hierarchy  and  an  official 
Roman  Catholic  representative  on  many  ecu- 
menical bodies,  including  the  Anglican/Roman 
Catholic  International  Commission.  He  was 
co-chairman  of  'English  ARC  from  1970  to 
1 98 1,  and  was  twice  honoured  with  the  cross  of 
St  Augustine  by  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
In  February  1980  he  was  appointed  an  assistant 
to  the  pontifical  throne  by  Pope  John  Paul  II. 

The  breadth  of  his  activities  and  his  popularity 
as  a  radio  personality,  especially  on  the  Any 
Questions?  programme  in  the  1960s,  conceal  from 
view  the  fact  that  his  was  chiefly  an  intellectual 
genius.  In  his  books — which  ranged  in  subject 
from  scripture  (he  consistently  supported  the 
priority  of  St  Matthew's  gospel,  as  he  demon- 
strated in  The  Originality  of  St  Matthew,  195 1)  to 
spirituality  via  theology,  ecumenism,  and  auto- 
biography— and  in  the  many  hundreds  of 
reviews  and  articles  which  he  wrote,  he  revealed 
a  wide  sympathy.  He  owed  most  to  the  scriptures 
and  the  fathers  but  had  a  great  attachment  to  the 
spiritual  teaching  of  the  French  Jesuit  master  of 
contemplative  prayer,  Jean-Pierre  de  Caussade 
( 1 675-1 751),  and  also,  in  later  years,  to  the 
Canadian  Jesuit,  Bernard  Lonergan  (1904-1985). 
Like  the  abbot  in  the  rule  of  St  Benedict,  he 
made  full  use  of  things  ''nova  et  vetera"1  and  always 
retained  much  of  that  balance  of  the  middle  way, 
which  distinguishes  classical  Anglicanism  and  to 
some  extent  English  Catholicism.  From  1972  he 
was  a  member  of  the  editorial  board  of  the  New 
English  Bible. 

He  was  a  man  of  deep  spirituality,  who  put 
prayer  at  the  centre  of  a  timetable  which  always 
remained  fixed  and  unvaried  throughout  his 
adult  life.  He  loved,  as  a  Benedictine,  the  stabil- 
ity of  the  regular  life,  and  all  he  wrote  and  said 
reflected  his  deep  life  of  prayer.  As  a  junior  monk 
he  had  been  a  disciple  of  Dom  David  *Knowles 
and  had  sought  a  deeper  asceticism.  He  was  of 
slightly  more  than  average  height  and  as  a  young 
man  he  had  an  ascetic  appearance.  Advancing 


years  made  him  more  corpulent.  His  hair  was 
always  close-cropped,  which  gave  great  promi- 
nence to  his  head,  very  suitable  given  his  intellec- 
tual gifts.  He  lived  a  simple  life,  although  he 
enjoyed  smoking  a  pipe,  and  was  an  expert  chess 
player  as  well  as  a  devotee  of  detective  novels.  He 
was  a  reserved  man  but  became  easier  and  more 
relaxed  as  a  bishop.  He  remained  a  true  Bene- 
dictine, one  whose  central  vocation  is  seeking 
God.  He  died  20  September  1986,  at  St  John  and 
St  Elizabeth's  Hospital,  St  John's  Wood,  Lon- 
don. 

[B.  E.  ('C.')  Butler,  A  Time  to  Speak  (autobiography), 
1972;  Anne  T.  Floyd,  B.  C.  Butler's  Developing  Under- 
standing of  Church:  an  Intellectual  Biography,  1981; 
Dom  Daniel  Rees  (writing  as  'Ceredig'),  Bishop  Chris- 
topher Butler,  Seventh  Abbot  of  Downside  and  Bishop  of 
Nova  Barbara,  Downside,  1986;  Valentine  Rice,  Dom 
Christopher  Butler,  the  Abbot  of  Downside,  Notre  Dame, 
Indiana,  1965;  Tablet,  27  September  1986;  The  Times, 
22  September  1986;  personal  knowledge.] 

AlDAN  BELLENGER 


BUTLER,  Christopher  (1902- 1986),  monk 
and  theologian.  [See  Butler,  Basil  Edward 
('Christopher').] 

BYAM  SHAW,  Glencairn  Alexander  ('Glen') 
(1904- 1 986),  actor  and  director  of  theatre  and 
opera,  was  born  13  December  1904  in  Addison 
Road,  London,  the  fourth  in  the  family  of  four 
sons  and  one  daughter  of  John  Byam  Lister 
*Shaw,  painter,  illustrator,  and  founder  of  the 
Byam  Shaw  School  of  Art,  and  his  wife,  Evelyn 
Caroline  Pyke-Nott,  miniaturist.  He  went  to 
Westminster  School  as  a  day-boy  during  World 
War  I  and  his  contemporaries  included  his  elder 
brother,  James,  who  became  a  distinguished  art 
historian,  and  (Sir)  John  Gielgud,  who  was  to  be 
a  lifelong  friend  and  colleague. 

While  James  won  a  scholarship  to  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  and  Gielgud  to  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy of  Dramatic  Art,  Glen  next  surfaced  on  1 
August  1923  as  an  apparently  untrained  pro- 
fessional actor  in  At  Mrs  Beam's  at  the  Pavilion 
theatre,  Torquay.  In  the  era  of  the  matinee  idol 
Byam  Shaw's  dazzling  and  lifelong  good  looks, 
together  with  the  reported  encouragement  of  his 
cousin  May  Ward,  a  close  friend  of  (Dame)  Ellen 
*Terry,  may  have  been  enough  to  make  him  take 
the  plunge  into  acting.  His  first  London  appear- 
ance in  1925  was  as  Yasha  in  The  Cherry  Orchard 
(John  Gielgud  was  Trofimov)  and  in  the  next 
four  years  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  appear  in 
three  more  Chekhov  plays. 

In  1929  he  married  the  actress  (Madeleine) 
Angela  (Clinton)  Baddeley,  the  elder  sister  of 
Hermione  *Baddeley.  Their  father,  William 
Herman  Clinton-Baddeley,  was  an  unsuccessful 
composer.    The   Byam    Shaw   marriage   was   a 


56 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Byam  Shaw 


supremely  happy  one,  both  domestically  and 
professionally,  until  Angela's  death  in  1976. 
They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 

After  a  tour  together  to  South  Africa  in  1931 
Byam  Shaw  appeared  memorably  at  the  Lyceum 
in  1932  in  Max  Reinhardt's  mime  play  The 
Miracle,  which  starred  Lady  Diana  *Cooper  as 
the  Madonna.  In  1933  the  long  and  mutually 
rewarding  association  with  John  Gielgud  began 
when  Byam  Shaw  took  over  the  Gielgud  part  in 
the  long  running  Richard  of  Bordeaux  by  Gordon 
Daviot  (i.e.  Elizabeth  *Mackintosh).  In  1934  he 
was  Darnley  in  Daviot's  Queen  of  Scots  and  later 
Laertes  in  Gielgud's  longest  running  Hamlet, 
each  time  directed  by  Gielgud.  In  1935  he  played 
Benvolio  in  the  famous  Romeo  and  Juliet  with 
Laurence  (later  Baron)  *01ivier,  (Dame)  Edith 
*Evans,  and  (Dame)  Peggy  Ashcroft.  During  the 
play's  run  there  was  the  beginning  of  a  sea 
change  in  Byam  Shaw's  career.  He  assisted 
Gielgud  in  directing  Richard  II  for  the  Oxford 
University  Dramatic  Society — Vivien  *Leigh 
was  the  Queen  and  Michael  Denison  played 
three  small  parts — and  he  was  as  stimulating, 
firm,  and  courteous  to  his  undergraduate  cast  as 
he  was  always  to  be  to  professional  companies. 
He  had  now  found  his  true  metier,  he  had  never 
enjoyed  acting.  Until  the  war,  however,  he 
continued  to  act,  mostly  in  supporting  parts 
in  prestigious  Gielgud  productions,  but  also, 
importantly  for  the  future,  with  (Sir)  Michael 
•Redgrave,  George  *Devine,  and  Peggy  Ashcroft 
in  Michel-St  Denis's  short  season  at  the  Phoenix. 
But  he  was  now  directing  too,  and  in  1938  was 
engaged  to  direct  Gielgud  in  Dodie  Smith's  Dear 
Octopus. 

He  had  joined  the  Emergency  Reserve  of 
Officers  before  the  war  and  with  his  brother 
James  was  commissioned  into  the  Royal  Scots  in 
1940.  They  both  served  in  Burma  from  1942  and 
were  both  wounded.  Byam  Shaw  ended  his 
service  in  1045  as  a  major  making  training  films 
in  India.  By  1946  he  had  joined  St  Denis  and 
Devine  in  running  the  Old  Vic  Centre,  which 
combined  a  school  of  acting,  an  experimental 
project,  and  the  Young  Vic  Company.  Byam 
Shaw  also  found  time  to  direct  The  li'inslow  Boy 
by  (Sir)  Terence  *Rattigan  (with  Angela  in  a  key 
role) — the  start  of  another  rewarding  associa- 
tion— and  also  three  Shakespeare  plays  at  the 
Vic.  Despite  much  success  in  all  fields  the  three 
partners  fell  foul  of  the  Vic  governors  and  of  the 


theatre's  top-heavy  and  largely  hostile  admini- 
stration and  resigned  in  1951. 

Fortunately  for  Byam  Shaw  and  the  British 
theatre  there  followed  his  great  work  at  Strat- 
ford, first  as  co-director  with  (Sir)  Anthony 
*Quayle  (1952-6)  and  then  on  his  own,  until 
handing  over  to  his  chosen  successor  (Sir)  Peter 
Hall  in  1959.  Byam  Shaw  directed  fourteen  plays 
at  Stratford,  notably  .Antony  and  Cleopatra  (Red- 
grave and  Ashcroft),  Macbeth  (Olivier  and 
Leigh),  As  You  Like  It  (Ashcroft),  Othello  (Harry- 
Andrews  and  Emlyn  *\Villiams),  and  King  Lear 
(Charles  *Laughton  and  Albert  Finney);  and 
chose  companies  which  were  a  magnet  to  direc- 
tors of  the  calibre  of  Hall,  Peter  Brook,  and 
Gielgud.  He  helped  transform  Stratford  from  a 
worthy  tourist  trap  into  the  country's  theatrical 
capital.  Ironically  the  company  became  'Royal' 
only  after  he  left. 

As  a  freelance  director  in  the  1960s  he  was 
much  in  demand.  Then  suddenly,  though  self- 
confessedly  tone  deaf,  he  turned  to  opera; 
and,  unencumbered  by  musical  considerations, 
brought  his  special  gift  for  clarifying  texts  to  the 
service  of  outrageous  operatic  story  -lines,  incul- 
cating in  principals  and  chorus  his  passion  for 
theatrical  truth.  From  The  Rake's  Progress  at 
Sadler's  Wells  (1962)  to  Wagner's  Ring  at  the 
Coliseum  (1973)  he  directed  in  all  fifteen  operas, 
sweeping  the  stage  before  first  nights  'to  calm  his 
nerves'.  The  decoration  of  the  Coliseum's  safety 
curtain  was  taken  from  a  painting  by  his  father. 

Byam  Shaw  was  slim,  neatly  and  unthea- 
trically  dressed,  with  shoes  always  highly  pol- 
ished; his  white  hair,  ruddy  complexion,  and 
searching  brown  eyes  were  those  of  the  arche- 
typal senior  officer.  Even  his  quiet  voice  and 
beautiful  manners  cloaked  a  steely  authority .  He 
did  not  aspire  to  be  a  virtuoso  director,  manip- 
ulating the  playwright's  intentions  to  conform  to 
a  subjective  vision.  He  was  content  to  be  an 
interpreter,  but  he  brought  to  that  character- 
istically modest  role  the  highest  level  of  research, 
intuition,  and  love  of  the  theatre  and  its  work- 
ers. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1954  and  was  given 
an  honorary  D.Litt.  by  Birmingham  University 
in  1959.  He  died  in  a  nursing  home  in  Goring  on 
Thames  29  April  1986,  not  far  from  his  house  at 
Wargrave. 

[Michael  Billington,  Peggy  .Ashcroft,  1988;  Michael 
Denison,  Double  Act,  1085;  private  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Michael  Denison 


57 


c 


CACCIA,  Harold  Anthony,  Baron  Caccia 
(1905- 1 990),  diplomat,  was  born  21  December 
1905  in  Pachmarhi,  India,  the  only  child  of 
Anthony  Mario  Felix  Caccia,  of  the  Indian 
Forest  Service,  and  his  wife  Fanny  Theodora, 
daughter  of  Azim  Salvador  Birch,  of  Erewhon 
and  Oruamatua,  New  Zealand.  Caccia's  great- 
grandfather had  fled  to  England  from  Lombardy 
as  a  political  refugee  in  1826.  Caccia  went  to 
Eton,  where  he  was  a  popular  all-rounder,  and 
then  to  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  where  he  gained 
a  rugby  blue  and  second-class  honours  in  philo- 
sophy, politics,  and  economics  (1927).  In  1928 
he  won  a  Laming  travelling  fellowship  from 
Queen's  College,  Oxford. 

He  entered  the  Foreign  Office  in  1929  and  was 
appointed  third  secretary  at  Peking  in  1932.  He 
returned  to  London  in  1935  as  a  second  secretary 
and,  from  1936,  as  assistant  private  secretary  to 
the  secretary  of  state  until,  in  1939,  he  was 
transferred  to  Athens.  Driven  from  Athens  in 
1941,  the  Caccias  with  the  embassy  wives  and 
children  and  some  commandos,  including  Oliver 
Barstow,  his  wife's  brother,  had  a  perilous  jour- 
ney. Their  ship  was  bombed  en  route  to  Crete  and 
Barstow  was  killed.  They  reached  Crete  in 
another  small  craft  and  a  destroyer  took  them  to 
Cairo. 

Caccia  was  appointed  in  1943  to  the  staff  of  the 
resident  minister  in  north  Africa,  Harold  *Mac- 
millan  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Stockton),  at 
Algiers.  He  soon  moved  to  Italy  as  vice-president 
of  the  Allied  Control  Commission  and  political 
adviser  to  General  Harold  *  Alexander  (later  first 
Earl  Alexander  of  Tunis).  In  1944  he  became  the 
political  adviser  to  the  general  officer  command- 
ing British  land  forces  in  Greece,  and  was  in  the 
embassy  during  the  communist  uprising  in 
Athens  in  December  1944.  Caccia  was  in  his 
element  in  a  military  environment  and  got  on 
well  with  the  Allied  commanders.  In  1945  he 
became  minister  at  the  Athens  embassy,  before 
returning  to  the  Foreign  Office  as  chief  clerk  in 
1949.  In  this  post  he  was  instrumental  in  putting 
into  effect  the  administrative  reforms  which 
Anthony  *Eden  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Avon)  had 
announced  in  1943. 

In  1950  he  went  to  Austria,  then  still  under 
four-power  administration,  first  as  minister,  then 
as   British   high   commissioner,   and   finally   as 


ambassador  from  1951  to  1954.  He  was  again  in 
his  element  in  Austria,  persona  grata  to  the  Allied 
military  commanders  and  popular  with  the  Aus- 
trian authorities.  For  relaxation  he  pursued 
chamois  in  the  mountains.  In  1956  he  became 
British  ambassador  in  Washington.  After  the 
Suez  debacle,  communications  between  the  two 
governments  were  virtually  suspended.  In  spite 
of  his  earlier  relationship  with  the  US  president, 
Caccia  received  a  frosty  reception.  However, 
after  Harold  Macmillan  became  prime  minister 
normal  relations  were  rapidly  restored,  and  there 
were  no  further  crises  during  his  mission.  A 
major  success  was  the  resumption  of  full  co-op- 
eration on  atomic  energy  in  1958,  and  the  rela- 
tionship was  further  enhanced  by  an  official  visit 
by  the  queen.  Caccia  soon  got  back  on  excellent 
terms  with  the  administration  and  became  a 
respected  and  popular  figure  in  the  United 
States. 

In  1962  he  became  permanent  under-secretary 
of  state  and  in  1964  head  of  the  Diplomatic 
Service  until  his  retirement  in  1965.  He  was 
appointed  CMG  (1945),  KCMG  (1950),  GCMG 
(1959),  and  GCVO  (1961).  In  1965  he  was 
created  a  life  peer  as  Baron  Caccia.  He  took  the 
arms  of  his  Florentine  ancestors. 

From  1965  to  1977  he  was  provost  of  Eton  and 
also  accepted  many  outside  appointments  in 
banking,  finance,  industry,  and  insurance.  He 
was  director  of  the  National  Westminster  Bank, 
chairman  of  the  Orion  Bank,  a  director  of  the 
Foreign  and  Colonial  Investment  and  European 
trusts,  director  of  the  Prudential,  chairman  of 
Standard  Telephones  and  Cables  and  of  ITT 
(UK)  Ltd.,  and  a  member  of  the  advisory  council 
of  Foseco  Minsep  PLC.  He  was  chairman  of  the 
Gabbitas  Thring  Educational  Trust,  a  member 
of  the  advisory  committee  on  public  records,  and 
chairman  of  the  Marylebone  Cricket  Club.  In 
1969  he  became  first  chancellor  and  then  lord 
prior  of  the  Order  of  St  John  of  Jerusalem.  He 
was  a  regular  attender  at  the  House  of  Lords, 
where  he  sat  on  the  cross  benches,  speaking 
mainly  on  foreign  affairs.  He  was  chairman  of  the 
Anglo-Austrian  Society  and  became  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  in  1963,  and  of 
Queen's  College  in  1974. 

In  appearance  he  was  short,  stocky,  and  bald 
with  a  fair  complexion.  He  was  forthright  in 


58 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Carreras 


speech  and  energetic  in  action  and  he  retained 
throughout  his  life  a  cheerful  and  light-hearted, 
almost  boyish,  manner,  which  concealed  a  seri- 
ous and  thoughtful  disposition.  He  was  a  good 
administrator  and  universally  popular  in  all  that 
he  undertook.  He  ended  as  he  had  begun,  as  a 
great  all-rounder. 

In  1932  he  married  Anne  Catherine  ('Nancy'), 
daughter  of  Sir  George  Lewis  *Barstow,  civil 
servant.  They  had  two  daughters  and  one  son. 
Caccia  was  happy  in  his  family  life  and  he  and  his 
wife  were  a  devoted  couple.  But  his  latter  years 
were  saddened  by  the  untimely  death  of  his  son 
David  in  1983.  Caccia  died  of  cancer  at  his  home 
in  Builth  Wells,  Powys,  31  October  1990. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Sherfield 

CARADON,  Baron  (1907-1990),  colonial 
administrator  and  diplomat.  [See  Foot,  Hugh 
Mackintosh.] 

CARRERAS,  Sir  James  Enrique  (1909-1990), 
film  executive,  was  born  30  January  1009  at 
9  Chiswick  Lane,  Chiswick,  as  Jaime  Enrique 
Carreras,  the  only  child  of  Enrique  Carreras, 
commission  merchant,  and  his  wife,  Dolores 
Montousse.  He  was  educated  privately.  In  1913 
his  father,  who  came  from  the  Carreras  tobacco 
family  of  Spain,  became  a  film  exhibitor  and  built 
the  first  of  a  small  chain  of  cinemas  in  London, 
the  Blue  Halls.  James  joined  the  business  as  a 
youth  and  worked  his  way  up  from  usher  to 
assistant  manager.  In  1935  his  father  and  William 
Hinds,  known  professionally  as  Will  Hammer, 
founded  Exclusive  Films.  James  worked  for  this 
firm  also.  It  distributed  imported  second  features 
and  a  few  films  made  by  Hammer  himself  for  a 
small  company.  Hammer  Productions,  which  he 
had  registered  in  1934.  This  was  moribund  by 
1937.  During  the  war  James  rose  from  private  to 
lieutenant-colonel  in  the  Honourable  Artillery 
Company.  In  his  absence  his  own  son  Michael 
joined  the  company  at  sixteen  and,  like  his  father, 
began  at  the  bottom.  James  rejoined  the  firm 
after  the  war. 

Will  Hammer  now  wished  to  return  to  pro- 
duction and  revive  the  name  of  Hammer.  He  w  as 
associated  with  a  few  films  made  at  Marylebone 
Studios  in  1947.  In  1948  he  joined  with  Enrique 
and  James  Carreras  to  form  a  new  company, 
Hammer  Film  Productions,  as  the  production 
arm  of  Exclusive  Films.  Production  proper 
began  in  1948  at  a  mansion  studio  at  Bray,  near 
Windsor.  The  company  was  registered  in  Feb- 
ruary 1949  and  James  Carreras,  who  was  to 
dominate  the  company,  became  chairman.  They 
made  routine  second  features,  a  number  of  them 
based  on  BBC  radio  serials,  using  the  large  house 
and  nearby  locations  as  inexpensive  settings. 
Output  was  large,  and  films  were  quickly  and 


cheaply  made  by  a  small  permanent  team.  Much 
of  the  writing  and  direction  was  by  James's  son 
Michael  and  Will  Hammer's  son  Anthony 
Hinds,  and  there  was  an  informal  and  family 
atmosphere  in  the  unit. 

In  1955  they  made  a  science  fiction  thriller, 
The  Quatermass  Experiment,  in  which  the  survi- 
vor of  a  space  journey  is  gradually  consumed  by 
a  mysterious  fungus.  This  had  been  a  popular 
BBC  television  serial,  and  its  enormous  success 
as  a  film  encouraged  Carreras  to  introduce  a 
second  seeping  mass  of  something  horrible  in 
X  the  Unknown  the  next  year.  A  third  successful 
film,  shown  in  1957,  was  Quatermass  II,  which 
portrayed  people  taken  over  by  menacing  space 
organisms.  The  Gothic  horror  tale,  a  strain  in 
English  literature,  was  out  of  fashion  at  the  time, 
but  Carreras  now  took  a  well-considered  gamble, 
and  with  The  Curse  of  Frankenstein  later  that  year 
found  his  niche.  Christopher  Lee  and  Peter 
Cushing  first  appeared  as  Hammer's  favourite 
bogeymen  in  this  lurid  and  profitable  colour 
remake  of  the  1931  film,  Frankenstein. 

From  now  on  an  important  part  of  Hammer 
Films'  output  featured  vampires,  werewolves, 
resurrected  mummies,  blood,  and  gore,  and  there 
were  repeated  appearances  of  Frankenstein  and 
Dracula,  producing  delicious  dread  in  the  audi- 
ence. Most  other  film-makers  and  the  critics 
scorned  these  films,  made  in  six  to  eight  weeks 
and  promoted  w  ith  lurid  posters  and  stunts.  But 
they  had  a  large  and  enthusiastic  public  in  Britain 
and  abroad,  especially  in  America,  where  they 
had  a  huge  cult  following  among  teenagers. 
Ironically,  it  was  Carreras  who  achieved  the 
assured  distribution  in  America  which  had  so 
long  eluded  more  serious  British  producers.  His 
was  the  most  consistently  profitable  film  com- 
pany in  Britain,  earning  £1.5  million  in  foreign 
exchange  one  year.  It  received  the  Queen's 
Award  for  Industry  in  1968.  Carreras  took  no 
part  in  the  creative  side  of  film-making. 

However,  times  changed.  The  studio  was  sold 
in  1968,  and  although  production  continued 
elsewhere  the  verve  had  gone.  In  1972  Carreras 
sold  his  holding  to  Michael  and  resigned  as  chief 
executive,  though  he  remained  chairman.  He 
moved  to  the  EMI  group  of  companies,  w  here  he 
acted  as  special  adviser  for  some  years.  With  the 
appearance  in  1973  from  America  of  The  Exor- 
cist, an  exceptionally  frightening  film,  the  writing 
w  as  on  the  wall  for  the  escapist  Hammer  brand  of 
horror.  The  last  Hammer  film  was  made  in  1978 
and  the  company  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
receivers  by  1979.  Carreras  then  had  a  remark- 
able idea:  to  sell  the  'Hammer  House  of  Horror' 
series  to  television  in  the  early  1980s.  This  was 
then  repackaged  as  video  cassettes  in  the  late 
1980s  for  yet  another  set  of  youngsters  going 
through  the  monsters  stage. 


59 


Carreras 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


In  appearance  and  character  Carreras,  a  good- 
looking,  mild-mannered,  soberly  dressed  busi- 
nessman, who  was  a  strong  family  man  and 
devout  Christian,  was  a  surprising  person  to  have 
brought  about  the  phrase  'Hammer  horror'.  But 
the  essential  innocence  of  the  genre,  with  its 
saving  grace  of  absurdity,  was  very  different  from 
the  sadistic  and  violent  films  produced  by  other 
companies  in  later  years. 

Carreras  was  a  prominent  member  of  the 
Variety  Club,  the  show-business  charity,  being 
its  chief  barker  in  1954-5.  He  was  chairman  of 
the  board  of  Variety  Clubs  International  for 
eleven  years  and  president  in  196 1-3.  In  1970  he 
was  knighted  for  his  extensive  charity  work  over 
many  years,  especially  in  the  cause  of  young 
people — he  was  president  of  the  London  Federa- 
tion of  Boys'  Clubs  for  five  years.  He  was 
appointed  MBE  in  1944,  possibly  for  secret 
operations  in  Spain  during  the  war.  He  became 
KCVO  in  1980  and  also  received  honours  from 
Spain  and  Liberia. 

In  1927,  when  he  was  very  young,  he  married 
Vera  St  John  (died  1986).  Their  one  son  Michael 
was  born  in  1927.  Carreras  died  of  a  heart  attack 
9  June  1990  at  home  in  Henley-on-Thames. 

[The  Times,  12  June  1990;  Daily  Telegraph,  20  June 
1990;  Independent,  18  June  1990;  David  Pirie,  A  Heri- 
tage of  Horror,  1973.]  Rachael  Low 

CAVE,  Sir  Richard  Guy  (1920-1986),  indus- 
trialist, was  born  16  March  1920  in  Bickley, 
Kent,  the  youngest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and 
three  daughters  of  William  Thomas  Cave,  Lon- 
don solicitor,  and  his  wife,  Gwendoline  Mary 
Nicholls.  The  already  very  tall  Richard  Cave 
('Dick'  to  his  many  friends  from  an  early  age) 
was  educated  at  Tonbridge  School,  where  he  was 
captain  of  the  rowing  IV  and  of  swimming,  and 
was  in  the  rugby  XV.  In  1938  he  went  to 
Gonville  and  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  to  read 
mechanical  engineering.  His  course  was  inter- 
rupted by  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939. 

From  1940  Cave  served  with  the  44th  battal- 
ion of  the  Royal  Tank  Regiment  in  North  Africa 
(taking  part  in  the  battle  of  El  Alamein),  Sicily, 
and  mainland  Italy.  Landing  in  Normandy  on 
D-Day  plus  three,  he  commanded  A  squadron  of 
the  44th  battalion  with  great  distinction  through- 
out the  campaign  in  north-west  Europe,  being 
awarded  the  MC  (1944).  His  tank  was  among  the 
first  to  cross  the  Rhine.  His  brigade  commander, 
Michael  (later  Baron)  Carver,  described  him  as  'a 
splendid  squadron  commander,  brave,  sensible, 
level-headed,  always  calm  and  resolute  and 
unfailingly  cheerful'. 

After  the  war  Cave  decided  not  to  return  to 
Cambridge  to  complete  his  degree  and  instead 
joined  Smiths  Industries  in  1946.  The  drive, 
intelligence,  insight,  and  all-round  competence 
of  this  big  man — Cave  stood  a  good  six  feet,  five 


inches — were  recognized  from  the  outset.  He 
was  appointed  export  director  of  the  motor 
accessory  division  in  1956  and  managing  director 
of  that  division  in  1963,  joining  the  main  board  at 
the  same  time.  In  1967  he  became  managing 
director  of  the  firm,  in  1968  chief  executive,  and 
in  1973  chairman.  Under  his  steady,  firm,  force- 
ful, and  also  imaginative  direction,  Smiths 
Industries  achieved  remarkable  progress  and  suc- 
cess, and  diversified  considerably. 

In  1976  Cave  left  Smiths  Industries  to  become 
chairman  of  Thorn  Electrical  Industries,  taking 
over  from  its  founder,  Sir  Jules  Thorn.  Cave's 
outstanding  leadership  qualities — humanity, 
humour,  and  warmth,  combined  when  necessary 
with  toughness  and  directness — were  equal  to 
the  challenge.  He  quickly  won  the  loyalty  of  the 
staff,  recognizing  at  the  same  time  that  Thorn 
was  perhaps  unduly  dependent  on  the  home 
market  and  that  too  many  of  its  businesses  were 
in  comparatively  low-level  technologies.  His 
major  achievement  at  Thorn  was  the  merger  with 
EMI  in  1979,  which,  despite  much  criticism  at 
the  time  from  the  newspaper  press  and  the  City, 
secured  the  twin  objectives  of  establishing  a 
truly  international  company  and  strengthening 
Thorn's  technological  base.  Notwithstanding 
major  lung  surgery  in  1980,  Cave  character- 
istically continued  as  an  active  chairman  of 
Thorn  until  late  in  1983. 

Cave  also  played  a  positive  and  valuable  role  in 
many  other  companies.  He  served  as  non-execu- 
tive chairman  of  Vickers  from  1984,  during  a 
period  in  the  company's  history  of  significant 
divestments  and  some  important  acquisitions. 
He  was  also  deputy  chairman  of  British  Rail 
(1983-5),  and  his  directorships  included  those  of 
Thomas  Tilling  (1969-76),  Tate  &  Lyle 
(1976-86),  Equity  &  Law  (1972-9),  and  Thames 
Television  (198 1-4). 

Throughout  his  business  career  Cave  left  a 
distinctive  and  personal  mark  on  wider  industrial 
policy.  He  had  a  long-standing  belief  in  training, 
having  created  a  training  college  for  young 
entrants  to  Smiths  Industries.  He  also  had  a  deep 
interest,  from  the  wider  national  viewpoint,  in 
export  promotion,  as  shown  by  his  membership 
of  the  British  Overseas  Trade  Board  (1977-80), 
and  in  employment  matters,  as  demonstrated  by 
his  chairmanship  of  the  Confederation  of  British 
Industry's  steering  group  on  unemployment 
(1981-3).  His  active  membership,  from  1970 
until  his  death,  of  the  Industrial  Society,  of 
which  he  was  chairman  from  1979  to  1983,  bore 
witness  to  his  lasting  concern  for  better  industrial 
relations.  He  was  knighted  in  1976. 

Cave  was  a  many-sided  man  with  several 
interests.  He  was  a  keen  supporter  of  the  arts,  in 
particular  of  the  Aldeburgh  Festival  close  to  his 
much-loved  home  in  Suffolk,  being  chairman  of 
the  successful  Aldeburgh  appeal.  He  loved  opera 


60 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Giwston 


and  ballet  and,  perhaps  even  more,  sailing,  and 
was  commodore  of  the  Aldeburgh  Yacht  Club 
(1975-6)  and  a  member  of  the  Royal  Yacht 
Squadron. 

In  1957  he  married  Dorothy  Gillian,  daughter 
of  Henry  Kenneth  Fry,  of  Adelaide,  a  general 
physician  who  later  specialized  in  psychiatry  and 
neurology.  They  had  two  sons  and  two  daugh- 
ters. Cave,  a  devoted  family  man,  died  of  cancer 
at  his  home  in  Aldeburgh  5  December  1986  after 
a  long  period  of  illness. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

George  Jellicoe 

CAVXNDISH-BENTINCK,  Victor  Frederick 
William,  ninth  Duke  of  Portland 
( 1 897-1990),  diplomat  and  international  busi- 
nessman. [See  Bentlnoc,  Victor  Frederick 
William  Cavendish-.] 

CAWSTON,  (Edwin)  Richard  (1923-1986), 
documentary  film-maker,  was  born  31  May  1923 
in  Weybridge,  Surrey,  the  elder  child  and  elder 
son  of  Edwin  Cawston,  merchant,  of  Weybridge, 
and  his  wife  Phyllis,  daughter  of  Henry  Charles 
Hawkins.  He  always  wanted  to  make  films;  as  a 
boy  at  Westminster  School  he  and  a  friend  made 
a  documentary  of  the  school's  evacuation  to 
Lancing.  In  1941  he  joined  the  Royal  Signals  and 
then  spent  two  terms  at  Oriel  College,  Oxford, 
doing  an  army  short  course  in  radio,  electricity, 
and  magnetism.  He  became  a  captain  in  1945, 
and  a  major  in  1946,  while  serving  in  the 
Southern  Command  in  India.  When  he  was 
demobilized  in  1047,  he  took  a  post  as  assistant 
film  librarian  with  the  newly  reopened  BBC 
television  sen  ice  in  Alexandra  Palace. 

He  did  not  stay  a  librarian  for  long.  He  soon 
became  film  editor  and  then  the  producer  of  the 
popular  Television  Xewsreel.  Between  1950  and 
1954  he  produced  700  editions  and  gained  a 
depth  of  experience  in  the  technicalities  of  film 
craftsmanship  which  few  of  his  television  con- 
temporaries could  equal.  This  early  experience  of 
volume  production  under  pressure  was  the  foun- 
dation of  his  success  as  one  of  Britain's  (and  later 
the  world's)  most  respected  television  documen- 
tary producers  over  a  period  of  thirty  years.  It  is 
also  a  key  to  the  kind  of  producer  he  became;  he 
was  a  capable  camera  director,  but  he  showed  his 
greatest  strengths  in  the  cutting  room  and  dub- 
bing theatre  after  the  film  had  been  shot.  The 
newsreel  years  gave  him  a  grounding  in  the 
shaping  and  pacing  of  film  and  the  adding  of 
commentary,  music,  and  effects,  which  were  to 
be  of  great  value  in  guiding  the  work  of  younger 
producers  as  well  as  in  developing  his  own. 

In  1954  Television  Newsreel  lost  its  battle  to 
stay  independent  of  the  BBC  news  division  and 
Cawston  left  to  join  the  talks  department  of  the 
television  service,  as  a  documentary   producer. 


The  age  of  the  old  film  documentary  makers 
such  as  John  *Grierson  and  (F.)  Humphrey 
•Jennings  was  dead;  Cawston  was  present  at  the 
birth  of  the  new  documentary  on  television.  He 
produced  a  long  series  of  major  documentary- 
films,  many  of  which  won  national  and  inter- 
national awards.  He  was  especially  interested  in 
institutions  and  professions,  with  whom  his  frank 
and  open  approach  and  high  professionalism 
created  a  trust  which  gained  him  an  entree  that 
would  have  been  refused  to  most  producers.  His 
films  documented  the  worlds  of  lawyers,  pilots, 
the  National  Health  Service,  the  British  educa- 
tional svstem,  and,  perhaps  most  memorablv,  the 
BBC  itself  in  This  Is  the  BBC  (1959).  There  was 
no  'typical  Cawston'  film  because  he  did  not 
impose  his  own  views  or  slant  on  his  subject- 
matter.  His  aim  was  to  let  the  subject  speak  for 
itself,  usually  with  the  minimum  of  narration  or 
(as  in  the  BBC  film)  none  at  all.  The  common 
factor  was  meticulous  craftsmanship. 

In  1965,  just  after  the  start  of  BBC  2,  he  was 
made  head  of  documentary  programmes.  It  was 
here  that  for  fourteen  years  he  coached  and 
developed  a  new  generation  of  documentary 
makers.  The  sessions  in  which  he  looked  at 
rough  assemblies  of  their  films  were  master- 
classes  that  refined  the  skills  of  many  of  today's 
leading  documentary-makers.  But  he  did  not 
stop  making  his  own  films;  Royal  Family,  in 
which  he  recorded  a  year  (1968-9)  in  the  private 
and  public  life  of  the  queen,  was  at  that  time  the 
most  popular  and  widely  seen  documentary  in 
television  history  and  did  much  to  restore  the 
popularity  the  monarchy  had  lost  in  the  mid- 
1960s.  It  led  to  his  becoming  the  producer  of  the 
queen's  Christmas  day  broadcast  to  the  Com- 
monwealth from  1970  to  1985,  and  to  his 
appointment  as  CVO  in  1972. 

For  most  of  his  working  life  he  was  an  active 
and  influential  member  of  BAFTA,  the  tele- 
vision and  film-makers'  professional  body;  he 
was  chairman  from  1976  to  1979,  and  a  trustee 
from  1 97 1  until  his  death.  It  was  largely  through 
his  energy  and  enterprise  that  BAFTA  secured 
its  present  home  at  195  Piccadilly,  and  it  was  due 
to  his  advocacy  that  the  queen  made  the  initial 
major  donation  towards  its  funding  out  of  the 
sales  revenues  of  Royal  Family. 

Cawston  left  the  BBC  in  1979,  having  won 
almost  all  the  major  professional  prizes,  includ- 
ing the  Italia  prize  (1962),  three  BAFTA  awards, 
and  the  silver  medal  of  the  Royal  Television 
Society  (1961).  He  joined  Video  Arts  Ltd.  as 
special  projects  director,  but  continued  produc- 
ing programmes  for  the  BBC  as  an  independent 
executive  producer,  and  acting  as  consultant  to 
the  government  and  tourist  board  of  Hong 
Kong. 

Cawston  was  tall,  clean  shaven,  and  well  built; 
his  dress  was  reassuringly  conventional,  more 


61 


Cawston 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


like  that  of  a  family  solicitor  than  the  usual  image 
of  a  film-maker.  In  1951  he  married  Elisabeth 
Anne  ('Liz'),  daughter  of  Richard  Llewellyn 
Rhys,  of  St  Fagans,  canon  of  LlandafT.  They  had 
two  sons.  She  died  in  1977,  and  in  1978  he 
married  Andrea,  daughter  of  Michael  Phillips, 
company  director,  of  Cyprus.  Cawston  died  of  a 
heart  attack  in  Cassis,  France,  7  June  1986. 

[BBC  Written  Archives  Centre,  Caversham  Park, 
Reading;  BBC  Research  Library,  80  Wood  Lane,  Lon- 
don W12;  private  information.]  Antony  Jay 

CAYZER,  (Michael)  Anthony  (Rathborne) 
(1920- 1 990),  shipowner  and  director  of  aviation 
companies,  was  born  28  May  1920  at  Tylney 
Hall,  Rotherwick,  Hampshire,  the  second  son  in 
the  family  of  two  sons  and  two  daughters  of 
Major  Herbert  Robin  Cayzer,  later  first  Baron 
Rotherwick,  shipowner  and  later  chairman  of  the 
Clan  Line,  and  his  wife  Freda  Penelope,  daugh- 
ter of  Colonel  William  Hans  Rathborne,  of 
county  Cavan,  Ireland.  Anthony  Cayzer  grew  up 
at  Tylney  and  was  educated  at  Eton,  from  where, 
with  the  intention  of  becoming  a  professional 
soldier — his  father  had  a  distinguished  military 
record — he  went  to  the  Royal  Military  College, 
Sandhurst,  and  was  commissioned  into  the  Royal 
Scots  Greys  in  1939. 

He  would  probably  have  had  a  successful  and 
happy  army  career,  but  while  serving  in  the 
Middle  East,  where  he  was  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches, he  contracted  poliomyelitis  and  was 
invalided  out  in  1944.  He  entered  the  Cayzer 
family's  shipowning  and  financial  empire  and  his 
business  career  was  to  span  a  period  of  great 
change  in  the  shipping  world.  He  was  chairman 
of  the  Liverpool  Steamship  Owners'  Association 
for  ten  years  from  1956  to  1967.  He  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Chamber  of  Shipping  of  the  United 
Kingdom  in  1967  and  of  the  Shipping  and 
Forwarding  Agents  from  1963  to  1965.  He  was 
also  deputy  chairman  of  the  British  and  Com- 
monwealth Shipping  Company  and  a  director  of 
Cayzer,  Irvine  &  Co.  and  of  Overseas  Containers 
(Holdings)  Ltd. 

Professional  involvement  with  shipping  mat- 
ters on  this  scale  was  to  be  expected  in  a 
grandson  of  Sir  Charles  Cayzer,  founder  of  the 
Clan  Line,  one  of  the  most  prestigious  of  the 
later  British  merchant  shipping  concerns.  He  was 
fascinated  by  the  complexities  of  the  freight 
conferences,  the  collective  monopolies  by  which 
potentially  destructive  competition  between 
shipping  concerns  was  avoided.  His  knowledge 
of  these  organizations  and  their  workings  found 
expression  when,  as  chairman  of  the  trustees  of 
the  National  Maritime  Museum  from  1977  to 
1987  (he  had  been  a  trustee  since  1968),  he 
personally  inspired  and  organized  a  gallery  which 
made  this  important  aspect  of  maritime  history 


intelligible  to  the  lay  visitor  in  a  thoroughly 
attractive  way. 

This  involvement  in  the  National  Maritime 
Museum's  development  was  typical  of  Cayzer's 
chairmanship.  He  was  highly  successful  in  this 
when  as  an  academic  institution  it  sought  to 
interpret  its  themes  to  a  mass  public  with  accu- 
racy and  realism.  Despite  his  interest  and  his 
background  as  an  arbiter  of  power,  he  never 
sought  to  usurp  the  director's  responsibility  for 
initiating  policy  and  managing  its  execution.  He 
sought  continuously  for  ways  in  which,  with  his 
immense  circle  of  acquaintance  and  knowledge  of 
the  business  world,  he  could  further  the  aims  of 
the  museum.  His  association  with  it  marked  a 
considerable  personal  achievement. 

Cayzer  broke  away  from  his  family  business 
tradition  by  becoming  deeply  involved  with  civil 
aviation.  He  was  fascinated  by  the  element  of  risk 
enterprise  and  competition  involved  in  the 
industry  at  this  stage  in  its  development  and  by 
some  of  the  more  piratical  business  colleagues 
with  whom  he  found  himself  working.  A  quali- 
fied pilot  of  multi-engined  planes,  he  knew  the 
handling  characteristics  of  many  of  the  aircraft 
his  companies  operated.  He  became  deputy 
chairman  of  Air  UK  and  of  Aviation  Services 
Ltd.,  chairman  of  Servisair  (1954-87)  and  of 
Britavia,  and  a  director  of  Bristow's  Helicopter 
Group.  In  1970  he  was  a  moving  force  in  the 
merger  of  British  United  with  Caledonian  Air- 
ways to  form  British  Caledonian.  He  would  have 
dearly  liked  to  see  the  establishment  of  a  national 
aviation  museum  to  complement  the  National 
Maritime  Museum. 

A  well-built,  handsome  man,  Cayzer  had  all 
the  social  graces  which  went  with  his  upbringing 
and  considerable  fortune.  He  held  extensive 
shooting  parties  at  his  1 ,500-acre  estate  in  Hert- 
fordshire. He  was  not  an  intellectual,  though  he 
frequently  expressed  great  respect  for  academic 
achievement.  He  was  open-minded,  flexible  in 
his  approach  to  problems,  and  always  ready  to 
enter  into  new  worlds.  He  greatly  enjoyed  Glyn- 
debourne  as  he  did  his  motor  yacht  Patra.  In  his 
attitude  to  women  he  was  intensely  conservative. 
To  him  they  were  essentially  private  and  social 
creatures.  He  could  not  accept  them  as  suitable 
for  higher  professional  responsibilities  or  as  reli- 
able participants  in  confidential  business  affairs. 
His  very  brave  struggle  with  the  after-effects  of 
polio,  which  impeded  his  mobility,  was  at  times 
painful  to  watch  and  perhaps  prevented  him 
from  reaching  his  full  potential. 

He  married  in  1952  the  Hon.  Patricia  Helen 
Browne,  elder  daughter  of  Dominick  Geoffrey 
Edward  Browne,  fourth  Baron  Oranmore  and 
Browne;  they  had  three  daughters.  She  died  in 
1 98 1  and  in  1982  he  married  Baroness  Sybille, 
daughter  of  Count  de  Selys  Longchamps.  He 


62 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cazalet-Keir 


died  of  cancer  in  the  Nuffield  Hospital,  Mayfair, 
London,  4  March  1990. 

[C  Augustus  Muir  and  M.  Davies,  A  Victorian  Ship- 
owner, a  Portrait  of  Sir  Charles  Cayzer,  1978;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]   Basil  Greenhill 

CAZALET-KEIR,  Thelma  (1 899-1989),  politi- 
cian, was  born  28  May  1899  at  4  Whitehall 
Gardens,  London,  the  third  of  four  children,  the 
eldest  of  whom  was  killed  in  action  in  19 16,  and 
only  daughter  of  William  Marshall  Cazalet,  a 
man  of  hereditary  wealth  and  standing,  whose 
family  origins  were  Huguenot,  and  his  wife 
Maud  Lucia,  daughter  of  Sir  John  Robert 
Heron-Maxwell,  seventh  baronet,  of  Springkell, 
Dumfriesshire,  who  was  of  modest  means.  The 
mother  was  the  dominant  parental  influence, 
from  whom  Thelma  derived  her  worldly  sophis- 
tication and  love  of  the  arts;  also  her  feminism 
and  Christian  Science,  two  creeds  to  which  she 
held  firmly  throughout  her  life. 

In  London  and  at  the  Cazalets'  country  house, 
Fairlawne  in  Kent,  she  was  introduced  as  a  child 
to  many  leading  figures  in  politics  and  literature, 
including  Rudyard  *Kipling,  J.  M.  *Barrie,  the 
•Pankhursts,  and  Sidney  and  Beatrice  *Webb. 
After  being  taught  at  home  by  governesses,  she 
attended  lectures  at  the  London  School  of  Eco- 
nomics. The  lure  of  politics  was  already  strong, 
and  in  the  years  immediately  following  World 
War  I  she  became  an  accepted  member  of  the 
*Lloyd  George  family  circle,  through  her  close 
friendship  with  the  prime  minister's  youngest 
child,  *Megan. 

She  entered  politics  by  way  of  local  govern- 
ment, first  in  Kent  and  then  as  a  member  of 
the  London  county  council  for  seven  years 
(1924-31),  after  which  she  became  an  alderman. 
Despite  her  radical  connections  her  party  alle- 
giance was  Conservative,  though  her  outlook  was 
never  narrowly  partisan.  In  193 1  she  unsuccess- 
fully contested  the  parliamentary  seat  of  East 
Islington  at  a  by-election,  but  in  the  general 
election  held  later  in  the  year  she  was  returned  as 
National  Conservative  MP  for  the  same  con- 
stituency with  a  majority  of  over  14,000. 

In  the  House  of  Commons  she  joined  her 
brother  Victor,  who  was  MP  for  Chippenham. 
(He  was  killed  in  1943  in  an  air  crash  with  the 
Polish  General  Sikorski.)  Her  best  subject  in 
Parliament  was  education,  with  which  she  had 
been  particularly  concerned  on  the  LCC  She 
was  a  regular  speaker  on  the  education  estimates, 
and  from  1937  to  1940  was  parliamentary  private 
secretary  to  Kenneth  Lindsay,  when  he  was 
parliamentary  secretary  to  the  Board  of  Educa- 
tion. In  March  1944,  as  a  member  of  the  Tory- 
reform  committee,  she  was  put  in  charge  of  an 
amendment  to  the  education  bill  introduced  by 
R  A.  *Buder  (later  Baron  Buder  of  Saffron 
Walden),  providing  that  there  should  be  equal 


pay  for  men  and  women  teachers.  When  the 
amendment  was  carried  by  the  margin  of  a  single 
vote,  (Sir)  Winston  'Churchill's  wartime  coali- 
tion suffered  its  only  defeat. 

Gready  angered,  Churchill  insisted  that  the 
clause  be  deleted,  making  the  issue  one  of  con- 
fidence in  himself;  and  she  then  felt  she  had  no 
option  but  to  vote  against  her  own  amendment. 
An  important  point  had  been  made,  however, 
and  Churchill  announced  the  setting  up  of  a 
royal  commission  to  consider  the  question  of 
equal  pay  for  equal  work  (1944-6).  From  1947 
she  was  chairman  of  the  equal  pay  campaign 
committee,  and  eventually  saw  the  principle 
enshrined  in  legislation  in  1970.  Meanwhile 
Churchill  had  made  personal  amends  by  appoint- 
ing her  in  May  1945  parliamentary  secretary  for 
education  in  his  short-lived  caretaker  govern- 
ment. The  1945  general  election,  which  swept 
that  government  away,  also  cost  her  her  seat  and 
brought  her  parliamentary  career  to  an  end. 

For  some  time  she  remained  active  in  public 
life  outside  Parliament.  From  1946  to  1949  she 
was  a  member  of  the  Arts  Council,  of  whose 
precursor,  the  Council  for  the  Encouragement  of 
Music  and  the  Arts  (CEMA),  she  had  been  a 
founder  member  in  1940.  She  was  also  on  the 
executive  committee  of  the  Contemporary  Art 
Society,  and  from  1956  served  a  five-year  term  as 
a  governor  of  the  BBC.  She  was  a  keen  supporter 
of  the  Fawcett  Library,  and  in  1964  was  presi- 
dent of  the  Fawcett  Society.  She  was  appointed 
CBE  in  1952. 

A  friend  of  most  of  the  prime  ministers  during 
her  life,  she  was  a  special  confidante  of  Edward 
Heath  throughout  his  premiership,  though  their 
relations  later  cooled  when  she  rebuked  him 
for  his  attitude  to  Margaret  (later  Baroness) 
Thatcher.  Rather  surprisingly,  she  was  never 
recommended  for  a  life  peerage. 

After  losing  her  parliamentary  seat  she  started 
market  gardening  at  her  home  in  Kent,  Raspit 
Hill,  and  for  a  time  ran  a  flower  shop  in  London. 
When  she  sold  Raspit  Hill,  deliberately  for  much 
less  than  its  true  value,  to  an  old  friend,  Malcolm 
*MacDonald,  she  moved  to  a  flat  in  London. 
During  her  last  years  her  sight  failed,  a  particu- 
larly sad  affliction  for  one  who  was,  perhaps 
above  all,  a  visual  aesthete.  Her  collection  of 
pictures  included  works  by  Sir  Matthew  *Smith, 
Sir  Stanley  *Spencer,  Paul  *Nash,  Walter  •Sick- 
en, and  Augustus  *John.  John  knew  her  well, 
and  his  portrait  of  her  in  a  bright  yellow  dress, 
with  a  piano — which  she  played  more  than 
adequately — behind  her,  is  one  of  his  finest.  (It 
was  painted  in  1936,  and  is  privately  owned.) 

In  1967  she  published  a  short  volume  of 
memoirs,  From  the  Wings,  notable  chiefly  for  its 
vivid  description  of  Lloyd  George,  though  also 
interesting  about  other  characters  in  her  life.  She 
married,  in  August  1939,  David  Edwin,  son  of 


63 


Cazalet-Keir 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  Revd  Thomas  Keir.  Her  husband  was  lobby 
correspondent  of  the  News  Chronicle.  He  died  in 
1969,  and  there  were  no  children.  On  her  mar- 
riage she  changed  her  surname  to  Cazalet-Keir. 
She  died  13  January  1989  at  her  London  flat,  90 
Eaton  Square. 

[The  Times,  16  January  1989;  Thelma  Cazalet-Keir, 
From  the  Wings  (autobiography),  1967;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  John  Grigg 

CECIL,  Lord  (Edward  Christian)  David 
(Gascoyne-)  (1902-1986),  man  of  letters,  was 
born  9  April  1902  at  24  Grafton  Street,  London 
Wi,  the  fourth  and  last  child  and  the  second 
son  of  James  Edward  Hubert  Gascoyne-*Cecil, 
fourth  Marquess  of  Salisbury,  politician,  and  his 
wife,  Lady  (Cicely)  Alice  Gore,  second  daughter 
of  the  fifth  Earl  of  Arran,  descended  on  her 
mother's  side  from  the  Melbourne  family.  A 
delicate  child,  he  was  much  at  home  and  bene- 
fited in  this  from  the  company  of  his  brilliant 
aunts  and  uncles,  notorious  for  their  eccen- 
tricities, wit,  and  zeal.  Between  191 5  and  1919  he 
was  at  Eton,  where  the  confidence  fostered  by 
this  remarkable  family  carried  him  through  an 
unfamiliar  and  in  some  ways  uncongenial  atmo- 
sphere. His  experience  of  Oxford — he  entered 
Christ  Church  in  1920 — was  different.  He  loved 
the  life  and  the  place.  His  exceptionally  quick, 
associative  mind  served  him  well  in  his  final 
examinations  where  he  took  a  first  class  in 
modern  history  (1924).  Though  he  failed  to  win 
an  All  Souls  fellowship,  he  was  elected  to  a 
fellowship  at  Wadham  in  1924  to  teach  mainly 
history.  At  the  same  time,  with  characteristic 
independence,  he  was  writing  a  life  of  the  poet 
William  *Cowper,  The  Stricken  Deer,  his  first  and 
one  of  his  best  books,  which  was  published  in 
1929  and  won  the  Hawthornden  prize  in  1930. 
This  success  led  to  his  decision  to  resign  his 
fellowship  in  1930  and  take  up  the  life  of  a  writer 
in  London.  There  he  met  and  fell  in  love  with 
Rachel,  only  daughter  of  (Sir)  (C.  O.)  Desmond 
*MacCarthy,  literary  critic,  one  of  the  original 
members  of  the  Bloomsbury  group.  Their  mar- 
riage took  place  in  1932.  Virginia  *Woolf  in  a 
wry  but  affectionate  entry  in  her  Diary  describes 
'David  and  Rachel,  arm-in-arm,  sleep-walking 
down  the  aisle,  preceded  by  a  cross  which 
ushered  them  into  a  car  and  so  into  a  happy,  long 
life,  I  make  no  doubt'  (A.  O.  Bell  (ed.),  The  Diary 
of  Virginia  Woolf,  vol.  iv,  1982,  p.  128).  She  was 
not  to  know  how  accurate  her  ironic  prediction 
would  prove.  A  remarkable  woman  in  her  own 
right,  Rachel  MacCarthy  was  the  perfect  match 
for  her  husband.  Of  a  simpler,  more  practical 
nature,  she  shared  his  vivacity  and  his  unfail- 
ing curiosity  about  people,  literature,  and  life. 
Like  him,  she  was  instinctively  religious  and  a 
practising  Christian.  They  were  perfectly  happy 


together,  drawing  their  many  friends  into  that 
happiness,  for  fifty  years. 

As  he  now  moved  into  the  country  near 
Cranborne,  David  Cecil's  new  life,  though  con- 
genial, showed  him  that  he  missed  Oxford, 
especially  the  teaching.  In  1939  he  accepted  a 
fellowship  in  English  at  New  College  and  it  was 
here  as  tutor  and,  from  1949,  as  Goldsmiths' 
professor  that  he  exercised  his  widest  influence 
and  produced  much  of  his  best  work.  He  had  a 
genius  for  teaching,  communicating  enjoyment, 
and  drawing  out  the  best  from  others.  A  brilliant 
conversationalist,  his  wit  consisted  in  verbal 
sharpness  and  accuracy,  together  with  a  pecu- 
liarly sympathetic  humour  that  was  always 
adapted  to  the  company  and  the  occasion.  He 
was  a  celebrated  lecturer,  but  his  influence  was 
most  felt  in  tutorials,  classes,  or  small,  intimate 
groups.  He  and  his  wife,  naturally  hospitable, 
were  eager  to  mix  their  friends  and  share  them 
with  young  unknowns.  Without  condescension 
or  pretension  they  spread  over  a  wide  circle  of 
acquaintances  and  pupils  the  best-known  cul- 
tural, political,  and  artistic  influences  of  the  mid- 
twentieth  century. 

In  the  1960s  David  Cecil  began  to  feel  that  his 
particular  concern  for  English  literature  was 
under  attack  in  an  increasingly  professional  age. 
He  never  avoided,  indeed  enjoyed,  debate,  and 
was  confident  of  his  position,  but  he  shared  his 
family's  clear-sightedness  about  the  signs  of  the 
times.  Developments  in  graduate  studies,  and  the 
insistence  on  advanced  degrees  as  a  qualification 
for  university  teaching,  made  him  feel  his  way- 
was  out  of  favour.  In  1969  he  reached  retirement 
age  and  went  happily  to  Cranborne,  where  he 
continued  to  write  and  entertain  until  his  wife's 
death  in  1982,  and,  though  less  happily,  with 
remarkable  resilience  and  little  diminished  pow- 
ers of  enjoyment  until  his  own  death. 

David  Cecil's  writings,  especially  his  biogra- 
phies of  William  *Cowper  (The  Stricken  Deer, 
1929),  Lord  *Melbourne  (1955),  Jane  *Austen 
(1978),  and  Charles  *Lamb  (1983),  are  a  sub- 
stantial contribution  to  the  understanding  of 
different  kinds  of  personality  and  period.  As  such 
they  had  a  value  beyond  the  academic,  and 
reached  a  wide  readership.  His  literary  criticism 
came  to  be  badly  underestimated.  Early  Victorian 
Novelists  (1934)  was  ahead  of  its  time  in  a  subtle 
analysis  and  discussion  of  the  structure  of 
Wuthering  Heights.  Hardy  the  Novelist  (1943) 
remains  a  classic  exposition  of  the  work  of  one  of 
his  favourite  authors.  His  best  essays,  too  often 
written  off  as  belles-lettres,  are  as  acute  as  they  are 
sensitive.  But  most  typical  of  his  imagination  is 
bis  response  to  extrovert,  worldly  figures  like 
Melbourne,  or  balanced  moral  observers  like 
Jane  Austen,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  to  intro- 
verted, despondent,  but  gentle  and  humorous 
spirits,  like  Cowper  and  Lamb.  To  their  situation 


64 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Chancellor 


he  was  drawn  by  a  sympathy  typical  of  the  depth 
and  complexity  of  his  own  nature. 

He  considered  himself,  with  good  reason,  the 
most  fortunate  of  men.  Born  into  one  of  the  first 
families  in  the  land,  gifted  with  intellectual  and 
imaginative  sympathies  of  a  high  order,  pro- 
fessionally successful,  idyllically  happy  in  his 
marriage  and  family  life,  he  might  well  have 
grown  complacent  and  a  figure  of  envy.  But 
complacency  was  not  in  his  nature  or  his  back- 
ground: he  was  self-critical  and  self-aware.  As  for 
enemies,  he  had  few  if  any.  He  was  greatly  loved 
because  of  the  unusual  sweetness  of  his  temper 
and  his  genuine  humility.  Naturally  high-spir- 
ited and  with  some  vanity,  he  felt  most  strongly 
an  inherited  impulse  of  service  and  purpose. 
Himself  a  devout  Christian,  what  he  possessed  he 
wanted  to  share,  and  he  had  been  given  precisely 
the  gifts  to  enable  this.  His  appearance  was 
extraordinary  and  memorable:  elegant  and  at  the 
same  time  spontaneously  gauche,  continually  in 
motion  from  the  twirling  thumbs  to  the  enthu- 
siastic forward  lurch.  His  voice,  too,  was  rapid, 
stuttering,  and  spasmodic,  with  Edwardian  pro- 
nunciation. David  Cecil  was  one  of  the  most 
influential  cultural  figures  of  his  age. 

He  was  appointed  CH  in  1949  and  C.Lit.  in 
1972.  He  had  honorary  doctorates  from  London, 
Leeds,  Liverpool,  St  Andrews,  and  Glasgow 
universities.  He  died  at  Cranborne  1  Januarv 
1986. 

[W.  W.  Robson  (ed.),  Essays  and  Poems  Presented  to 
Lord  David  Cecily  1970;  Hannah  Cranborne  (ed.),  David 
Cecil:  a  Portrait  by  his  Friends,  privately  printed,  1090; 
family  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Rachel  Trickett 

CHANCELLOR,  Sir  Christopher  John 
Howard  (1904- 1989),  news  agency  chief  execu- 
tive and  company  chairman,  was  born  29  March 
1904  in  Cobham,  Surrey,  the  elder  son  and  eldest 
of  three  children  of  (Sir)  John  Robert  •Chan- 
cellor, soldier  and  later  colonial  administrator, 
and  his  wife  Elsie,  daughter  of  George  Rodie 
Thompson,  barrister,  of  Lynwood,  Ascot.  He 
was  educated  at  Eton  and  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  obtained  a  second  class  (divi- 
sion I)  in  part  i  of  the  history  tripos  (1924)  and  a 
first  class  (division  II)  in  part  ii  (1925).  On 
graduation,  friendship  with  the  son  of  (Sir) 
Ernest  Debenham  led  Chancellor  into  the 
Debenham  &  Freebody  drapery  chain.  But  his 
hopes  of  rising  to  manage  the  business  collapsed 
when  the  family  sold  out  in  1927.  In  1929  his 
wife  wrote  to  Sir  G.  Roderick  *Jones,  managing 
director  of  Reuters  and  a  family  friend,  asking  for 
a  job  for  her  husband.  At  interview,  recollected 
Jones  later,  Chancellor  revealed  an  'executive 
outlook' — intelligence  balanced  by  steadiness, 
energy  and  enthusiasm  matched  by  prudence. 
These  qualities,  plus  a  necessary  suave  ruthless- 


ness,  were  to  serve  Chancellor  well  throughout 
his  business  career.  He  was  clean-cut  and  of 
medium  build,  with  a  distinctive,  light  voice.  His 
piercing,  enquiring  eyes  and  expressive  eyebrows 
gave  him  presence. 

After  starting  in  1930  in  the  editorial  depart- 
ment of  Reuters,  Chancellor  progressed  rapidly. 
He  was  appointed  general  manager  for  the  Far 
East  at  Shanghai  from  the  beginning  of  1932. 
Although  not  himself  a  regular  journalist,  Chan- 
cellor understood  the  news  business.  He  was 
particularly  effective  in  negotiating  contracts, 
and  in  smoothly  representing  Reuters  within 
ruling  circles.  Mixing  duty  with  pleasure,  the 
Chancellors  became  prominent  figures  within 
Shanghai  society. 

In  1939  Chancellor  returned  to  London  to 
become  a  third  general  manager.  On  Jones's 
enforced  resignation  in  1941  he  became  joint 
general  manager,  and  sole  general  manager  in 
1944.  Reuters  could  not  make  much  profit  out  of 
selling  general  news,  and  money  was  always 
short.  But  at  the  end  of  the  war  Chancellor  gave 
priority  to  negotiating  supportive  contracts  with 
the  news  agencies  of  liberated  western  Europe. 
He  also  turned  to  the  Commonwealth  for  new 
partners  to  join  the  Press  Association  and  the 
Newspaper  Proprietors'  Association  in  the  own- 
ership of  Reuters.  In  recognition  of  his  work,  he 
was  appointed  CMG  in  1948,  and  knighted  in 
195 1  at  the  time  of  Reuters'  centenary. 

After  195 1  Chancellor  found  himself  increas- 
ingly frustrated  by  an  unenterprising  board. 
Fortunately,  the  daily  conduct  of  new  s  reporting 
was  in  the  hands  of  the  management;  and  here,  at 
the  time  of  the  1956  Suez  crisis,  Chancellor  was 
able  to  make  one  last  and  crucial  contribution. 
He  had  long  been  sympathetic  towards  colonial 
nationalism,  and  he  was  a  personal  friend  of 
several  Labour  politicians,  including  Hugh 
•Gaitskell,  who  led  the  loud  opposition  to  the 
Suez  landings.  Chancellor  made  sure  that  Reu- 
ters reported  the  Suez  war  from  both  sides  and  in 
language  which  favoured  neither  side.  Person- 
ally, he  was  disgusted  by  the  British  military 
intervention.  But,  as  head  of  Reuters,  he  was 
motivated  by  a  wider  awareness.  Under  his 
guidance  and  just  in  time,  Reuters  successfully 
set  out  to  end  its  British  imperial  role  and 
become  a  supra-national  news  agency. 

In  1959  Chancellor  chose  to  step  down.  One  of 
his  successors  later  likened  him  at  Reuters  to 
Horatius  defending  the  bridge,  successful  in 
holding  his  chosen  ground  but  restricted  in  w  hat 
he  could  otherwise  attempt.  Chancellor's  under- 
lying achievement  was  to  keep  Reuters  in  com- 
petition with  the  much  more  affluent  .American 
agencies.  He  became  deputy  chairman  and  then 
chairman  of  Odhams  Press  (1959-61).  He  found 
himself  plunged  uncomfortably  into  one  of  the 
most  controversial  take-over  battles  of  the  1960s, 


65 


Chancellor 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


between  Thomson  Newspapers  and  the  Mirror 
group.  After  the  Mirror's  victory,  Chancellor 
resigned.  He  disapproved  of  the  new  combined 
company  gaining  control  of  so  many  leading 
titles. 

He  next  joined  the  Bowater  Paper  Corpora- 
tion, becoming  chairman  in  1962.  Chancellor 
pursued  a  necessary  policy  of  drastic  rationaliza- 
tion and  decentralization.  But  when  he  retired  in 
1969  Bowaters  was  still  vulnerable.  Chancellor 
was  chairman  of  Madame  Tussaud's  from  1961 
to  1972,  and  of  the  Bath  Preservation  Trust  from 
1969  to  1976.  With  characteristic  commitment  to 
what  he  regarded  as  a  moral  duty  of  conserva- 
tion, he  successfully  campaigned  against  pro- 
posals for  the  drastic  modernization  of  the  city. 

In  1926  Chancellor  married  Sylvia  Mary, 
daughter  of  Sir  Richard  Arthur  Surtees  Paget, 
second  baronet,  barrister  and  physicist.  They 
had  two  sons  and  two  daughters.  Chancellor  died 
9  September  1989  in  Wincanton,  Somerset. 
[Reuter  archive,  notably  a  1976  interview  by  Stuart 
Underhill;  conversations  with  contemporaries;  The 
Times,  Daily  Telegraph,  and  Independent,  1 1  September 
1989;  D.  J.  Jeremy  (ed.),  Dictionary  of  Business  Biogra- 
phy, vol.  i,  1984;  Sir  Roderick  Jones,  A  Life  in  Reuters, 
1 951;  Donald  Read,  The  Power  of  News:  the  History  of 
Reuters,  1992.]  Donald  Read 

CHATWIN,  (Charles)  Bruce  (1940-1989),  trav- 
eller and  writer,  was  born  13  May  1940  in 
Sheffield,  the  elder  child  (his  brother  was  born 
four  years  later)  of  Charles  Leslie  Chatwin,  a 
Birmingham  solicitor,  and  his  wife,  Margharita 
Turnell.  He  was  educated  at  Marlborough  Col- 
lege, where  he  was  dreamily  interested  in  classics 
and  enthusiastic  about  acting;  in  his  spare  time 
he  collected  and  restored  odd  pieces  of  furniture. 
In  1958  he  joined  Sotheby's  auction  house  as  a 
porter;  he  rose  rapidly  to  become  head  of  the 
department  of  antiquities  and  the  newly  founded 
and  flourishing  department  of  Impressionist 
painting.  He  was  made  a  director  of  the  firm  in 
his  twenties  but  left  in  1966,  variously  citing 
failing  eyesight  and  disillusion  with  the  art  busi- 
ness, to  go  to  Edinburgh  University. 

While  visiting  the  Sudan  he  had  developed  a 
fascination  with  nomads  which  was  to  last  all  his 
life:  he  identified  with,  and  to  some  extent 
adopted,  a  travelling  way  of  life,  revered  its 
disdain  for  possessions,  and  theorized  in  pub- 
lished and  unpublished  work  about  the  impor- 
tance of  walking  and  the  pernicious  effects  of 
settlement.  At  Edinburgh  he  studied  archaeology 
with  Professor  Stuart  Piggott;  he  left  after  two 
years,  without  taking  his  degree,  and  went  to 
Mauritania,  from  which  he  returned  with  a  sheaf 
of  desert  photographs  and  many  more  notes  on 
nomads,  which  were  subsequently  extended  by 
journeys  to  Iran  and  Afghanistan.  In  1970  he 
helped  to  organize  an  exhibition  of  'Animal  Style 
Art'  at  the  Asia  House  Gallery  in  New  York.  In 


the  early  1970s  he  worked  for  the  Sunday  Times 
Magazine,  first  as  an  art  consultant,  and  then  as 
a  journalist:  his  pieces  included  interviews  with 
Andre  Malraux,  Indira  *Gandhi,  George  Costa- 
kis,  the  Greek  collector  of  Russian  avant-garde 
art,  and  the  dress  designer  Madeleine  Vionnet, 
who  had  invented  the  bias  cut  which  helped  to 
abolish  the  corset.  He  is  said  to  have  left  the 
paper  with  a  characteristic  flourish,  sending  a 
telegram  which  explained:  'Gone  to  Patagonia 
for  six  months.' 

This  trip  resulted  in  his  first  published  book, 
In  Patagonia  (1977),  an  imaginative  investigation 
of  that  country  which  mixed  crisp  description 
with  anthropology,  biography,  and  history,  rel- 
ishing strange  encounters  and  esoteric  facts,  and 
rendering  these  in  a  spare  elliptical  prose.  In 
Patagonia  was  awarded  the  1977  Hawthornden 
prize  and  the  E.  M.  Forster  award.  Chatwin 
earned  and  retained  a  name  as  a  redefiner  of 
travel  writing,  though  the  books  that  followed 
were  strikingly  varied  in  subject-matter  and 
style.  The  Viceroy  of  Ouidah  (1980),  luxuriant, 
highly  wrought,  and  exotic,  provided  a  fiction- 
alized account  of  the  life  of  a  Brazilian  slave- 
trader.  The  book  was  in  part  based  on  Chatwin's 
researches  in  Dahomey,  where  he  had  been 
arrested  during  a  coup  d'etat  on  suspicion  of 
being  a  mercenary;  Werner  Herzog  filmed  the 
story  as  Cobra  Verde  (1988).  On  the  Black  Hill 
(1982) — written,  Chatwin  claimed,  in  order  to 
put  paid  to  the  label  'travel-writer',  from  which 
he  recoiled — described  in  dense  domestic  detail 
the  intertwined  lives  of  a  pair  of  Welsh  twins 
who  never  moved  from  their  farm  in  the  border 
country;  the  book,  which  won  the  1982  Whit- 
bread  award  for  the  best  first  novel  and  the  James 
Tait  Black  memorial  prize,  was  made  into  a  film 
directed  by  Andrew  Grieve  (1987).  Five  years 
later  Chatwin  produced  The  Songlines  (1987),  a 
capacious  exploration  of  Aboriginal  creation 
myths  which  incorporated  some  of  his  early 
speculations  about  nomads.  Utz  (1988),  a  coolly 
written  study  of  an  obsessional  collector  of  Meis- 
sen porcelain,  drew  on  his  experience  of  the  art 
world  and  his  interest  in  the  Soviet  Eastern  bloc; 
it  was  short-listed  for  the  1988  Booker  prize  and 
filmed  by  George  Sluizer.  His  collection  of 
articles,  What  Am  I  Doing  Here,  appeared  in 
1989,  a  few  months  after  his  death;  a  selection  of 
his  photographs  and  notebooks,  edited  by  David 
King  and  Francis  Wyndham,  was  published  in 

1993- 

Chatwin  was  an  animated  talker,  physically 
and  mentally  restless,  prominently  blue-eyed, 
and  hugely  enthusiastic.  He  was  a  vivid  presence, 
in  print  and  in  person:  he  drew  people  to  him 
during  his  lifetime  and  became  the  subject  of 
myth-making  after  his  death;  he  had  both  male 
and  female  lovers.  In  1965  he  married  Elizabeth 
Margaret,  the  daughter  of  Gertrude  Laughlin 


66 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cheney 


and  Hubert  Chanler,  an  American  naval  officer; 
there  were  no  children.  His  wife,  a  shepherdess 
and  a  trekker,  was  one  of  his  most  stalwart 
travelling  companions.  They  lived  in  Gloucester- 
shire and  later  in  the  Chilterns;  Chatwin,  who 
liked  to  work  away  from  home,  also  had  a  series 
of  London  rooms,  which  were  uniformly  small, 
bare,  and  white.  In  September  1986  he  was 
diagnosed  as  having  the  AIDS  virus;  he  died  in 
Nice  18  January  1989,  of  a  fungal  infection. 

[Nicholas  Murray,  Bruce  Chatmn,  1993;  Susannah 
Qapp,  A  Portrait  of  Bruce  Chatmn,  1995;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge]   Slsannah  Clapp 

CHENEY,  Christopher  Robert  (1906- 1987), 
historian,  was  born  20  December  1906  in  Ban- 
bury, Oxfordshire,  the  youngest  of  four  sons 
(there  were  no  daughters)  of  George  Gardner 
Cheney,  director  of  a  family  printing  business 
established  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  his 
wife,  Christina  Stapleton  Bateman,  school- 
teacher. It  was  a  close-knit  family,  with  strong 
musical  interests  which  he  shared.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Banbury  County  School  and  Wadham 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  won  the  Gibbs  schol- 
arship in  1927  and  took  a  first-class  degree  in 
modern  history  in  1928.  He  then  began  research 
in  medieval  English  ecclesiastical  history  under 
(Sir)  F.  M.  *Powicke.  After  spells  of  lecturing  in 
Cairo,  University  College  London  (1931-3),  and 
Manchester  University  (1933-7),  m  '937  he 
succeeded  V.  H.  *Galbraith  as  reader  in  diplo- 
matic in  Oxford  and  became  a  fellow  of  Magda- 
len College.  He  returned  to  Manchester  as 
professor  of  medieval  history  in  1945,  moving  to 
Cambridge  in  1955  on  his  election  to  the  chair  of 
medieval  history,  which  he  held  until  his  retire- 
ment in  1972,  and  to  a  fellowship  at  Corpus 
Christi  College.  During  World  War  II  he  worked 
in  the  War  Office  with  MI5. 

His  greatest  achievement  was  to  lead  the  way 
in  interpreting  the  records  and  history  of  the 
medieval  English  church  and  of  the  relations 
of  the  papacy  with  England,  and  in  furthering 
the  collaborative  enterprises,  both  national  and 
international,  necessary  to  publish  the  original 
sources.  His  upbringing  gave  him  a  lasting  inter- 
est in  the  practical  process  of  making  books,  and 
he  always  took  delight  in  good  craftsmanship  and 
typographical  perfection. 

Cheney's  university  lectures  were  the  seeding 
ground  for  many  of  his  published  works.  His 
Oxford  courses  on  diplomatic  led  to  his  Sotartes 
Public  in  the  Thirteenth  and  Fourteenth  Centuries 
(1972)  and  to  his  writings  on  English  episcopal 
documents.  These  involved  him  in  two  major 
collaborative  enterprises.  A  project  to  produce  an 
edition  of  the  corpus  of  medieval  church  coun- 
cils, inspired  by  Powicke,  was  in  danger  of 
running  into  the  quicksands  of  planning  commit- 


tees when  he  took  control,  brought  out,  and  part 
edited  one  volume  (1964)  and  assisted  sub- 
stantially in  the  completion  of  another.  Later  he 
directed  and  contributed  to  the  British  Academy 
series  of  Episcopal  Acta.  The  field  he  made 
particularly  his  own  was  the  age  of  Innocent  III, 
especially  the  great  pope's  relations  with  Eng- 
land. Critical  examination  of  Innocent's  letters 
concerning  England  led  to  two  definitive  vol- 
umes of  documents  (1953  and,  with  Mary  Che- 
ney, 1967).  These  provided  the  groundwork  for 
his  Ford  lectures,  From  Becket  to  Lang  ton  (1956), 
his  monograph  on  Hubert  *Walter  (1967),  and 
his  fine  book,  Pope  Innocent  III  and  England 
(1976).  All  were  remarkable  for  the  lucidity. 
sanity,  and  breadth  of  imagination  and  know- 
ledge they  revealed. 

A  penetrating,  but  never  unjust  critic,  he  was 
an  inspiring  if  exacting  teacher,  remembered  for 
his  inflexibly  high  standards,  and  for  his  kindness 
and  humour,  which,  together  with  intelligence 
and  imagination,  were  reflected  in  his  face.  His 
originality  lay  in  going  more  deeply  and  criti- 
cally, more  precisely  and  less  credulously,  into 
the  written  materials  preserved  in  archives  and 
other  collections.  In  the  memorable  words  of  his 
Cambridge  inaugural  lecture,  he  pointed  out  that 
'Records,  like  the  little  children  of  long  ago,  only 
speak  when  they  are  spoken  to,  and  they  will  not 
speak  to  strangers.'  No  one  was  better  able  than 
he  to  penetrate  the  minds  of  the  men  behind  the 
medieval  institutions  that  he  described  almost  as 
if  he  had  been  there  when  they  were  being 
fashioned.  He  brought  to  historical  study  in 
England  a  mastery  of  the  techniques  of  research 
in  which  English  scholars  hitherto  had  lagged 
behind  continental  writers.  At  the  same  time,  his 
deeper  penetration  into  the  practical  application 
of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  medieval  church  in 
England  provided  a  model  for  their  future 
researches.  Closely  associated  with  Walther 
Holzmann,  who  worked  in  English  archives  on 
the  ambitious  Papsturkunden  project  sponsored 
by  the  Gottingen  Academy,  he  carried  his  own 
researches  on  collections  of  papal  decretals  and 
the  work  of  judges  delegate  in  England  to  a  point 
that  has  inspired  French  and  German  scholars  to 
begin  filling  in  gaps  in  the  Papsturkunden  in 
Frankreich  series.  As  joint  literary  editor  of  the 
Royal  Historical  Society  (1938-45),  he  guided 
many  scholars'  work  to  publication. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1984.  In  1951  he 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy; 
other  academic  honours  included  honorary  doc- 
torates at  Glasgow  (D.Lirt.,  1970)  and  Man- 
chester (D.Litt.,  1978),  and  election  as  a 
corresponding  fellow  of  the  Mediaeval  Academy 
of  America  and  corresponding  member  of  the 
Monumenta  Germaniae  Historica.  Wadham  Col- 
lege made  him  an  honorary  fellow  in  1968. 


67 


Cheney 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cheney  was  a  small  man  with  dark  hair  and  an 
impish  glance.  In  1940  he  married  Mary  Gwen- 
dolen (daughter  of  Gilbert  Hall,  of  the  Malayan 
Civil  Service),  a  historian  who  collaborated  with 
him  in  two  of  his  books  and  supported  him  in  his 
research  all  his  life.  There  were  two  sons  and  one 
daughter  of  the  marriage.  Cheney  died  in  Cam- 
bridge 19  June  1987. 

[C.  N.  L.  Brooke  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  Ixxiii,  1987;  Speculum,  vol.  lxiii,  1988;  personal 
knowledge.]  M.  Chibnall 

CHESTER,  Sir  (Daniel)  Norman  (1907-1986), 
warden  of  Nuffield  College,  Oxford,  was  born 
27  October  1907  in  Chorlton-cum-Hardy,  Man- 
chester, the  elder  son  and  eldest  of  three  children 
of  Daniel  Chester,  traveller  in  the  cotton  trade, 
of  Chorlton-cum-Hardy,  and  his  wife  Edith, 
daughter  of  John  and  Elizabeth  Robinson  of 
Stretford,  near  Manchester.  He  was  educated  at 
St  Clement's  Church  of  England  School,  Chorl- 
ton-cum-Hardy. 

Growing  up  in  somewhat  straitened  circum- 
stances, Chester  left  school  at  fourteen  to  work  in 
the  treasurer's  department  of  Manchester  city 
council.  By  the  age  of  twenty-four  he  had  won  an 
external  BA  (1930)  at  Manchester  University, 
where  he  also  gained  an  MA  (1933).  This  was 
followed  by  a  research  post  and  later  a  lecture- 
ship there.  In  1935-6  he  held  a  Rockefeller 
fellowship  in  the  United  States  to  study  public 
utilities.  On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939  he  was 
recruited  to  the  economic  section  of  the  war 
cabinet  secretariat,  where  he  served  from  1940  to 
1945.  He  worked  closely  with  Herbert  *Morrison 
(later  Baron  Morrison  of  Lambeth)  and  Sir  John 
•Anderson  (later  first  Viscount  Waverley),  but 
the  most  memorable  of  his  tasks  was  to  act  in 
1 94 1 -2  as  secretary  to  the  committee  on  social 
insurance  and  allied  services  chaired  by  Sir 
William  (later  Baron)  *Beveridge. 

When  the  war  ended  in  1945  he  went  to 
Oxford  as  a  fellow  of  the  newly  founded  Nuffield 
College,  where  he  was  to  remain  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  In  1954  he  was  elected  warden  of 
Nuffield,  a  position  he  held  until  1978.  His 
experience  of  Whitehall  and  the  contacts  made 
there  stood  him  in  good  stead.  More  than  anyone 
else,  Chester  shaped  the  development  of  the 
college  (founded  in  1937),  which  was  breaking 
new  ground  for  Oxford  in  being  the  first  gradu- 
ate college  for  both  men  and  women,  and  the  first 
college  to  specialize,  being  devoted  exclusively  to 
the  social  sciences.  Even  before  he  was  elected 
warden,  he  had  become  involved  in  every  detail 
of  college  development — the  finances  and  fur- 
nishing and,  even  more,  the  recruitment  of 
fellows  and  students.  The  college  was  granted  a 
royal  charter  in  1958.  One  of  Chester's  major 
achievements  was,  after  early  estrangements,  to 
reconcile  Viscount  'Nuffield  to  the  college  that 


bore  his  name.  He  took  great  pride  in  the  fact 
that,  when  Nuffield  died  in  1963,  he  made  the 
college  his  residuary  legatee. 

Chester  was  a  man  of  enormous  energy.  His 
abiding  commitment  to  local  self-government  led 
him  to  serve  as  an  Oxford  city  councillor  and 
later  alderman  from  1952  to  1974.  He  was  a 
leading  figure  in  the  Royal  Institute  of  Public 
Administration,  serving  as  its  chairman  in 
1953-4  and  acting  as  editor  of  its  journal  from 
1943  to  1966.  After  helping  to  found  the  Study  of 
Parliament  Group  in  i960,  he  was  its  president 
from  1 97 1  to  his  death.  He  chaired  the  'Britain  in 
Europe'  campaign  in  Oxford  during  the  1975 
referendum  and  was  assiduous  in  building  up 
Nuffield  College's  links  with  Europe,  in  particu- 
lar with  the  Fondation  Nationale  des  Sciences 
Politiques  in  Paris.  He  was  one  of  the  founders  of 
the  British  Political  Studies  Association  and  then 
of  the  International  Political  Science  Association, 
of  which  he  was  president  in  1961-4.  He  played 
a  central  role  in  the  establishment  of  the  Oxford 
Centre  for  Management  Studies  (later  Temple- 
ton  College)  and  was  its  chairman  from  1965  to 

1975- 

He  had  been  a  runner  in  his  youth  and 
remained  dedicated  to  sport.  His  wartime  friend, 
Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx), 
persuaded  him  to  chair  a  government  committee 
on  association  football  in  1966-8  and  he  was  a 
key  figure  in  football  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He 
served  as  chairman  of  the  Football  Grounds 
Improvement  Trust  and  finally  as  deputy  chair- 
man of  the  Football  Trust,  travelling  assiduously 
to  see  games  all  over  the  country. 

Chester  was  also  a  productive,  meticulous,  and 
wide-ranging  scholar.  He  wrote  with  clarity  and 
precision  rather  than  with  stylistic  sparkle,  his 
works  making  a  notable  and  authoritative  con- 
tribution to  the  study  of  Parliament  and  admini- 
stration. His  principal  books  included  Central 
and  Local  Government:  Financial  and  Adminis- 
trative Relations  (1951),  (ed.)  Lessons  of  the  British 
War  Economy  (1951),  The  Nationalisation  of  Brit- 
ish Industry,  7945-5/  (1975),  The  English 
Administrative  System  1 780-1 8 jo  (1981),  and 
Economics,  Politics  and  Social  Studies  in  Oxford 
(1986). 

Chester  remained  very  much  a  northerner, 
always  keeping  something  of  his  Mancunian 
accent.  His  occasionally  blunt  rejection  of  the 
conventional  Oxford  style  upset  some  people  and 
earned  him  a  reputation  for  abrasiveness.  But 
behind  the  rough  exterior  there  was  a  man  who 
showed  great  kindness  to  colleagues  and  to  stu- 
dents. He  had  great  breadth  of  vision  and  an 
unfailing  sense  of  duty.  He  left  his  mark  on  many 
sectors  of  national  life — association  football,  local 
government,  and  the  study  of  British  govern- 
ment. But  his  main  achievement  was  in  giving 
shape  to  Nuffield  College  as  a  new  model  of 


68 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Chibnall 


collegiate  life  and  of  what  he  believed  a  graduate 
college  dedicated  to  the  social  sciences  should  be. 
Under  his  guidance  the  college  became  a  highly 
prestigious  institution  both  in  Oxford  (its  ex- 
students  supplied  a  majority  of  tutorial  fellows  in 
the  social  sciences)  and  internationally. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1951  and  knighted 
in  1974.  He  became  a  chevalier  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour  in  1976  and  received  an  honorary 
Litt.D.  from  Manchester  University  in  1968.  On 
retirement  in  1978  he  became  an  honorary  fellow 
of  Nuffield.  In  1936  he  married  Eva  (died  1980), 
daughter  of  James  H.  Jeavons,  master  butcher. 
There  were  no  children.  Following  an  operation, 
he  died  in  Oxford  20  September  1986  while  still 
in  full  vigour  and  enjoying  his  hobbies  of  bridge 
playing,  country  walking,  and  ornithology.  Nuf- 
field College  has  drawings  of  him  by  David 
Hockney. 

[D.  E.  Buder  and  A.  H.  Halsey  (eds).  Policy  and 
Politics  (Festschrift),  1978;  obituary  by  Nevil  Johnson 
in  Public  Administration,  vol.  lxv,  summer  1087;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]         David  Bltler 

CHIBNALL,  Albert  Charles  (1894-1988),  bio- 
chemist and  historian,  was  born  28  January  1894 
in  Hammersmith,  London,  the  second  of  three 
sons  and  third  of  six  children  (two  subsequent 
daughters  died  in  infancy)  of  George  William 
Chibnall,  baker,  and  his  wife  Kate,  daughter  of 
Thomas  Butler,  restaurateur  in  London  and 
minor  landowner  at  Littlebury  in  Essex.  At  St 
Paul's  School  he  developed  an  early  interest  in 
chemistry  and  geology.  With  an  exhibition  at 
Clare  College,  Cambridge,  he  embarked  on  the 
natural  sciences  tripos,  intending  to  take  the 
diploma  in  mining  engineering.  After  completing 
part  i  of  the  tripos  in  19 14,  in  which  he  gained  a 
second  class,  he  joined  the  army  (Army  Service 
Corps)  and  saw  service  in  Salonika,  transferring 
to  the  Royal  Flying  Corps  in  19 17.  His  two 
brothers  were  killed  in  the  war. 

On  demobilization  Chibnall  decided  not  to 
return  to  Cambridge  and  became  a  research 
student  with  S.  B.  Schryver,  professor  of  plant 
biochemistry  at  Imperial  College,  London.  Here 
he  laid  the  foundations  of  a  career  in  protein 
biochemistry  which  profoundly  influenced  the 
development  of  the  subject.  After  two  years  in 
the  laboratory  of  T.  B.  Osborne,  at  New  Haven, 
Connecticut,  in  1924  Chibnall  returned  to  Eng- 
land, to  University  College  as  an  assistant,  doing 
further  work  on  proteins  and  broadening  his 
interests  to  plant  waxes.  He  continued  to  publish 
on  the  latter  subject  even  after  retirement  from 
active  biochemistry.  He  succeeded  Schryver  as 
professor  of  biochemistry  at  Imperial  College  in 
1929  and  Sir  F.  G.  *Hopkins  in  the  chair  of 
biochemistry  in  Cambridge  in  1943.  When  he 
took  up  his  Cambridge  chair  he  became  a  fellow 
of  Clare  College. 


In  1939  appeared  his  classic  monograph,  Pro- 
tein Metabolism  in  the  Plant,  which  was  based  on 
his  research  and  the  prestigious  Silliman  lectures 
he  gave  at  Yale  during  the  previous  year.  In  later 
years  at  Imperial  College  and  Cambridge,  how- 
ever, the  structure  and  chemistry  of  proteins  in 
general  became  his  main  interest.  At  this  time  the 
precise  nature  of  protein  structure  was  still 
unknown  and  theories  abounded.  The  careful 
amino  acid  analyses  carried  out  by_  his  group 
before  the  advent  of  chromatography  were  the 
best  of  their  kind  and  no  structural  theory  could 
survive  if  it  did  not  comply  with  their  data. 
Chibnall  and  his  group  demonstrated  directly 
that  asparagine  and  glutamine  were  components 
of  proteins.  From  the  1930s  to  the  early  1950s  he 
was  the  man  to  approach  with  a  problem  relating 
to  protein  chemistry.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society  in  1937.  Collaboration  with 
W.  T.  *Astbury  and  Kenneth  *Bailey  led  to  a 
patent  for  the  conversion  of  groundnut  protein 
into  a  fibre  with  the  characteristics  of  wool.  The 
process  was  promising  enough  to  be  put  into 
commercial  production  by  Imperial  Chemical 
Industries,  but  it  failed  to  compete  successfully 
with  the  synthetic  fibres.  The  importance  of  the 
scientific  environment  Chibnall  built  up  at  this 
critical  time  for  the  development  of  protein 
chemistry  is  reflected  in  the  subsequent  achieve- 
ments of  his  young  associates.  He  suggested  that 
Frederick  Sanger  should  investigate  the  amino 
groups  of  insulin,  work  which  in  the  course  of 
time  led  to  the  first  determination  of  the 
sequence  of  a  protein  and  the  award  of  a  Nobel 
prize.  He  also  encouraged  R.  R.  *Porter,  a 
contemporary  of  Sanger,  who  was  later  to  be 
similarly  honoured  for  his  work  on  the  structure 
of  immunoglobulin. 

Chibnall  played  an  important  part  in  the 
development  of  biochemistry  in  the  United 
Kingdom.  From  the  mid- 1930s  he  had  strong 
links  with  the  Agricultural  Research  Council  and 
did  much  to  strengthen  biochemistry  in  its  insti- 
tutes. He  served  as  a  member  of  the  council  but 
turned  down  the  secretaryship  when  it  was 
offered  to  him.  He  was  the  longest  serving 
secretary  of  the  Biochemical  Society,  chairman  of 
the  society's  committee,  and  president  of  the  first 
international  congress  of  biochemistry  when  it 
met  in  Cambridge  in  1949.  Ironically  this  was  the 
year  when,  at  the  height  of  his  academic  distinc- 
tion, he  decided  to  give  up  the  Cambridge  chair 
and  devote  himself  fully  to  research.  There  was 
altruism  in  this  decision,  for  he  felt  that,  with  the 
tremendous  advances  and  importance  of  animal 
and  medical  biochemistry,  a  person  more  versed 
in  these  aspects  than  himself  should  be  in  charge 
of  the  Cambridge  department. 

Historical  research  fascinated  Chibnall  for 
most  of  his  life.  His  interest  was  first  aroused 
when  soon  after  demobilization  he  spent  time  at 


69 


Chibnall 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Somerset  House  and  the  Public  Record  Office 
seeking  information  about  his  sixteenth-century 
ancestors,  the  Chibnalls  of  Sherington.  He 
taught  himself  the  techniques  of  historical 
research  and  from  then  onwards,  when  he  could 
spare  time  from  his  busy  life  as  a  scientist,  he 
meticulously  collected  material  about  medieval 
Sherington.  When  in  1958  he  finally  gave  up  his 
laboratory  in  Cambridge  he  was  able  to  devote 
himself  full-time  to  historical  research  and  enjoy 
college  life  at  Clare.  In  effect  he  started  a  second 
career  and  produced  a  series  of  important  books 
on  medieval  Buckinghamshire.  The  most 
remarkable  of  these,  Sherington,  Fiefs  and  Fields 
of  a  Buckinghamshire  Village  (1965),  was  much 
acclaimed  by  leading  historians.  In  1978  at  the 
age  of  eighty-four  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Society  of  Antiquaries. 

Chibnall  was  tall  and  well  built,  with  an  air  of 
distinction  and  quiet  authority.  His  scholarship 
crossed  the  normal  boundaries.  For  an  academic 
he  had  a  wide  experience  of  life  and  was  generous 
and  supportive  to  his  junior  associates.  He  fol- 
lowed their  development  with  interest  and  drew 
great  pleasure  from  their  successes. 

In  1 93 1  he  married  his  cousin  Cicely,  daughter 
of  Herbert  Barber  Chibnall,  businessman;  they 
had  two  daughters.  Cicely  died  in  childbirth  in 
1936.  In  1947  he  married  Marjorie  McCallum 
Morgan,  a  history  lecturer  at  the  University  of 
Aberdeen  and  later  a  fellow  of  Girton  College, 
Cambridge.  She  was  the  daughter  of  John  Chris- 
topher Morgan,  farmer.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  Chibnall  died  at  his  home  in  Cam- 
bridge 10  January  1988. 

[E.  Ashby,  Cambridge  Review,  vol.  cix,  1988;  S.  V. 
Perry,  Biochemist,  vol.  x,  1988;  F.  Sanger,  Annual 
Review  of  Biochemistry,  vol.  lvii,  1988;  R.  L.  M.  Synge 
and  E.  F.  Williams  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxv,  1990;  personal  knowledge.] 

S.  V.  Perry 

CHIPPERFIELD,   James    Seaton    Methuen 

(1912-1990),  circus  proprietor  and  inventor  of 
the  safari  park,  was  born  17  July  19 12  in  a 
mahogany  wagon  on  land  belonging  to  Paul, 
third  Baron  *Methuen,  near  Corsham,  Wiltshire, 
the  second  son  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and 
two  daughters  of  Richard  Chipperfield,  owner  of 
a  small  family  circus,  and  his  wife  Maud,  daugh- 
ter of  George  Seaton,  another  circus  man. 
Because  the  show  was  constantly  on  the  road, 
'Jimmy'  received  almost  no  formal  education, 
rarely  attending  any  school  for  more  than  a  few 
days;  but  he  grew  up  richly  imbued  with  the 
traditions  of  the  circus,  in  which  his  family  had 
performed  for  more  than  two  centuries. 

A  short,  stocky  man  with  dark  hair  and  strong 
features,  he  inherited  his  father's  ferocious  appe- 
tite for  hard  physical  work.  Hours  on  the  trapeze 
equipped  him  with  powerful  arms  and  shoulders, 


and  from  an  early  age  he  showed  an  exceptional 
affinity  with  animals,  not  least  with  Rosie,  the 
elephant  in  which  he  and  his  elder  brother  Dick 
invested  all  their  capital  of  £400  during  the 
1920s.  He  also  trained  lions  and  tigers,  wrestled 
the  bear,  and  played  the  clown. 

At  the  age  of  sixteen  he  fell  in  love  with 
another  Rosie,  daughter  of  Captain  Tom  Pur- 
chase, circus  proprietor  and  lion  trainer,  who  had 
been  killed  by  a  lion.  In  1934,  when  Chipperfield 
was  twenty-two,  the  young  couple  eloped  and 
married,  to  circumvent  his  father's  opposition, 
and  they  remained  happily  married  for  nearly 
sixty  years.  Their  eldest  son,  also  Jimmy,  died  of 
tetanus  at  the  age  of  six  in  1 941,  but  they  had  two 
more  sons  and  two  daughters. 

At  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939  Chipperfield 
set  his  heart  on  becoming  a  fighter  pilot  in  the 
Royal  Air  Force.  His  handicaps  would  have 
defeated  most  aspirants:  he  had  no  mathematics, 
and  only  one  kidney,  the  other  having  been 
crushed  during  a  bout  with  Bruni  the  bear. 
Ignoring  adverse  medical  reports,  he  put  himself 
into  school,  alongside  children,  and  by  sheer 
determination  mastered  enough  trigonometry  to 
win  his  wings  and  fly  Mosquito  fighter  bombers 
with  No.  85  Squadron. 

After  the  war  he  returned  to  the  circus,  and  in 
partnership  with  Dick  built  up  the  biggest  travel- 
ling show  in  Britain.  Then  in  1955  he  broke  away 
on  his  own,  farming  in  Hampshire,  training 
animals  for  Walt  Disney  films,  and  founding  a 
zoo  in  Southampton.  He  began  to  travel  in 
Africa,  and  it  was  the  sight  of  big  game  roaming 
the  plains  of  Kenya  and  Uganda  that  gave  him 
the  most  important  idea  of  his  life. 

This  was  for  a  novel  form  of  zoo,  in  which  the 
animals  would  run  free  in  large  paddocks,  and 
human  beings  would  stay  in  cages — their  cars — 
to  drive  among  them.  It  took  him  some  time  to 
find  an  ideal  site,  but  in  1964  he  hit  on  Longleat, 
the  ancestral  home  of  the  Bath  family.  There, 
in  partnership  with  the  sixth  Marquess  of  Bath, 
he  built  the  world's  first  safari  park.  While 
the  fences  were  being  installed,  The  Times 
denounced  the  scheme  as  'a  dangerous  folly',  and 
called  for  its  suppression;  this  made  excellent 
publicity  for  the  venture,  which  opened  at  Easter 
1966  and  proved  a  colossal  success. 

Other  parks  followed  at  Woburn,  Knowsley, 
Blair  Drummond,  and  Bewdley.  Their  success 
attracted  the  enmity  of  traditional  zoo-keepers, 
particularly  Sir  Solly  (later  Baron)  Zuckerman, 
then  secretary  of  the  London  Zoological  Society; 
but  Chipperfield  claimed  with  obvious  truth  that, 
apart  from  inventing  a  novel  attraction,  he  had 
established  useful  breeding  groups  of  endangered 
species.  He  became  a  rich  man,  bought  expensive 
cars,  and  enjoyed  his  association  with  landed 
aristocrats  such  as  the  Marquess  of  Bath  and  the 
Duke  of  Bedford. 


70 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Church 


In  1975  he  and  Rosie  suffered  a  severe  blow 
when  their  eldest  surviving  son,  Richard,  was 
killed  in  a  car  accident  in  Uganda.  An  out- 
standing animal  man,  with  an  attractive  person- 
ality, he  had  been  the  natural  heir  to  the 
business.  With  him  gone,  it  was  left  to  Mary,  the 
elder  daughter,  to  carry  on  the  family's  circus 
traditions. 

During  the  1960s  Chipperfield  settled  com- 
fortably, but  without  ostentation,  into  a  sub- 
stantial house  on  the  outskirts  of  Southampton. 
In  1986  he  moved  to  a  farm  at  Middle  Wallop,  in 
Hampshire,  where  he  remained  surrounded  by 
animals — there  was  usually  a  chimpanzee  on  the 
premises,  and  often  a  lion  cub — and  by  the  latest 
electronic  gadgets.  Although  tough  with  anyone 
who  crossed  him,  he  was  generous  and  loyal  to 
friends,  and  retained  a  fierce  pride  in  his  family 
and  their  achievements.  He  published  his  auto- 
biography, My  Wild  Life,  in  1975,  and  died  20 
April  1990  at  his  home,  Croft  Farm,  near  Middle 
Wallop. 

[Jimmy   Chipperfield,  My   Wild  Life,   1975;   private 
information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Dlff  Hart-Davis 

CHURCH,  Charles  James  Gregory  (1942- 
1989),  house  builder,  was  born  29  October  1942 
in  Windlesham,  Surrey,  the  only  son  and 
younger  child  of  Charles  Church,  farm  labourer, 
of  Windlesham,  and  his  wife,  Fuensanta  Gui- 
santes.  He  was  educated  at  Strodes  School, 
Egham,  and  studied  civil  engineering  at  the 
Regent  Street  Polytechnic  in  London.  His  inter- 
est in  construction  and  house  building  became 
apparent  very  early  and  by  the  age  of  eleven  he 
had  become  a  competent  electrician  and  was  able 
to  wire  his  parents'  cottage  for  electric  light.  Five 
years  later  he  single-handedly  built  a  tennis  court 
for  a  neighbour.  During  his  college  vacations  he 
worked  for  the  Turriff  construction  group  as  a 
junior  engineer.  His  construction  manager,  Jack 
Hamer,  was  so  impressed  by  the  house  builder 
in-the-making  that  he  lent  Church  the  deposit 
money  for  the  purchase  of  his  first  site. 

In  1964  he  graduated  and  worked  full-time  for 
Turriff.  A  year  later  he  moved  to  Laing  as  a 
junior  engineer,  as  part  of  the  team  involved  in 
the  construction  of  the  Wraysbury  reservoir 
project.  Laing  moved  him  to  Doncaster  in  1966 
to  work  on  a  new  gas  pipeline.  Church  felt  that 
his  determination  and  enterprise  were  going  both 
unnoticed  and  unrewarded,  and  after  only  six 
months  in  his  new  job  he  decided  to  establish  his 
own  company.  In  partnership  with  Con  Burke  he 
established  the  civil  engineering  company,  Burke 
&  Church  Ltd.,  in  1967,  and  quickly  sold  his  first 
house  at  Prior  Road,  Camberley.  The  proceeds 
of  the  sale  were  ploughed  back  into  the  business 
and  used  to  acquire  more  land,  including  a  two- 


acre  site  in  Wokingham,  Surrey,  on  which  sat  a 
tumbledown  cottage,  in  which  he  lived. 

At  this  time  he  learned  a  valuable  business 
lesson.  He  realized  that  trying  to  establish  a  land 
bank  and  develop  houses  was  tying  up  his 
dwindling  cash  resources.  The  only  way  forward 
for  a  small  house  builder  was  to  develop  an 
option  system  on  difficult  sites,  rather  than 
buying  them  outright.  Church  was  already  adept 
at  buying  sites,  but  he  knew  he  could  not 
compete  with  cash-rich,  large  house  builders  for 
land  which  could  be  easily  developed.  Instead  he 
turned  to  tracts  of  land  which  other  builders 
would  avoid.  Sites  without  planning  consent  or 
those  which  would  be  difficult  to  develop  because 
of  drainage  or  construction  problems  began  to 
attract  him,  not  only  because  they  were  cheap 
but  because  he  could  secure  an  option  to  buy  at 
a  future  date  for  very  little  money. 

During  the  1970s  he  not  only  honed  these  land 
buying  skills,  but  also  developed  his  own  'just- 
in-time'  construction  techniques  more  than  a 
decade  ahead  of  Japanese  and  American  building 
companies.  This  entailed  extremely  efficient 
management  of  each  construction  site,  to  ensure 
that  materials  arrived  only  when  they  were 
needed  and  when  they  could  be  paid  for.  Simul- 
taneously he  recognized  the  need  for  a  highly 
skilled,  highly  motivated,  and  loyal  workforce. 
Although  he  demanded  a  lot  from  his  workers, 
they  were  among  the  best  paid  in  the  industry. 
Church  could  also  lead  by  example,  as  there  was 
hardly  a  job  on  the  site  he  could  not  do  himself, 
and  he  imbued  his  workers  with  a  sense  of 
achievement  and  of  fun. 

While  he  was  developing  his  reputation  as  a 
consummate  house  builder,  who  provided  qual- 
ity, up-market  homes,  mainly  designed  in  Tudor 
or  Georgian  style,  Church  continued  to  be  ham- 
strung by  a  lack  of  cash.  He  solved  this  problem 
in  the  mid-1970s  by  forming  a  partnership  with 
Martin  Grant,  another  Surrey-based  house 
builder.  Grant's  cash  injection  allowed  Church 
to  start  acquiring  larger  sites.  This  enabled  the 
company  to  lay  the  solid  foundations  of  growth, 
which  ultimately  resulted  in  a  stock  market 
flotation  in  1988,  when  750  houses  a  year  were 
being  built.  The  stock  market  had  not  fully- 
recovered  from  its  crash  the  previous  autumn 
and  house  builders  were  out  of  favour  with  the 
City.  Church  became  frustrated  by  investors' 
lack  of  confidence  and  a  year  later  bought  back  all 
the  shares.  Once  more  Charles  Church  became  a 
private  company,  whose  posters,  prominently 
displayed  on  London  underground  stations,  gave 
it  a  high  profile. 

In  the  male-dominated  w  orld  of  building  and 
construction  he  was  unusual  in  that  he  employed 
a  relatively  high  number  of  women  in  key  posi- 
tions. This  was  never  a  token  gesture.  He  wanted 
to  help  people  develop  their  intrinsic  skills  while 


7* 


Church 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


at  the  same  time  encouraging  them  to  widen 
their  experience.  He  included  his  wife  in  this 
policy,  for  in  the  early  days  she  was  expected  to 
do  her  share  of  the  physical  work  and  later  was 
encouraged  to  become  involved  in  all  aspects  of 
managing  a  house-building  company.  Ultimately 
she  became  a  main  board  director  in  charge  of 
architecture  and  was  expected  to  take  control  of 
the  business  if  anything  happened  to  him. 

Church  was  just  over  six  feet  tall,  with  long 
legs,  broad  shoulders,  large  eyes,  and  thick, 
brownish-red  hair.  He  seemed  to  be  a  workaholic 
who  believed  his  business  was  his  life,  but  he 
found  time  to  indulge  his  great  passion  for 
vintage  aircraft.  He  bought  a  1,000-acre  farm  and 
sporting  estate  in  Hampshire,  at  which  he  based 
his  company  for  refurbishing  World  War  II 
aircraft  and  established  his  own  vintage  plane 
collection,  which  included  various  Spitfires,  a 
Hurricane,  a  Mustang,  an  ME  109,  and  a  Lan- 
caster bomber.  He  died  at  the  controls  of 
his  beloved  Mark  V  Spitfire,  which  developed 
engine  failure  and  crashed  near  Hartley  Wintney 
in  Hampshire,  1  July  1989. 

In  1967  he  married  a  former  air  hostess, 
Susanna  Bridgette,  daughter  of  William  Simms, 
dairy  shop  manager.  They  had  two  daughters 
and  a  son. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Duggan 

CLAPHAM,  (Arthur)  Roy  (1904-1990),  bota- 
nist, was  born  in  Norwich  24  May  1904,  the 
eldest  of  three  children  and  only  son  of  George 
Clapham,  schoolmaster,  and  his  wife,  Dora  Mar- 
garet Harvey.  His  childhood  was  spent  in  Nor- 
wich, where  he  attended  the  City  of  Norwich 
School  (1915-22),  winning  a  scholarship  to 
Downing  College,  Cambridge.  At  Cambridge  he 
developed  his  interests  in  botany,  retaining  his 
love  of  the  native  flora  but  applying  his  know- 
ledge of  the  physical  sciences  and  mathematics 
to  plant  physiology.  He  obtained  first  classes  in 
both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1924 
and  1925)  and  then  undertook  research,  super- 
vised by  Professor  F.  F.  *Blackman,  for  his 
Cambridge  Ph.D.  (1929). 

In  1928  he  was  appointed  crop  physiologist  at 
Rothamsted  Agricultural  Experimental  Station 
in  Hertfordshire,  where  he  worked  closely  and 
successfully  with  (Sir)  R.  A.  *Fisher  to  establish 
reliable  methods  for  using  small  samples  to 
measure  the  yield  of  cereal  crops.  In  1930  Clap- 
ham  was  appointed  to  a  teaching  post  in  the 
botany  department  at  Oxford  University  and  in 
1933  he  and  his  wife  set  up  their  home  in 
Wytham.  His  period  at  Oxford  under  (Sir) 
Arthur  *Tansley  was  one  of  great  activity.  He 
lectured  on  a  very  wide  variety  of  topics  and 
published  research  in  plant  ecology,  palaeoeco- 
logy,  cytotaxonomy,  and  physiology.  His  ability 


as  a  teacher,  both  formally  in  lectures  and  infor- 
mally in  tutorials,  was  outstanding.  His  lectures 
concentrated  on  the  essential  steps  in  under- 
standing a  subject,  and  he  had  the  rare  gift  of 
being  able  to  express  himself  in  clear,  simple, 
often  elegant  language  with  perfect  syntax. 

In  1944  he  moved  to  the  chair  of  botany  at  the 
University  of  Sheffield,  where  he  remained  until 
his  retirement  in  1969.  He  fell  in  love  with  the 
Derbyshire  countryside  and  soon  became  an 
expert  on  its  vegetation. 

He  continued  to  develop  both  teaching  and 
research  in  plant  ecology  and  thus  built  upon 
the  foundation  already  laid  by  his  predecessor, 
W.  H.  *Pearsall.  Several  of  his  research  students 
made  important  contributions,  but  his  own  time 
for  research  was  devoted  to  the  preparation,  with 
T.  G.  Turin  and  E.  F.  *Warburg,  of  the  Flora 
of  the  British  hies.  This  was  published  in  1952 
and  was  followed  by  a  revised  second  edition 
(1962)  and  by  the  Excursion  Flora  (1959).  Initially 
his  department  was  small,  but  Clapham's  wide 
interests  ensured  that  it  offered  a  well-balanced 
treatment  of  modern  botany,  to  which  Clapham 
himself  contributed  a  full  share.  During  the 
following  years  the  size  and  activities  of  the 
department  were  steadily  expanded  so  that  at  his 
retirement  it  had  acquired  both  a  national  and 
international  reputation  for  its  achievements. 

Clapham  enjoyed  field  classes  and  would  seem 
oblivious  of  driving  rain  or  wet  undergrowth  as 
he  explained  ecological  processes.  His  colleagues 
never  ceased  to  be  surprised  at  the  extent  of  his 
knowledge,  not  only  of  botany,  nor  indeed  of 
physical  sciences  and  mathematics,  but  of  lit- 
erature, languages,  art,  and  history.  He  combined 
a  retentive  memory  with  a  penetrating  intellec- 
tual curiosity.  He  could  be  a  fearsome  critic,  but 
he  was  always  constructive. 

His  early  scientific  publications  are  notable  for 
their  precision  and  their  clarity  of  presentation. 
Yet  after  moving  to  Sheffield  he  ceased  publish- 
ing original  research  and  increasingly  became  a 
source  of  ideas  and  a  stimulus  to  others,  both 
formally  through  his  writing  and  informally 
through  discussion.  For  example,  he  played  a 
leading  part  in  the  scheme  to  map  in  detail  the 
distribution  of  British  flora,  and  in  the  United 
Kingdom's  contribution  to  the  International  Bio- 
logical Programme.  He  was  an  editor  of  the  New 
Phytologtst  from  1930  to  1961. 

At  Sheffield  an  increasing  proportion  of  Clap- 
ham's  time  was  given  to  serving  on  committees 
of  the  university,  of  learned  societies,  and  of 
national  bodies,  such  as  the  Nature  Conservancy, 
Field  Studies  Council,  and  the  planning  board  of 
the  Peak  District  National  Park.  He  was  a  trustee 
of  the  British  Museum  (Natural  History)  from 
1965  to  1975.  In  1959  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society.  He  also  served  the  University 
of  Sheffield  as  a  pro-vice-chancellor  ( 1954-S)  and 


72 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Clark 


was  acting  vice-chancellor  in  1965.  He  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1969  and  in  1048  a  fellow  of 
the  Linnean  Society,  of  which  he  was  president 
in  1967-70.  He  won  the  Linnean  gold  medal  in 
1972.  In  1970  he  received  honorarv  doctorates 
from  Sheffield  (Litt.D.)  and  Aberdeen  (LL  D). 
Following  his  retirement  he  moved  to 
Arkholme  in  the  Lune  Valley  near  Lancaster. 
Clapham  was  of  medium  build  and  always  wore 
glasses.  His  face  was  very  attentive,  with  a 
quizzical  look  and  a  smile  never  far  away.  In  1933 
he  married  Brenda  North  (died  1986),  daugh- 
ter of  Alexander  Goodwin  Stoessiger,  watch 
importer  and  wholesale  jeweller,  of  London. 
They  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters.  One  of 
his  sons  died  in  infancy  in  1934.  Clapham  died  in 
Lancaster  Royal  Infirmary,  18  December  1990. 

[Donald  Pigott  in  Journal  of  Ecology,  vol.  lxxx,  1992, 
and  Sew  Phytology,  vol.  cxix,  1991;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  Donald  Pigott 

CLARK,  Colin  Grant  (1905- 1989),  economist, 
was  born  2  November  1905  in  London,  the  eldest 
in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  one  daughter  of 
James  Clark,  a  merchant  of  Scottish  descent,  w  ho 
worked  in  South  Africa,  and  his  wife,  Marion 
Jolly,  who  had  travelled  to  London  for  the  birth. 
He  was  educated  at  the  Dragon  School  in 
Oxford,  Winchester,  and  (from  1924)  Brasenose 
College,  Oxford.  Though  he  read  chemistry, 
obtaining  a  second-class  degree  in  1928,  he 
developed  a  fascination  for  economics,  partly 
influenced  by  G.  D.  H.  *Cole  and  Lionel  (later 
Baron)  *Robbins. 

He  then  took  up  a  research  post  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics,  moving  in  May  1929  to 
Liverpool  University,  to  work  on  the  Merseyside 
social  survey.  In  February  1930  he  was  invited  to 
join  the  Economic  Advisory  Council,  which 
included  J.  Maynard  (later  Baron)  *Keynes. 
Through  that  connection  Clark  became  a  Cam- 
bridge lecturer  in  statistics  in  the  economics 
faculty  (1931-7).  His  first  book,  The  National 
Income  1Q24-1Q31  (1932),  was  a  landmark  in 
national  accounting.  His  reputation  grew 
through  the  publication,  with  A.  C.  *Pigou,  of 
The  Economic  Position  of  Great  Britain  (1936)  and 
the  appearance  of  his  National  Income  and  Outlay 
(1937).  Keynes  relied  gready  on  his  estimates. 

Clark  also  found  time  for  Labour  party  poli- 
tics, and  unsuccessfully  fought  three  parliamen- 
tary elections  (North  Dorset,  1929,  Liverpool 
Wavertree,  1931,  and  South  Norfolk,  1935). 
Although  he  assumed  a  non-party  stance,  he 
shifted  after  World  War  II  across  the  political 
spectrum  from  Fabianism  towards  free  market 
economics.  While  he  retained  sympathy  towards 
the  weak,  he  increasingly  doubted  the  power  of 
government  to  secure  improvement  without 
growth  and  monetary  stability. 

In  1937,  with  his  outstanding  The  Conditions  of 


Economic  Progress  (1940)  in  preparation,  Clark 
obtained  leave  to  visit  Australian  universities. 
Though  expected  back  in  Cambridge,  he  learned 
that  the  Labour  premier  of  Queensland  needed 
urgent  assistance.  Thus  began  a  long  spell,  to 
1952,  as  under-secretary  of  state  for  labour  and 
industry  and  adviser  to  the  Queensland  govern- 
ment, which  was  combined  with  academic  writ- 
ing. Four  books  appeared  quickly  {The  National 
Income  of  Australia,  with  J.  G.  Crawford,  1938;/! 
Critique  of  Russian  Statistics,  1939;  The  Conditions 
of  Economic  Progress,  1940;  and  The  Economics  of 
i960,  1942),  though  much  of  his  important  work 
appeared  in  the  official  Economic  News. 

In  October  195 1  Clark's  interest  in  world  food 
supplies,  stemming  from  Australian  experience, 
brought  him  secondment  to  Rome  to  advise  the 
Food  and  Agriculture  Organization.  It  was  then 
that  he  decided  to  apply  for  the  vacant  director- 
ship of  the  Oxford  University  Institute  for 
Research  in  Agricultural  Economics  and,  to  his 
surprise,  was  appointed  (1953-69).  The  Condi- 
tions of  Economic  Progress,  revised  in  1951,  was 
extended  in  1957.  He  argued  that  progress 
involves  shifts  from  primary  into  secondary  and 
tertiary  sectors,  and  he  quantified  the  size  of  the 
movement  and  its  resulting  changes  in  income 
and  productivity  through  intensive  empirical 
study.  Clark  was  a  master  of  data  assembly. 
possessing  an  uncanny  ability  to  draw  elegant 
and  simple  conclusions.  There  followed  The 
Economics  of  Subsistence  Agriculture  (1964,  with 
Margaret  Haswell),  The  Economics  of  Irrigation 
(1967,  revised  with  Ian  Carruthers  in  1981),  and 
Population  Growth  and  Land  Use  (1967). 

In  a  broader  context,  Clark  became  con- 
troversial, relentlessly  pursuing  three  themes. 
First,  his  conversion  to  Catholicism  in  1942 
provoked  his  interest  in  population  growth, 
prompting  him  to  attack  Malthusian  views.  He 
became  a  key  lay  member  of  the  pope's  Com- 
mission on  Population  (1964-6),  from  which 
Humanae  Vitae  appeared.  Though  frequently 
regarded  as  extreme,  Clark  was  able  to  demon- 
strate agriculture's  remarkable  capacity  to 
increase  food  availability  to  support  his  conten- 
tion that  'the  earth  can  feed  its  people'.  His  other 
themes  were  equally  prominent.  By  1957  he 
found  kindred  free  market  advocates  in  London 
at  the  Institute  of  Economic  Affairs.  In  Growth- 
manship  (1961),  one  of  several  IEA  pamphlets,  he 
argued  that  progress  would  not  be  achieved  by 
increased  levels  of  nationally  planned  investment 
but  by  improving  skills  and  fostering  incentive. 
The  latter,  his  third  theme  (Taxmanshtp,  1964), 
could  only  be  damaged  by  attempts  to  secure 
welfare  improvements  by  excessive  redistribu- 
tion of  wealth. 

In  1969  Clark  retired  to  Australia,  briefly 
joining  Monash  University  before  returning  to 
Brisbane  and  an  unofficial  position  at  Queensland 


73 


Clark 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


University.  There  he  continued  avid  writing, 
including  his  final  book  Regional  and  Urban 
Location  (1982),  in  which,  despite  his  normal 
stance,  he  expressed  scepticism  about  market 
efficiency  in  guiding  the  geographical  distribu- 
tion of  industry  and  population. 

Clark  held  four  honorary  doctorates  (the  last 
fittingly  from  Queensland  University,  1985)  to 
add  to  his  Oxford  D.Litt.  (1971),  a  Festschrift 
appeared  in  1988  (Duncan  Ironmonger  et  al., 
National  Income  and  Economic  Progress,  Essays  in 
Honour  of  Colin  Clark),  and  he  became  a  corre- 
sponding fellow  of  the  British  Academy  (1978) 
and,  in  1987,  a  distinguished  fellow  of  the 
Australian  Economic  Society.  He  was  also  a 
fellow  of  the  Econometric  Society. 

Clark  was  regarded  by  some  as  a  'gadfly'  or 
wayward  genius;  others  thought  he  had  been 
overlooked  for  a  Nobel  prize  for  his  national 
income  work  or  felt  that  his  passion  for  data 
overwhelmed  his  capacity  for  deductive  reason- 
ing. With  enormous  zest  for  life  he  was  never 
remote,  singing  to  an  accordion,  reciting  *Belloc, 
and  engaging  in  rough  rural  living  and  walking, 
which  admirably  suited  his  physique.  He  was 
above  average  height,  with  a  strong  muscular 
body  and  short  cropped  hair,  and  often  seemed 
to  be  untidily  dressed.  While  his  memory  and 
powers  of  recall  were  undaunting,  he  was  basi- 
cally a  sensitive  man  who  was  easy  to  approach 
and  whose  eyes  would  twinkle  at  the  prospect  of 
a  friendly  argument. 

In  1935  he  married  Marjorie,  daughter  of 
Hugh  Herbert  Tattersall,  sea  captain  in  the 
merchant  navy.  They  had  eight  sons  and  one 
daughter.  Clark  died  in  Brisbane,  4  September 
1989. 

[John  Eatwell  et  al.  (eds.),  The  New  Palgrave:  a 
Dictionary  of  Economics,  1987;  Economic  Record,  vol.  lxv, 
September  1989,  and  vol.  lxvi,  December  1990;  David 
L.  Sills  (ed.),  Encyclopaedia  of  the  Social  Sciences,  vol. 
xviii,  1968;  personal  knowledge.]  G.  H.  Peters 

CLARKE,  Thomas  Ernest  Bennett  (1907- 
1989),  author  and  screenwriter,  was  born  7  June 
1907  in  Watford,  Hertfordshire,  the  younger  son 
and  third  of  four  children  of  (Sir)  Ernest  Michael 
Clarke,  a  company  director  dealing  in  shipping 
and  gold  mines,  and  his  wife  Madeline,  daughter 
of  Ernest  Bennett  Gardiner,  an  Irish  bank  man- 
ager. Always  known  as  'Tibby',  Clarke  attended 
Charterhouse  and  spent  a  year  at  Clare  College, 
Cambridge,  studying  law,  before  visiting  Aus- 
tralia, where  he  edited  the  Red  Heart,  a  girls' 
magazine.  He  then  travelled  to  New  Zealand, 
San  Francisco,  and  Canada.  On  his  return  to 
England  he  secured  employment  as  junior  edito- 
rial assistant  on  the  Hardware  Trade  Journal, 
moving  on  to  work  for  the  weekly  magazine 
Answers  and  other  papers. 

Clarke's  work  in  the  late  1920s  as  publicity 


officer  for  the  W.  S.  Crawford  Advertising 
Agency  brought  him  into  contact  with  the  film 
industry  for  the  first  time,  publicizing  sound 
equipment  systems  for  Western  Electric.  Clarke 
was  made  redundant  in  1930  and  decided  to  visit 
Argentina,  securing  his  passage  by  becoming  a 
purser  on  a  tramp  steamer.  On  his  return  he 
resumed  work  for  Answers  and  wrote  Go  South- 
Go  West  (1932),  an  account  of  his  recent  adven- 
tures abroad.  Clarke  secured  another  journalist/ 
publicity  job,  editing  the  UK  Temperance  and 
General  Provident  Institution's  monthly  maga- 
zine. He  then  decided  to  go  freelance,  continued 
work  on  his  novels,  and  reported  for  the  Daily 
Sketch. 

In  World  War  II  Clarke  enlisted  as  a  war 
reserve  constable  in  the  Metropolitan  Police  until 
asthma  forced  his  discharge.  He  did  not  write 
screenplays  until  1942,  aged  thirty-five,  when 
Monja  Danischewsky,  director  of  publicity  at 
Ealing  Studios,  asked  Clarke  to  assist  with  unsat- 
isfactory scripts  before  securing  a  contract  as  a 
screenwriter.  His  first  screen  credit  was  for 
'doctoring'  the  script  of  For  Those  in  Peril  (1944), 
followed  by  The  Halfway  House  (1944),  a  ghost 
story  directed  by  Basil  Dearden. 

Clarke  is  best  known  for  his  Ealing  comedies, 
and  his  first  opportunity  to  work  on  comedy  was 
to  write  a  short  sequence  of  the  supernatural 
story  film  Dead  of  Night  (1945).  This  was  a 
prelude  to  his  writing  the  first  classic  'Ealing 
comedy',  Hue  and  Cry  (1946),  an  ingenious  story 
about  the  revenge  of  youngsters  who  discover 
that  criminals  have  been  using  their  newspaper 
to  pass  information.  One  of  his  most  famous 
comedies  was  Passport  to  Pimlico  (1949),  which 
celebrated  its  characters'  discovery  that  an  area  of 
London  belonged  to  Burgundy,  thus  freeing 
them  from  laws  and  petty  restrictions,  a  theme 
that  reflected  its  postwar  audiences'  desire  to  be 
rid  of  rationing.  Clarke  won  an  Oscar  and  an 
award  at  the  Venice  film  festival  for  The  Lavender 
Hill  Mob  (1951),  about  a  Bank  of  England 
employee,  played  by  (Sir)  Alec  Guinness,  who 
steals  bullion  and  turns  it  into  souvenir  models  of 
the  Eiffel  tower.  The  Titfield  Thunderbolt  (1952), 
about  a  village  community  trying  to  save  a 
branch  railway  from  closure,  similarly  celebrated 
individuals  who  battled  against  authority. 
Although  these  films  had  no  clear  political  mes- 
sage, their  themes  tapped  into  the  mood  of 
postwar  austerity  and  reflected  the  concerns  of 
many  British  people.  Clarke  also  scripted  The 
Blue  Lamp  (1949),  a  police  drama  from  a  play  by 
Ted  (later  Baron)  Willis,  starring  Jack  *Warner 
and  (Sir)  Dirk  Bogarde. 

Clarke  was  associated  with  Ealing's  most  pro- 
ductive years,  when  it  was  a  studio  with  a 
distinctive  outlook  and  structure,  which  enabled 
its  head,  Sir  Michael  *Balcon,  to  initiate  some  of 
the  British  cinema's  most  famous  films.  In  1955 


74 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Clayton 


Ealing  was  sold  to  the  BBC  and  Clarke  went 
freelance,  working  in  Hollywood  and  Britain.  He 
scripted  John  Ford's  Gideon's  Day  (1958)  and 
adapted  literary  classics  during  this  period.  But 
his  days  of  writing  original  screenplays  were  over 
and  he  was  never  again  allowed  the  freedom  or 
creative  inspiration  he  enjoyed  at  Ealing.  The 
last  film  with  a  'Clarke'  screen  credit  was  A  Man 
Could  Get  Killed  (1066). 

In  1952  he  was  appointed  OBE.  He  published 
a  witty  and  penetrating  autobiography  in  1974, 
This  Is  Where  I  Came  In.  He  continued  to  write 
novels  throughout  his  career  as  a  screenwriter: 
Jeremy's  England  (1934),  Cartwright  Was  a  Cad 
(1936),  Two  and  Two  Make  Five  (1938),  What's 
Yours?  (1938),  Mr.  Spirket  Reforms  (1940),  The 
World  Was  Mine  (1964),  The  Wide  Open  Door 
(1966),  The  Trial  of  the  Serpent  (1968),  The 
Wrong  Turning  (1971),  The  Man  Who  Seduced  a 
Bank  (1979),  Murder  at  Buckingham  Palace 
(1981),  and  Grim  Discovery  (1983). 

Clarke  was  a  courteous,  sensitive  man  with  a 
great  sense  of  humour,  who  fulfilled  his  ambition 
to  become  a  racehorse  owner  in  the  1960s.  He 
was  genial  and  portly,  with  a  youthful  appear- 
ance; his  distinctive  brown  hair  had  a  silver 
streak.  In  1932  he  married  Joyce  Caroline  Jenny 
(died  1983),  daughter  of  Roy  Rockwell  Steele, 
engineer.  They  had  a  son,  Michael,  a  film  pro- 
ducer who  died  in  a  drowning  accident  in  1966, 
and  a  daughter,  Ann.  Clarke  died  11  February 
1989  in  London. 

[Charles  Barr,  Ealtng  Studios,  1977;  T.  E.  B.  Clarke, 
This  Is  Where  I  Came  In  (autobiography),  1974;  British 
Film  Institute  microfiche  jacket;  private  information] 

Sarah  Street 

CLAYTON,  Sir  Stanley  George  (1911-1986), 
professor  of  obstetrics  and  gynaecology,  was  born 
13  September  191 1  in  Hankow,  China,  the 
younger  son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  the 
Revd  George  Clayton,  Methodist  minister,  and 
his  wife,  Florence  Powell.  At  the  age  of  eight  he 
was  sent  to  Kingswood  School  near  Bath  and 
from  there  in  1929  he  went  to  King's  College, 
London,  with  a  Sambrooke  scholarship  to  begin 
his  medical  studies.  He  went  on  to  King's 
College  Hospital  and  qualified  MB,  BS  and 
MRCS,  LRCP  in  1934,  gaining  the  Jelf  medal  in 
surgery  and  the  Todd  prize  in  medicine.  He  then 
took  the  primary  FRCS  (1936),  gaining  the 
Hallett  prize.  As  a  medical  student  he  was  noted 
not  only  for  his  academic  brilliance  but  also  as  a 
first-class  rugby  player.  After  qualification  and 
house  appointments,  he  became  a  gynaecological 
registrar  at  King's  in  1936  and  obstetric  registrar 
at  Queen  Charlotte's  Hospital  in  1938. 

The  war  years  saw  him  serving  as  a  general 
surgeon  and  a  gynaecologist  in  the  Emergency 
Medical  Services  and  latterly  as  a  major  in  the 
Royal  Army  Medical  Corps.  On  his  return  to 


civilian  life  he  resumed  work  in  his  chosen 
speciality  of  obstetrics  and  gynaecology  and  he 
was  soon  appointed  to  the  consultant  staff  of 
King's  College  Hospital  (1047),  Queen  Char- 
lotte's (1946),  and  the  Chelsea  Hospital  for 
Women  (1953).  He  obtained  the  London  Uni- 
versity degrees  of  MD  (1941)  and  MS  (1942).  As 
a  consultant  he  was  noted  for  the  excellence  of 
his  clinical  judgement  and  the  speed  of  his 
surgery,  but  above  all  for  the  clarity  of  his 
teaching,  both  at  undergraduate  and  postgrad- 
uate levels.  His  pocket  textbooks  of  obstetrics 
and  gynaecology  ran  to  many  editions  and  were 
compulsory  reading  for  most  undergraduates — 
indeed  they  were  often  used  by  postgraduates  as 
well.  He  became  FRCOG  in  1951. 

The  opportunity  to  develop  the  academic  side 
of  his  professional  life  came  when  he  was  invited 
to  take  the  chair  of  obstetrics  and  gynaecology  at 
Queen  Charlotte's  Hospital  and  the  Chelsea 
Hospital  for  Women  in  1963.  He  returned  to 
King's  to  take  up  the  newly  established  chair  of 
obstetrics  and  gynaecology  in  1967  and  set  up  the 
new  academic  department.  He  soon  gathered 
round  him  a  team  of  young  and  enthusiastic 
academics,  who  worked  under  his  guidance  to 
build  the  foundations  of  what  was  to  become  one 
of  the  outstanding  departments  in  the  country, 
with  a  growing  international  reputation.  In  later 
years,  in  spite  of  a  heavy  involvement  in  the  work 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Obstetricians  and  Gynae- 
cologists (RCOG),  he  continued  to  devote  much 
of  his  time  to  the  department  at  King's  and  to  the 
hospital  and  medical  school.  Clayton's  associa- 
tion with  the  RCOG  was  long  and  distinguished. 
He  served  on  many  of  its  committees  and  was 
in  turn  vice-president  (1971)  and  president 
(1972-5).  During  his  presidency,  his  admin- 
istrative skills  and  obvious  integrity  enabled  him 
to  guide  the  Australian  gynaecologists  through  a 
minefield  of  legal  and  professional  problems 
when  they  decided  to  separate  from  the  parent 
college.  The  Australians  made  him  an  honorary 
fellow  of  their  new  college  in  1985.  Clayton  also 
edited  the  British  Journal  of  Obstetrics  and  Gynae- 
cology from  1963  to  1975.  He  was  knighted  in 
1974  and  became  honorary  FRSM  in  1985. 

After  his  retirement  from  King's  in  1976, 
Clayton  took  on  that  most  onerous  of  tasks  for  a 
medical  man,  chairmanship  of  the  consultants' 
merit  awards  committee.  In  this  role  he  travelled 
widely  around  the  country  and  did  much  to 
explain  the  workings  of  the  committee  to  the 
often  aggrieved  consultant  body. 

Clayton  was  a  well-built,  balding,  bespec- 
tacled, and  shy  man,  with  a  somewhat  austere 
outward  appearance.  He  spoke  his  mind  diffi- 
dently but  was  always  to  the  point  and  impatient 
of  the  inessential.  He  had  a  delightful  sense  of 
humour,  which  quickly  broke  through  his  outer 
shell,  and   he  was  an  entertaining  and   lively 


75 


Clayton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


companion.  A  knowledgeable  and  keen  gardener, 
he  was  also  interested  in  embroidery,  at  which  he 
became  very  skilled.  He  had  a  happy  family  life 
at  home  in  Leatherhead  with  Kathleen  Mary, 
daughter  of  Alfred  Willshire.  They  were  married 
in  1936  and  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Kathleen 
died  in  1983.  Clayton  continued  to  work  as  editor 
of  Ten  Teachers'  Obstetrics  (14th  edn.,  1985)  and 
Ten  Teachers'  Gynaecology  (14th  edn.,  1985)  and 
took  a  close  interest  in  developments  in  the 
speciality.  He  suffered  a  great  deal  from  angina 
following  a  mild  coronary  thrombosis,  but  char- 
acteristically made  light  of  the  disability.  Follow- 
ing an  operation  from  which  he  was  recovering 
satisfactorily,  he  suffered  another  coronary  and 
died  12  September  1986  in  King's,  the  hospital 
to  which  he  had  given  devoted  service  for  more 
than  fifty  years. 

[Munk's  Roll,  vol.  viii,  1989;  Daily  Telegraph,  17 
September  1986;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Michael  Brudenell 

CLEGG,  Sir  Alexander  Bradshaw  (1909- 
1986),  teacher,  educator,  and  educational  admin- 
istrator, was  born  13  June  1909  in  Sawley, 
Derbyshire,  the  only  son  and  youngest  of  five 
children  of  Samuel  Clegg,  headmaster  of  Long 
Eaton  Grammar  School,  and  his  wife,  Mary 
Bradshaw.  'Alec'  Clegg  attended  his  father's 
school  before  going  on  to  the  Quaker  Bootham 
School,  York,  at  the  age  of  fifteen.  He  studied 
modern  languages  at  Clare  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  obtained  a  second  class  (division  I)  in 
all  three  of  his  examinations — part  i  (French)  in 
1929,  part  i  (German)  in  1930,  and  part  ii  (1931). 
He  then  qualified  as  a  teacher  at  the  London  Day 
Training  College. 

Clegg  served  as  an  assistant  master  at  St 
Clement  Dane's  Grammar  School  in  London, 
where  he  taught  languages  and  football.  In  1936 
he  was  appointed  an  administrative  assistant  to 
the  Birmingham  education  committee.  His  note- 
books of  that  period  show  a  meticulous  regard  for 
the  details  of  administrative  procedures,  which 
he  was  sometimes  later  at  pains  to  conceal.  In 
1939  he  became  assistant  education  officer  to 
Cheshire,  before  being  appointed  in  1942  as 
deputy  education  officer  to  Worcestershire.  He 
became  deputy  education  officer  to  the  West 
Riding,  one  of  the  largest  education  authorities  in 
the  country,  in  January  1945.  Within  a  few 
months  the  chief  education  officer  moved  to 
Lancashire  and  Clegg  was  appointed  in  his  place. 
In  later  years  he  attributed  this  to  the  fact  that 
the  clerk  to  the  West  Riding,  himself  legally 
qualified,  discovered  that  the  preferred  candidate 
also  had  a  legal  qualification.  So  began  a  remark- 
able career  in  creative  educational  administra- 
tion. 

Clegg  concentrated  on  the  essentials.  Early  on 
he  established  a  number  of  specialist  colleges  for 


teachers:  in  1949  Bretton  Hall  for  teachers  of  the 
arts,  and  in  1952  Woolley  Hall  as  the  first 
in-service  residential  college.  Others  followed. 
Bringing  teachers  together,  thinking  with  them, 
and  learning  from  them,  was  a  matter  of  personal 
commitment  throughout  Clegg's  career.  He  had 
a  gift  for  expressing  complex  ideas  simply.  He 
wrote  Ten  Years  of  Change  (1953),  which  was  the 
first  of  four  major  reports  to  the  West  Riding 
education  committee.  Unlike  most  such  reports, 
it  pointed  sharply,  with  accompanying  photo- 
graphs, to  the  failures  of  the  system  as  well  as  to 
its  successes.  As  regards  secondary  schools, 
Clegg  believed  they  should  take  responsibility  for 
children  of  all  abilities  but  insisted  that  there  was 
no  one  way  of  achieving  this.  Local  communities 
in  the  West  Riding  were  encouraged  to  shape 
schools  to  their  needs.  So  some  comprehensive 
schools  were  large,  some  small;  some  had  sixth 
forms,  others  did  not.  What  worked  was  the  test. 
Clegg  had  no  interest  in  uniformity.  He  was  one 
of  the  main  architects  of  the  comprehensive 
system  of  education. 

In  1959  Clegg  served  on  the  central  advisory 
council  for  education,  chaired  by  Sir  Geoffrey 
(later  Baron)  *Crowther,  which  dealt  with  the 
education  of  fifteen-  to  eighteen-year-olds,  but 
his  main  interests  lay  with  the  changing  primary 
school.  After  widespread  discussion  with  teach- 
ers, he  came  to  the  view  that  a  middle-school 
system  would  combine  the  best  practices  of  the 
primary  school  with  the  needs  of  eleven-  and 
twelve-year-olds.  His  reasoning  convinced  the 
secretary  of  state  and  enabling  legislation  was 
passed  in  1964. 

In  1964  the  West  Riding  published  his  The 
Excitement  of  Writing  to  show  what  could  be 
achieved  by  young  children  if  the  opportunity 
was  given  to  them  to  express  themselves  freely. 
In  1963  he  was  invited  to  serve  on  the  inquiry 
chaired  by  (Sir)  John  *Newsom,  whose  report, 
Half  Our  Future  (1963),  concluded  that  most 
children  in  secondary  modern  schools  were 
undervalued,  a  view  he  shared.  He  was  knighted 
in  1965,  the  year  in  which  he  became  president  of 
the  Association  of  Chief  Education  Officers.  In 
1968  his  most  influential  book,  written  with 
Barbara  Megson,  Children  in  Distress,  was  pub- 
lished. In  1970  he  was  invited  by  the  Department 
of  Education  and  Science  to  deliver  the  lecture  in 
Central  Hall,  Westminster,  to  commemorate  one 
hundred  years  of  state  education.  In  that  lecture, 
published  in  About  Our  Schools  (1980),  he  exam- 
ined the  failure  over  that  period  to  achieve 
genuine  educational  opportunities  for  the  dis- 
advantaged and  pointed  to  the  disturbing  social 
and  economic  consequences  of  this.  After  retir- 
ing from  the  West  Riding  in  March  1974,  he 
became  chairman  of  the  Centre  for  Information 
and  Advice  on  Educational  Disadvantage,  a  post 
he  held  between  1976  and  1979. 


76 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Clements 


He  was  awarded  honorary  degrees  by  Leeds 
(1972),  Loughborough  (1972),  and  Bradford 
(1978),  and  was  made  a  fellow  of  King's  College, 
London  (1972)  and  an  honorary  fellow  of  Bretton 
Hall  (1981).  The  inspirational  qualities  which  he 
brought  to  his  achievements  in  the  West  Riding 
and  elsewhere  were  remarkable.  He  was  proud  of 
his  ability  to  pick  and  then  trust  colleagues  of 
high  quality.  Informality  mixed  with  firmness  of 
purpose,  good  humour,  and  approachability  were 
characteristics  of  his  style.  Absolute  integrity  and 
a  commitment  to  put  the  interests  of  children 
above  all  else  were  at  the  heart  of  his  achieve- 
ment. 

In  1940  he  married  Jessie  Coverdale,  daughter 
of  Thomas  Phillips,  teacher;  they  had  three  sons. 
Clegg  died  in  York,  20  January  1986. 

[Qegg  papers,  Lawrence  Badey  Centre,  Bretton  Hall, 
Yorkshire;  Bramley  Occasional  Papers,  vol.  iv,  1990; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Peter  Newsam 

CLEMENTS,  Sir  John  Selby  (1910-1988), 
actor,  manager,  and  producer,  was  born  25  April 
1910  at  1  Carlton  Terrace,  Childs  Hill,  Hendon, 
Middlesex,  the  only  child  of  Herbert  William 
Clements,  barrister,  and  his  wife,  Man-  Elizabeth 
Stephens.  He  was  educated  at  St  Paul's  School 
and  spent  one  term  at  St  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge. He  was  forced  to  withdraw  from  the 
college,  where  he  had  begun  to  study  history, 
because  sudden  financial  loss  meant  his  family 
could  no  longer  afford  the  fees.  His  mother's 
great  friend,  Marie  Lohr,  gave  him  his  first  job  at 
the  age  of  twenty  at  the  Lyric  theatre,  Hammer- 
smith. In  193 1  he  joined  the  Shakespearian 
Company  run  by  Sir  (P.  B.)  Ben  *Greet,  and  at 
twenty-five,  in  1935,  was  sufficiently  confident  to 
found  the  Intimate  Theatre,  Palmers  Green,  as  a 
weekly  repertory  company  which  he  managed, 
directed,  and  acted  in  until  1040.  In  the  first  year 
he  produced  forty-two  plays  there,  playing 
thirty-six  leading  parts. 

In  1936  he  married  his  first  wife,  Inga  Maria 
Lillemor  Ahlgren.  They  had  no  children  and  the 
marriage  was  dissolved  ten  years  later.  In  1946  he 
married  the  actress  Kay  Hammond,  whose  real 
name  was  Dorothy  Katherine,  daughter  of  Sir 
Guy  Standing,  KBE,  of  the  Royal  Naval  Volun- 
teer Reserve.  Kay  was  formerly  the  wife  of  Sir 
Ronald  George  Leon,  third  baronet,  and  mother 
of  Sir  John  Leon,  fourth  baronet,  later  better 
known  as  the  actor  John  Standing.  She  and 
Clements  had  no  children. 

During  the  war  Clements  had  produced  many 
plays  for  ENSA  and  also  organized  a  revue 
company  to  entertain  the  troops  at  out-of-the- 
way  places.  John  Clements  and  Kay  Hammond 
together  became  one  of  the  best  know  n  theatrical 
couples  of  their  day.  In  1944  they  acted  at  the 
Apollo  in  Private  Lives,  by  (Sir)  Noel  *Coward, 


an  enchanting  production  with  which  Coward 
was  delighted.  In  1946  Clements  appeared  as  the 
Earl  of  Warwick  in  The  Kingmaker  at  the  St 
James's  theatre,  which  he  himself  managed.  He 
presented  and  directed  Man  and  Superman  in 
195 1  at  the  New  theatre,  playing  the  role  of  John 
Tanner. 

In  addition  to  his  many  productions  and 
performances,  Clements  was  a  successful  broad- 
caster on  the  radio,  taking  part  with  Kay  Ham- 
mond in  the  weekly  discussion  programme,  We 
Beg  To  Differ.  Their  comic  rivalry  on  the  air 
delighted  audiences.  From  1955  Clements  was 
adviser  on  drama  for  Associated  Rediffusion,  one 
of  the  first  independent  television  companies,  for 
which  he  was  contracted  to  produce  a  number  of 
television  plays.  In  July  1955  he  joined  the  board 
of  directors  of  the  Saville  theatre,  the  manage- 
ment of  which  came  under  his  personal  con- 
trol. 

In  i960  Kay  Hammond  became  paralysed 
after  a  stroke  and  was  confined  to  a  wheelchair 
for  the  remaining  twenty  years  of  her  life.  Clem- 
ents joined  the  Old  Vic  Company  in  1961, 
making  his  first  appearance  in  New  York  in  the 
ride  part  of  Macbeth  in  1962.  In  1966  he  took  on 
the  challenge  of  directing  the  Chichester  festival 
theatre  when  Sir  Laurence  (later  Baron)  *OHvier 
left  to  found  the  National  Theatre.  His  bound- 
less enthusiasm  and  love  of  the  theatre  overcame 
any  initial  reluctance  on  the  part  of  the  actors  he 
approached  for  his  first  season  at  Chichester  to 
join  him  'in  the  wake  of  Larry'.  He  was  able  to 
recruit  Celia  "Johnson  and  Bill  Fraser  and  splen- 
did supporting  casts,  who  were  very  loyal  to  him. 
His  seasons  were  independent  and  enterprising 
and  he  was  always  encouraging,  calm,  and 
resourceful  in  times  of  crisis. 

As  a  director  he  was  businesslike,  almost 
prosaic,  and  very  logical,  never  selfish  and  always 
courteous.  Six  feet  tall,  with  a  handsome  face  and 
slightly  'jug'  ears,  he  had  kind  eyes  and  excellent 
hands.  He  was  one  of  the  last  actor-managers  in 
the  country.  In  Chichester  he  was  not  only  the 
director  of  four  plays  each  summer  season,  but 
also  played,  among  other  parts,  Macbeth, 
Antony,  and  Prospero,  as  well  as  two  of  Jean 
Anouilh's  heroes,  the  general  in  The  Fighting 
Cock  and  Antoine  in  Dear  Antoine.  It  was  his 
appreciation  of  the  literary  tradition  of  drama 
that  gave  him  the  courage  to  present  The  Fighting 
Cock,  which  had  been  a  great  success  in  its 
original  French  version  in  Paris.  Heartbreak 
House,  in  which  he  played  Shotover,  was  one  of 
his  most  memorable  productions. 

Clements  also  acted  in  a  number  of  films, 
including  Things  to  Come  (1936),  South  Riding 
(1937),  The  Four  Feathers  (1939),  Oh  What  a 
Lovely  War!  (1969),  and  Gandhi  (1982).  He  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1956  and  knighted  in  1968.  A 
member  of  the  council  of  Equity  in  1948-9  and 


77 


Clements 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


vice-president  in  1950-9,  he  was  also  a  popular 
trustee  of  the  Garrick  Club. 

He  left  Chichester  in  1973  to  spend  more  time 
with  his  wife,  for  they  were  a  devoted  couple. 
She  died  in  1980.  Clements  died  6  April  1988  at 
Pendean  Convalescent  Home  near  Midhurst, 
where  he  spent  the  last  two  years  of  his  life. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  Bessborough 

CLEVERDON,  (Thomas)  Douglas  (James) 
(1903-1987),  bookseller,  publisher,  and  radio 
producer,  was  born  17  January  1903  in  Bristol 
(he  retained  all  his  life  a  faint  trace  of  a  Bristol 
accent),  the  elder  child  and  elder  son  of  Thomas 
Silcox  Cleverdon,  master  wheelwright,  and  his 
wife,  Jane  Louisa  James.  The  only  book  in  the 
house  in  those  days  was  his  mother's  Welsh 
Bible.  He  was  educated  at  Bristol  Grammar 
School,  where  he  learned  his  love  of  books  from 
the  headmaster,  Ted  Barton.  While  still  an 
astonishingly  good-looking  schoolboy  in  a  cap 
and  blazer  he  went  for  a  week  to  London,  and 
walked  into  Francis  BirrelPs  and  David  *Gar- 
nett's  new  bookshop.  He  was  feted  by  Clive  *Bell 
and  Roger  *Fry,  and  introduced  to  the  latest 
work  in  painting,  engraving,  and  printing. 

He  published  his  first  catalogue  as  an  under- 
graduate at  Jesus  College,  Oxford,  immediately 
establishing  his  reputation  as  a  lover  of  fine 
printing  and  exquisitely  illustrated  books.  He 
became  part  of  what  he  himself  later  called  the 
'typographical  renaissance'  made  possible  by 
Stanley  *Morison's  reintroduction  of  great  type- 
faces of  the  past  and  (A.)  Eric  *Gill's  sculptural 
lettering,  and  became  a  close  friend  and  disciple 
of  both.  At  Oxford  he  obtained  a  second  class  in 
classical  honour  moderations  (1924)  and  a  third 
in  literae  humaniores  (1926). 

In  1926  he  opened  his  own  bookshop  in 
Charlotte  Street,  Bristol.  Roger  Fry  painted  the 
hanging  sign,  bought  from  an  old  pub,  with 
Athena's  owl  perched  on  a  pile  of  books,  and  Eric 
Gill  painted  the  fascia  over  the  shop  window  in 
sans-serif  capitals.  Cleverdon  asked  him  for  a 
copy  of  the  alphabet,  and  it  was  from  this  that 
Morison  commissioned  the  famous  'Gill  Sans- 
serif.  At  this  time  he  also  began  publishing,  with 
Gill's  Art  and  Love  (1927),  printed  in  a  limited 
edition,  including  thirty-five  copies  on  full  vel- 
lum, and  S.  T.  *Coleridge's  The  Rime  of  the 
Ancient  Mariner  (1929),  for  which  he  commis- 
sioned ten  copper  engravings  and  an  introduc- 
tion from  David  *Jones.  This  venture  was 
brought  to  an  end  by  the  economic  depression, 
but  Cleverdon  continued  to  sell  books  until  the 
end  of  the  1930s,  when  he  was  persuaded  by 
Francis  Dillon  to  begin  working  part-time  for  the 
BBC.  In  1939  he  worked  for  Children's  Hour  and 
in  the  same  year  became  a  west  regional  features 
produce.  In  1940,  as  he  himself  put  it,  'a  bomb 
fell  on  the  bookshop,  and  I  was  with  the  BBC  for 


thirty  years'.  In  1943  he  became  a  features 
producer  in  London. 

He  was  to  bring  to  radio  all  his  skills  as  a 
publisher:  inspired  commissioning  of  new  work, 
patient  encouragement  and  direction  of  writers, 
musicians,  and  actors,  perfectionism  in  editing 
and  production,  and  all  the  craftsmanship  he  had 
learned  from  Morison  and  Gill,  and  in  his 
father's  workshop. 

It  was  shortly  before  the  war  that  he  met 
(Elinor)  Nest,  former  head  girl  of  the  Clergy 
Daughters  School  in  Bristol  and  daughter  of 
James  Abraham  Lewis,  canon,  of  Cardiff.  They 
eventually  married  in  1944,  though  (Sir)  John 
*Betjeman  referred  to  her  ever  afterwards  as 
'Douglas's  child  bride'.  They  were  to  have  two 
daughters,  the  elder  of  whom,  born  in  1948,  died 
immediately,  and  three  sons,  the  eldest  of  whom 
died  at  birth  in  1952.  Cleverdon,  busy,  bustling, 
chuckling,  with  sparkling  blue  eyes  and  a  slightly 
irregular  smile,  would  greet  almost  everyone  as 
'my  dear'  to  save  himself  from  having  to  remem- 
ber names.  He  was  a  small  man,  and  it  was  said 
that  he  'towered  over'  his  wife.  But  she  was  to  be 
his  strength  and  stay,  making  a  home  that 
gleamed  with  merriment  like  the  bright  china  on 
the  Welsh  dresser,  a  house  always  full  of 
friends. 

Cleverdon's  main  achievement  of  the  war 
years  was  the  The  Brains  Trust,  which  he  devised 
with  Howard  *Thomas,  and  which  reached  an 
audience  of  twelve  million.  He  was  sent  briefly  to 
Burma  in  1945  as  a  BBC  war  correspondent,  and 
on  his  return  began  by  developing  the  already 
existing  Radio  Portrait  series  for  the  Third  Pro- 
gramme. These  included  personal  reminiscences 
of  Joseph  *Conrad,  (G)  Norman  *Douglas,  and 
Henry  *James.  He  dramatized  David  Jones's  In 
Parenthesis  (1948)  and  The  Anathemata  (1953), 
using  the  voices  of  Richard  *Burton  and  Dylan 
*Thomas.  He  also  launched  Henry  *Reed's  satir- 
ical Hilda  Tablet  series  in  1953,  broadcast  the 
poems  of  Sylvia  *Plath,  Ted  Hughes,  Thorn 
Gunn,  Wole  Soyinka,  John  Betjeman,  Siegfried 
*Sassoon,  and  Stevie  *Smith,  and  produced  the 
work  of  David  Garnett,  (Dame)  Rose  *Macaulay, 
Sir  Compton  *Mackenzie,  and  Jacob  *Bronow- 
ski.  He  also  travelled  to  Rapallo  to  record  a  series 
of  broadcasts  with  Sir  Max  *Beerbohm. 

Cleverdon  produced  programmes  of  folk-song 
with  A.  L.  Lloyd  and  Alan  Lomax,  and  commis- 
sioned new  music  from  Humphrey  *Searle,  Alan 
*Rawsthorne,  (Sir)  Lennox  'Berkeley,  Alex- 
ander Tcherepnin,  Peter  Racine  *Fricker,  and 
Matyas  Seiber.  He  was  the  first  to  engage 
Michael  *Flanders  and  Donald  Swann  for  the 
radio.  His  most  famous  commission  was  Under 
Milk  Wood,  broadcast  in  1954,  which  he  suc- 
ceeded in  wringing  out  of  Dylan  Thomas  shortly 
before  his  death  in  1953. 

Cleverdon  retired  from  the  BBC  in  1969,  and, 


78 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cobbold 


as  well  as  organizing  poetry-  festivals,  returned  to 
publishing,  with  his  own  Clover  Hill  Editions, 
called  after  the  Anglo-Saxon  meaning  of  his  own 
name.  His  printer  was  his  old  friend  Will  Carter 
of  the  Rampant  Lions  Press,  Cambridge.  He 
preserved  the  same  standards  he  had  set  himself 
as  a  young  man,  with  beautifully  produced  work 
by  (A.)  Reynolds  *Stone,  Michael  *Ayrton,  and 
David  Jones,  and  The  Story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche, 
an  unprinted  Kelmscott  Press  book  with  wood 
blocks  by  William  *Morris  after  Sir  Edward 
•Burne-Jones. 

Cleverdon  died  i  October  1987  at  his  home  at 
27  Barnsbury  Square,  London  Ni. 

[Douglas  Cleverdon,  Fifty  Years,  The  Private  Library, 
1983;  Nicolas  Barker  in  Book  Collector,  vol.  xxxii,  no.  1, 
1083;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Wells 

COBBOLD,  Cameron  Fromanteel,  first 
Baron  Cobbold  (1904- 1987),  governor  of  the 
Bank  of  England,  was  born  14  September  1904  at 
23  Eaton  Terrace,  London,  the  only  child  of 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Clement  John  Fromanteel 
Cobbold,  barrister,  of  Belstead  Manor,  Ipswich, 
and  his  wife  Stella  Willoughby  Savile,  daughter 
of  Charles  Cameron.  He  was  educated  at  Eton 
and  went  to  King's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1923. 
However,  academic  life  did  not  offer  the  chal- 
lenge he  was  seeking  and  he  left  after  the  first 
year. 

After  brief  experience  in  accountancy,  he 
worked  in  France  and  Italy,  w  here,  as  manager  in 
Milan  of  an  insurance  company,  his  skill  in 
unravelling  the  tangled  affairs  of  a  failed  Italian 
bank  came  to  the  notice  of  Montagu  (later  Baron) 
*Norman,  governor  of  the  Bank  of  England.  At 
Norman's  invitation,  he  joined  the  Bank  in  1933 
and  rapid  advancement  followed.  He  became 
adviser  to  the  governor  in  1935  and,  in  1938,  one 
of  four  executive  directors  appointed  to  the  court 
with  the  object  of  easing  the  load  upon  the 
governor.  After  World  War  I  and  increasingly 
through  the  1930s,  problems  of  industrial  reor- 
ganization and  reconstruction  had  led  the  Bank 
into  areas  that  hitherto  had  been  regarded  as 
outside  the  concerns  of  a  central  bank.  Norman's 
solution  was  to  create  a  specialist  team  of  advisers 
working  outside  the  formal  structures  of  the 
Bank's  staff.  'Kirn'  Cobbold  occupied  a  special 
place  in  Norman's  team. 

His  Bank  apprenticeship  was  full  and  varied, 
both  on  the  international  and  domestic  fronts. 
Having  joined  shortly  after  the  collapse  of  the 
gold  standard,  he  immediately  found  himself 
closely  involved  in  intricate  international  discus- 
sions, especially  with  the  French,  which  led  to 
the  tripartite  monetary  agreement  of  1936, 
designed  to  restore  order  in  the  troubled  Euro- 
pean foreign  exchange  markets.  His  domestic 
responsibilities    were    no    less    important    and. 


increasingly,  his  time  was  taken  up  with  the 
preparation  of  emergency  plans  for  wartime 
operations  in  the  Bank  and  City.  War  finance 
itself,  the  transition  from  war  to  peace,  problems 
of  meeting  the  domestic  financial  needs  of  the 
country  in  the  immediate  postwar  period  and,  of 
special  importance,  negotiations  which  led  to  the 
creation  of  the  International  Monetary  Fund  and 
World  Bank  were  matters  of  state  that  com- 
manded the  attention  and  honed  the  skills  of  the 
Bank's  young  deputy  governor,  a  post  Cobbold 
attained  in  1945. 

As  deputy  governor  he  was  closely  involved  in 
the  negotiations  with  the  government  that  pre- 
ceded the  nationalization  of  the  Bank  in  1946 
and,  with  the  example  of  Norman  to  encourage 
him,  he  took  on  the  governorship  in  1949  deter- 
mined to  maintain  the  Bank's  integrity  and 
independence  of  mind.  Despite  the  pressures, 
crises,  and  uncertainties  of  his  twelve  years  as 
governor,  he  succeeded  in  keeping  the  Bank  out 
of  politics.  Pressures  there  w  ere — a  sterling  crisis 
and  devaluation  within  months  of  his  becoming 
governor,  the  Bank  Rate  Tribunal  of  1957,  and 
the  wide-ranging  committee  of  inquiry  into  the 
operation  of  the  monetary  system  chaired  by 
Baron  (later  Viscount)  *Radcliffe  (1957-9) — °ut 
they  were  only  episodes  in  what  he  saw  as  the 
proper  role  of  the  Bank,  dedicated  to  serving  the 
national  interest  and  providing  sound  practical 
advice  to  government.  He  was  essentially  a  prag- 
matist  and  an  able  administrator,  a  'markets' 
man  and  not  an  academic,  happy  to  hear  the 
arguments  and  to  make  up  his  own  mind.  To 
some  around  him  he  appeared  reserved,  even 
unfriendly,  and  he  never  succeeded  in  over- 
coming a  dislike  of  public  speaking.  Some  part  at 
least  of  this  was  probably  due  to  an  inherent 
shyness,  which  others  wrongly  attributed  to  a 
lack  of  personal  warmth.  He  set  himself  high 
standards  and,  by  example  and  encouragement, 
succeeded  in  getting  the  best  out  of  others. 

His  public  service  did  not  end  with  his  retire- 
ment as  governor  in  196 1.  He  had  for  many  years 
been  a  fellow  of  Eton  (1951-67)  and  in  1962  he 
chaired  the  Malaysia  commission  of  inquiry.  A 
year  later  he  was  appointed  lord  chamberlain  of 
the  queen's  household  (1963-71)  and  brought  to 
his  new  duties  the  same  perceptive  approach  and 
professional  expertise  that  had  characterized  his 
years  at  the  Bank.  Tall  and  powerfully  built,  with 
a  commanding  presence,  he  was  able  to  find 
genuine  and  satisfying  relaxation  in  country  pur- 
suits. Still  active  in  mind  and  body,  he  spent  his 
last  years  in  retirement  happily  surrounded  by 
family  and  friends  at  Lake  House,  Knebworth. 
Cobbold  had  an  honorary  LL  D  from  McGill 
University  (1961)  and  an  honorary  D.Sc.(Econ.) 
from  London  (1963).  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  1959,  was  appointed  GCVO  in  1963 


79 


Cobbold 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


and  KG  in  1970,  and  was  created  first  Baron 
Cobbold  in  i960. 

He  met  Lady  (Margaret)  Hermione  (Milli- 
cent)  Bulwer-Lytton  in  India  in  1925  while 
staying  with  her  father,  Victor  Alexander  George 
Robert  *Bulwer-Lytton,  second  Earl  of  Lytton, 
governor  of  Bengal.  They  married  in  1930  and 
Lady  Hermione  inherited  the  family  seat  at 
Kneb worth  on  the  death  of  her  father  in  1947. 
They  had  two  daughters,  one  of  whom  died  in 
1937  at  the  age  of  five,  and  two  sons,  the  elder  of 
whom,  David  Antony  Fromanteel  Lytton-Cob- 
bold  (born  1937),  succeeded  to  the  peerage. 
Cobbold  died  at  Knebworth  1  November  1987. 

(John  S.  Fforde,  The  Bank  of  England  and  Public  Policy 
IQ41-58,  1992;  family  records;  personal  knowledge.] 

Peter  Taylor 

COCHRANE,  Archibald  Leman  (1909-1988), 
medical  scientist  and  epidemiologist,  was  born  in 
Galashiels  12  January  1909,  the  second  child  in 
the  family  of  a  daughter  and  three  sons  of  Walter 
Francis  Cochrane,  of  Kirklands,  manufacturer  of 
Scotch  tweed,  and  his  wife  Mabel  Purdom, 
daughter  and  granddaughter  of  lawyers  from 
Hawick.  His  grandfather's  family  had  become 
wealthy,  but  the  death  of  his  father  on  active 
service  in  April  191 7  led  to  his  mother's  relative 
impoverishment.  He  gained  entry  scholarships  to 
Uppingham  and  King's  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  obtained  first  classes  in  both  parts  of 
the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1929  and  1931). 

An  inheritance  gave  him  the  means  to  con- 
tinue study  and  in  1931  he  began  research  in 
tissue  culture  at  the  Strangeways  Laboratory, 
Cambridge,  hoping  to  become  a  university  lec- 
turer. The  results  of  his  experiments,  however, 
seemed  trivial  and  the  concomitant  development 
of  what  he  believed  (erroneously)  to  be  a  psycho- 
logical symptom  led  him  to  abandon  the  project 
and  seek  medical  advice.  British  doctors  were 
unsympathetic  and  he  sought  help  at  the  Kaiser 
Wilhelm  Institute  in  Berlin.  He  received  sym- 
pathy there,  but  little  else,  and  he  turned  to 
Theodor  Reik,  an  early  follower  of  Sigmund 
Freud,  partly  to  obtain  treatment  and  partly  to 
learn  enough  about  psychoanalysis  to  design 
ways  of  testing  psychoanalytical  hypotheses.  The 
succeeding  two  and  a  half  years  did  nothing  for 
his  complaint,  but  they  provided  an  exceptional 
education,  as  he  followed  Dr  Reik  from  Berlin  to 
Vienna,  and  to  The  Hague,  attending  the  clinical 
course  in  both  the  last  cities. 

Returning  to  Britain  in  1934  with  fluent  Ger- 
man, a  hatred  of  Fascism,  and  a  sceptical  attitude 
to  all  theories  not  validated  by  experiment, 
Cochrane  enrolled  as  a  medical  student  at  Uni- 
versity College  Hospital,  London.  The  outbreak 
of  the  Spanish  civil  war  and  the  intervention  of 
Fascist  Germany  and  Italy  led  him  to  abandon 
his  studies  for  membership  of  a  field  ambulance 


unit  supporting  the  International  Brigade,  in 
which  he  was  probably  the  only  member  with 
neither  party  political  nor  religious  affiliation. 
After  a  year's  service  on  the  Aragon  and  Madrid 
fronts,  he  returned  to  University  College  Hospi- 
tal, with  valuable  experience  of  wartime  triage 
and  the  realities  of  left-wing  politics. 

Cochrane  qualified  MB,  B.Chir.  (Cambridge, 
1938)  in  time  to  complete  a  house  physician's  job 
at  the  West  London  Hospital  and  obtain  a 
research  appointment  at  UCH  before  war  again 
intervened.  He  joined  the  Royal  Army  Medical 
Corps  in  1940  and  was  posted  to  a  general 
hospital  in  Egypt.  He  was  then  sent  to  Crete, 
where  he  was  soon  taken  prisoner.  There  fol- 
lowed the  darkest  period  of  his  life  when,  as 
medical  officer  for  a  prisoner-of-war  camp  in 
Salonika,  he  was  confronted  by  major  epidemics, 
severe  malnutrition,  and  extreme  Nazi  brutality. 
During  this  time  he  undertook  what  he  later 
described  as  his  'first,  worst,  and  most  successful 
controlled  trial'  in  search  of  a  cure  for  famine 
oedema,  finding  it  in  small  amounts  of  yeast 
obtained  on  the  black  market. 

When  he  returned  to  Britain  in  1945,  a  Rocke- 
feller fellowship  enabled  him  to  take  a  course  at 
the  London  School  of  Hygiene,  where  he  became 
enthusiastic  about  the  conduct  of  controlled 
trials  by  random  allocation  of  treatments  and 
obtained  his  DPH  (1947).  He  then  went  for  a 
year  (1947)  to  the  Phipps  Clinic  in  Philadelphia, 
where  he  developed  a  lifelong  interest  in  the 
scientific  study  of  diagnostic  and  prognostic 
error.  In  1948  he  accepted  an  appointment  with 
the  Medical  Research  Council's  pneumoconiosis 
research  unit  in  Cardiff.  There  Cochrane 
designed  and  started  an  ambitious  project  to  test 
the  idea  that  tuberculosis  played  an  important 
part  in  transforming  the  disease  into  its  most 
disabling  form. 

In  i960  Cochrane  was  appointed  David 
Davies  professor  of  tuberculosis  and  diseases  of 
the  chest  at  the  Welsh  National  School  of  Medi- 
cine and  transformed  his  team  into  a  new  epide- 
miology unit,  of  which  he  became  director  in 
1969,  under  the  Medical  Research  Council.  With 
this  support,  he  continued  his  studies  of  the 
progress  of  pneumoconiosis  and  conducted  pop- 
ulation surveys  to  study  the  natural  history  and 
aetiology  of  anaemia,  glaucoma,  and  other  com- 
mon diseases.  He  showed  the  importance  of 
building  in  checks  on  the  reproducibility  of  any 
diagnostic  procedure  and  demonstrated  that  it 
was  regularly  possible  to  get  over  90  per  cent  of 
the  public  to  participate  in  health  surveys.  The 
social  importance  of  his  trials  was  lucidly 
expressed  in  his  short  book,  Effectiveness  and 
Efficiency  (1971),  which  won  him  international 
acclaim.  He  became  FRCP  in  1965. 

In  1972  Cochrane  became  the  first  president  of 
the  new   faculty   of  community  (subsequently 


80 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cockayne 


public  health)  medicine  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians.  He  had  never  been  attracted  by 
administration  or  ceremony  and  was  relieved  to 
hand  over  after  two  years.  In  this  period,  how- 
ever, he  succeeded  in  welding  into  a  harmonious 
whole  two  mutually  suspicious  groups:  academ- 
ics in  social  medicine  and  practising  medical 
officers  of  health.  He  was  appointed  MBE  in 
1945  and  CBE  in  1968,  and  had  honorary  doc- 
torates from  York  (1973)  and  Rochester,  USA 

(1977)- 

'Archie',  as  Cochrane  was  generally  known, 
combined  concern  for  public  welfare  with  that 
for  the  individual  and  discovered  late  in  life,  as  a 
result  of  the  trouble  he  took  over  an  illness  of  his 
sister's,  that  they  both  suffered  from  hereditary 
porphyria,  which  may  have  been  responsible  for 
the  sexual  condition  that  so  affected  his  early 
career.  He  created  a  garden  included  in  the 
national  garden  scheme  and  collected  with  dis- 
crimination contemporary  paintings  and  sculp- 
ture. A  man  of  medium  height  and  athletic  build, 
he  had  reddish  hair  and  a  permanently  quizzical 
expression.  He  never  married,  having  resolved  to 
have  no  more  love  affairs  after  an  unfortunate 
experience  in  the  USA  in  1947.  He  died  of 
cancer  after  a  long  illness,  18  June  1988,  at  his 
nephew's  home  in  Holt,  near  Wimborne,  Dorset. 
He  is  commemorated  in  Green  College,  Oxford, 
to  which  he  left  a  substantial  legacy,  by  a 
residence  for  students  and  a  fellowship  for  the 
director  of  the  Cochrane  Centre,  set  up  by  the 
Department  of  Health  to  promote  overviews  of 
controlled  trials. 

[A.  L.  Cochrane  with  Max  Blythe,  One  Man's  Medi- 
cine: an  Autobiography,  1089;  personal  knowledge.] 

Richard  Doll 

COCKAYNE,  Dame  Elizabeth  (1 894-1 988), 
chief  nursing  officer,  was  born  29  October  1894 
in  Burton-on-Trent,  the  youngest  in  the  family 
of  two  daughters  and  three  sons  of  William 
Cockayne,  brewer's  traveller  and  licensed  vic- 
tualler, and  his  wife,  Alice  Bailey.  One  of  her 
brothers  was  killed  in  World  War  I,  the  second 
died  of  tuberculosis,  and  the  third  died  in  1943. 
Her  father  died  when  she  was  five.  These  dis- 
tressing experiences  sharpened  Elizabeth  Cock- 
ayne's deep  commitment  to  Christianity  and 
sense  of  duty  to  others.  She  went  to  Guild  Street 
Girls'  School  in  Burton-on-Trent.  After  con- 
tracting smallpox  as  a  child,  she  contemplated  a 
career  in  nursing.  In  191 2  she  embarked  upon  a 
two-year  training  in  fever  nursing  at  the  Borough 
Hospital,  Plymouth.  Although  asked  by  the 
matron  to  stay  on  the  staff  after  her  training  was 
completed,  she  decided  to  leave  Plymouth  in 
1915 

She  had  four  years'  training  at  Sheffield  Royal 
Infirmary,  which  gave  her  a  dual  qualification. 
She  was  rapidly  promoted  to  the  post  of  ward 


sister  in  19 19  and  then  night  sister,  a  post  in 
which  she  oversaw  the  administration  of  the 
500-bed  hospital.  While  she  was  on  night  duty- 
she  undertook  a  course  in  hygiene  and  sanitary 
science  offered  by  the  local  education  authority. 
Much  against  the  wishes  of  her  employers,  she 
left  Sheffield  to  undertake  midwifery  training  at 
Birmingham  Maternity  Hospital  (1920-1).  She 
impressed  her  supervisors  with  her  intelligence 
and  judgement,  and  took  charge  of  caring  for 
premature  babies.  Her  mother  died  at  this  time. 
She  left  Birmingham  to  become  a  peripatetic 
nurse-tutor,  travelling  between  the  Gloucester 
and  Cheltenham  General  hospitals.  As  her  head- 
mistress had  noted  earlier,  she  had  a  natural  flair 
for  teaching.  Throughout  her  life  she  maintained 
a  keen  commitment  to  her  own  education  as  well 
as  that  of  others. 

Although  happy  in  Gloucester,  she  moved  to 
London  to  be  near  her  sister,  a  schoolmistress, 
who  had  fallen  ill.  She  joined  the  West  London 
Hospital  as  one  of  the  first  nurses  to  occupy  a 
combined  post  as  assistant  matron  and  sister 
tutor.  She  excelled  in  her  new  position  and  by 
the  age  of  twenty-nine  was  appointed  to  a 
matron's  post  first  at  the  West  London,  then  at 
the  Saint  Charles,  and  finally  at  the  Royal  Free 
Hospital.  She  was  at  the  Royal  Free  from  1936  to 
1948,  having  succeeded  the  formidable  Rachael 
Cox-Da  vies  as  matron.  She  displayed  calmness 
and  courage  after  the  outbreak  of  war,  when  the 
hospital  was  bombed  and  she  was  buried  in  the 
rubble.  At  the  same  time  she  was  invited  by  the 
matron-in-chief  of  the  London  county  council  to 
act  as  an  examiner  to  training  schools  and  to 
review  the  policy  on  the  length  of  the  working 
week  for  nurses  and  domestics.  She  inspected 
work  in  training  schools  and  factories,  super- 
vising the  health  of  munitions  workers  during 
World  War  II.  She  had  a  continued  interest  in 
the  effects  of  fatigue  and  strain  on  nurses'  health 
and  performance.  She  was  honorary  secretary  of 
the  Association  of  Hospital  Matrons  between 
1937  and  1948,  occupying  one  of  the  premier 
positions  in  nursing  policy  and  politics.  As  a 
founding  member  of  the  sister  tutor  section  of 
the  Royal  College  of  Nursing,  she  recognized  the 
prejudice  faced  by  tutors,  who  were  regarded  as 
superfluous  and  a  luxury  in  training  schools. 

In  1945  Elizabeth  Cockayne  was  appointed  a 
member  of  the  working  party  (chaired  by  Sir 
Robert  Wood)  on  the  recruitment  and  training  of 
nurses,  which  reported  in  1947.  It  aimed  to 
improve  the  intellectual  calibre  of  nurse  training 
by  reducing  the  repetitive  and  routine  nature  of 
practical  nursing  experience  and  stripping  the 
nursing  role  of  its  domestic  functions.  It  reported 
(HMSO,  1947)  that  this  could  only  be  achieved 
by  radically  reducing  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
matron-dominated  General  Nursing  Council 
over   nurse   training   and   substituting   it   with 


M 


Cockayne 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


regional  nursing  boards.  These  recommenda- 
tions made  Elizabeth  Cockayne  unpopular  with 
her  fellow  matrons.  In  1948  she  was  appointed 
the  first  chief  nursing  officer  in  the  National 
Health  Service,  where  she  remained  until  her 
retirement  in  1958. 

She  was  of  slender  build,  with  striking  fea- 
tures, a  kindly  face,  and  keen  intelligent  eyes.  An 
enlightened,  energetic,  and  progressive  leader, 
she  had  charisma,  charm,  a  generous  nature, 
humanitarian  values,  and  an  understanding  of 
the  various  groups  whose  differences  often 
clashed  in  the  sectarian  politics  of  health  care.  A 
shrewd  but  subtle  strategist,  she  determined  that 
the  nursing  voice  should  be  heard  at  the  highest 
levels  of  policy-making.  She  was  gifted  with  the 
rare  capacity  to  influence  without  alienating,  and 
to  assume  multiple  roles  without  undermining 
her  integrity.  She  was  committed  to  nurses' 
welfare  and  high  standards  of  patient  care. 

After  her  retirement  she  was  a  member  of 
the  South  West  Metropolitan  Health  Board 
(1959-65)  and  an  adviser  to  the  World  Health 
Organization  during  the  1950s.  In  later  life  she 
cared  for  many  old  people  near  her  home  in 
Cobham,  Surrey,  some  of  whom  were  younger 
than  herself.  She  lived  alone  in  her  cottage  after 
the  death  of  her  sister  in  1982.  She  received  the 
Jubilee  medal  (1935),  the  Coronation  medal 
(1953),  and  the  Florence  Nightingale  medal  of 
the  International  Red  Cross  committee  in  Gen- 
eva. She  was  appointed  DBE  in  1955.  She  died  4 
July  1988  at  her  home  in  Cobham,  Surrey.  She 
was  unmarried. 

[Interview  with  Dame  Elizabeth  Cockayne,  27  March 
1987,  in  membership  file,  Royal  College  of  Nursing 
archives,  44  Heriot  Row,  Edinburgh;  Dame  Kathleen 
Raven's  memorial  speech  in  honour  of  Dame  Elizabeth 
Cockayne,  Royal  Free  Hospital,  31  October  1988.] 

Anne  Marie  Rafferty 

COCKERELL,  Sydney  Morris  (1906- 1987), 
bookbinder  and  conservator,  was  born  6  June 
1906  at  96  Earls  Court  Road,  London,  the  second 
of  three  children  and  elder  son  of  Douglas 
Bennett  *Cockerell,  bookbinder,  and  his  wife 
Florence  Margaret  Drew,  daughter  of  Samuel 
Drew  Arundel,  box-maker,  of  London.  His 
mother  died  in  19 12  and  his  father  married  again 
two  years  later.  His  father's  training  and  back- 
ground influenced  much  of  'Sandy'  Cockerell's 
own  career.  After  St  Christopher's  School, 
Letchworth,  in  1924  Cockerell  joined  his  father 
as  a  partner  in  D.  Cockerell  &  Son.  Their 
workshop  was  in  an  extension  to  the  family  house 
at  Letchworth  and  both  there  and,  from  1963,  in 
Grantchester,  there  was  always  an  air  of  domes- 
ticity about  Sydney  Cockerell's  surroundings.  In 
partnership  with  his  father,  in  1935  he  rebound 
the  'Codex  Sinaiticus'  after  its  purchase  for  the 
nation.  In  the  same  year  they  were  joined  by 


Roger  Powell,  who  remained  as  a  partner  until 
1947,  when  he  established  his  own  workshop, 
remaining  in  close  and  amicable  contact.  Douglas 
Cockerell  died  in  1945. 

Cockerell's  long  association  with  university, 
national,  and  other  libraries,  as  he  repaired  man- 
uscripts and  early  printed  books,  began  in  the 
1920s.  Cambridge  University  Library  was  among 
the  first  such  customers,  and  the  most  long- 
standing. Some  of  that  library's  greatest  treas- 
ures, including  the  'Codex  Bezae',  the  'Book  of 
Cerne',  the  'Book  of  Deer',  and  Sir  Isaac  •New- 
ton's papers  all  passed  through  his  hands.  For 
Trinity  College,  repairs  included  those  for  the 
twelfth-century  'Eadwine  Psalter'  and  the  auto- 
graph volume  of  John  *Milton's  poetry.  The 
extensive  task  of  repairing  papers  for  the  Words- 
worth Trust,  at  Dove  Cottage,  was  spread  over 
many  years,  while  for  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum, 
Cambridge,  Cockerell  repaired  *Handel's  auto- 
graphs and  the  Fitzwilliam  virginal  book,  among 
others.  In  such  work  he  was  unsurpassed  in  his 
generation.  He  was  also  consulted  widely  from 
overseas,  notably  following  the  Florence  floods  in 
1967. 

As  a  binder  of  more  recent  books,  the  tradi- 
tions shared  with  his  father  likewise  led  him  to 
consider  bookbinding  as  a  process  as  much 
concerned  with  a  book's  structure  and  use  as 
with  its  outward  decoration.  His  many  commis- 
sions included  rolls  of  honour  for  both  Houses  of 
Parliament  as  well  as  for  the  armed  services;  he 
was  regularly  called  on  for  lectern  bibles  in 
cathedrals.  From  1948,  collaboration  with  Joan 
Rix  Tebbutt,  of  the  Glasgow  School  of  Art,  led 
to  a  distinctive  series  of  bindings  in  toned  vel- 
lum, in  which  designer  and  binder  co-operated  in 
outstanding  accord. 

Adept  with  his  hands,  Cockerell  was  also  of  a 
highly  practical  turn  of  mind.  Many  of  his  tools 
he  made  himself,  and  the  hydraulic  ram  (adapted 
from  an  aeroplane's  wing  flaps),  with  which  he 
impressed  gold  leaf  into  his  bindings,  gave  any 
visitor  immediate  notice  of  his  ingenuity.  Like 
his  father,  Cockerell  insisted  on  the  best  materi- 
als appropriate  to  their  purpose,  paying  especial 
attention  to  leathers  (especially  goatskins)  and  to 
papers  with  a  neutral  pH  and  of  the  right  weight 
and  fibre  structure.  In  the  1920s  his  experiments 
on  marbling  paper  for  bindings  soon  led  to  its 
regular  production  by  his  workshop.  This  con- 
tinued until  his  death,  principally  in  the  hands  of 
William  Chapman.  The  necessary  combs  to  cre- 
ate the  repeatable  and  distinctive  (yet  always 
subtly  different)  patterns  were  made  in  the 
workshop. 

He  was  an  influential  teacher,  succeeding  his 
father  at  both  the  Central  School  of  Arts  and 
Crafts,  London,  and  at  the  Royal  College  of  Art. 
At  University  College  London  he  lectured  to 
students  of  librarianship  in  1945-76,  and  thus 


82 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Coke 


sought  to  demonstrate  how  his  practical  skill  and 
knowledge  could  be  applied  to  the  proper  care  of 
books  and  manuscripts.  In  his  workshop  he 
trained  a  series  of  assistants,  most  of  whom 
subsequently  either  joined  major  libraries,  or 
established  their  own  practices.  His  book,  The 
Repairing  of  Books  (1958),  was  offered  as  a  further 
means  of  closing  the  gap  between  the  librarian  or 
collector  and  the  craftsman. 

CockerelPs  appearance  was  dominated  by 
prominent  and  luxuriant  eyebrows,  which 
formed  an  inseparable  part  of  his  conversation, 
helping  by  turn  to  orchestrate  his  dry  sense  of 
humour  or  forcefully  express  criticism,  as  neces- 
sary. He  was  scathing  about  poor  workmanship, 
and  formidable  when  he  perceived  incompetence 
in  those  charged  with  the  care  of  the  nation's 
collections  of  books  and  manuscripts.  He  was 
appointed  OBE  in  1980  and  was  awarded  an 
honorary  Litt.D.  by  Cambridge  in  1982. 

In  1932  he  married  Elizabeth  Lucy  (died 
1991),  daughter  of  Harrison  Cowlishaw,  archi- 
tect. She  had  been  one  of  his  father's  students  at 
the  Central  School,  and  she  brought  her  own 
contribution  to  the  workshop.  They  had  a  son 
and  two  daughters.  Cockerell  died  in  Adden- 
brooke's  Hospital,  Cambridge,  6  November 
1987. 

[Book  Collector,  summer  1974;  Cockerell  Bindings, 
i8g4~ig8o  (exhibition  catalogue,  Fitzwilliam  Museum), 
1981;  Independent,  10  November  1987;  personal  knowl- 
edge.] David  McKitterick 

COKE,  Gerald  Edward  (1907-1990),  indus- 
trialist, merchant  banker,  patron  of  music,  art, 
and  scholarship,  collector,  and  creator  of  gar- 
dens, was  born  25  October  1907  at  Bruton  Street, 
London,  the  only  son  and  eldest  of  three  children 
of  (Sir)  John  Spencer  Coke,  major  in  the  Scots 
Guards  and  royal  equerry  (seventh  son  of  Tho- 
mas William  *Coke,  second  Earl  of  Leicester,  of 
Holkham  Hall,  Norfolk),  and  his  wife  Dorothy 
Olive,  only  child  of  Sir  Harry  *Lawson,  second 
baronet,  second  baron,  and  first  and  only  Ms- 
count  Burnham,  newspaper  proprietor  and 
member  of  Parliament,  of  London.  Coke  was 
educated  at  Eton  and  New  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  obtained  a  third  class  in  modern  history 
(1929). 

During  the  1930s  Coke  worked  at  Barrow- 
in-Furness  in  a  firm  connected  with  haematite 
iron  ore  mining.  He  served  throughout  World 
War  II  in  the  Scots  Guards  and  attained  the  rank 
of  lieutenant-colonel.  From  1945  to  1975  he  was 
a  director  of  the  merchant  bank  S.  G.  Warburg  & 
Co.,  and  rose  to  be  vice-chairman.  He  also  served 
as  a  director  of  the  Rio  Tinto-Zinc  Corporation 
(1947-75),  and  as  chairman  (1956-62).  His  suc- 
cess in  these  enterprises  owed  as  much  to  his 
charm,  patent  sincerity,  and  integrity  as  it  did  to 
his  commercial  acumen.  He  was  a  JP  from  1952 


and  deputy  lieutenant  of  Hampshire  from  1974. 
He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1967  and  became  an 
honorary  FRAM  in  1968. 

The  financial  success  of  his  work  in  commerce 
and  banking  allowed  him  to  acquire  his  home, 
Jenkyn  Place,  Bentley,  Hampshire,  which  he  and 
his  wife  transformed  into  a  residence  of  great 
beauty  and  refined  taste,  filled  with  libraries, 
precious  porcelain,  the  great  Handel  collection, 
and  many  objets  d'art.  Both  partners  devoted  long 
hours  almost  daily  to  the  creation  of  the  large 
and  choice  gardens  surrounding  their  property, 
which  were  intermittently  open,  chiefly  to  con- 
noisseurs and  garden  societies,  and  formed  the 
subject  of  television  programmes. 

Coke's  character  obliged  him  to  share  the 
fruits  of  his  wealth  and  accomplishments  with 
many  in  the  fields  of  music,  scholarship,  and 
similar  concerns.  His  influence  contributed 
much  to  the  success  of  Glyndebourne,  run  by- 
John  *Christie  and  Sir  George  Christie,  of  whose 
arts  trust  he  was  chairman  (1955—75).  He  also 
served  as  a  director  of  the  Royal  Opera  House, 
Co  vent  Garden  (1958-64),  and  of  the  Royal 
Academy  of  Music  (1957-74).  He  was  a  governor 
of  the  BBC  (196 1 -6).  Particularly  close  to  his 
heart  was  his  long  association,  as  treasurer  and 
benefactor,  with  Bridewell  Royal  Hospital,  and 
King  Edward's  School,  Witley,  where  there  is  a 
portrait  of  him  by  Sir  William  *Coldstream. 
When  Coke  took  over  as  treasurer,  King 
Edward's  School  was  a  relatively  small  boys' 
school,  which  he  made  into  a  co-educational 
boarding  school  of  some  importance. 

The  piece  de  resistance  of  his  life  as  a  scholar 
and  collector  was  the  Coke  Handel  collection, 
which  embraced  important  musical  manuscripts, 
libretti,  and  autographs.  Coke  also  enabled  Han- 
del scholars,  such  as  O.  E.  Deutsch  and  W.  C. 
Smith,  to  persevere  with  and  complete  their 
studies.  Towards  the  end  of  his  life  he  was 
instrumental  in  arranging  for  the  publication  of  a 
Handel  iconography  and  for  the  eventual  transfer 
of  the  Handel  collection  to  the  care  of  the  Handel 
Institute.  His  1983  book,  In  Search  of  James 
Giles,  was  the  culmination  of  his  other  great 
enthusiasm,  his  porcelain  collection. 

If  Coke  was  an  amateur,  then  this  term  can 
only  be  understood  in  the  sense  that  music, 
opera,  porcelain,  or  the  art  of  garden  cultivation 
were  not  the  source  of  his  income  but  the  objects 
of  his  expenditure.  His  knowledge  and  expertise 
in  so  many  disparate  fields  were  prodigious,  but 
they  were  always  imparted  to  others  with  that 
modesty  and  self-effacement  which  characterized 
him,  and  which  perhaps  led  to  his  failure  to 
receive  higher  official  honours. 

In  appearance  he  was  tall  and  slender,  with  an 
upright  bearing.  On  2  September  1939,  the  day 
before  the  outbreak  of  war,  Coke  married  Patri- 
cia, daughter  of  Sir  Alexander  George  Montagu 


83 


Coke 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


*Cadogan,  diplomat.  The  marriage  was  one  of 
exceptional  happiness  and  harmony,  and  of 
shared  interests  in  gardening,  music,  and  collect- 
ing. They  had  a  daughter  and  three  sons,  the 
third  of  whom  died  of  meningitis  suddenly  in 
1972,  a  day  after  his  successful  final  degree 
examination  at  London  University.  Coke  died  at 
Jenkyn  Place,  Bentley,  of  heart  failure,  9  January 
1990.  A  concert  in  his  memory  was  given  at 
Glyndebourne  on  5  August  1990,  at  which  it  was 
disclosed  that  Coke  had  persuaded  his  shipping 
heiress  friend,  the  countess  of  Munster,  to  sell 
one  of  her  ships  and  with  the  proceeds  endow  a 
trust  for  education  in  music.  By  1994  well  over 
1,300  British  musicians  had  benefited  from  the 
trust. 

[Donald  Burrows  in  the  Guardian,  18  January  1990; 
Gerald  Coke,  The  Gerald  Coke  Handel  Collection,  1985; 
The  Countess  of  Munster  Musical  Trust,  annual  reports; 
information  from  Henry  Grunfeld  at  S.  G.  Warburg, 
Sir  George  Christie,  and  Leopold  de  Rothschild;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Edward  Ullendorff 

COLDSTREAM,     Sir     William     Menzies 

(1908- 1 987),  artist  and  arts  administrator,  was 
born  28  February  1908  at  the  Doctor's  House, 
West  Street,  Belford,  Northumberland,  the 
youngest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  three 
daughters  of  George  Probyn  Coldstream,  general 
medical  practitioner,  and  his  wife  (Susan  Jane) 
Lilian  Mercer,  elder  daughter  of  Major  Robert 
Mercer  Tod  (43rd  Light  Infantry),  of  Edin- 
burgh. 

He  was  two  years  old  when  the  family  moved 
to  West  Hampstead,  London.  Early  interest  in 
the  natural  sciences  made  him  want  to  become  a 
doctor  but,  at  the  age  of  twelve,  with  a  suspected 
heart  condition  following  rheumatic  fever,  he 
was  removed  from  school  and  tutored  at  home. 
Although  he  went  at  sixteen  to  the  University 
Tutorial  Centre,  Red  Lion  Square,  to  prepare  for 
entry  to  medical  school,  by  his  eighteenth  birth- 
day he  had  failed  matriculation,  met  W.  H. 
*Auden,  and  started  to  draw  and  paint  seriously. 
In  April  1926,  with  his  father's  support,  he 
enrolled  at  the  Slade  School  of  Fine  Art. 

While  there  he  was  awarded  the  Slade  certifi- 
cate for  drawing  (1926),  a  Slade  scholarship,  the 
figure  and  summer  composition  prizes  (1927), 
the  summer  landscape  prize,  and  the  second 
Melville  Nettleship  prize  for  figure  composition 
(1928).  Meanwhile,  he  had  become  greatly 
impressed  by  the  work  of  nineteenth-century 
French  masters,  especially  Cezanne,  Braque,  and 
Matisse,  and  by  artists  like  Walter  *Sickert, 
Duncan  *Grant,  and  Picasso;  had  attended  out- 
side lectures  by  Sickert  on  'The  Technique  of 
Drawing  and  Painting';  and,  to  increase  his 
manual  graphic  control,  taken  extra  drawing 
instruction  from  a  signwriter  in  Horseferry 
Road.  By  the  time  he  left  the  Slade  (1929)  he  was 


working  wholly  from  nature,  with  intense  inter- 
est in  the  appearance  of  things. 

In  1930  he  got  his  first  commission,  met  Victor 
Pasmore,  and  was  elected  to  the  London  Artists' 
Association.  Over  the  next  two  years  he  became 
increasingly  concerned  at  the  conflict  between 
his  real  interest  in  visual  facts  and  his  apprecia- 
tion that  abstraction  was  gaining  ground,  in 
response  to  current  aesthetic  theories  and  the 
support  for  subjective  painting  then  centred  on 
Paris.  In  1932  he  became  temporary  art  master  at 
Wellington  College  and  in  1933  briefly  attempted 
'objective  abstraction',  which  Geoffrey  Tibbie 
and  Rodrigo  *Moynihan  were  then  moving 
towards.  When  elected  that  year  to  the  London 
Group,  he  already  felt  convinced  that  abstract  art 
appealed  only  to  an  elitist  minority  and  that 
broken  communications  between  artist  and  pub- 
lic needed  rebuilding. 

Spurred  by  contemporary  political  and  social 
problems  and  believing  in  film  as  a  commu- 
nicator, he  got  a  job  with  the  pioneering  GPO 
Film  Unit  run  by  John  *Grierson.  In  1935  he 
directed  The  King's  Stamp  and  edited  Coal  Face, 
with  lyrics  by  Auden  and  music  by  Benjamin 
(later  Baron)  *Britten;  but,  after  directing  Fairy 
of  the  Phone  (1936)  and  Roadways  (1937),  he 
decided  to  return  to  painting.  The  experience 
had  convinced  him  that  film  was  no  answer  to  the 
current  crisis  in  painting,  that  many  of  the 
approved  preconceptions  about  art  were  for  him 
unimportant,  and  that  he  had  to  start  painting 
again — but  now  only  in  the  way  that  interested 
him:  directly  from  nature,  as  a  pure  transcription 
of  what  he  saw. 

To  encourage  an  objective  process  in  visual 
representation,  in  1937  he  joined  with  Claude 
*Rogers  and  Victor  Pasmore  in  starting  a  School 
of  Drawing  and  Painting  at  12  Fitzroy  Street 
(later  316  Euston  Road).  Although  it  closed  on 
the  outbreak  of  war  (1939),  it  had  much  impact 
and  created  a  'new  look'  in  English  art. 

In  1940  Coldstream  enlisted  in  the  Royal 
Artillery  but  was  soon  transferred  to  the  Royal 
Engineers  and  commissioned  as  a  camouflage 
officer  (1940).  He  served  in  England  until 
appointed  an  official  war  artist  (1943).  He  then 
went  first  to  Egypt,  painting  mostly  portraits  at 
No.  11  Indian  transit  camp,  between  the  pyra- 
mids and  Cairo.  From  1944  he  was  in  Italy,  doing 
outstanding  war  landscapes  in  Capua,  Pisa, 
Rimini,  and  Florence. 

On  demobilization  (1945)  he  joined  Victor 
Pasmore  in  teaching  at  Camberwell  School  of  Art 
and  Crafts,  later  (1948)  becoming  its  inspiring 
head  of  painting.  In  June  the  following  year  he 
was  appointed  Slade  professor  at  University 
College  London,  returning  to  the  school  he  had 
always  loved.  During  twenty-six  dynamic  years 
there  he  greatly  strengthened  its  work,  intro- 
duced postgraduate  courses,  and,  for  the  first 


84 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Collar 


time,  made  film  studies  available  at  university 
level.  Taking  always  a  leading  role  in  the  life  of 
University  College,  he  was  elected  a  fellow  in 
1953.  During  those  years  and  after  his  retirement 
(1975),  his  paintings  included  a  succession  of 
outstanding  nudes,  a  series  of  views  of  West- 
minster painted  from  the  Department  of  the 
Environment  in  Marsham  Street,  and  a  number 
of  commissioned  portraits  which  rank  among  his 
most  remarkable  works.  Among  these  are:  'Dr 
Bell,  Bishop  of  Chichester'  (1954,  Tate  Gallery), 
'Sir  Ifor  Evans'  (1958-60,  University  College 
Uondon),  'Westminster  Abbey  I'  (1973-4,  Arts 
Council  Collection,  South  Bank  Centre,  Lon- 
don), and  'Reclining  Nude'  (1974-6,  Tate  Gal- 
lery). 

An  exceptional  chairman,  he  discharged  a 
formidable  range  of  public  duties.  He  was  chair- 
man of  the  National  Advisory  Council  on  Art 
Education  (1958-71)  and  largely  responsible  for 
the  liberalizing  transformation  of  art  education 
in  Britain;  a  trustee  of  the  National  Gallery 
(1948-55,  1956-63)  and  of  the  Tate  Gallery 
(1949-55,  I950-63);  a  member  of  the  Arts  Coun- 
cil (1952-62),  vice-chairman  of  the  council 
(1962-70),  and  chairman  of  its  art  panel 
(1953-62);  a  director  of  the  Royal  Opera  House 
(1957-62);  chairman  of  the  British  Film  Institute 
(1064-71);  and  vice-president  of  Morley  College 
(1977-83).  In  1977  he  was  elected  to  the  Society 
of  Dilettanti  and  became  painter  to  the  society. 
Appointed  CBE  in  1952,  he  was  knighted  in  1956 
and  received  honorary  degrees  from  the  uni- 
versities of  Nottingham  (1961),  Birmingham 
(1962),  and  London  (1984),  and  from  the  Coun- 
cil for  National  Academic  Awards  (1975). 

First  and  foremost  a  painter,  laden  with  self- 
doubt  and  ever  diffident  about  his  remarkable 
achievements,  he  was  a  good  friend  and 
immensely  stimulating  companion,  whose  out- 
standing work  is  a  lasting  tribute  to  his  self- 
imposed  discipline  and  the  integrity  of  his 
painterly  qualities.  Small,  wiry,  grey-suited,  and 
unobtrusive,  he  was  highly  intelligent  and  gready 
respected,  with  an  irrepressible  wit  which,  in 
Rodrigo  Moynihan's  words,  was  'an  inspired 
sustained  hilarity,  directed  towards  the  absurd- 
ities of  art,  the  pretensions  of  artists,  the  short- 
comings of  friends'. 

On  22  July  193 1  he  married  Nancy,  a  student 
with  him  at  the  Slade  and  daughter  of  Hugh 
Culliford  Sharp,  doctor  of  medicine,  of  Truro. 
They  had  two  daughters.  The  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1942  and  on  30  March  1961  he 
married  Monica  Mary ,  daughter  of  Alfred  Eric 
Monrad  Hover,  journalist,  of  London.  They  had 
a  son  and  two  daughters.  By  1982  his  health  had 
begun  to  decline,  and  by  1984  he  could  no  longer 
paint.  Although  he  attended  the  private  view  of 
his  last  solo  exhibition  (June  1984)  at  the 
Anthony  D'Offay  Gallery ,  he  was  by  then  unable 


to  work.  After  a  long  illness,  he  died  at  the 
Homoeopathic  Hospital  in  Camden,  18  February 
1987. 

[The  Times  and  Daily  Telegraph,  19  February  1987; 
Independent,  21  February  1987;  The  Paintings  of  William 
Coldstream,  catalogue  for  Tate  Gallery  exhibition, 
1 990-1;  William  Coldstream  Memorial  Meeting,  24  April 
1987,  UCL  booklet,  1988;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Ian  Tregarthen  Jenkin 

COLLAR,  (Arthur)  Roderick  (1908-1086), 
mathematician  and  aeronautical  engineer,  was 
born  22  February  1908  in  West  Ealing,  London, 
the  second  of  three  children  and  elder  son  of 
Arthur  Collar,  of  Whitstable,  Kent,  who  had  a 
successful  ironmonger's  and  builder's  business, 
and  his  wife,  Louie  Gann,  who  also  came  from  a 
Kent  family.  He  was  educated  at  the  local  board 
school  in  Whitstable,  from  where  he  gained  a 
scholarship  to  Simon  Langton  School  in  Canter- 
bury .  Here  he  developed  his  mathematical  and 
scientific  ability ,  and  became  good  at  games  and 
an  accomplished  piano-player  and  violinist.  It 
was  in  a  football  match  that,  at  the  age  of  fifteen, 
he  was  struck  a  blow  that  led  to  the  permanent 
loss  of  sight  in  his  right  eye.  In  1926  he  entered 
Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  as  an  open 
scholar.  He  obtained  a  first  in  part  i  of  the 
mathematical  tripos  in  1927  and  a  second  in  part 
ii  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  in  1929. 

Collar  sought  an  appointment  in  1929  in  the 
National  Physical  Laboratory  at  Teddington,  and 
soon  found  working  there,  in  the  aerodynamics 
department  under  E.  F.  *Relf,  so  congenial  that 
he  stayed  from  1929  until  the  beginning  of 
World  War  II  in  1939.  In  1930  the  airship  R101 
crashed  in  France  on  its  maiden  voyage  to  India, 
and  Collar's  ability  came  to  the  fore  when  he 
made  skilful  step-by-step  calculations  on  the 
airship's  motion  prior  to  the  disaster.  It  was, 
however,  for  his  work  on  the  application  of 
matrices  to  aeroplane  flutter  that  Collar  was  best 
known  at  the  NPL.  Initiated  by  R.  A.  Frazer, 
this  work  had  been  fostered  by  the  aeronautical 
research  committee,  which  later  brought  Frazer, 
W.  J.  Duncan,  and  Collar  together  to  produce  in 
1938  the  first  textbook  on  the  subject — Elemen- 
tary Matrices,  which  proved  a  best  seller  in 
Britain  and  the  USA,  and  was  later  translated 
into  Russian  and  Czech.  This  basic  work  on 
flutter  was  developed  at  the  Royal  Aeronautical 
Establishment  (RAE)  into  a  design  tool  in  time  to 
ensure  that  the  new  fighter  aircraft  being  built 
prior  to  World  War  II — the  Hurricane  and 
Spitfire — were  flutter  free.  With  the  onset  of 
war,  in  1941  Collar  was  transferred  to  the  RAE, 
to  help  with  this  design  work. 

After  the  war  several  universities  considered 
introducing  aeronautical  engineering  into  their 
engineering  faculties.  One  of  the  first  to  do  so 


85 


Collar 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


was  Bristol  University,  which  in  1945  invited 
Collar  to  be  the  first  holder  of  the  Sir  George 
White  chair  in  aeronautics.  After  he  took  up  the 
post  in  1946  his  new  department  prospered  in 
new  accommodation.  From  1954  to  1957  he  was 
dean  of  the  faculty  and  in  1968,  after  the  sudden 
death  of  the  vice-chancellor,  he  was  persuaded  to 
hold  this  position  for  seventeen  months,  pending 
the  appointment  of  a  successor.  Collar's  person- 
ality made  all  this  seem  natural;  a  sincere  Chris- 
tian and  a  born  raconteur,  with  a  slim  athletic- 
build,  who  enjoyed  cricket  and  music,  he  was  an 
attractive  colleague. 

Collar  always  took  an  active  part  in  the  Royal 
Aeronautical  Society  (he  was  president  in  1963-4 
and  became  an  honorary  fellow  in  1973),  and 
won  a  number  of  its  principal  prizes,  including 
the  society's  gold  medal  in  1966.  He  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1964  and  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society  in  1965.  His  outstanding 
aeronautical  work  led  to  his  appointment  as 
chairman  of  the  Aeronautical  Research  Council 
(1964-8).  He  also  served  on  the  councils  of  the 
Rolls-Royce  Technical  College,  the  Royal  Mili- 
tary College  of  Science,  Clifton  College,  the 
Cranfield  Institute  of  Technology,  and  the  Royal 
Society.  He  had  honorary  degrees  from  Bristol 
(1969),  Bath  (1971),  and  Cranfield  (1976). 

In  1934  Collar  married  Winifred  Margaret 
Charlotte,  of  East  Molesey,  Surrey,  daughter  of 
Ernest  George  Whittington  Earl  Moorman,  a 
clerk  in  the  office  of  works  at  Hampton  Court 
Palace.  They  had  two  sons.  After  his  retirement 
in  1973  from  Bristol  University,  Collar  began  to 
suffer  from  rheumatoid  arthritis  in  his  hands  and 
feet.  Following  a  fall  in  a  friend's  garden  in  1983, 
he  developed  leukaemia.  This  left  him  severely  ill 
for  the  last  years  of  his  life  and  led  to  his  death  at 
his  home  in  Bristol,  12  February  1986. 

[R.  E.  D.  Bishop  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiii,  1987;  personal  know- 
ledge.] A. G.  Pugsley 

COLLINS,  Cecil  James  Henry  (1908- 1989), 
artist,  was  born  in  Plymouth  23  March  1908,  the 
only  child  of  Henry  Collins,  an  engineer  in  a 
Plymouth  laundry,  and  his  wife,  Mary  Bowie.  He 
won  scholarships  to  the  Plymouth  School  of  Art 
(1924-7)  and  the  Royal  College  of  Art  (1927-31), 
where  he  was  a  favourite  pupil  of  (Sir)  William 
•Rothenstein.  At  the  Royal  College  he  met  a 
fellow  student,  Elisabeth  Ward  Ramsden,  whom 
he  married  in  1931.  She  was  the  daughter  of 
Clifford  Ramsden,  editor  and  proprietor  of  the 
Halifax  Courier  and  Guardian.  There  were  no 
children  of  the  marriage. 

The  chief  contemporary  artistic  influences  on 
him  at  this  time  were  Picasso  and  Klee:  other 
strong  influences  were  Byzantine  art,  the  music 


of  Igor  Stravinsky's  classical  period,  and  contem- 
porary scientific  illustrations,  both  of  cell  biology 
and  of  astronomy.  His  early  love  of  *Shelley  and 
•Shakespeare  was  now  augmented  by  his  studies 
of  *Coleridge  and  *Milton.  When  he  and  his 
wife  went  to  live  in  a  lonely  cottage  in  Buck- 
inghamshire, these  influences,  together  with 
readings  in  the  English  mystics  and  the  silence  of 
the  place,  inspired  him  to  do  his  first  visionary 
paintings,  which  were  successfully  shown  at 
his  first  London  exhibition,  at  the  Bloomsbury 
Gallery  in  1935.  (Sir)  Herbert  *Read,  much 
impressed,  included  his  work  in  the  London 
International  Surrealist  Exhibition  in  1936.  Col- 
lins's  association  with  the  Surrealists  was  short- 
lived, for  he  was  accused  of  religious  sympathies 
and  excluded  from  the  movement. 

He  went  to  live  near  Dartington,  where  the 
American  artist  Mark  Tobey  was  teaching. 
Tobey  and  Bernard  *Leach  aroused  his  interest 
in  eastern  thought  and  art.  There  he  painted 
several  great  works,  such  as  'The  Voice',  'The 
Quest',  and  the  double  portrait,  'The  Artist  and 
his  Wife'  (1939,  Tate  Gallery).  The  artistic  and 
intellectual  stimuli  at  Dartington,  together  with 
the  threat  of  war,  inspired  Collins  to  paint  his 
most  famous  series  of  works,  based  on  the  image 
of  the  Fool,  which  he  began  in  late  1939.  To  him 
the  Fool  signified  'purity  of  consciousness'  and 
he  gave  to  his  many  depictions  of  the  image  all 
the  qualities  that  were  most  threatened  by  war: 
charm,  fun,  compassion,  and  insight.  Rejected 
for  war  service  at  a  time  when  the  Dartington 
community  was  depleted  by  the  internment  of 
many  of  its  teachers,  who  had  taken  refuge  there 
from  Germany,  Collins  was  asked  to  teach,  and  it 
was  then  that  he  discovered  his  great  gifts  as  a 
teacher. 

His  exhibition  at  the  Lefevre  Gallery  in  1944, 
even  though  cut  short  by  a  flying  bomb,  was  an 
outstanding  success.  Collins  and  his  wife  had  left 
Dartington  by  this  time  and  lived  variously  in 
London,  Yorkshire,  Oxford,  and  Cambridge.  In 
this  period  Collins  produced  his  'paradisal  draw- 
ings' and  experimented  with  print-making.  He 
also  published  in  1947  his  essay  The  Vision  of  the 
Fool,  a  work  that  expresses  his  feelings  about  the 
role  of  the  artist  (the  Fool)  in  the  modern  world 
of  war  and  industrialization. 

This  time  of  success  was  to  be  followed  by  a 
long  period  when  some  critics  turned  against  him 
and  others  neglected  him.  He  took  up  teaching 
again,  at  the  Central  School  from  1951  onwards, 
and  leaned  towards  the  traditional  images  of 
Christianity.  He  found  a  new  freedom  in  paint- 
ing large  works,  based  on  the  principle  of  what  he 
called  the  'matrix':  he  would  let  the  image  come 
to  him  out  of  a  preliminary  working  with  his 
paints  in  a  seemingly  wild  and  chaotic  manner. 
Thus  he  independently  discovered  something  of 


86 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Colville 


what  the  American  abstract  expressionists  had 
been  doing  for  years.  These  new  works  were 
shown  in  a  major  retrospective  of  his  work  at  the 
Whitechapel  Gallery  in  1959.  The  matrix  period 
led  him  to  explore  in  greater  depth  the  three 
main  images  of  his  work:  the  Fool,  the  Lady  or 
Anima,  and  the  Angel.  The  matrix  period  was 
followed  by  a  return  to  a  calmer,  more  classical, 
style  in  which  he  continued  to  express  the  moods 
of  the  spiritual  worlds  these  images  conveyed  to 
him.  The  Fool,  the  Lady,  and  the  Angel  all  have 
access  to  the  world  of  the  Great  Happiness, 
which  is  the  true  source  of  our  creativity.  In  his 
portrayals  of  the  Lady  Collins  gave  new  expres- 
sion to  the  ancient  tradition  of  Wisdom  or 
Sapientia  as  a  beautiful  woman  and  in  his  angels 
he  showed  creatures  who  are  constantly  and 
mysteriously  always  present  and  ready  to  give  us 
guidance. 

When  in  1975  the  Central  School  tried  to  end 
his  teaching  contract,  his  students  arose  in  rebel- 
lion on  his  behalf.  His  contract  was  extended  for 
a  year,  but  the  battle  had  to  be  fought  again  with 
each  new  generation  of  students  marching  and 
demonstrating,  and  with  correspondence  in 
national  newspapers  supporting  his  cause.  The 
conflict,  which  arose  from  objections  to  the 
originality  of  his  teaching  methods  and  the  meta- 
physical ideas  on  which  they  were  founded,  often 
debilitated  him  and  distracted  him  from  paint- 
ing. Nevertheless  he  received  support  from  other 
quarters,  notably  from  his  association  with  the 
Anthony  d'Offay  Gallery  from  1976  onwards,  an 
Arts  Council  film  of  his  work  in  1978,  and  a  Tate 
Gallery  exhibition  of  his  prints  in  1981,  the  year 
in  which  his  poems  In  the  Solitude  of  this  Land 
and  a  reprint  of  The  Vision  of  the  Fool  were 
published.  These  were  to  be  followed  by  two 
full-length  television  documentaries  in  1984  and 
1988. 

In  early  manhood  and  into  middle  age  Collins 
wore  a  beard.  In  later  years  the  curvature  of  his 
spine,  brought  about  by  deprivations  in  his  early 
life,  became  very  pronounced,  though  it  never 
affected  his  co-ordination.  He  had  great  physical 
calm,  with  long,  fine,  thin  fingers  with  which  he 
would  seemingly  shape  his  sentences  in  front  of 
him  as  he  spoke.  He  was  very  nervous  of  catching 
colds  and  would  often  be  seen  in  the  hottest 
weather  wearing  a  tweed  suit,  a  thick  tweed 
greatcoat,  and  a  hat.  His  eyes  were  expressive, 
witty,  and  sharply  observant. 

Collins  was  present  at  the  opening  of  the 
retrospective  exhibition  of  his  work  at  the  Tate 
Gallery  in  May  1989  and  died  shortly  afterwards 
in  the  London  Clinic,  4  June  1989.  He  was 
buried  in  Highgate  cemetery.  He  had  been 
appointed  MBE  in  1979  and  elected  RA  in  1988. 
A  man  of  deep  metaphysical  interests,  and  with  a 
scholar's  analytical  mind,  he  was  regarded  by 


some  as  Britain's  greatest  visionary  artist  since 
William  *Blake. 

[William  Anderson,  Cecil  Collins:  the  Quest  for  the  Great 
Happiness,  1088;  Cecil  Collins,  Paintings  and  Drawings, 
1935-45,  1946;  Kathleen  Raine,  Cecil  Collins,  Painter  of 
Paradise,  1079;  Judith  Collins,  Cecil  Collins  (catalogue 
of  Tate  Gallery  retrospective  exhibition),  1989;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge] 

William  Anderson 

COLVTLLE,  Sir  John  Rupert  (191 5-1987), 
diplomat  and  private  secretary,  was  born  in 
London  28  January  191 5,  the  youngest  of  three 
sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  the  Hon. 
George  Charles  Colville,  barrister,  and  his  wife, 
Lady  (Helen)  Cynthia  Crewe-Milnes,  daughter 
of  Robert  Offley  Ashburton  *Crewe-Milnes, 
Marquess  of  Crewe,  politician.  He  was  educated 
at  West  Downs  School  and  Harrow  and  con- 
tinued on  a  senior  scholarship  to  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  obtained  a  first  class  in  part 
i  of  the  history  tripos  and  a  second  class  (division 
I)  in  part  ii  (1936).  In  1937  he  joined  the 
Diplomatic  Service  and  after  only  two  years  was 
seconded  to  10  Downing  Street  to  act  as  assistant 
private  secretary  to  Neville  'Chamberlain.  He 
liked  and  admired  Chamberlain  and  would  have 
favoured  Viscount  (later  the  Earl  of)  'Halifax  to 
succeed  him  in  May  1940 — 'I  am  afraid  it  must  be 
Winston,'  he  wrote  regretfully  in  his  diary — but 
even  then  he  conceded  'Churchill's  drive  and 
determination  and  he  was  quickly  converted  into 
one  of  the  most  devoted  of  his  supporters. 

Exciting  and  congenial  though  he  found  the 
work  in  No.  10,  after  the  outbreak  of  World  War 
II  Colville  resolved  to  enter  the  armed  forces, 
and  in  October  1 941  he  overcame  the  opposition 
of  the  Foreign  Office  and  the  handicap  of  bad 
eyesight  and  joined  the  Royal  Air  Force  Volun- 
teer Reserve.  After  training  in  South  Africa  he 
was  commissioned  as  a  pilot  officer  and  joined 
No.  268  Squadron  of  the  Second  Tactical  Air 
Force,  flying  Mustang  fighters.  In  spite  of  peri- 
odic efforts  by  Churchill  to  recapture  him,  he 
remained  with  the  air  force  until  the  end  of  1943 
and  was  allowed  to  rejoin  his  unit  for  the 
invasion  of  France,  returning  to  Whitehall  for 
good  in  August  1944. 

Although  in  spirit  a  Conservative,  who  had 
contemplated  standing  as  such  in  1945,  Colville 
gready  admired  C  R.  (later  first  Earl)  'Attlee's 
honesty,  efficiency,  and  common  sense,  and 
found  no  difficulty  in  serving  under  him  when 
Labour  came  to  power.  However,  his  career  was 
still  diplomacy  and  in  October  1945  he  returned 
to  the  Foreign  Office  to  work  in  the  southern 
department.  After  the  dramas  of  No.  10  the  work 
lacked  savour,  and  within  two  years  he  had 
moved  away  again  to  become  private  secretary  to 
the  twenty-year-old  Princess  Elizabeth  (1947-9). 
It  was  a  natural  appointment  for  a  former  page  of 
honour  to  King  'George  V,  whose  mother  was  a 


87 


Colville 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


woman  of  the  bedchamber  to  Queen  *Mary.  No 
one  would  have  been  surprised  if  he  had 
remained  in  royal  service,  but  after  two  years  he 
returned  to  diplomacy  and  was  posted  to  Lisbon 
(1947-51)  as  first  secretary. 

It  was  not  for  long;  when  Churchill  became 
prime  minister  in  October  195 1,  Colville  was 
invited — commanded,  almost — to  rejoin  him  as 
principal  private  secretary.  When  Churchill  suf- 
fered a  severe  stroke  in  June  1953  but  refused  to 
allow  his  powers  to  be  delegated,  Colville  and  the 
prime  minister's  son-in-law  and  parliamentary 
private  secretary,  Christopher  (later  Baron) 
*Soames,  found  themselves  called  on  to  make 
decisions  on  matters  about  which  they  would 
normally  never  have  been  consulted.  For  almost 
a  month,  with  the  encouragement  and  support  of 
the  secretary  of  the  cabinet,  Sir  Norman  *Brook 
(later  Baron  Normanbrook),  they  dealt  with  gov- 
ernment departments  which  had  no  conception 
of  the  gravity  of  the  prime  minister's  condition, 
acting  in  his  name  and  articulating  what  they 
believed  would  have  been  his  views.  They  han- 
dled their  duties  with  tact  and  discretion,  but  the 
experience  fortified  Colville's  resolve  not  to 
return  yet  again  to  diplomacy  after  Churchill's 
resignation  in  April  1955. 

Instead,  he  embarked  on  two  new  careers.  He 
joined  Hill  Samuel  and  became  a  director  of  the 
National  &  Grindlay,  Ottoman,  and  Coutts's 
banks  and  chairman  of  Eucalyptus  Pulp  Mills. 
He  also  took  to  writing.  His  first  book,  a  biogra- 
phy of  the  sixth  Viscount  *Gort,  Man  of  Valour 
(1972),  won  excellent  reviews  and  encouraged 
him  to  follow  it  with,  among  others,  a  study  of 
Churchill's  entourage,  The  Churchillians  (1981), 
and  an  autobiographical  volume,  Footprints  in 
Time  (1976).  His  best  known  work,  however,  was 
his  edition  of  the  diaries  which  he  had  kept  while 
at  No.  10,  The  Fringes  of  Power  (1985),  a  colour- 
ful, informative,  and  admirably  honest  account  of 
the  years  he  spent  working  for  Churchill.  He  also 
served  as  treasurer  of  the  National  Association  of 
Boys'  Clubs  and  president  of  the  New  Victoria 
Hospital  in  Kingston.  Colville  was  appointed 
CVO  (1949)  and  CB  (1955),  and  was  knighted  in 
1974.  He  was  an  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour 
and  an  honorary  fellow  of  Churchill  College, 
Cambridge  (1971),  in  whose  foundation  he 
played  a  role. 

By  birth,  upbringing,  and  career,  Colville 
seemed  a  quintessential  establishment  figure,  but 
any  tendency  to  pomposity  or  undue  convention- 
ality was  curbed  by  his  keen  eye  for  the  ridicu- 
lous. His  tact,  charm,  good  judgement,  and 
readiness  always  to  tell  the  truth  when  necessary, 
made  him  an  ideal  private  secretary.  He  was 
stocky  and  of  medium  height,  very  dark,  with  a 
roundish  face  and  slightly  Latin  appearance — 
'Who  is  that  foreigner  with  an  English  wife?' 
people    would    sometimes   ask    when    he    was 


abroad.  His  hair  went  grey  when  he  was  in  his 
forties,  which  gave  him  a  more  distinguished  air: 
this  concerned  him  little;  he  took  no  particular 
trouble  over  his  appearance  and,  without  being 
scruffy,  was  rarely  smart.  He  married  in  1948 
Lady  Margaret  Egerton,  lady-in-waiting  to  Prin- 
cess Elizabeth  and  daughter  of  John  Francis 
Granville  Scrope  Egerton,  fourth  Earl  of  Elles- 
mere.  They  had  two  sons  and  a  daughter.  He  was 
still  leading  and  enjoying  an  active  life  when  on 
19  November  1987  he  suffered  a  heart  attack 
while  at  Winchester  station  and  died  almost 
immediately. 

[John  Colville,  The  Fringes  of  Power,  1985,  and  Foot- 
prints in  Time,  1976;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Philip  Ziegler 

COOK,  Sir  William  Richard  Joseph  (1905- 
1987),  scientific  civil  servant,  was  born  10  April 
1905  in  Trowbridge,  Wiltshire,  the  elder  son  and 
eldest  of  three  children  of  John  Cook,  railway 
inspector,  and  his  wife,  Eva  Boobyer.  A  success- 
ful scholar  at  Trowbridge  High  School,  he  went 
on  to  Bristol  University,  graduating  B.Sc.  in 
1925,  with  first-class  honours  in  mathematics 
(specializing  in  applied  maths).  He  took  a 
diploma  in  education  in  1926  and  an  M.Sc.  in 

1927.  Success  as  a  part-time  lecturer  almost 
persuaded  him  to  become  a  teacher,  but  he 
settled  for  the  Civil  Service  and  joined  the 
research   department  at  Woolwich   Arsenal   in 

1928,  as  librarian. 

After  working  for  a  time  on  the  external 
ballistics  of  guns,  he  joined  the  new  rocket 
programme  in  1935,  becoming  by  1940  deputy 
controller  of  projectile  development,  where  he 
was  responsible  for  many  successful  military 
applications  of  rockets.  At  the  end  of  the  war 
Cook  became  first  director  of  a  new  rocket 
establishment  at  Westcott,  but  uncertainty  and 
disagreement  about  the  future  of  the  work  unset- 
tled him  so  much  that  in  1947  he  moved  to 
become  director  of  physical  research  at  the 
Admiralty,  where,  although  the  field  was  new  to 
him,  he  was  instrumental  in  pioneering  major 
advances  in  underwater  warfare  technology.  He 
became  deputy  chief  scientific  adviser,  Ministry 
of  Defence,  in  1950,  as  well  as  chief  of  the  Royal 
Naval  Scientific  Service. 

In  1954  the  government  decided  to  develop 
thermonuclear  weapons  and  Cook,  an  ideal 
choice,  was  appointed  to  lead  the  programme,  as 
deputy  director  at  Aldermaston.  The  essence  of 
his  work  was  to  test  the  bomb  before  a  possible 
test  ban  treaty  could  be  imposed.  A  crash  pro- 
gramme, driven  by  Cook,  culminated  in  a  suc- 
cessful test  series  based  on  Christmas  Island  in 
1957.  He  himself  went  to  the  island  to  play  a  vital 
role  as  directing  scientist.  Following  this  demon- 
stration of  British  thermonuclear  capability,  he 
played  a  leading  role  in  the  successful  nego- 


88 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cooper 


nations  to  re-establish  co-operation  with  the 
United  States.  Cook  left  Aldermaston  early  in 
1958  to  become  member  for  engineering  and 
development  in  the  Atomic  Energy  Authority 
and  took  over  the  newly  formed  reactor  group  in 
1961.  Here  he  achieved  a  great  deal,  resolving 
problems  in  the  advanced  gas-cooled  reactor, 
bringing  the  fast  reactor  to  full  power,  and 
recommending  the  construction  of  a  heavy-water 
steam-generating  reactor. 

Cook  returned  to  the  Ministry  of  Defence  in 
1964  where,  as  a  deputy  chief  scientific  adviser, 
he  took  responsibility  for  operational  require- 
ments and  projects.  His  immediate  problem  was 
the  disorganization  that  followed  the  cancellation 
of  the  fighter  bomber  TSR2.  An  Anglo-French 
project  for  a  fighter  aircraft  quickly  failed  when 
the  French  withdrew,  and  was  replaced  by  a  joint 
British-German-Italian  effort.  After  much  diffi- 
cult negotiation,  in  which  Cook  played  a  promi- 
nent part,  the  successful  Tornado  fighter  was 
specified  and  produced.  In  1968  he  became  chief 
adviser,  projects  and  research,  and  set  up  a 
number  of  important  international  projects 
intended  to  reduce  defence  costs.  He  also  initi- 
ated the  studies  which  led  eventually  to  the 
Chevaline  system  to  improve  the  defence  pene- 
tration of  the  Polaris  missile. 

He  retired  in  1970  but  soon  became  involved 
in  commercial  directorships,  which  kept  him 
very  busy  for  another  fifteen  years.  Nationally 
the  most  important  of  these  was  Rolls-Royce, 
which  had  gone  bankrupt  in  197 1.  He  was 
appointed  to  chair  a  committee  to  decide  very 
quickly  whether  the  RB211  engine  should  be 
continued,  and  it  is  largely  to  his  credit  that  the 
engine  eventually  became  the  backbone  of  Rolls- 
Royce's  civil  programme.  He  was  appointed  a 
director  when  the  new  government-owned  com- 
pany was  set  up  later  in  1971.  In  addition  to  his 
directorships,  he  continued  to  chair,  very  effec- 
tively, the  nuclear  safety  committees  for  another 
ten  years.  He  was  appointed  CB  in  195 1,  and 
KCB  in  1970,  having  been  knighted  in  1968.  He 
held  honorary  degrees  from  Strathclyde  (1967) 
and  Bath  (1975).  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  in  1962. 

Cook,  known  as  'Bill'  to  his  friends  and 
colleagues,  was  slightly  built  and  always  neatly 
dressed.  A  man  of  great  charm  and  ready  wit, 
fond  of  his  pipe  and  of  a  Scotch,  he  was  known 
for  his  meticulous  preparation  for  meetings,  his 
ability  to  find  and  probe  the  weaknesses  in  a 
technical  case,  and  his  forceful  but  good 
humoured  pressure  on  all  to  give  of  their  best.  In 
1929  he  married  Grace,  daughter  of  Frederick 
Arthur  Purnell,  treasurer  for  Burton-on-Trent 
council;  they  had  one  daughter.  They  were 
divorced  in  1939  and  in  the  same  year  he  married 
Gladys,  librarian  at  the  Woolwich  Arsenal 
department,  the  daughter  of  Sydney  Edward 


Allen,  postman.  They  had  one  son  and  one 
daughter.  When  Gladys's  health  began  to  fail  he 
looked  after  her  devotedly.  He  died  16  Sep- 
tember 1987  in  Westminster  Hospital,  London, 
following  a  massive  stroke. 

[Lord  Penney  and  V.  H.  B.  Macklen  in  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiv, 
1988;  The  Times,  19  September  1987;  Daily  Telegraph, 
22  September  1987;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Challens 

COOPER,  Lady  Diana  Olivia  Winifred 
Maud,  first  Viscountess  Norwich  (1892- 
1986),  beauty,  actress,  memorable  hostess  and 
guest,  and  autobiographer,  was  born  29  August 
1892  in  London  into  the  Manners  family  where 
she  was  accepted  as  the  third  of  three  daughters 
and  the  fifth  of  five  children.  Her  assumed  father 
was  Henry  John  Brinsley  Manners,  Marquess  of 
Granby,  later  eighth  Duke  of  Rutland,  MP,  and 
her  mother  was  Marion  Margaret  Violet,  daugh- 
ter of  Colonel  Charles  Hugh  Lindsay.  It  was 
generally  believed,  and  certainly  by  Diana,  that 
her  true  father  was  Henry  John  Cockayne 
('Harry')  *Cust,  politician,  journalist,  and 
brother  of  the  fifth  Baron  Brownlow.  She 
received  no  formal  education,  but  was  educated 
at  home  by  governesses  and  the  culture  of  her 
surroundings.  She  learned  much,  including  great 
drifts  of  poetry,  which  she  remembered  to  her 
dying  day.  In  her  voluminous  correspondence 
and  in  the  drafts  for  her  books,  her  prose  was 
vivid  and  imaginative  and  her  idiosyncratic  spell- 
ing added  to  its  charm. 

At  ten  years  old,  Diana  contracted  Urb's 
disease,  a  form  of  paralysis,  and  for  five  years  was 
a  semi-invalid.  She  never  complained,  but, 
because  of  her  illness,  was  certainly  over- 
indulged by  the  family.  In  1910  she  formally 
'came  out'  and  took  her  place  at  the  centre  of  that 
so-called  'golden  generation',  soon  so  largely  to 
perish  in  war.  At  this  time  her  beauty  was  first 
acknowledged.  She  was  hailed  'queen  of  beauty', 
but  also  acquired  some  notoriety.  She  and  her 
immediate  circle  dubbed  themselves  the  'corrupt 
coterie'  and  lived  their  lives  of  privilege  to  the 
full  and  sometimes  to  excess.  Diana  was  much 
criticized  when,  at  a  party  on  the  Thames  in 
1914,  Sir  Dennis  Anson  swam  for  a  dare  and  was 
drowned;  this  tragedy  haunted  her  all  her  life. 
When  war  came  in  19 14,  Diana  Manners  trained 
as  a  member  of  the  Voluntary  Aid  Detachment  at 
Guy's  Hospital.  She  was  hard-working  and  con- 
scientious and  acted  as  a  nurse  at  Guy's  and  at 
the  hospital  established  by  her  parents  in  their 
London  house  in  Arlington  Street. 

Diana  had  many  suitors  and  mourned  the 
deaths  of  several  of  them  in  the  fighting.  (Alfred) 
Duff  *Cooper,  at  first  in  the  Foreign  Office  and 
then  in  the  Grenadier  Guards,  was  amongst  her 
most  ardent  admirers.  In  1916  she  promised  to 


89 


Cooper 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


marry  him,  but  was  prevented  by  lack  of  money 
and  opposition  from  her  ambitious  mother.  Even 
the  DSO,  to  which  Duff  Cooper  was  appointed 
in  191 8,  failed  to  overcome  this  opposition. 
Eventually,  however,  agreement  was  given  and 
they  were  married  on  2  June  19 19.  It  was  a 
marriage  which  never  staled.  Diana  had  many 
who  loved  her  and  Duff  was  frequently  unfaith- 
ful; but  for  each  the  relationship  with  the  other 
remained  the  most  important  thing  in  both  their 
lives. 

To  earn  money,  Diana  acted  in  two  unmemor- 
able  films  before  her  marriage  and  gained  the 
reputation  of  a  hard-working  actress  as  well  as  a 
transcendent  beauty.  Marriage  and  Duff  Coo- 
per's wish  to  enter  politics  increased  the  need  for 
money  and  Diana  was  glad  to  accept  Max  Rein- 
hardt's  offer  to  play  the  madonna  in  a  mime  play, 
The  Miracle.  This  was  first  staged  in  the  USA 
from  November  1923  to  the  following  May,  and 
again  for  the  following  three  autumns  and  win- 
ters. It  toured  Europe  in  1927,  and  London  and 
the  provinces  in  1932;  the  last  performance  was 
in  January  1933.  The  Miracle  was  a  phenomenal 
success  and  Diana  Cooper's  triumphant  part  in  it 
was  remembered  as  long  as  she  lived.  The  money 
earned  allowed  her  husband  to  enter  Parliament, 
as  MP  for  Oldham,  in  1924. 

On  15  September  1929  she  had  a  son,  John 
Julius.  He  was  her  only  child  and  she  took  a  close 
and  intelligent  interest  in  his  education.  Once 
The  Miracle  was  ended,  she  was  primarily  con- 
cerned with  her  husband's  career  rather  than  her 
own  and  she  gave  him  powerful  support,  as 
chatelaine  of  Admiralty  House  (Duff  Cooper 
became  first  lord  of  the  Admiralty  in  May  1937). 
There  she  first  had  the  opportunity  to  display 
her  outstanding  talent  as  a  hostess  in  a  splendid 
setting.  In  the  1930s  the  Coopers  were  friendly 
with  King  Edward  VIII  and  Mrs  Simpson  and 
accompanied  them  on  the  cruise  of  the  Nahlin  in 
1936.  They  were  spoken  of  as  belonging  to  Mrs 
Simpson's  camp,  but  this  was  never  the  case. 

Diana  supported  Duff  throughout  World  War 
II,  even  accompanying  him  to  Singapore  and  the 
Far  East  against  convention  and  in  the  face  of 
opposition.  When  in  Britain,  they  lived  in  the 
Dorchester  Hotel  and  at  Bognor  in  a  house  given 
to  Diana  by  her  mother,  where  she  found  com- 
plete happiness  running  a  smallholding  farm.  In 
January  1944  Duff  Cooper  became  British  repre- 
sentative to  the  French  committee  of  liberation 
in  Algiers  and  in  November  British  ambassador 
in  Paris.  His  wife  was  unfailingly  at  his  side;  her 
French  was  fluent  but  inaccurate,  and  she  was  by 
no  means  a  conventional  ambassadress,  but  she 
gave  the  embassy  a  glamour  possessed  by  none 
other.  With  her  remarkable  ability  to  get  on  with 
people,  she  collected  a  group  of  artists  and 
writers  known  as  'La  Bande';  it  was  said  with 
criticism  that  some  of  them  had  collaborated 


with  the  Germans.  Whilst  at  the  embassy,  Diana 
Cooper  discovered  and  rented  the  house  'she 
loved  best  in  the  world',  the  Chateau  St  Firman 
at  Chantilly.  On  leaving  the  embassy  at  the  end 
of  1947,  contrary  to  convention  and  to  the 
aggravation  of  their  successors,  the  Coopers 
returned  to  live  at  Chantilly. 

In  1952  Duff  Cooper  was  created  first  Vis- 
count Norwich,  but  Diana  would  have  none  of  it, 
announcing  in  The  Times  that  she  wished  to 
retain  her  former  name  and  title,  so  'Lady  Diana 
Cooper'  she  remained.  In  1953  Duff  Cooper  was 
taken  violently  ill  and,  although  he  recovered, 
died  1  January  1954  on  a  cruise  to  Jamaica.  He 
was  buried  at  Belvoir  castle,  but  Diana  did  not 
attend  the  funeral:  she  never  attended  the  funer- 
als of  those  she  loved.  Her  life  had  been  centred 
round  Duff  for  thirty-five  years  and  she  was 
distraught  without  him. 

She  lived  for  a  further  thirty-two  years.  She 
disliked  getting  old,  but  found  solace  in  writing  a 
three-volume  autobiography,  which  was  a 
resounding  success.  She  gained  much  comfort 
from  John  Julius,  her  grandchildren,  and  her 
many  friends.  She  retained  her  love  of  travel  and 
her  interest  in  people:  she  still  enjoyed  each  new 
experience,  even,  it  seemed,  two  burglaries, 
when  she  displayed  her  courage  and  her  endur- 
ing star  quality.  She  will  be  remembered  mostly 
for  her  outstanding  beauty,  but  for  most  people 
this  obscured  that  she  was  a  shy,  very  clever,  and 
sometimes  extremely  funny  woman.  She  died  16 
June  1986,  at  her  London  home  in  Warwick 
Avenue. 

[Philip  Ziegler,  Diana  Cooper,  1981;  Diana  Cooper,  The 
Rainbow  Comes  and  Goes,  1958,  The  Light  of  Common 
Day,  1959,  and  Trumpets  from  the  Steep,  i960;  personal 
knowledge.]  Charteris  of  Amisfield 

COSSLETT,  (Vernon)  Ellis  (1908-1090),  phys- 
icist and  electron  microscopist,  was  born  16  June 
1908  in  Cirencester,  Gloucestershire,  the  eighth 
child  in  the  family  of  six  boys  and  five  girls  of 
Edgar  William  Cosslett,  carpenter,  and  his  wife, 
Anne  Williams.  His  father  worked  on  the  Earl  of 
Eldon's  Stowell  Park  estate,  and  they  lived  in  an 
isolated  house  on  the  site  of  the  Roman  villa  at 
Chedworth.  Because  of  illness,  Ellis  was  seven 
when  he  entered  elementary  school  in  Cirences- 
ter, eight  miles  from  home.  At  twelve  he  won  a 
junior  county  scholarship  to  Cirencester  Gram- 
mar School,  and  in  1926  a  county  scholar- 
ship took  him  to  Bristol  University,  where 
he  obtained  first-class  honours  in  chemistry 
(1929). 

In  1929  he  was  awarded  an  ICI  research 
studentship  to  work  for  a  Bristol  Ph.D.  in 
chemistry.  He  spent  the  second  year  at  the 
Kaiser  Wilhelm  Institute  for  Physical  Chemistry 
in  Berlin,  and  took  full  advantage  of  the  opportu- 
nity, having  acquired  some  German  while  an 


90 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cotton 


undergraduate.  However,  he  did  not  know  that  at 
that  verv  time  the  electron  miscroscope  was 
being  invented  by  M.  Knoll  and  E.  Ruska  only  a 
few  miles  away.  Witnessing  the  rise  of  the  Nazi 
party  had  a  traumatic  effect,  making  him  a 
lifelong  worker  for  left-wing  causes,  although  he 
concealed  these  views  from  most  of  his  col- 
leagues. He  obtained  his  Ph.D.  in  1932  and  a 
London  M.Sc.  in  1939. 

He  moved  to  London  in  1935  to  teach  at 
Faraday  House  and  research  part-time  on  elec- 
tron optics  at  Birkbeck  College  under  P.  M.  S. 
(later  Baron)  *Blackett,  and  later  J.  D.  *Bernal. 
In  1939  he  was  awarded  a  Keddey-Fletcher- 
Warr  research  fellowship  but,  in  the  autumn, 
Birkbeck  was  evacuated  to  Oxford  and  he  spent 
the  war  years  teaching  physics  to  short-course 
officer  cadets  in  the  electrical  laboratory  of 
Oxford  University.  He  maintained  his  interest  in 
electron  optics  and  became  increasingly  con- 
vinced of  the  possibilities  of  the  electron  micro- 
scope: although  he  had  barely  set  eyes  on  one,  he 
was  a  founder  of  the  Electron  Microscope  Group 
of  the  Institute  of  Physics  in  1946. 

In  the  same  year  Cosslett  was  awarded  an  ICI 
fellowship  at  the  Cavendish  Laboratory,  Cam- 
bridge, where  there  was  an  electron  microscope, 
which  had  been  received  during  the  war  under 
lend-lease  arrangements  with  the  USA.  Cos- 
slett's  life's  work  was  now  beginning.  Even 
before  he  was  appointed  lecturer  in  1949,  he 
started  to  attract  bright  young  research  students 
to  his  EM  section,  nearly  all  of  whom  made 
important  contributions  to  electron  microscopy 
then,  and  in  their  later  careers.  At  its  peak  the 
section  had  forty  members.  Noteworthy  projects 
which  were  brought  to  successful  conclusions 
were:  the  X-ray  projection  microscope  (1955), 
the  X-ray  scanning  microprobe  analyser  (1959),  a 
high  voltage  (750  kilovolts)  electron  microscope 
(1966),  and,  joindy  with  the  Cambridge  engi- 
neering department,  a  high  resolution  (<o.2  nm) 
electron  microscope  (1979).  Commercial  devel- 
opments followed  from  all  these  projects.  Writ- 
ing occupied  much  of  Cosslett's  time  and  he 
published  four  books,  including  Practical  Elec- 
tron Microscopy  (1951)  and  Modern  Microscopy 
(1966),  and  many  papers. 

He  was  little  involved  with  undergraduate 
teaching  and  was  not  elected  to  a  college  fellow- 
ship (at  Corpus  Christi)  until  1963.  In  1965  he 
became  reader  in  electron  physics  and  was  also 
awarded  the  Sc.D.  Cosslett's  achievements, 
which  were  considerable,  lay  not  in  proposing 
new  principles,  or  the  design  and  engineering  of 
new  instruments,  but  in  drawing  together  the 
many  diverse  strands  of  the  rapidly  developing 
subject  that  embraced  the  whole  of  biology  and 
material  sciences.  He  was  adept  in  attracting 
good  students,  guiding  them  towards  rewarding 
projects,  obtaining  grants  to  finance  them,  and 


keeping  them  informed  about  work  in  progress  in 
other  laboratories  all  over  the  world.  Early  on,  he 
very  quickly  built  up  an  international  reputation 
and  was  a  founder  member  and  first  secretary 
(1955)  of  the  International  Federation  of  Societ- 
ies for  Electron  Microscopy. 

In  1972  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society;  he  was  awarded  its  Royal  medal  in  1979. 
He  shared  the  Duddell  medal  of  the  Institute  of 
Physics  (197 1 ),  and  received  honorary  degrees 
from  Tubingen  (D.Sc.,  1963)  and  Gothenburg 
(MD,  1974).  He  was  an  honorary  fellow  (1965)  of 
the  Royal  Microscopical  Society  and  served  as 
president  (196 1-3). 

Cosslett  was  a  mild-mannered  and  courteous 
man  but  there  were  fires  within,  which,  on  rare 
occasions  and  to  the  dismay  of  those  present, 
would  burst  out  spectacularly.  Outside  micro- 
scopy, interests  that  he  shared  with  his  second 
wife  included  mountain  walking,  listening  to 
music,  and  gardening.  In  1936  he  married  Rose- 
mary, a  teacher  at  Clifton  Girls'  College  and 
daughter  of  James  Stanley  Wilson,  graduate 
electrical  engineer,  of  Barking,  Essex.  In  1940  the 
marriage  was  dissolved  and  in  the  same  year  he 
married  Anna  Joanna,  daughter  of  Josef  Wischin, 
a  railway  official  in  Vienna.  She  was  a  micro- 
scopist  who  had  recently  arrived  in  London 
as  a  refugee;  they  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 
She  continued  with  her  research  and  played  an 
important  part  in  the  EM  section  until  her  death 
in  1969.  After  some  years  of  increasing  disability, 
Cosslett  died  at  his  home,  31  Comberton  Road 
in  the  village  of  Barton  near  Cambridge, 
21  November  1990. 

[T.  Mulvey  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  the  Royal 
Society,  vol.  xl,  1904;  V.  E.  Cosslett.  'The  Develop- 
ment of  Electron  Microscopy  and  Related  Techniques 
at  the  Cavendish  Laboratory,  Cambridge,  1946-1979', 
Contemporary  Physics,  vol.  xxii,  1981,  pp.  3—36  and 
147-82;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Dennis  McMullan 

COTTON,  (Thomas)  Henry  (1907-1987), 
golfer,  was  bom  26  January  1907  in  Holmes 
Chapel,  Cheshire,  the  second  son  in  the  family  of 
two  sons  and  one  daughter  of  George  Cot- 
ton, industrialist,  inventor,  and  Wesleyan  lay- 
preacher,  and  his  second  wife,  Alice  le  Poidevin, 
a  native  of  Guernsey.  His  early  childhood  was 
spent  in  Peckham.  He  and  his  brother  Leslie 
went  to  Ivydale  Road  School,  Peckham.  and, 
after  their  evacuation  from  London  in  World 
War  I,  to  Reigate  Grammar  School.  Thereafter 
Cotton  won  a  scholarship  to  Alleyn's  School. 
The  war  over,  George  Cotton  obtained  junior 
membership  for  both  boys  at  the  Aquarius  Golf 
Club,  and  both  won  the  club  championship 
before  reaching  their  teens.  From  the  time  he  left 
Alleyn's  (after  irritating  the  headmaster)  to 
become  a  golf  professional  at  sixteen,  Cotton  trod 


91 


Cotton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


a  path  of  his  own.  His  aloofness  lost  him  popu- 
larity with  contemporaries,  and  his  strong  will 
brought  him  into  conflict  with  golf's  rulers,  but 
he  rarely  deviated  from  his  chosen  course.  His 
achievements  were  founded  on  intense  applica- 
tion and  self-reliance. 

When  he  entered  his  profession,  the  status  of 
golf  professional  was  barely  above  that  of  a  senior 
caddy.  By  personal  example  Cotton  did  more 
than  anyone  of  his  time  to  alter  that.  He  sought 
the  best:  silk  shirts  from  Jermyn  Street,  limou- 
sines rather  than  taxis,  and  the  best  restaurants. 
Though  he  was  to  win  three  British  Open 
Championships  and  many  famous  victories,  the 
impact  he  made  on  his  own  profession  was  his 
greatest  attainment.  He  was  not  long  content  to 
be  the  junior  of  six  assistants  at  Fulwell  Golf 
Club  on  12s.  6d.  a  week.  Within  a  year  he  had 
moved  to  an  assistant's  post  at  Rye.  There  he 
made  friends  with  Cyril  *Tolley,  a  fine  amateur 
golfer,  who  assisted  his  next  move.  At  nineteen, 
Cotton  went  to  Langley  Park,  the  youngest  head 
professional  in  the  history  of  British  golf. 

At  this  point  Cotton  perceived  that  to  reach 
the  top  in  golf  he  must  challenge  American 
supremacy.  With  the  blessing  of  his  club,  £300, 
and  a  first-class  ticket  on  the  Aquitania,  he  joined 
America's  winter  season  of  1928-9.  A  year  later 
he  was  invited  to  Argentina  to  teach  and  play 
exhibition  matches  with  a  fellow  professional. 
There  (Maria)  Isabel  Estanguet  Moss  booked 
him  for  fifty  lessons.  The  daughter  of  Pedro 
Estanguet,  a  wealthy  landowner,  and  his  wife 
Epifania,  and  married  to  Enrique  Moss,  of 
Argentina's  diplomatic  service,  'Toots',  as  she 
became  universally  known,  was  five  years  Cot- 
ton's senior.  They  formed  a  close  partnership, 
which  transformed  both  their  lives.  Eventually, 
on  the  annulment  in  Latvia  in  June  1939  of  her 
first  marriage,  they  married  at  a  Westminster 
register  office  in  December  1939.  They  had  no 
children,  although  there  were  two  daughters 
from  Isabel's  first  marriage.  Passionately  loyal  to 
Cotton's  interests,  when  occasion  demanded  she 
became  his  most  trenchant  critic. 

Cotton  won  three  Open  victories  (1934  at 
Royal  St  George's,  1937  at  Carnoustie,  and  1948 
at  Muirfield).  After  seven  years  at  Langley  Park, 
Cotton  had  taken  a  post  at  Waterloo,  a  fashion- 
able club  near  Brussels.  But  after  his  first  Open 
win,  he  was  persuaded  by  the  sixth  Earl  of 
*Rosebery  to  build  up  the  reputation  of  Ashridge 
Golf  Club.  The  outbreak  of  World  War  II 
interrupted  a  career  at  the  peak  of  success. 
Cotton  joined  the  Royal  Air  Force,  and  suffered 
a  regime  which  aggravated  his  stomach  ulcer. 
Medically  discharged,  with  the  rank  of  flight 
lieutenant,  he  raised  £70,000  for  the  Red  Cross 
and  other  war  charities  from  130  matches  which 
he  organized.  He  took  appointments  first  at 
Coombe  Hill  and  then  Royal  Mid-Surrey.  From 


there  he  won  his  last  Open  in  1948.  That  was  the 
apogee  of  a  career  in  which  he  had  dominated 
tournament  golf  for  some  twenty  years.  He  was 
also  captain  of  the  British  Ryder  Cup  team  in 
1939,  1947,  and  1953.  Though  there  were  minor 
wins  in  1953  and  1954,  writing,  teaching,  and 
golf  architecture  became  main  outlets.  He  wrote 
several  books  on  golf,  as  well  as  designing  thir- 
teen golf  courses  in  Britain  and  ten  more 
abroad. 

In  1963  Cotton  went  to  Portugal  and  on  the 
Algarve  coast  created  from  a  swamp  the  Penina 
Golf  Course,  which  became  his  memorial.  He 
became  virtually  squire  of  the  place  until  the 
Portuguese  revolution  of  April  1974,  during 
which  he  was  expelled.  Profoundly  depressed  by 
enforced  exile,  Cotton  was  rallied  by  his  wife  and 
they  moved  for  a  spell  to  Sotogrande  in  Spain. 
After  a  two-year  interlude  they  returned  to 
Portugal.  There,  at  Christmas  1982  Toots  died, 
ending  half  a  century's  close  partnership.  In  1987 
Cotton  entered  King  Edward  VII  Hospital,  and 
there  received  intimation  of  his  knighthood.  He 
had  been  appointed  MBE  in  1946.  During  his 
convalescence  he  died  suddenly  in  King  Edward 
VII  Hospital,  London,  22  December  1987,  and 
was  buried  at  Mexilhoeira  Grande  in  Portugal. 
He  was  knighted  posthumously  in  the  New 
Year's  honours  of  1988. 

Always  an  individualist,  Cotton  taught  that 
golfing  excellence  demanded  infinite  pains.  He 
believed  in  strong  hands  and  could  hit  a  succes- 
sion of  one-handed  shots  without  regripping  the 
club.  A  severe  opponent,  he  was  also  an  excellent 
host.  Tireless  in  pursuit  of  his  own  goals,  he 
freely  shared  with  a  generation  of  young  golfers 
more  insight  into  the  game  than  any  other  figure 
of  his  time. 

[Henry  Cotton,  This  Game  of  Golf,  1948;  Peter  Dober- 
einer,  Maestro:  the  Life  of  Henry  Cotton,  1992;  personal 
knowledge.]  W.  F.  Deedes 

COUSINS,  Frank  (1904- 1986),  trade-union 
leader,  was  born  8  September  1904  at  28 
Minerva  Street,  Bulwell,  Nottinghamshire,  the 
eldest  son  in  a  family  of  ten  (five  sons  and  five 
daughters)  of  Charles  Fox  Cousins,  miner,  and 
his  wife  Hannah  Smith,  the  daughter  of  a  miner 
from  Bulwell.  He  was  educated  at  Beckett  Road 
School  in  Wheatley,  Doncaster,  and  King 
Edward  Elementary  School,  Doncaster,  which  he 
left  at  the  age  of  fourteen  in  191 8  shortly  before 
the  end  of  World  War  I.  He  immediately  started 
work  alongside  his  father,  as  a  trainee  at  Brods- 
worth  colliery  in  Doncaster,  where  he  worked 
underground  and  joined  the  mineworkers'  union 
(then  the  Yorkshire  Miners'  Association,  which 
was  part  of  the  Miners'  Federation  of  Great 
Britain,  the  forerunner  of  the  National  Union  of 
Mineworkers). 

After  working  in  the  colliery  for  more  than 


92 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cousins 


five  years  Cousins  left  to  become  a  truck  driver, 
first  delivering  coal  locally  and  then,  in  1 931,  as 
a  long-distance  road-haulage  driver — by  which 
rime  he  had  joined  the  Transport  and  General 
Workers'  Union,  led  by  Ernest  *Bevin.  He 
mostly  ferried  meat  between  Scotland  and  Lon- 
don until  July  1938,  when  he  became  a  full-time 
official  of  the  TGWU,  as  an  organizer  in  the 
Doncaster  district.  In  one  sense  he  was  born  into 
trade  unionism  as  were  so  many  of  his  genera- 
tion— men  of  great  natural  ability  but  without 
extended  education  or  social  opportunities  open 
to  the  more  prosperous  groups  in  society. 
Becoming  a  trade-union  activist  was  a  calling, 
quite  the  equal  of  similarly  dedicated  work  for  a 
political  party.  At  this  time  Cousins  first  met 
Ernest  Bevin,  clashing  with  him  over  organizing 
road  haulage  workers  into  the  union.  It  was  a 
brotherly  clash,  but  one  which  both  men  remem- 
bered, and  especially  Cousins,  since  he  felt  it  may 
have  been  a  turning-point  in  his  own  career, 
demonstrating  as  it  did  his  characteristic  style  as 
a  fearless,  stubborn,  awkward,  and  rebellious 
negotiator. 

His  physical  stature  helped  to  accentuate  these 
characteristics:  he  was  six  feet  four  inches  tall, 
powerfully  built,  and  immensely  strong.  He 
spoke  with  a  sharp  rasping  tone,  especially  when 
excited  by  events.  His  loyalty  to  his  principles 
and  political  beliefs  was  absolute. 

His  development  as  a  full-time  official  for  the 
TGWU  took  him  from  Doncaster  to  Sheffield 
during  World  War  II.  In  1944  he  was  appointed 
to  his  first  national  trade-union  post,  as  national 
officer  for  the  road  haulage  section  of  the 
TGWU,  based  in  London.  In  October  1948 
Cousins  was  appointed  national  secretary  for  the 
group,  a  substantial  achievement  in  view  of  his 
difficult  relationship  with  the  TGWU  general 
secretary,  Arthur  *Deakin,  with  whom  Cousins 
had  frequently  clashed,  on  industrial  as  well  as 
political  policy.  Deakin,  a  rock  of  the  established 
right-wing  authority  of  the  trade-union  move- 
ment, sought  to  keep  Cousins  firmly  under 
control  and,  where  possible,  deny  him  advance- 
ment in  the  union.  But  a  series  of  remarkable 
circumstances  thrust  Cousins  into  the  top  ranks 
of  the  TGWU. 

Deakin  died  in  1955  before  he  could  secure  his 
preferred  successor.  The  job  of  general  secretary 
of  the  TGWU,  arguably  the  most  important 
power-broking  role  in  the  British  Labour  move- 
ment, then  went  to  Deakin's  number  two,  Arthur 
Tiffin,  and  to  everyone's  surprise  Cousins  was 
appointed  by  the  union's  executive  as  Tiffin's 
deputy.  Tiffin  died  unexpectedly  within  six 
months  of  taking  over  and  on  2  January  1956 
Cousins  was  appointed  'acting'  general  secretary. 
Later,  on  1 1  May  1956,  after  a  union  ballot,  he 
was  confirmed  as  general  secretary  by  503,560 
votes  to  77,916 — which  was  the  largest  ballot 


return  in  the  history  of  any  British  trade  union. 
At  that  time  the  union  ran  membership  ballots 
only  for  the  general  secretary's  post. 

The  whole  affair  was  an  extraordinary 
sequence  of  events,  which  was  to  have  far- 
reaching  consequences  for  the  entire  Labour 
movement — especially  for  the  Labour  party, 
then  under  the  leadership  of  Hugh  *Gaitskell. 
The  largest  union  in  the  country  had  a  left-wing 
radical  at  the  helm  for  the  first  time  in  its  history. 
Cousins  immediately  made  an  impact  on  the 
industrial  front,  first  in  the  motor  industry, 
where  he  inherited  a  difficult  and  tense  climate  of 
industrial  relations  as  automation  was  being 
introduced,  and  then  in  London  buses,  where  he 
led  a  strike  lasting  nearly  two  months.  At  the 
same  time  he  quickly  sought  to  switch  the 
TGWU's  traditional  political  stance  from 
staunchly  pro-Gaitskell  to  the  support  of 
Aneurin  *Bevan  and  the  Bevanite  left.  In  fact  he 
went  beyond  this  and  personally  associated  him- 
self and  his  family  with  the  Campaign  for 
Nuclear  Disarmament.  In  i960  Cousins  led  the 
campaign  to  'Ban  the  Bomb'  at  the  Labour  party 
conference  at  which  Gaitskell  was  defeated  on 
defence  policy.  The  defeat  precipitated  Gait- 
skell's  famous  'fight,  fight,  and  fight  again' 
speech. 

After  Gaitskell 's  death  in  1963  Cousins  played 
a  prominent  part  in  helping  to  secure  Harold 
Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx)  as  leader 
of  the  Labour  party.  In  October  1964,  when 
Wilson  won  the  general  election,  Cousins  was 
invited  into  the  Labour  cabinet  as  the  first 
minister  of  technology.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  Yet  the  rebellious 
instinct  refused  to  desert  him  even  in  the  cabinet. 
He  quickly  found  himself  at  odds  with  Wilson,  as 
he  opposed  all  moves  by  the  Wilson  government 
to  establish  a  statutory  incomes  policy.  When,  in 
the  end,  he  failed  to  persuade  his  cabinet  col- 
leagues, he  resigned  from  the  Wilson  govern- 
ment in  July  1966.  Shortly  afterwards  he  also 
resigned  his  parliamentary  seat  at  Nuneaton — a 
seat  that  had  been  found  for  him  in  a  by-election 
in    1964   and    which    he   assumed    in  January 

1965 

Cousins  consistently  resisted  any  form  of  state 
control  over  pay,  carrying  this  opposition  back 
with  him  to  the  TGWU  where,  after  resigning 
from  the  government,  he  resumed  as  general 
secretary  in  1966.  Yet  he  never  again  quite 
recaptured  the  force  of  his  earlier  years.  How- 
ever, during  the  three  years  which  remained 
before  he  retired  from  the  TGWU  in  September 
1969,  he  ensured  the  succession  of  his  chosen 
'crown  prince',  Jack  Jones. 

Cousins's  final  role  was  as  the  founding  chair- 
man of  the  Community  Relations  Commission, 
set  up  in  1968  by  the  Wilson  government,  and 
charged  with  improving  race  relations  in  Britain. 


93 


Cousins 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


It  was  a  cause  close  to  Cousins's  heart — so  much 
so  that  he  remained  in  the  post  for  a  short  while 
even  after  the  election  of  a  Conservative  govern- 
ment under  (Sir)  Edward  Heath  in  1970.  Indeed, 
he  was  persuaded  to  do  so  by  the  home  secretary, 
Reginald  *Maudling.  In  November  1970  Cousins 
finally  resigned  his  chairmanship  of  the  CRC  and 
went  into  retirement  in  the  village  of  Wrington 
near  Bristol,  curiously  enough  only  a  few  miles 
from  where  the  founder  of  the  TGWU,  Ernest 
Bevin,  was  born.  Cousins  refused  several  invita- 
tions to  return  to  public  life  and  declined  a  seat 
in  the  House  of  Lords. 

Cousins  was  the  most  forceful  of  all  trade- 
union  leaders  to  emerge  in  the  postwar  years;  he 
had  a  remarkable  and  galvanizing  effect  on  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  entire  Labour  movement.  He 
shifted  the  Labour  party  and  the  trade-union 
movement  to  the  left  and  turned  the  Transport 
and  General  Workers'  Union — the  largest  union 
in  the  country — from  a  pillar  of  the  Labour 
right-wing  establishment  into  a  driving  force  for 
radical  left-wing  reform.  Yet  as  a  cabinet  minis- 
ter, the  first  minister  of  technology,  he  was  a 
failure.  Like  so  many  'imports'  from  industry,  he 
could  never  come  to  terms  with  the  climate  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  Yet  he  did  lay  the  founda- 
tions at  the  Ministry  of  Technology'  for  a  new 
approach  to  technological  development. 

In  1930  Cousins  married  Annie  Elizabeth 
('Nance'),  daughter  of  Percy  Judd,  a  railway 
clerk  in  Doncaster.  They  had  two  sons  and  two 
daughters.  Cousins  died  n  June  1986  in  Ches- 
terfield, Derbyshire. 

[Geoffrey  Goodman,  The  Awkward  Warrior,  1979,  and 
Brother  Frank,  1969;  Margaret  Stewart,  Frank  Cousins, 
1968;  Jack  Jones,  Union  Man,  1986;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Geoffrey  Goodman 

CREDITOR,  Dora  (1 901-1989),  UK  repre- 
sentative at  the  United  Nations  in  the  1960s, 
and  wife  of  Hugh  Gaitskell,  leader  of  the  Labour 
party.  [See  Gaitskell,  Anna  Deborah 
('Dora').] 

CROFT,  (John)  Michael  (1 922-1 986),  founder 
and  director  of  the  National  Youth  Theatre,  was 
born  in  Oswestry  8  March  1922,  the  child  of 
Constance  Croft,  who  was  unmarried.  As  a 
young  child  he  moved  with  his  elder  sister  to  live 
with  his  mother's  sister  in  Manchester,  where  he 
was  educated  at  Burnage  Grammar  School  from 
1933  to  1940.  His  adolescence  was  dominated  by 
two  passions,  for  literature  (in  particular,  poetry, 
for  which  he  had  an  almost  photographic  mem- 
ory), and  for  team  games,  which  he  played  with 
extreme  gusto,  but  at  which  he  achieved  a  limited 
effectiveness  only  in  cricket,  the  rich  lore  of 
which  always  fascinated  him. 

He  had  little  satisfaction  or  security  from  his 
home.  He  soon  developed  an  uncompromising 
individualism  and  volunteered  for  aircrew  duties 


in  the  Royal  Air  Force  in  1940.  He  became  a 
sergeant-pilot  and  took  part  in  daylight  bombing 
raids  over  occupied  France,  but  his  manual 
dexterity  proved  unequal  to  the  demands  of 
flying,  and  he  was  offered  the  option  of  a 
discharge. 

He  had  a  variety  of  casual  occupations,  as  an 
actor,  professional  'fire-watcher'  in  ARP  (Air 
Raid  Precautions),  credit  salesman,  and  lumber- 
jack, before  he  volunteered  for  the  navy  in  1943. 
After  service  in  Mediterranean  convoys,  he  fin- 
ished the  war  as  a  radar  operator  on  merchant 
ships. 

In  1946  he  went  to  Keble  College,  Oxford,  to 
read  English.  He  was  a  member  of  an  exception- 
ally talented  generation  of  ex-service  students, 
and  revelled  in  being  able  to  indulge  his  love  of 
literature,  theatre,  writing,  and  sport,  while,  at 
the  same  time,  breaking  university  regulations  by 
living  in  licensed  premises.  He  took  a  special 
short-course  degree  and  achieved  a  third  class  in 
English  in  1948. 

An  unsettled  period  followed  graduation.  He 
did  occasional  journalism,  poetry  writing,  broad- 
casting, and  acting,  and  worked  as  a  private  tutor 
and  a  supply-teacher.  From  teaching,  he  gath- 
ered the  material  for  his  novel,  Spare  the  Rod 
(1954),  a  minor  cause  celebre  amongst  liberal 
educationists,  which,  after  skirmishes  with  the 
Board  of  Censors,  was  filmed  in  1961  with  Max 
Bygraves  as  the  sexually  ambivalent  school- 
teacher. He  also  wrote  Red  Carpet  to  China 
(1958).  Croft's  final  teaching  post  was  at  Alleyn's 
School,  Dulwich  (1950-5),  where  he  staged  a 
series  of  epic  Shakespearian  productions,  involv- 
ing the  majority  of  the  school's  pupils,  that 
aroused  the  interest  of  the  London  press  and  the 
professional  theatre.  His  work  was  characterized 
by  spectacle,  vigour,  commitment,  and  an  un- 
usual concern  for  verse-speaking:  he  wanted  to 
envelop  everybody  in  his  huge  enthusiasm  and  to 
make  them  share  his  fascination  with  the  works 
of  Shakespeare. 

Spare  the  Rod  gave  him  sufficient  financial 
independence  to  resign  from  teaching,  ostensibly 
to  devote  himself  to  writing,  but  it  seems  that  he 
was  persuaded  by  a  group  of  ex-pupils,  dis- 
consolate at  the  loss  of  their  Shakespeare  play,  to 
direct  them  in  an  out-of-term  production  of 
Henry  V  zt  Toynbee  Hall  in  1956.  In  effect,  this 
was  the  first  'Youth  Theatre'  production  and  it 
determined  the  course  of  the  rest  of  his  life.  The 
venture  was  self-supporting:  ticket  sales  and 
donations  were  the  only  funding  until,  in  1958, 
King  George's  Jubilee  Fund  gave  a  grant  which 
was  continuous.  Subsequently,  the  British  Coun- 
cil and  the  Department  of  Education  and  Science 
provided  support.  There  was  a  long  and  fairly 
acrimonious  battle  with  the  Arts  Council  before 
any   funding   was   secured,   only   for  it   to  be 


94 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cross 


withdrawn  after  a  few  years.  By  1970,  Croft  was 
able  to  claim,  'We  have  three  companies  touring 
in  Europe,  four  in  London,  and  one  in  the  north- 
east of  England — the  whole  being  run  by  a  full- 
time  staff  of  four,  with  a  handful  of  voluntary 
helpers.'  Ahead  lay  the  televising  and  broad- 
casting of  youth  theatre  productions,  the  com- 
missioning of  new  works  (significantly  from 
Peter  Terson  and  Barrie  Keeffe  in  the  1970s),  the 
visit  to  America,  the  acquiring  of  the  Shaw 
theatre  (1971),  and,  in  1977,  official  recognition 
of  the  National  Youth  Theatre  of  Great  Brit- 
ain. 

Croft  gained  an  increasing  reputation  as  an 
internationally  respected  director,  and  his  com- 
panies added  to  the  lustrous  reputation  of  the 
English  theatre,  but  the  NYTGB  struggled 
against  inadequate  funding.  He  saw  his  creation 
as  the  victim  of  national  parsimony  to  the  arts 
and  he  became  more  obviously  an  abrasive, 
militant  publicist,  enjoying  a  bare-knuckle 
approach  to  negotiation.  He  had  a  flair  for 
discovering  stars,  such  as  Derek  Jacobi,  Helen 
Mirren,  Ben  Kingsley,  and  Diana  Quick. 

He  was  appointed  OBE  in  1971.  After  the 
straitened  circumstances  of  his  early  days,  his 
later  success  introduced  him  to  an  expansive 
lifestyle,  which  he  delighted  in  sharing  gen- 
erously with  his  vast  number  of  friends  and 
acquaintances.  He  was  homosexual,  but  he  had 
many  friends  of  the  opposite  sex  and,  particularly 
in  his  early  years,  led  a  bisexual  existence.  He 
had  few  intimates,  apparently  finding  it  difficult 
to  break  down  his  core  of  loneliness.  He  was  a 
man  of  gargantuan  appetites  in  every  way,  espe- 
cially for  food  and  drink,  and  his  eventual  failure 
to  control  these  proclivities,  allied  to  a  dread  of 
surgery,  contributed  to  his  comparatively  early 
death.  He  died  of  a  heart  attack  at  his  home  in 
Kentish  Town,  15  November  1986.  A  character- 
istic instruction  in  his  will  provided  a  party  for  a 
vetted  list  of  some  hundreds  of  his  friends,  'at 
which  the  food  shall  be  wholesome — and  the 
drink  shall  not  be  allowed  to  run  out'. 

[Michael  Croft's  papers  in  private  hands;  personal 
knowledge.]  Geoffrey  Sykes 

CROSS,  (Arthur)  Geoffrey  (Neale),  Baron 
Cross  of  Chelsea  (1904-1989),  judge,  was  born 
in  London  1  December  1904,  the  elder  son  and 
elder  child  of  Arthur  George  Cross,  quantity 
surveyor,  of  Hastings,  and  his  wife,  Mary  Eliz- 
abeth Dalton.  He  was  eight  years  older  than  his 
brother,  (Sir)  Rupert  *Cross,  a  distinguished 
academic  lawyer.  He  was  a  scholar  of  West- 
minster School,  where  his  classical  scholarship 
was  firmly  grounded.  He  then  won  a  classical 
scholarship  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 
First-class  honours  in  both  parts  of  the  classical 
tripos  (1923  and  1925)  and  the  Craven  scholar- 
ship (1925)  followed.  He  was  elected  to  a  fellow- 


ship of  Trinity,  which  he  held  from  1927  to  1931. 
His  book  Epirus,  published  in  1932,  became  a 
classic. 

But  while  he  might  have  aspired  to  be  a 
successor  to  Richard  *Porson  or  Sir  Richard 
*Jebb,  he  decided  in  favour  of  a  career  at  the 
Chancery  bar.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Middle  Temple  in  1930  and  started  to  practise  in 
Lincoln's  Inn.  His  abilities  were  soon  recog- 
nized. He  built  up  a  large  junior  practice,  espe- 
cially in  the  somewhat  esoteric  field  of  estate 
duty,  which  amply  justified  him  in  taking  silk  in 
1949.  At  that  time  the  Chancery  bar  was  excep- 
tionally strong.  His  contemporaries  and  rivals 
included  Charles  *Russell  (later  Baron  Russell  of 
Killowen),  (Sir  Edward)  Milner  *Holland,  and 
(Sir)  Andrew  Clark,  all  formidable  advocates. 
Cross's  talents  were  less  spectacular  or  rhetorical, 
but  sometimes  the  more  effective  for  that  reason. 
Promotion  to  the  Chancery  bench  was  stagnant 
in  the  1950s.  There  was  no  compulsory  retire- 
ment age.  Incumbents  showed  a  marked  reluc- 
tance to  accept  the  limitations  of  increasing  age 
and  the  inevitability  of  promotion  was  thus 
delayed.  Ultimately  however  there  were  retire- 
ments and  Milner  Holland's  refusal  of  the  prof- 
fered appointment  facilitated  the  promotion  of 
Russell,  Cross,  and  others.  Thus  the  strong 
Chancery  bar  of  the  1950s  became  the  strong 
Chancery  bench  of  the  1960s. 

Cross's  practice  had  been  wide-ranging.  He 
had  been  leading  counsel  for  the  Bank  of  Eng- 
land before  the  Bank  rate  leak  enquiry  in  1956. 
He  was  for  many  years  closely  involved  on  behalf 
of  C.  S.  Gulbenkian  and  his  family  in  the 
intricacies  of  the  various  agreements  concerning 
the  production  and  distribution  of  Middle  East 
oil.  Those  who  were  involved  with  him  at  that 
time  never  ceased  to  admire  his  gifts  for  convert- 
ing the  complex  into  the  simple.  His  advice  was 
widely  sought  because  of  his  gifts  of  clarity  of 
thought  and  expression.  From  i960  (the  year  in 
which  he  was  knighted)  to  1969  he  served  as  a 
judge  of  the  Chancery  Division,  always  charming 
and  courteous  to  those  appearing  before  him, 
quick  to  see  the  point  and  to  reach  his  decisions. 
By  chance,  cases  involving  champagne,  sherry, 
and  toffee-apples  came  before  him  and  not 
only  brought  him  unaccustomed  publicity,  but 
revealed  an  enjoyment  of  life  which  had  hitherto 
been  known  only  to  his  family  and  friends. 

He  bought  a  house  at  Aldeburgh  in  Suffolk. 
This  led  him  to  sit  as  a  deputy  chairman  of 
Suffolk  quarter-sessions  and  to  acquire  for  him 
the  novel  experience  of  the  workings  of  the 
criminal  law.  He  was  fond  of  saying  that  the 
criticism  of  Chancery  lawyers  with  their  sup- 
posed love  of  technicality  was  misdirected.  The 
criticism  should  be  directed  at  criminal  law- 
yers. 


95 


Cross 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Promotion  to  the  Court  of  Appeal  came  in 
1969.  After  only  two  years,  in  1971  he  was 
promoted  to  the  House  of  Lords  as  a  lord  of 
appeal  in  ordinary.  But  he  decided  to  retire  in 
1975  upon  the  completion  of  his  fifteen  years' 
service.  His  relatively  short  time  in  the  two 
appellate  tribunals  did  not  enable  him  to  leave  his 
mark  as  an  appellate  judge.  He  and  his  wife 
retired  to  Herefordshire,  where  they  lived  hap- 
pily for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  He  served  for 
five  years  after  his  retirement  as  chairman  of 
the  appeal  committee  of  the  Takeover  panel 
(1976-81)  and  occasionally  chaired  a  select  com- 
mittee in  the  House  of  Lords.  He  had  become  a 
bencher  of  the  Middle  Temple  in  1958  and  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
in  1972.  In  his  last  years  at  the  bar  he  was  an 
admirable  and  sensitive  chairman  of  the  bar's 
charity,  the  Barristers'  Benevolent  Association. 
He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1969. 

He  had  not  only  his  intellectual  gifts,  but  also 
warmth  and  charm.  He  was  nearly  six  feet  in 
height  and  somewhat  short-sighted,  but  his  thick 
lenses  did  not  conceal  his  smile.  He  possessed  a 
real  humility  and  often  wondered  why  so  much 
had  come  his  way  when  others  had  been  less 
fortunate.  He  married  in  1952  Joan,  widow  of 
Thomas  Walton  Davies  and  daughter  of  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Theodore  Eardley  Wilmot,  who 
was  killed  in  France  in  March  191 8.  There  was  a 
daughter  of  the  marriage.  Cross  died  in  hospital 
in  Hereford,  4  August  1989. 

[Independent,    17   August    1989;   private   information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Roskill 

CROWTHER-HUNT,  Baron  (1920-1987),  aca- 
demic, constitutional  expert,  and  broadcaster. 
[See  Hunt,  Norman  Crowther.] 

CUTHBERTSON,  Sir  David  Paton  (1900- 
1989),  medical  researcher  and  nutritionist,  was 
born  9  May  1900  in  Kilmarnock,  Ayrshire,  the 
only  child  of  John  Cuthbertson,  MBE,  FRSE, 
secretary  of  the  West  of  Scotland  Agricultural 
College,  and  his  wife,  Lilias  Ann  Bowman, 
formerly  matron  of  Kilmarnock  Infirmary.  He 
was  educated  at  Kilmarnock  Academy.  After 
army  service  (191 8-19),  first  as  a  cadet,  later  as 
second  lieutenant  (temporary)  in  the  Royal  Scots 
Fusiliers,  he  entered  Glasgow  University,  from 
which  he  graduated  B.Sc.  in  192 1,  with  chem- 
istry as  the  principal  subject.  He  won  the  Dobie- 
Smith  gold  medal  and  was  awarded  a  scholarship 
by  the  Scottish  Board  of  Agriculture  to  under- 
take research  in  chemistry.  He  decided,  however, 
that  his  interest  in  research  required  a  medical 
degree  and  he  graduated  MB,  Ch.B.  from  the 
University  of  Glasgow  in  1926,  having  obtained 
the  Hunter  medal  in  physiology  and  the  Strang- 
Steel  scholarship  for  research,  which  enabled 
him  to  carry  out  the  work  during  vacations  for 


his  first  scientific  publication,  in  the  Biochemical 
Journal,  in  1925. 

His  first  appointment  (1926)  was  as  lecturer  in 
pathological  biochemistry  in  the  University  of 
Glasgow  and  clinical  biochemist  to  Glasgow 
Royal  Infirmary.  It  was  while  holding  this  joint 
appointment  that  he  carried  out  the  initial  stud- 
ies on  the  changes  in  metabolism  in  surgical 
patients  which  led,  later,  to  worldwide  recogni- 
tion. In  the  eight  years  he  held  this  post,  before 
being  appointed  to  the  Grieve  lectureship  in 
physiological  chemistry  in  the  University  of 
Glasgow  in  1934,  he  published  twenty-seven 
papers,  mainly  on  the  effects  of  immobility,  bed 
rest,  infection,  or  injury,  on  metabolism  in  surgi- 
cal patients.  In  1934  he  studied  with  Professor 
Karl  Thomas  in  Leipzig  University. 

His  nutritional  investigations  at  this  time 
included  studies  on  the  interactions  of  carbohy- 
drate and  fat  with  the  metabolism  of  protein, 
some  of  which  were  carried  out  in  collaboration 
with  colleagues,  of  whom  one,  Hamish  N. 
Munro,  was  to  gain  a  considerable  international 
reputation  for  his  work  in  nutrition  about  thirty 
years  later.  In  1937  his  MD  was  awarded  with 
honours  and  he  gained  the  Bellahouston  medal  of 
the  University  of  Glasgow.  Undoubtedly,  how- 
ever, it  was  the  publication  of  his  Arris  and  Gale 
lecture  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons  of 
England  in  the  Lancet  (1942,  no.  1,  pp.  433-7), 
entitled  'Post-shock  Metabolic  Response',  which 
gained  for  him  his  greatest  and  enduring  inter- 
national recognition.  Textbooks  throughout  the 
world  came  to  refer  to  his  general  classification  of 
the  changes  in  metabolism  which  follow  serious 
injury  as  the  'ebb'  and  'flow'  phases,  the  ebb 
phase  corresponding  to  the  period  of  clinical 
shock  and  the  flow  phase  to  the  subsequent 
period  of  increased  energy  consumption,  which 
gradually  returns  towards  normal  with  healing 
and  recovery. 

During  the  later  years  of  the  1939-45  world 
war  business  travel  (to  research  or  scientific 
committee  meetings)  became  part  of  Cuthbert- 
son's  life  and  continued  until  his  death.  His 
secondment  to  the  Medical  Research  Council  in 
London  in  1943  required  frequent  travel  between 
Glasgow  and  London  until  1945.  In  that  year  he 
became  director  of  the  Rowett  Research  Insti- 
tute, Bucksburn,  Aberdeen,  a  post  which  he  held 
until  retirement  in  1965  with  a  knighthood, 
having  been  appointed  CBE  in  1957.  Under  his 
direction  the  Institute  expanded  with  new  build- 
ings and  facilities,  such  that  in  1951  there  were 
nine  sections  and  in  its  jubilee  year  in  1963  the 
number  of  staff  had  increased  fourfold.  There 
were  laboratories  for  studies  with  trace  ele- 
ments, radioactive  isotopes,  and  a  large  animal 
calorimeter.  The  Rowett  became  internationally 
renowned  in  nutrition  research. 

On  retirement  Cuthbertson  returned  to  full- 


96 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Cutner 


rime  research  on  the  changes  in  metabolism 
following  injury,  with  support  from  the  MRC 
and  Glasgow  Royal  Infirmary.  He  continued  to 
publish  scientific  papers  and  review  articles,  and 
travel  widely  to  scientific  meetings,  being  partic- 
ularly welcome  in  the  USA.  Two  of  his  notable 
attributes  were  his  ability  to  obtain  support  for 
research  and  to  encourage  others.  His  eminence 
was  recognized  by  honorary  degrees  from  Rut- 
gers (1958),  Glasgow  (i960),  and  Aberdeen 
(1972),  and  honorary  fellowship  or  membership 
of  royal  colleges  and  societies. 

Cuthbertson  was  six  feet  tall  and  had  a  pleas- 
ant personality  and  a  gently  positive  approach. 
He  found  time  for  art,  water-colours,  and 
engraving,  and  many  of  his  colleagues  received 
personally  engraved  Christmas  cards.  Another 
activity  was  golf — he  played  in  Scottish  inter- 


university  matches  and  for  many  years  partici- 
pated in  the  matches  between  the  senates  of  the 
ancient  Scottish  universities.  In  1928  he  married 
a  nursing  sister  in  Glasgow  Royal  Infirmary,  Jean 
Prentice  (died  1987),  daughter  of  the  Revd  Alex- 
ander Prentice  Telfer,  of  Tarbet,  Dunbarton- 
shire. Cuthbertson  died  at  home  in  Troon,  15 
April  1989,  having  played  golf  in  the  morning. 
He  is  commemorated  in  the  annual  Cuthbertson 
lecture  of  the  European  Society  for  Parenteral 
and  Enteral  Nutrition  and  by  a  plaque  in  Glas- 
gow Royal  Infirmary. 

[Personal  records  in  the  archives  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Edinburgh;  personal  knowledge.]  Adam  Fleck 

CUTNER,  Solomon  (1902- 1988),  pianist.  [See 
Solomon.] 


97 


D 


DAHL,  Roald  (1916-1990),  writer  of  children's 
fiction,  was  born  13  September  19 16  in  Llandaff 
near  Cardiff,  the  youngest  in  a  family  of  four 
daughters  and  two  sons  of  Norwegian  parents: 
Harald  Dahl,  who  had  given  up  farming  near 
Oslo  to  make  a  fortune  as  a  ship-broker  in  Wales, 
and  his  wife,  Sofie  Magdalene,  daughter  of  Olaf 
Hesselberg,  a  meteorologist  and  classical  scholar. 
His  sister  married  the  microbiologist  (Sir)  Ashley 
*Miles. 

When  Dahl  was  only  three,  a  beloved  older 
sister  and,  a  few  weeks  later,  his  father  both  died. 
This  was  the  first  in  a  series  of  mortal  disasters 
that  dogged  him,  and,  he  said,  gave  his  work  a 
black  savagery.  His  mother  ran  the  family  and 
gave  Dahl  a  passion  for  reading.  He  was  a  rebel 
at  Llandaff  Cathedral  School,  St  Peter's  in 
Weston-super-Mare,  and  Repton.  In  his  account 
of  his  childhood,  he  revealed  the  cruel  flogging 
pleasurably  inflicted  by  Repton's  headmaster, 
G.  F.  *Fisher  (later  Baron  Fisher  of  Lambeth, 
archbishop  of  Canterbury). 

Resisting  the  attractions  of  a  university  educa- 
tion, at  the  age  of  eighteen  he  joined  the  Public 
Schools  Exploring  Society's  expedition  to  New- 
foundland, sponsored  by  Shell,  and  then  joined 
Shell  in  1934  and  was  sent  to  Dar-es-Salaam, 
Tanganyika.  When  war  broke  out  in  1939,  he 
drove  to  Nairobi,  Kenya,  to  volunteer  for  the 
Royal  Air  Force.  He  served  with  No.  80  Fighter 
Squadron  in  the  Western  Desert  (1940)  and  was 
severely  wounded  when  his  Hurricane  crashed 
over  Libya.  He  rejoined  his  squadron  to  serve  in 
Greece  and  then  Syria  (1941).  Invalided  home  to 
London,  he  was  posted  to  Washington  as  assis- 
tant air  attache  (1942-3),  and  worked  in  security 
(1943-5).  He  was  appointed  wing  commander  in 

1943- 

While  he  was  in  Washington  in  1943, 
C.  S.  *Forester,  creator  of  Captain  Horn- 
blower  and  author  of  many  popular  novels, 
asked  Dahl  to  write  an  account  of  his  most 
exciting  RAF  experience.  Forester  liked  the 
contribution  so  much  that  he  sent  it  to  the 
Saturday  Evening  Post,  which  published  it. 
Dahl's  first  book,  originally  written  as  a  film 
script  for  Walt  Disney,  was  The  Gremlins 
(1943),  which  concerned  a  tribe  of  imaginary 
goblins  who  were  blamed  by  the  RAF  for 
everything  that  went  wrong  with  an  aircraft. 


Dahl  claimed,  mistakenly,  to  have  invented 
the  name. 

His  short  stories,  published  in  such  notice- 
boards  of  the  genre  as  the  New  Yorker  and 
Harper's  Magazine,  tiptoed  along  the  tightrope 
between  the  macabre  and  the  comic  in  a  manner 
reminiscent  of  Saki  (H.  H.  *Munro)  in  that 
mode.  In  a  typical  Dahl  plot,  a  woman  murders 
her  husband  with  a  frozen  leg  of  lamb  and  then 
feeds  it  to  the  investigating  detectives,  or  a  rich 
woman  goes  on  a  cruise,  leaving  her  husband  to 
perish  in  an  elevator  stuck  between  two  floors  in 
an  empty  house.  When  the  stories  were  pub- 
lished as  collections,  Someone  Like  You  (1954) 
and  Kiss  Kiss  (i960),  they  made  Dahl  a  celebrity, 
his  fame  being  augmented  by  their  translation  to 
the  television  screen  as  Tales  of  the  Unexpected, 
which  ran  for  many  years  from  1965.  They  are 
bizarre  examples  of  the  fashionable  genre  of 
black  comedy. 

In  1953  Dahl  married  the  film  star  Patricia 
Neal  (on  the  rebound  from  her  long  affair  with 
Gary  Cooper).  She  was  the  daughter  of  William 
Burdett  Neal,  manager  of  the  Southern  Coal  and 
Coke  Company,  of  Packard,  Kentucky.  They  had 
one  son  and  four  daughters,  but  one  daughter 
died  of  measles  in  1962,  and  their  son  was  brain- 
damaged at  the  age  of  four  months,  when  a  cab 
hit  his  pram  in  New  York.  Dahl  started  writing 
children's  books  for  his  own  children,  character- 
istically because  he  thought  the  existing  ones 
were  'bloody  awful',  and  because  he  said  he  had 
run  out  of  ideas  for  macabre  short  stories. 

James  and  the  Giant  Peach  (1967)  was  an 
instant  new  planet  in  the  sky  of  children's  books. 
Dahl  also  wrote,  among  others,  Charlie  and  the 
Chocolate  Factory  (1967,  filmed  as  Willy  Wonka 
and  the  Chocolate  Factory,  1971),  Fantastic  Mr 
Fox  (1970),  Charlie  and  the  Great  Glass  Elevator 
(1973),  Danny,  the  Champion  of  the  World  (1975), 
The  Enormous  Crocodile  (1978),  The  Twits  (1980), 
and  George's  Marvellous  Medicine  (1981).  The 
books  are  rude,  naughty,  and  violent,  and  chil- 
dren loved  them,  though  some  librarians  and 
teachers  did  not.  Children  think  that  Dahl  is  on 
their  side  against  the  interfering  and  misunder- 
standing adult  world. 

While  pregnant  with  their  fifth  child,  Patricia 
Neal  suffered  a  series  of  massive  strokes,  and  was 
helped  through  her  long  recovery  by  Dahl,  until 


98 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Daniel 


she  was  well  enough  to  resume  acting.  He  then 
divorced  her,  in  1953,  and  in  the  same  year 
married  her  best  friend  and  his  long-time  mis- 
tress, Felicity  Ann,  former  wife  of  Charles  Regi- 
nald Hugh  Crosland,  businessman  and  farmer, 
and  daughter  of  Alphonsus  Liguori  d'Abreu, 
thoracic  surgeon,  of  Birmingham.  They  lived 
with  the  eight  children  of  their  previous  mar- 
riages at  Gipsy  House,  a  white  Georgian  farm- 
house in  Great  Missenden  in  Buckinghamshire. 
There  Dahl  wrote,  always  in  pencil,  in  a  hut  in 
the  garden. 

Dahl  wrote  several  scripts  for  films,  among 
them  the  James  Bond  adventure,  You  Only  Live 
Twice  (1967),  and  Chitty  Chitty  Bang  Bang 
(1968).  He  was  six  feet  six  inches  tall,  a  chain- 
smoker,  a  lover  of  fine  wine,  a  collector  of 
contemporary  painting,  and  a  keen  gambler  on 
horses.  His  public  statements  were  often 
intemperate,  and  some  of  his  stories  about  him- 
self were  as  tall  as  he  was.  But  he  had  a  magical 
touch  for  the  macabre  and  the  surrealist,  and  for 
a  lord  of  misrule  topsy-turvydom  that  made  him 
the  most  popular  children's  writer  of  his  age.  He 
died  2}  November  1090  in  the  John  Radcliffe 
Hospital,  Oxford. 

[Barry  Farrell,  Pat  and  Roald,  1970;  Roald  Dahl,  Boy, 
1984,  Going  Sob,  1986,  and  Ah  Sweet  Mystery  of  Life, 
1989  (autobiographies);  Jeremy  Treglown,  Roald  Dahl: 
a  Biography,  1994;  personal  knowledge.] 

Philip  Howard 

DAMM,  Sheila  Van  (1922-1987),  car  rally 
driver  and  director  of  the  Windmill  theatre.  [See 
Van  Damm,  Sheila.] 

DANIEL,  Glyn  Edmund  (1914-1986),  archae- 
ologist and  writer,  was  born  23  April  1914  at 
Lampeter  Velfrey,  Pembrokeshire,  the  only  child 
of  John  Daniel,  schoolmaster,  and  his  wife,  Mary 
Jane  Edmunds.  He  was  educated  in  his  father's 
school  at  Llantwit  Major  (where  they  moved  in 
1919)  and  then  at  Barn,-  County  School,  of  which 
he  had  many  happy  memories,  vividly  recorded 
in  his  autobiography  Some  Small  Harvest  (1986). 
He  gained  a  place  for  1932  at  St  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  spending  the  preceding  year  at  Uni- 
versity College,  Cardiff,  studying  geology  and 
the  organ.  Turning  to  the  archaeology  and 
anthropology  tripos  at  St  John's,  after  getting  a 
first  in  the  qualifying  examination  for  the  geo- 
graphy tripos  (1933),  he  graduated  with  first 
classes  in  both  section  A  (1934)  and  section  B 
(1935).  He  continued  as  a  research  student  at  St 
John's  with  a  Strathcona  studentship,  receiving 
also  an  Allen  scholarship  in  1937. 

The  remarkable  megalithic  monuments  of 
western  Europe  formed  the  subject  of  his 
research,  both  in  Britain  (his  doctoral  disserta- 
tion of  1938  being  published  in  1950  as  The 
Prehistoric  Chamber  Tombs  of  England  and  Wales) 
and  in  France,  where  his  first  visit  to  Brittany  in 


1936  resulted  eventually  in  The  Prehistoric  Cham- 
ber Tombs  of  France  (i960),  with  an  authoritative 
overview  of  the  whole  subject  in  The  Megalith 
Builders  of  Western  Europe  (1958). 

His  doctoral  dissertation  won  him  a  research 
fellowship  at  St  John's  in  1938,  but  his  tenure 
was  interrupted  by  the  war.  He  served  as  an 
intelligence  officer  in  the  RAF  (1940-5),  becom- 
ing officer  in  charge  of  photo  interpretation. 
India  and  south-east  Asia  (1942-5),  rising  to  the 
rank  of  wing  commander  and  being  mentioned  in 
dispatches.  In  India  he  met  his  future  wife  Ruth, 
daughter  of  the  Revd  Richard  William  Bailey 
Langhorne,  headmaster  of  Exeter  Cathedral 
Choristers'  School.  They  were  married  in  1946, 
and  their  happy  partnership  formed  thereafter  a 
central  part  of  rus  life.  They  had  no  children. 

On  his  return  from  India  he  resumed  his 
fellowship  at  St  John's,  another  significant  and 
enduring  strand  in  his  life,  serving  as  steward 
from  1946  to  1955.  He  was  made  assistant 
lecturer  in  the  department  of  archaeology  in 
1945,  becoming  lecturer,  then  reader,  and  then, 
in  1974,  Disney  professor  and  head  of  depart- 
ment until  his  retirement  in  1981.  He  received  a 
Cambridge  Litt.D.  in  1962. 

Already  with  his  first  major  publication,  The 
Three  Ages  (1943),  he  showed  an  acute  awareness 
of  the  relevance  of  the  history  of  archaeology  to 
current  archaeological  research.  His  A  Hundred 
Years  of  Archaeology  (1950),  a  pioneering  study 
in  the  history  of  archaeology,  perhaps  his  most 
important  contribution,  was  followed  by  several 
others,  including  The  Idea  of  Prehistory  (1962). 

As  a  teacher  he  excelled  in  kindling  the 
enthusiasm  of  his  pupils,  many  of  whom  became 
also  his  friends.  He  held  that  'friendship  is  a 
conspiracy  for  pleasure',  and  while  food  and 
drink  habitually  formed  part  of  that  pleasure  (a 
point  well  documented  in  The  Hungry  Archae- 
ologist in  France,  1963),  people  mattered  more. 
His  keen  eye  for  character  is  deployed  in  his  two 
detective  novels  {The  Cambridge  Murders,  1945, 
and  Welcome  Death,  1954),  and  his  ebullient 
sense  of  humour  comes  over  well  in  the  small, 
privately  published  The  Pen  of  My  Aunt  (1961). 
His  love  affair  with  France  was  consummated  in 
1964  by  the  purchase  of  a  house  in  the  Pas  de 
Calais,  which  he  and  his  wife  visited  frequently 
until  the  year  of  his  death. 

While  his  most  influential  academic  work  was 
in  the  history  of  archaeology,  his  greatest  impact 
on  the  archaeology  of  postwar  Britain  was  as  a 
communicator,  not  least  as  chairman  of  the 
highly  successful  television  panel  game  Animal, 
Vegetable,  Mineral?,  which  made  both  Sir  (R.  E.) 
Mortimer  *Wheeler  and  Glyn  Daniel  household 
names,  and  brought  them  the  accolade  of  tele- 
vision personality  of  the  year  in  1954  and  1955 
respectively.  Daniel  was  a  founding  director  of 
Anglia  Television  from  1959  to  1981.  He  was  a 


99 


Daniel 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


brilliant  and  entertaining  speaker  and  his  public 
lectures  and  broadcasts  made  him  widely  known 
and  recognized.  As  editor  of  the  Ancient  People 
and  Places  series  for  Thames  &  Hudson  he 
commissioned  over  ioo  volumes.  He  became 
editor  of  Antiquity  in  1958,  following  the  death  of 
its  founder-editor  O.  G.  S.  *Crawford  the  pre- 
vious year.  Yet  he  was  not  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  (where  his  role  as  a  popularizer 
may  have  counted  against  him)  until  1982. 

He  was  a  fellow  of  the  Society  of  Antiquaries 
from  1942,  and  served  as  president  of  the  Royal 
Anthropological  Institute  in  1977-9.  A  corre- 
sponding fellow  of  many  learned  societies  over- 
seas, he  became  a  knight  (first  class)  of  the 
Dannebrog  in  1961:  Princess  (later  Queen)  Mar- 
grethe  of  Denmark,  like  the  prince  of  Wales,  had 
been  among  his  many  distinguished  pupils. 

His  scholarly  contributions  will  be  remem- 
bered, and  yet  the  sheer  humanity  and  zest  that 
sparkle  from  his  Antiquity  editorials  and  from  the 
pages  of  Some  Small  Harvest  give  as  valid  an 
insight  into  a  remarkable  teacher  and  scholar.  A 
non-smoker,  after  a  short  illness  he  died  of  lung 
cancer  at  home  in  Cambridge,  13  December 
1986. 

[Glyn  Daniel,  Some  Small  Harvest  (autobiography), 
1986;  Stuart  Piggott  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Acad- 
emy, vol.  lxxiv,  1988;  J.  D.  Evans  et  al.  (eds.),  Antiquity 
and  Man:  Essays  in  Honour  of  Glyn  Daniel,  1981;  Glyn 
Daniel,  Writing  for  Antiquity,  ed.  Ruth  Daniel,  1992; 
personal  knowledge.]  Colin  Renfrew 

DAVIES,  Duncan  Sheppey  (1921-1987),  scien- 
tist, industrialist,  and  civil  servant,  was  born  in 
Liverpool  20  April  1921,  the  only  child  of 
Duncan  Samuel  Davies,  stockbroker,  and  his 
wife,  Elsie  Dora,  nee  May.  He  grew  up  in 
Liverpool  and  was  educated  at  Liverpool  Col- 
lege. He  went  to  Oxford  as  a  scholar  at  Trinity 
College,  read  chemistry,  and  graduated  with 
first-class  honours  in  1943.  His  postgraduate 
research  was  supervised  by  (Sir)  Cyril  *Hin- 
shelwood,  a  polymath  and  an  internationally 
respected  physical  chemist.  Unusually  for  that 
period  he  studied  the  kinetics  of  growth  of 
bacterial  cells,  which  was  a  field  pioneered  by 
Hinshelwood  and  a  precursor  to  modern  bio- 
technology. His  D.Phil.  was  awarded  in  1946. 
The  years  at  Oxford  formed  him  as  a  gifted 
scientist,  a  bounding  spirit,  and  a  warm  and 
tolerant  human  being. 

The  principal  part  of  his  career  was  spent  in 
Imperial  Chemical  Industries  (ICI).  In  1945  he 
joined  the  research  department  at  the  dyestuffs 
division  in  Blackley,  Manchester,  at  a  time  when 
it  teemed  with  chemical  talent  and  spawned  the 
fibres  division  and  pharmaceutical  division.  He 
worked  for  ten  years  on  the  mechanism  of 
organic  reactions  related  to  the  manufacture  and 
use  of  colours  and  fine  chemicals.  His  exceptional 


talents  began  to  be  revealed  when  he  took  over 
a  works  experimental  section  in  the  colours 
department  at  Grangemouth  works.  Labor- 
atory-derived techniques  were  applied  with  con- 
siderable ingenuity  and  success  to  full-scale 
operations.  As  research  director  of  ICI  general 
chemicals  division  at  Runcorn  (1959-62)  he  fol- 
lowed up  this  work  and  was  involved  in  the 
initiation  of  major  changes  in  the  business  port- 
folio and  its  associated  research.  The  rebuild- 
ing of  university  relationships  with  the  division 
proved  to  be  a  stepping-stone  to  his  next  post: 
director  of  the  ICI  petrochemical  and  polymer 
laboratory,  'charged  with  the  creation  of  new 
innovative  opportunities  (products  and  proc- 
esses) for  ICF.  The  hour  and  the  man  were  well 
suited.  He  recruited  about  400  scientists  and 
managers  from  ICI,  other  companies,  and  uni- 
versities all  over  the  world.  He  introduced  new 
ways  of  using  the  economics  of  the  chemical 
industry  to  direct  the  choice  of  research  pro- 
grammes. He  was  one  of  the  first  people  in  the 
chemical  industry  to  think  automatically  of  it  as 
a  global  business.  Not  surprisingly  he  introduced 
biotechnology  into  the  laboratory. 

Those  around  him,  especially  the  young,  were 
inspired  to  considerable  achievement.  Ideas  of  all 
sorts  poured  forth.  He  became  a  superb  and 
challenging  communicator,  both  in  speech  and 
writing.  In  this  period  he  extended  his  influence 
to  the  universities  and  research  councils.  With 
Callum  McCarthy  he  wrote  An  Introduction  to 
Technological  Economics  (1967).  He  was  one  of 
the  instigators  of  the  much  valued  co-operative 
awards  in  science  and  engineering  (CASE),  in 
which  a  Ph.D.  student  was  supervised  by  an 
industrial  and  an  academic  supervisor. 

In  1967  he  became  deputy  chairman  of  Mond 
division  in  Runcorn  and  in  1969  became  general 
manager,  research  and  development,  at  ICI  head- 
quarters. In  this  post  he  worked  directly  with  the 
main  board  research  and  development  director 
and  was  responsible  for  group  research  and 
development  policy  and  connected  matters,  such 
as  long-term  future  business  and  government 
contracts. 

After  a  career  spanning  thirty-two  years  with 
ICI,  Davies  became  chief  scientist  in  the  UK 
Department  of  Industry  in  1977.  He  was  the 
senior  permanent  civil  servant  responsible  for 
policy  in  science,  engineering,  and  technology. 
He  gave  renewed  importance  to  the  role  of 
engineering  in  the  UK  and  brought  refreshing 
vigour  to  science  in  Whitehall.  He  championed 
biotechnology,  as  an  exploitable  technology. 
Davies  himself  became  deeply  attached  to  infor- 
mation technology,  and  when  he  retired  from  the 
department  in  1982,  he  was  an  addict  of  personal 
computers. 

He  was  a  European  and  a  member  of  the  Club 
of  Rome.  As  chairman  he  breathed  new  life  into 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Davis 


the  British  Ceramics  Association.  He  was  an 
ebullient  president  of  the  Society  of  Chemical 
Industry.  Davies  wrote,  lectured,  consulted, 
argued,  and  travelled.  He  was  witty,  erudite, 
loving,  and  lovable.  His  two  great  passions  were 
Wagner  and  *Shakespeare.  He  was  appointed  CB 
in  1982,  was  an  honorary  fellow  of  UMIST,  and 
received  honorary  degrees  from  the  universities 
of  Stirling  (1975),  Surrey  (1980),  and  Bath 
(198 1 ),  and  from  the  Technion  in  Haifa  (1982), 
and  he  was  a  foreign  associate  of  the  US  Acad- 
emy of  Engineering  (1978). 

Davies  was  a  large  bulky  man,  with  a  bluff 
cheerful  face,  warm  welcoming  personality,  and 
an  abundance  of  energy.  In  1944  he  married 
(Joan)  Ann,  daughter  of  Edward  Noel  Frimston, 
cotton  broker,  and  Caroline  Ethel  Martin,  a 
Liverpool  artist.  They  had  a  son  and  three 
daughters.  Davies  died  in  Paris,  25  March 
1987. 
[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Geoffrey  Allen 

DAVIS,  Sir  William  Wellclose  (1901-1987), 
admiral,  was  born  in  Simla  11  October  1901,  the 
elder  son  and  eldest  of  three  children  of  Walter 
Stewart  Davis,  of  the  Indian  Political  Service, 
and  his  wife,  Georgina  Rose.  Having  been  to 
Summer  Fields  School  in  Oxford,  he  joined  the 
Royal  Navy  as  a  cadet  in  May  19 15  and  attended 
the  naval  colleges,  Osborne  and  Dartmouth.  He 
first  went  to  sea  as  a  midshipman  in  the  battle- 
ship Neptune  in  19 17.  He  specialized  in  torpe- 
does in  1926  and  quickly  showed  his  ability  as  a 
staff  officer.  He  was  fleet  torpedo  officer  to 
Admiral  Sir  Frederic  *Dreyer  on  the  China 
station  and  was  promoted  to  commander  in  1935. 
He  then  became  fleet  torpedo  officer  and  staff 
officer,  plans,  to  the  commander-in-chief,  Home 
Fleet,  and  was -subsequently  appointed  executive 
officer  of  the  battle  cruiser  Hood  in  January  1939. 
He  served  in  her  for  the  first  eighteen  months 
of  World  War  II  and  was  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches. 

Promoted  to  captain  in  December  1940,  Davis 
went  to  the  Admiralty  as  deputy  director  of 
plans.  He  was  for  a  time  seconded  to  the  staff  of 
Admiral  of  the  Fleet  Sir  Roger  (later  first  Baron) 
*Keyes,  director  of  combined  operations.  Davis 
displayed  his  tact  in  his  handling  of  Operation 
Workshop — the  projected  seizure  of  the  Medi- 
terranean island  of  Pantelleria,  a  plan  proposed 
by  Keyes  and  espoused  by  (Sir)  Winston 
•Churchill,  but  fiercely  resisted  by  the  chiefs  of 
staff  and  by  Admiral  Sir  Andrew  *Cunningham 
(later  Viscount  Cunningham  of  Hyndhope),  the 
C-in-C,  Mediterranean.  Operation  Workshop 
never  took  place,  but  Davis  himself  emerged 
with  credit,  Keyes  calling  him  'the  admirable 
staff  officer'. 

In  March  1943  Davis  took  command  of  the 


cruiser  Mauritius,  a  ship  in  a  very  sensitive  state 
of  discipline,  which  was  aggravated  in  January 
1944  when  she  arrived  in  Plymouth  Sound  with 
her  ship's  company  expecting  to  pay  off.  In  spite 
of  Davis's  representations  to  the  Admiralty, 
proper  leave  was  not  granted  and  the  ship  had  to 
return  almost  at  once  to  the  Mediterranean.  Her 
sailors  believed,  not  unreasonably,  that  they  were 
being  punished  for  previous  acts  of  indiscipline 
and  there  was  further  unrest,  with  outright 
refusals  of  duty.  It  was  a  discouraging  start,  but 
Davis,  with  his  gift  for  making  people  work 
together,  turned  the  commission  into  a  triumph. 
Mauritius  was  the  only  major  British  warship  to 
take  part  in  the  four  invasions,  of  Sicily,  Salerno, 
Anzio,  and  Normandy,  bombarding  enemy  shore 
positions  on  more  than  250  occasions.  Later  in 
1944  Mauritius  destroyed  two  enemy  convoys  in 
the  Bay  of  Biscay.  Davis  himself  was  mentioned 
in  dispatches  three  more  times  and  appointed  to 
the  DSO  with  bar  (1944). 

After  the  war  Davis  was  director  of  the  under- 
water weapons  division  at  the  Admiralty,  where 
he  helped  to  form  the  new  electrical  branch,  and 
then  he  became  chief  of  staff  to  the  C-in-C, 
Home  Fleet  (1948-9).  Promoted  to  rear-admiral 
in  1950,  he  was  naval  secretary  to  three  first  lords 
of  the  Admiralty.  From  1952  to  1954  he  was  flag 
officer,  second  in  command,  Mediterranean 
Fleet,  when  the  first  Earl  *Mountbatten  of 
Burma  was  C-in-C.  It  was  made  clear  to  Davis 
that  he  was  to  run  the  fleet  while  Mountbatten 
dealt  with  the  numerous  political  and  strategic 
problems  in  the  Mediterranean. 

A  tall  man,  and  extremely  good-looking  in  his 
youth,  Davis  had  great  personal  charm  and  a 
good  brain.  There  was  nothing  bombastic  or 
dramatic  about  him;  he  was  no  fire-eater.  But 
when  he  went  to  the  Admiralty  in  1954,  as  vice- 
chief  of  the  naval  staff,  he  provided  the  com- 
petent, imperturbable  staff  work  which  ably 
supported  the  much  more  flamboyant  Mountbat- 
ten, then  first  sea  lord,  during  a  seemingly 
interminable  series  of  crises  in  the  late  1950s, 
notably  the  'Crabb  affair',  when  Commander 
Crabb,  a  naval  frogman,  disappeared  whilst  alleg- 
edly inspecting  the  propellers  of  the  Soviet 
cruiser  which  had  brought  Bulganin  and  Khru- 
shchev to  Portsmouth  in  1956;  the  Suez  opera- 
tion, later  that  year,  which  Mountbatten  himself 
deplored;  and  the  navy's  response  to  the  swinge- 
ing cuts  proposed  by  the  1957  white  paper  of 
Duncan  *Sandys  (later  Baron  Duncan-Sandys), 
a  man  whom  Davis  privately  thought  had  little 
grasp  of  the  strategic  needs  of  the  country. 

His  last  appointment,  as  a  full  admiral,  was 
from  1958  to  i960  as  C-in-C,  Home  Fleet,  and 
NATO  C-in-C,  eastern  Atlantic.  He  was  by  then 
the  only  senior  naval  officer  still  serving  who  had 
served  in  World  War  I.  He  was  also  the  first 
C-in-C  to  haul  down  his  flag  afloat  and  hoist  it 


Davis 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


again  ashore  over  the  'Fiihrer  Bunker',  the 
NATO  headquarters  at  Northwood  in  Middle- 
sex. He  was  appointed  CB  in  1952,  KCB  in  1956, 
and  GCB  in  1959.  After  he  retired  in  i960  he 
devoted  much  time  to  county  affairs  in  Glouces- 
tershire. To  the  end  of  his  life  he  took  a  close 
interest  in  naval  history  and  naval  affairs. 

In  1934  he  married  Lady  (Gertrude)  Eliz- 
abeth, second  daughter  of  Constantine  Charles 
Henry  Phipps,  third  Marquess  of  Normanby, 
canon  of  St  George's  chapel,  Windsor.  She  died 
in  1985.  They  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters. 
Davis  died  in  hospital  in  Gloucester,  29  October 
1987. 

[Daily  Telegraph,  2  November  1987;  unpublished  auto- 
biography in  the  possession  of  the  family;  private 
information.]  John  Winton 

DE  BEER,  Esmond  Samuel  (1895- 1990),  histo- 
rian and  benefactor,  was  born  15  September  1895 
in  Dunedin,  New  Zealand,  the  second  son  and 
fourth  and  youngest  child  of  Isidore  Samuel  de 
Beer,  merchant,  and  his  wife  Emily,  daughter  of 
Bendix  Hallenstein.  His  family  on  both  sides  was 
Jewish  and  had  reached  New  Zealand  from 
Germany,  by  way  of  Australia,  during  the  1860s, 
in  his  grandfather's  generation.  The  continuing 
success  of  Hallensteins,  the  family  clothing 
chain,  gave  de  Beer  ample  means  for  a  life  of 
private  research  in  England,  where  he  lived  from 
his  school-days  onwards.  It  was  never  necessary 
for  him  to  hold  a  salaried  post.  From  his  early 
schooling  in  Dunedin,  de  Beer  was  sent  in  19 10 
to  Mill  Hill  School,  from  which  he  went  up  to 
New  College,  Oxford,  in  191 4  to  read  history. 
After  army  service,  first  in  the  ranks  and  then  as 
a  lieutenant  in  the  2/35^  Sikh  Regiment  of  the 
Indian  Army  (191 6-19),  he  returned  to  Oxford, 
taking  a  special  wartime  BA  in  1920  (MA  1925). 
He  then  studied  at  University  College  London 
and  in  1923  received  a  London  MA  for  a  thesis 
on  political  parties  during  the  ministry  of  Sir 
Thomas  *Osborne,  first  Earl  of  Danby. 

The  later  seventeenth  century  remained  de 
Beer's  lifelong  intellectual  centre.  As  he  wrote  of 
his  mentor,  Sir  Charles  *Firth,  whose  assistant 
he  became,  he  was  at  home  there  and  almost  on 
terms  of  friendship  with  its  men  and  women.  He 
built  up  a  large  private  library,  most  of  which 
was  dispersed  by  gift,  chiefly  to  the  University  of 
Otago,  in  the  1980s,  when  he  could  himself  no 
longer  use  it.  An  omnivorous  reader,  he  retained 
so  well  what  he  read  that,  in  his  last  bedridden 
years  when  his  sight  had  failed,  he  could  pass 
time  by  recalling  it  verbatim.  Together  with 
his  sisters,  Mary  (1 890-1 981)  and  Dora  (1891- 
1982),  his  companions  in  a  succession  of  London 
houses,  he  made  a  small  but  well  chosen  art 
collection,  which  he  gave  to  Dunedin  Public  Art 
Gallery  in  1982.  He  and  they  had  already  given 
Iolo  A.  Williams's  library  of  eighteenth-century 


English  literature  to  the  university  and  made  a 
succession  of  other  substantial  gifts  to 
the  Dunedin  Public  Art  Gallery  and  the  Otago 
Museum. 

De  Beer's  scholarly  reputation  derived  from 
his  editions  of  the  diary  of  John  *Evelyn  and  the 
correspondence  of  John  *Locke.  They  were  car- 
ried through  virtually  single-handed,  despite  the 
impression  given  by  the  punctilio  of  his  acknow- 
ledgements. Taken  together,  they  provide  a 
remarkable  overview  of  the  cultural  and  intellec- 
tual milieu  of  their  time,  being  marked  by  an  easy 
mastery  of  bibliographical,  biographical,  literary, 
and  historical  skills  as  well  as  of  the  circum- 
stances of  living  in  and  out  of  seventeenth- 
century  England.  Their  editor's  curiosity  and  his 
conviction  that  the  treatment  of  any  topic  should 
be  complete,  as  far  as  its  carefully  weighed  merits 
allowed,  exactly  balance  his  feeling  for  concise- 
ness and  his  passion  for  eliminating  the  otiose. 
He  began  work  on  Evelyn  in  the  late  1920s  by 
revising  an  existing  transcript.  Early  in  the  1930s 
he  was  formally  invited  by  the  Clarendon  Press 
to  prepare  their  edition.  As  published  in  1955  the 
six  volumes  are  the  first  satisfactory  rendering  of 
the  Diary  and  its  author:  a  full  and  scrupulous 
text,  sustained  by  an  introduction  and  appen- 
dices and  by  some  12,000  footnotes,  the  whole 
made  accessible  by  a  large  and  exemplary  index. 
Separately  published  by-products  were  magiste- 
rial essays  on  the  origin  and  diffusion  of  the  term 
'Gothic',  the  development  of  the  European 
guidebook,  and  the  early  history  of  London 
street  lighting. 

In  1956,  after  the  task  had  been  refused  by 
another  scholar,  de  Beer  began  the  second  great 
instalment  of  his  life's  work,  his  Clarendon  Press 
edition  of  Locke's  correspondence.  He  himself 
brought  together  much  of  the  material.  When  its 
first  two  volumes  appeared  in  1976  he  was 
already  past  eighty,  but  he  followed  them  punc- 
tually with  five  more  before  his  health  began 
seriously  to  decline  in  1982.  The  eighth,  com- 
pleting the  record  of  some  3,650  items,  came  out 
in  1989. 

De  Beer's  direct  services  to  scholarship  were 
supplemented  by  unstinting  generosity  to  insti- 
tutions, societies,  and  individuals,  for  preference 
through  intermediaries,  in  his  lifetime  and  by 
bequest.  He  gave  generous  and  judicious  support 
to  the  Bodleian,  British,  and  London  Libraries, 
where  he  was  a  regular  reader;  his  subsidies 
ensured  the  publication  of  J.  C.  *Beaglehole's 
edition  of  the  journals  of  Captain  James  *Cook 
and  the  Anglo-Australian  edition  of  Cook's 
charts  and  views.  He  was  both  benefactor  and 
practical  helper  of  the  Royal  Historical  Society, 
the  Historical  Association,  the  Bibliographical 
Society,  and  the  London  Topographical  Society. 
Two  London  University  institutes  engaged  his 
special  loyalty:  he  was  honorary  librarian  at  the 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


De  Manio 


Institute  of  Historical  Research  (1040-5),  and  he 
and  his  sisters  established  at  the  Warburg  Insti- 
tute a  fund  in  memory  of  Fritz  *Saxl.  He  was  an 
honorary  fellow  of  the  Warburg  (1978)  and  of 
New  College,  Oxford  (1959),  and  a  fellow  of 
University  College  London  (1967),  the  Society  of 
Antiquaries  (1942),  the  Royal  Society  of  Lit- 
erature (1958),  and  the  Royal  Historical  Society 
(1927),  besides  being  vice-president  (1966)  and 
president  (1972-8)  of  the  Hakluyt  Society  and 
vice-president  of  the  Cromwell  Association 
(1980).  He  held  honorary  doctorates  from  the 
universities  of  Durham  (1956),  Oxford  (1957), 
and  Otago  (1963)  and  he  was  a  trustee  of  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  (1959-67)  and  a  mem- 
ber of  the  reviewing  committee  for  the  export  of 
works  of  art  (1965-70).  In  1965  he  was  elected  a 
fellow  of  the  British  Academy  and  in  1969  he  was 
appointed  CBE. 

De  Beer  valued  such  recognitions.  He  prized 
more  highly,  however,  the  private,  individual 
state  that  allowed  him  freedom  personally  and 
vicariously  to  advance  learning.  By  disposition 
bookish,  shy,  and  a  little  stiff,  mildly  pedantic, 
deliberate  and  precise  in  manner  and  speech,  he 
was  also  courteous,  friendly,  and  humorous.  He 
had  a  knowledgeable  love  of  comfort,  food,  wine, 
and  travel,  especially  in  Italy.  His  physical  stam- 
ina matched  his  scholarly  tenacity.  A  tireless 
walker  and  a  climber,  he  took  special  pleasure  in 
the  far  south  of  the  South  Island  of  New  Zealand 
and  the  island  of  Raasay  near  Skye,  where  he 
spent  summer  holidays  in  company  with  his 
sisters  and  others.  He  had  a  wide  acquaintance 
with  literature,  particularly  drama,  *Shakespeare 
and  Ibsen  being  two  of  his  heroes,  and  with 
music,  principally  opera.  In  adult  life  he  neither 
practised  the  Jewish  religion  nor  adopted 
another.  De  Beer's  aspect  was  dapper  and 
benevolent:  he  always  wore  spectacles  and  a  small 
moustache.  Of  middle  height,  he  was  broad- 
shouldered  but  thinnish  in  build,  with  a  large 
and  powerful  head.  A  confirmed  and  lifelong 
bachelor,  he  died  3  October  1990  in  Stoke 
House,  Stoke  Hammond,  north  Buckingham- 
shire, a  residential  home  for  the  aged. 

[Charles  Brasch,  Indirections:  a  Memoir  igog-ig47, 
1980;  Addresses  green  at  Memorial  Gathering  at  the 
Warburg  Institute,  London,  on  6  December,  iggo,  1990; 
Michael  Strachan,  Esmond  de  Beer  (i8gs~'99°)< 
Scholar  and  Benefactor:  A  Personal  Memoir,  with  a 
Bibliography  by  J.  S.  G.  Simmons,  1995;  personal 
knowledge.]  J.  B.  Trapp 

DE  FERRANTI,  Basil  Reginald  Vincent 
Ziani  (1930-1988),  industrialist  and  politician. 
[See  Ferranti,  Basil  Reginald  Vincent  Ziani 
de.] 

DE  MANIO,  Jack  (1914-1988),  broadcaster,  was 
born  26  January  19 14  in  Hampstead,  London,  the 
only  child  of  Jean  Baptiste  de  Manio,  an  Italian 


aviator,  and  his  Polish  wife,  Florence  Olga.  Before 
he  was  born  his  father,  the  first  person  to  fly 
across  the  English  Channel  in  winter,  was  killed 
in  a  flying  accident  during  a  race  to  Lisbon.  His 
mother,  an  eccentric  and  fashionable  woman, 
never  remarried  but  had  many  male  admirers. 
She  spoke  eight  languages,  but  her  English  was 
bad,  and  de  Manio  later  attributed  his  poor 
progress  in  reading  and  writing  to  this.  He 
claimed  to  have  been  born  a  Catholic  and  brought 
up  for  a  time  as  a  Jew.  He  left  Aldenham  School 
without  any  academic  qualifications,  and  got  a  job 
as  an  invoice  clerk  in  a  brewery  in  Spitalfields,  in 
the  East  End  of  London.  For  a  time  he  then 
attempted  to  make  a  career  in  the  hotel  business, 
first  on  the  kitchen  staff  at  Grosvenor  House  and 
as  assistant  to  the  wine  waiter  at  the  Ritz,  and  later 
as  a  waiter  at  the  Miramar  Hotel,  Cannes. 
Following  his  marriage  in  1935  he  lived  in  the 
United  States  for  a  short  while,  working  on  his 
wife's  family's  farm. 

At  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  de  Manio 
was  called  up  into  the  Royal  Sussex  Regiment.  In 
1939-40  he  fought  with  the  7th  battalion,  in  the 
British  Expeditionary  Force,  and  from  1940  to 
1944  he  was  with  the  1st  battalion,  Middle  East 
Forces.  He  was  awarded  the  MC  in  1940,  and  a 
bar  was  added  to  it  in  North  Africa.  In  1944  he 
joined  the  Forces  Broadcasting  Unit  in  Beirut. 

On  leaving  the  army  in  1946  he  was  able  to  get  a 
job  with  the  BBC  Overseas  Service  as  an 
announcer,  and  he  transferred  to  the  Home 
Service  in  1950.  He  managed  to  survive  the  furore 
over  his  slip  of  the  tongue  when  he  announced  a 
talk  by  the  governor  of  Nigeria,  Sir  John  *Mac- 
pherson,  on  'The  Land  of  the  Niger',  as  'The 
Land  of  the  Nigger',  and  in  1958  he  was  invited  to 
join  the  new  BBC  programme  Today. 

Today  was  a  daily  breakfast-time  magazine 
programme  on  the  Home  Service  (renamed 
Radio  4  in  1967)  'bringing  you  news,  views,  and 
interviews*.  Despite  his  inability  to  give  the 
correct  rime,  de  Manio  survived  as  presenter 
from  1958  until  1971.  Although  one  listener 
demanded  compensation  after  he  had  crashed  his 
car  in  surprise  after  hearing  the  wrong  time 
announced  on  his  car  radio,  most  listeners  got 
used  to  his  misreading  the  studio  clock,  and  his 
mistakes  made  him  seem  more  human,  a  real 
person.  With  his  relaxed,  informal  style  and  his 
friendly  manner,  he  became  very  popular, 
regarded  by  millions  of  listeners  as  a  personal 
friend.  To  the  listening  public  he  was  the  Today 
programme,  a  national  institution.  In  1969  he 
was  the  first  radio  broadcaster  to  interview 
Prince  Charles.  In  1964,  and  again  in  1971,  he 
was  voted  radio  personality  of  the  year  by  the 
Variety  Club  of  Great  Britain.  But  in  1970  the 


103 


De  Manio 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


new  editor  of  morning  current  affairs  pro- 
grammes decided  to  add  a  co-presenter,  and  to 
make  Today  more  of  a  current  affairs  pro- 
gramme. For  a  year  de  Manio  was  joint  presenter 
with  John  Timpson.  He  never  felt  happy  with 
the  new  format,  feeling  that  two  presenters 
tended  to  talk  to  each  other,  rather  than  directly 
to  the  listeners.  On  his  retirement  from  Today  in 
1 97 1  his  BBC  colleagues  presented  him  with  an 
old  studio  clock,  with  the  inscription  'and  parting 
Time  toiled  after  him  in  vain'  (Samuel  •John- 
son). 

For  the  next  seven  years,  until  1978,  de  Manio 
presented  his  own  afternoon  programme,  Jack  de 
Manio  Precisely.  His  one  venture  into  television, 
when  he  was  asked  to  present  Wednesday  Maga- 
zine, a  women's  programme,  was  not  a  success. 
For  a  short  time  from  1979  onwards  he  was  a 
contributor  to  Woman's  Hour,  but  he  did  little 
broadcasting  in  the  1980s. 

Jack  de  Manio's  career  and  the  development  of 
the  informal  interview  marked  the  end  of  the  old 
style  of  impersonal  and  impartial  radio  broad- 
casting. On  the  air  he  behaved  naturally,  and 
Brian  Johnston's  advice,  when  asked  how  to 
become  a  good  broadcaster,  was  'be  like  Jack  de 
Manio:  be  yourself.  The  Guardian  in  197 1 
referred  to  the  'cosy  warmth'  of  de  Manio's 
Today  compared  with  that  of  his  successors. 

Jack  de  Manio  was  thickset,  with  large  features 
and  a  wide  mouth.  As  a  radio  broadcaster,  it  was 
his  voice  rather  than  his  face  which  was  well 
known.  The  slightly  hoarse,  gravelly  tones 
became  instantly  recognizable,  and  despite  his 
foreign  antecedents,  he  was  the  epitome  of  the 
middle-class,  middle-brow  Englishman,  a  Daily 
Telegraph  reader. 

He  was  married  twice.  In  1935  he  married 
Juliet  Gravaeret  Kaufman,  an  American.  They 
had  one  son.  His  wife  and  son  spent  the  war  in 
the  United  States.  They  were  divorced  in  1946, 
and  he  was  not  reunited  with  his  son,  who 
remained  in  the  United  States,  until  the  1950s. 
In  1946  he  married  Loveday  Elizabeth  Mat- 
thews, a  widow,  daughter  of  Evelyn  Robins 
Abbott,  CIE,  Indian  civil  servant,  later  chief 
commissioner,  Delhi.  They  had  no  children.  Jack 
de  Manio  died  28  October  1988  in  hospital  in 
London. 

[Independent,  29  October  1988;  Jack  de  Manio,  Life 
Begins  Too  Early,  a  Sort  of  Autobiography,  1970;  Jack  de 
Manio,  To  Auntie  with  Love,  1967;  John  Timpson, 
Today  and  Yesterday,  1976;  recordings  in  the  National 
Sound  Archive,  29  Exhibition  Road,  London  SW7 
2AS;  private  information.]        Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

DENNIS,  Nigel  Forbes  (19 12-1989),  writer, 
was  born  16  January  191 2  in  Bletchingley,  Sur- 
rey, the  younger  child  and  only  son  of  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Michael  Frederick  Beauchamp 
Dennis  and  his  wife  Louise  Marguerite  Jermyn, 


youngest  daughter  of  Theodore  and  Merelina 
Bosanquet,  whose  family  were  descendants  of 
Huguenots  from  the  Languedoc.  His  parents 
lived  in  north  Devon.  As  a  young  man  Colonel 
Dennis  had  tried  his  fortune  in  South  Africa, 
fought  in  the  Boer  war,  then  settled  in  Southern 
Rhodesia,  where  Nigel's  sister,  Dorothy,  was 
born.  Returning  to  Britain  on  the  outbreak  of 
World  War  I,  he  enlisted  in  the  King's  Own 
Scottish  Borderers  and  was  killed  in  1918.  In 
1920  his  widow  married  his  best  friend,  Fitzroy 
Griffin,  and  the  whole  family  returned  to  Rho- 
desia. Nigel  was  sent  first  to  Plumtree  School, 
Southern  Rhodesia,  and  then  to  St  Andrew's, 
Grahamstown,  South  Africa,  which  he  had  to 
leave  early  on  account  of  attacks  of  epilepsy,  an 
affliction  which  had  struck  him  at  the  age  of 
about  eleven  and  against  which  he  bore  up 
courageously  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  had  one 
half-brother  and  one  half-sister. 

From  South  Africa  he  was  dispatched  to 
Kitzbiihel  in  Austria,  where  an  uncle,  A.  Ernan 
Forbes  Dennis,  husband  of  Phyllis  Bottome,  the 
novelist,  and  friend  of  Alfred  Adler,  the  psycho- 
logist, was  running  a  sort  of  crammer  for  would- 
be  entrants  to  the  Foreign  Office  (Peter  *Fleming 
and  Ian  *Fleming  were  fellow  pupils  in  Dennis's 
time)  and  also  acting  as  British  consul.  From 
there  he  moved  on,  at  his  uncle's  suggestion,  to 
the  Odenwaldschule  in  Bavaria,  a  progressive, 
co-educational  establishment  at  the  opposite 
pole,  educationally  speaking,  to  Plumtree  and  St 
Andrew's.  Dennis,  whose  youthful  literary  ambi- 
tions had  been  expressed  in  stories  contributed  to 
the  Boy's  Own  Paper  (until  a  hot  one  from  the 
Odenwaldschule  caused  the  editor  to  disengage), 
was  very  soon  writing  a  novel  about  this  experi- 
ence. Called  Chalk  and  Cheese,  it  was  published  a 
few  years  later,  in  1934,  under  the  pseudonym  of 
'Richard  Vaughan'.  Dennis  chose  to  disown  it. 

After  a  further  unsettled  period  (more  tutor- 
ing, this  time  in  Wales;  helping  his  family,  by 
now  repatriated,  to  run  a  small  hotel  in  Chipping 
Campden  called  The  Live  and  Let  Live,  where 
the  young  Graham  Greenes  were  neighbours; 
and  selling  ladies'  garments  from  door  to  door) 
Dennis  got  his  lucky  break.  A  legacy  enabled  him 
to  travel  steerage  to  New  York  and  a  dockers' 
strike  prevented  him  from  returning  on  the 
appointed  date.  He  stayed  eighteen  years,  work- 
ing first  as  an  assiduous  freelance,  writing  stories 
and  articles,  helping  to  translate  Adler,  then 
landing  salaried  jobs.  He  became  (improbably) 
secretary  of  the  national  board  of  the  Review  of 
Motion  Pictures  (1935),  and  was  assistant  editor 
and  book  reviewer  of  the  New  Republic  (1937-8) 
and  staff  reviewer  of  Time  magazine  (from  1940). 
In  1949  he  published  his  first  acknowledged 
novel,  Boys  and  Girls  Come  Out  to  Play  (A  Sea 
Change  in  the  USA),  which  won  the  Anglo- 


104 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Dexter 


American  novel  award  for  that  year  (shared  with 
Anthony  West).  It  starts  very  personally,  with  a 
description  of  a  voung  man  having  an  epileptic 
fit. 

Dennis  returned  to  England  in  1950  and  five 
years  later  published  Cards  of  Identity,  the  novel 
which  made  his  name.  Its  theme — the  ease  with 
which  modern  man,  uncertain  of  who  he  is,  can 
be  manipulated  by  charlatans — was  advanced 
and  piquant.  At  the  request  of  George  *Devine, 
of  the  English  Stage  Company,  Dennis  turned  it 
into  a  play.  It  was  produced  at  the  Royal  Court 
theatre  in  1956.  A  second  play,  The  Making  of 
Moo,  an  anti-religious  send-up  which  caused 
protests  in  the  stalls,  followed  a  year  later  and  in 
1958  both  were  published  in  book  form  as  Two 
Plays  and  Preface — the  preface  being  a  Voltairean 
swipe  at  theologians  like  St  Augustine  and  a 
paean  of  praise  for  satirists  like  Aristophanes.  His 
last  play,  August  for  the  People,  was  produced  in 
1961. 

Dennis's  books  were  few  but  distinguished: 
Dramatic  Essays  (1962),  a  collection  worth  pon- 
dering for  its  radical  approach;  a  study  of  one  of 
his  heroes,  Jonathan  Smift  (1964),  which  won  the 
Royal  Society  of  Literature  award  under  the 
W.  H.  Heinemann  bequest  (1966);  and  a  haunt- 
ing last  novel,  A  House  in  Order  (1966),  which 
showed  the  influence  of  Franz  Kafka  and  the 
author's  passion  for  gardening.  In  1967  he  moved 
to  Malta  and  two  final  volumes — Exotics  (1970), 
a  book  of  Mediterranean  poems,  and  a  short, 
quirky,  bellicose  An  Essay  on  Malta  (1972),  with 
illustrations  by  (Sir)  Osbert  *Lancaster — were 
inspired  by  this  new  scene. 

From  its  launch  in  February  1961  until  his 
retirement  twenty  years  later  Dennis  was  lead 
reviewer  of  the  Sunday  Telegraph.  His  admixture 
of  wit,  acuteness,  and  common  sense  made  him 
an  unfailing  draw.  Between  1963  and  1970  he 
was  drama  critic,  contributor,  and  finally  co- 
editor  of  Encounter  magazine,  but  this  associa- 
tion ended  in  acrimony.  He  wrote  for,  and  read 
on,  radio. 

Dennis  was  tall,  somewhat  sardonic-looking, 
and  with  facial  corrugations  in  his  later  years 
which  rivalled,  but  could  not  quite  match,  those 
of  his  admired  W.  H.  *Auden.  A  fine  con- 
versationalist when  the  mood  took  him,  he  could 
also  be  elusive  and  tortuous:  not  for  nothing  had 
he  fielded  in  boyhood  for  B.  J.  T.  Bosanquet,  the 
famous  cricketer  who  invented  the  googly.  He 
was  twice  married:  first,  probably  in  1934,  1935, 
or  1936,  to  Marie-Madeleine,  daughter  of  Avit 
('Jean')  Massias,  a  peasant  farmer  from  the  Char- 
ente.  They  had  two  daughters.  The  marriage  was 
dissolved  and  in  1959  he  married  Beatrice  Ann 
Hewart  Matthew,  a  most  spirited  support  and 
scribe.  She  was  the  daughter  of  William  Alex- 
ander   Matthew,    a    director    of   his    familv's 


shipping  firm  in  Cardiff.  Dennis  died  19  July 
1989  in  Little  Compton,  near  Moreton- 
in-Marsh,  Gloucestershire,  at  the  home  of  his 
elder  daughter. 

[Rachele  Verrecchia,  'Westdown  to  Mosali:  the  Diaries 
of  Louise  Bosanquet',  BA  thesis  for  Manchester  Met- 
ropolitan University,  1993;  written  recollections  by 
Dorothy  MacKendrick  (sister)  and  E.  J.  Oliver;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]         Rivers  Scott 

DEXTER,  John  (1925-1990),  stage  director,  was 
born  2  August  1925  in  Derby,  the  only  child  of 
Harry  Dexter,  plumber,  and  his  wife,  Rosanne 
Smith.  There  were  music,  painting,  and  home 
theatricals  in  the  family,  but  Dexter's  only  for- 
mal education  was  at  the  local  elementary  school 
(Reginald  Street),  which  he  left  at  the  age  of 
fourteen.  He  then  took  a  factory  job  before 
joining  the  army  as  a  national  serviceman.  Not 
having  attended  a  university  was  a  source  of 
lifelong  regret,  particularly  as  his  entry  into  the 
professional  theatre  coincided  with  the  rise  of  the 
graduate  director.  For  the  same  reason,  he  devel- 
oped into  a  compulsive  autodidact,  a  passionate 
scholar  of  stage  history  who  never  undertook  a 
classical  text  without  exhaustive  research. 

His  career  began  in  the  Derby  Playhouse,  in  a 
company  that  also  included  John  Osborne. 
Osborne  recommended  Dexter  to  the  English 
Stage  Company's  artistic  director,  George 
•Devine,  who  engaged  him  in  1957  as  an  asso- 
ciate director.  Dexter  had  no  previous  directing 
experience,  but  he  rapidly  gained  it  at  the  Royal 
Court  theatre,  which  he  subsequently  described 
as  his  university;  there  he  forged  relationships 
with  working-class  writers,  notably  Michael 
Hastings  and  Arnold  Wesker.  At  the  same  time 
he  formed  his  long  alliance  with  the  designer 
Jocelyn  Herbert,  crucially  in  the  1959  production 
of  Wesker's  The  Kitchen,  an  elaborately  choreo- 
graphed show  on  a  defiantly  undecorated  stage, 
where  even  the  lighting  rig  was  exposed  to  the 
audience.  This  marked  the  beginning  of  the  text- 
centred,  visually  austere  style  which  was  to 
become  his  trademark. 

At  the  Royal  Court  Dexter  gained  a  double 
reputation:  as  an  electrifying  animator  of  spec- 
tacle and  crowd  movement,  and  as  a  'play- 
wright's director',  who  could  spot  not  only  the 
defects  of  a  script  but  also  the  hidden  potential, 
and  coax  the  writer  into  achieving  it.  The  success 
of  his  subsequent  partnership  with  Peter  Shaffer 
{The  Royal  Hunt  of  the  Sun,  1964;  Black  Comedy, 
1966;  Equus,  1973)  depended  as  much  on  pre- 
rehearsal  textual  analysis  as  on  the  physical 
staging. 

In  1963  Dexter  left  the  Royal  Court  to  become 
assistant  director  to  Sir  Laurence  (later  Baron) 
*01ivier  at  the  National  Theatre  when  it  was  in 
its  honeymoon  phase.  He  began  widening  his 


105 


Dexter 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


range  with  productions  of  Saint  Joan  (1963), 
Hobson's  Choice  (1964),  and  the  Olivier  Othello 
(1964),  shows  that  went  lastingly  into  public 
memory.  He  also  began  another  fertile  partner- 
ship with  the  poet  Tony  Harrison,  whose  ver- 
sions of  Moliere  and  Racine  (The  Misanthrope, 
1973,  and  Phaedra  Britannica,  1975)  set  a  daz- 
zling new  standard  for  creative  translation. 

By  the  late  1960s  Dexter  was  building  a 
parallel  career  as  a  director  of  opera:  a  natural 
move  given  his  flair  as  an  animator  and  innate 
musicality  (coupled  with  his  temporary  with- 
drawal from  the  National  Theatre  following 
disagreements  with  Olivier).  His  first  venture, 
Berlioz'  Benvenuto  Cellini  at  Covent  Garden 
(1966),  was  untypically  ornate;  but  with  Verdi's  / 
Vespiri  Siciliani  at  the  Hamburg  State  Opera 
three  years  later  he  declared  himself  in  a  produc- 
tion of  characteristically  austere  magnificence. 
Staged  on  Josef  Svoboda's  gigantic  staircase 
between  two  vast  watch-towers,  this  production 
carried  his  name  round  the  world  as  a  new  force 
on  the  operatic  scene;  and  although  he  main- 
tained his  connection  with  Hamburg  until  1973 
(Verdi's  Un  Bulla  in  Maschera),  the  main  focus  of 
his  work  during  the  1970s  was  at  New  York's 
Metropolitan  Opera  House,  where  he  was  ap- 
pointed director  of  productions  in  1974.  Dexter 
saw  the  Met.  as  a  Babylonian  anachronism,  and 
he  made  it  his  mission  to  drag  it  into  the 
twentieth  century  through  simplified  staging, 
technical  reform,  and  enlargement  of  repertory. 
Against  the  odds,  he  won  over  the  conservative 
public  with  a  series  of  non-standard  works,  from 
Meyerbeer's  Le  Prophete  and  Poulenc's  Dialogues 
of  the  Carmelites  (both  1977)  to  Parade  (1981),  a 
French  triptych  which  he  assembled  from  Satie, 
Poulenc,  and  Ravel.  By  this  time,  however,  his 
relationship  had  soured  with  the  Met.'s  admini- 
stration and  its  musical  director,  James  Levine; 
and  during  the  early  1980s  he  returned  to  free- 
lance work. 

He  continued  to  direct  major  productions  in 
London  and  New  York,  but  never  achieved  his 
ambition  of  running  a  house  and  company  of  his 
own;  and  his  final  attempt  to  do  so — with  a 
classically  based  West  End  troupe — fell  apart 
after  its  opening  production  of  The  Cocktail 
Party  by  T.  S.  *Eliot  (Phoenix  theatre,  1986). 

Dexter  was  a  stocky  figure  of  medium  height, 
with  chubby  features  and  a  domed  head  that 
became  increasingly  prominent  as  he  lost  his 
hair.  He  had  a  biting  tongue,  which  could  wound 
actors  and  alienate  patrons;  he  also  suffered  from 
declining  health,  due  to  diabetes  and  the  after- 
math of  youthful  polio,  before  his  final  heart 
attack.  He  was  a  homosexual  and  suffered  a  brief 
term  of  imprisonment  for  homosexuality  in  the 
1950s.  A  collection  of  his  writings,  The  Honour- 
able  Beast:    a   Posthumous  Autobiography,   was 


published  by  his  friend  Riggs  O'Hara  in  1993. 
Dexter  died  23  March  1990  in  London,  follow- 
ing a  heart  operation. 

[John  Dexter,  The  Honourable  Beast:  a  Posthumous 
Autobiography,  1093;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Irving  Wardle 

DE  ZULUETA,  Sir  Philip  Francis  (1929- 
1989),  civil  servant  and  businessman.  [See 
Zulueta,  Sir  Philip  Francis  de.] 

DICKENS,  Frank  (1899- 1986),  biochemist,  was 
born  15  December  1899  in  Northampton,  the 
youngest  in  the  family  of  five  sons  and  a  daughter 
of  (William)  John  Dickens,  master  currier  and 
leather  merchant,  and  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Ann 
Pebody.  His  father,  who  built  up  a  leather  factory 
in  Northampton,  died  when  Frank  was  four 
years  old.  He  had  been  an  active  member  of  the 
Baptist  church  at  Walgrave,  but  his  wife 
belonged  to  the  Church  of  England.  Frank's  four 
brothers  joined  the  family  leather  firm,  Dickens 
Brothers  Ltd.,  situated  in  Kettering  Road, 
Northampton.  He  was  educated  at  Northampton 
Grammar  School  from  19 10  to  19 18.  From  the 
age  of  sixteen  he  became  seriously  interested  in 
science  and  was  always  grateful  that  his  science 
masters  were  good  teachers.  In  January  19 18  he 
won  an  open  scholarship  to  Magdalene  College, 
Cambridge,  but  because  of  the  war  he  could  not 
take  it  up  until  January  19 19.  He  enlisted  in  the 
army  (Artists'  Rifles,  and  then,  as  a  second 
lieutenant,  the  Northamptonshire  Regiment), 
but  did  not  see  active  service.  At  Cambridge  he 
took  the  shortened  postwar  course  of  eight  terms 
and  got  a  second  class  in  both  parts  (1920  and 
1 921)  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (physics  and 
chemistry).  He  then  moved  to  Imperial  College, 
London,  to  study  for  a  Ph.D.  in  organic  chem- 
istry, which  profoundly  influenced  his  later  work 
in  biochemistry. 

In  October  1923  Dickens  took  his  first 
appointment,  at  the  Middlesex  Hospital,  to  work 
with  a  newly  qualified  medical  graduate,  (Sir)  E. 
Charles  *Dodds.  Two  years  beforehand,  (Sir) 
Frederick  *Banting  and  Charles  H.  Best  in 
Canada  had  isolated  insulin.  Dickens  set  out  to 
simplify  the  method  of  isolation  and  make  the 
substance  available  for  patients.  He  was  thus 
precipitated  into  biochemistry,  from  1924  to 
1930  assisting  Dodds  in  his  work  on  the  isolation 
of  a  female  sex  hormone.  With  Dodds  he  wrote 
The  Chemical  and  Physiological  Properties  of  the 
Internal  Secretions  (1925).  He  also  developed  a 
lasting  interest  in  carbohydrate  metabolism.  In 
1929  he  spent  a  year  with  Otto  Warburg  in 
Berlin,  which  greatly  influenced  him.  He  trans- 
lated into  English  Warburg's  book,  The  Metabo- 
lism of  Tumours  (1930).  On  his  return  home  he 


106 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Dickson 


worked  in  the  newly  opened  Courtauld  Institute 
of  Biochemistry  at  the  Middlesex  Hospital, 
searching  for  differences  between  the  metabolism 
of  tumour  and  normal  tissue. 

In  1933  Dickens  moved  to  Newcastle  upon 
Tyne  to  be  the  director  of  the  cancer  research 
laboratory  at  the  Royal  Victoria  Infirmary.  Apart 
from  a  year  in  London  on  war  work  (for  the 
Royal  Naval  personnel  committee  of  the  Medical 
Research  Council  in  1043-4)  he  remained  in 
Newcastle  until  1946,  when  Dodds  invited  him 
back  to  the  Courtauld  Institute  and  he  became 
the  Philip  Hill  professor  of  experimental  bio- 
chemistry. His  research  work  on  the  mechanism 
whereby  living  tissues  derive  energy  from  the 
breakdown  of  carbohydrates  culminated  in  the 
description  of  what  is  known  as  the  'pentose 
phosphate  pathway',  for  which  he  is  best  known. 
He  was  a  major  contributor  to  the  discovery  of 
this  important  route  of  glucose  metabolism,  a 
significant  marker  of  the  rate  of  tumour  growth. 
Dickens's  happy  relationship  with  Dodds  was 
crucial:  although  Dickens  had  a  more  academic 
intellect,  Dodds  was  the  leader,  being  imagin- 
ative, ambitious,  and  a  superb  tactician  in  com- 
mittee. Dickens  admired  Dodds  even  if  he  would 
not  have  wanted  to  be  in  his  shoes.  Dickens's  last 
appointment  was  as  director  of  the  Tobacco 
Research  Council's  research  laboratories  at  Har- 
rogate, where  he  spent  two  years  (1967-9)  and 
was  influential  in  advising  the  tobacco  industry 
about  a  'safer'  cigarette. 

In  addition  to  his  research,  Dickens  played  a 
full  part  in  the  wider  development  of  biochem- 
istry and  a  decisive  role  in  the  organization  of  the 
first  international  congress  of  biochemistry  in 
Cambridge  in  1949.  For  eight  years  (1938-46)  he 
was  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Biochemical  Journal. 
Throughout  his  career  he  was  fortunate  in  the 
circumstances  in  which  he  worked,  being  sup- 
ported first  by  the  Medical  Research  Council  and 
then  by  the  Cancer  Research  Campaign.  He  was 
thus  able  to  choose  his  research  activities  and 
never  had  to  resort  to  self-promotion.  He  was  an 
honorary  member  of  the  Biochemical  Society 
(1967),  of  which  he  was  chairman  in  1950-1,  and 
was  elected  FRS  in  1946.  In  1972  he  received  an 
honorary  D.Sc.  from  Newcastle.  He  was  also  a 
fellow  of  the  Institute  of  Biology  (1968). 

Dickens  was  a  kind  and  gende  man,  of 
medium  height,  spruce  in  appearance,  with  a 
healthy  complexion  and  a  welcoming  air.  He  was 
an  attentive  host.  He  enjoyed  good  food  and  was 
very  put  out  when  as  external  examiner  at  the 
University  of  Leeds  he  was  accommodated  in  a 
temperance  hotel.  In  1925  he  married  Molly, 
daughter  of  Arthur  William  Jelleyman,  the 
owner  of  a  rope-walk  and  tenting  factory  in 
Northampton,  which  among  other  items  made 
special  ropes  for  the  local  hangman.  They  had 


two  daughters.  Dickens  died  at  his  home  in 
Ferring,  near  Worthing,  25  June  1986. 

[R.  H.  S.  Thompson  and  P.  N.  Campbell,  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiii, 
1987;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Peter  N.  Campbell 

DICKSON,  Sir  William  Forster  (1 898-1987), 
marshal  of  the  Royal  Air  Force,  was  born  in 
North  wood,  Middlesex,  24  September  1898,  the 
only  child  of  Campbell  Cameron  Forster  Dick- 
son, solicitor,  and  his  wife,  Agnes  Nelson-Ward, 
a  direct  descendant  of  Lord  *Nelson.  He  was 
educated  at  Haileybury  and  joined  the  Royal 
Naval  Air  Service  in  19 16. 

After  training  as  a  pilot  he  served  with  the 
Grand  Fleet  aboard  the  aircraft-carrier  Furious, 
where  he  pioneered  deck  landings  and  partici- 
pated in  the  first  carrier-based  bombing  raid, 
earning  appointment  to  the  DSO  (1918).  After 
the  war  he  became  a  flying  instructor  in  the 
newly  independent  Royal  Air  Force  and  flew  as  a 
test  pilot,  being  awarded  the  AFC  (1922).  Then, 
after  working  in  the  Air  Ministry  (1923-6)  as  the 
expert  on  naval/air  operations  for  Sir  Hugh 
(later  first  Viscount)  *Trenchard,  he  flew  with 
No.  56  Squadron  (1926-7),  attended  the  And- 
over  Staff  College  (1927-8),  spent  several  years 
in  India,  commanded  No.  25  Squadron  (1935-6), 
and  thoroughly  enjoyed  three  years  on  the 
directing  staff  at  Andover  (1936-8),  proving  a 
fine  instructor. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war,  having  attended  the 
Imperial  Defence  College  (1939),  he  was  called 
upon  to  use  his  exceptional  staff  skills  in  the  joint 
planning  staff,  first  as  group  captain  (1940)  and 
then  air  commodore  (1941).  He  contributed 
greatly  to  the  forward  planning  in  the  early  years 
of  the  war,  working  directly  for  (Sir)  Winston 
•Churchill  and  the  chiefs  of  staff,  joining  in 
meetings  with  the  Soviet  ambassador  to  discuss 
military  aid,  and  attending  the  Arcadia  con- 
ference, where  the  future  Anglo-American  strat- 
egy was  decided.  After  a  year  (1942-3)  in  Fighter 
Command  (as  air  vice-marshal)  he  spent  another 
year  (1943-4)  preparing  No.  83  Group  for  the 
Normandy  invasion,  whereupon  General  B.  L. 
•Montgomery  (later  first  Viscount  Montgomery 
of  Alamein)  insisted  that  the  Group  be  handed 
over  to  (Sir)  Harry  Broadhurst,  the  commander 
whom  he  knew.  Dickson,  accepting  the  inevit- 
able disappointment  with  good  grace,  departed 
for  Italy  to  command  the  Desert  Air  Force,  and 
for  most  of  1944  ably  directed  its  intensive 
interdiction  and  close  army  support  operations. 

At  the  end  of  the  year  he  returned  to  London 
as  assistant  chief  of  air  staff  (policy);  in  June  1946 
he  was  promoted  to  air  marshal  and  joined  the 
Air  Council  as  vice-chief  of  air  staff,  working 
under  the  first  Baron  *Tedder  and  devoting 
much  of  his  attention  to  the  RAF's  postwar 


107 


Dickson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


re-equipment  programme;  and  in  March  1948  he 
became  commander-in-chief,  Middle  East.  A 
year  later  he  was  criticized  in  Parliament  after 
four  reconnaissance  Spitfires  had  been  shot  down 
by  the  Israelis,  but  the  prime  minister  firmly 
defended  him  over  what  had  been  essentially  a 
political  air  operation.  Dickson  returned  to  the 
Air  Ministry  in  March  1950,  as  air  member  for 
supply  and  organization.  Central  to  his  work  was 
the  expansion  programme  necessitated  by  the 
Korean  war,  and  he  also  negotiated  an  agreement 
with  his  American  counterpart  to  cover  the 
deployment  of  a  large  USAF  contingent  in  the 
United  Kingdom. 

Dickson  became  chief  of  air  staff  on  1  January 
1953.  Churchill,  again  prime  minister,  remem- 
bered him  well  from  wartime  and  fully  supported 
him  in  his  prime  task:  the  planning  and  prepara- 
tion for  the  RAF's  nuclear  deterrent.  Recog- 
nizing the  increasing  importance  of  cold  war 
operations  Dickson  also  pressed  forward  the 
development  of  the  air  transport  force,  but  was 
ever  mindful  of  the  growing  economic  pressures 
on  the  RAF  budget.  He  became  marshal  of  the 
Royal  Air  Force  in  1954.  Then  on  1  January  1956 
Sir  Anthony  *Eden  (later  the  Earl  of  Avon),  now 
prime  minister,  appointed  him  to  the  new  posi- 
tion of  separate  chairman  of  the  chiefs  of  staff. 
Dickson,  convinced  of  the  need  for  a  stronger 
'centre'  in  the  Ministry  of  Defence,  readily 
accepted  the  post,  which  he  held  throughout  the 
Suez  crisis  and  the  subsequent  defence  review  by 
Duncan  *Sandys  (later  Baron  Duncan-Sandys); 
unable  to  exercise  much  influence  during  this 
controversial  debate  he  supported  the  proposal 
by  Harold  *Macmillan  (later  the  first  Earl  of 
Stockton)  in  1958  to  convert  his  post  to  chief  of 
defence  staff.  On  1  January  1959  he  became  the 
first  incumbent,  handing  over  to  the  first  Earl 
*Mountbatten  of  Burma  six  months  later.  He 
had  served  at  the  top  of  the  defence  hierarchy  for 
six  and  a  half  years,  at  a  time  of  turmoil,  defence 
cuts,  and  post-Suez  reforms  in  the  armed  ser- 
vices. While  short  of  stature,  he  always  com- 
manded attention,  combining  a  razor-sharp  brain 
with  a  great  sense  of  fun.  His  sense  of  humour 
often  defused  awkward  situations.  His  love  of 
flying  had  enamoured  him  of  the  RAF,  but  he 
retained  deep  respect  for  the  other  services  and 
was  seen  as  an  ideal  choice  for  Britain's  first  chief 
of  defence  staff. 

In  retirement  near  Newbury  his  interests 
included  the  Royal  Central  Asian  Society,  the 
Ex-Services  Mental  Welfare  Society,  and  the 
Forces  Help  Society  and  Lord  Roberts  Work- 
shops, and  he  loved  his  golf.  He  was  appointed 
OBE  (1934),  CB  (1942),  CBE  (1945),  KBE 
(1946),  KCB  (1952),  and  GCB  (1953). 

In  1932  he  married  Patricia  Marguerite,  sister 
of  Sir  George  ('Gubby')  *Allen,  cricketer,  and 
daughter  of  Sir  Walter  Macarthur  Allen,  com- 


mandant-in-chief of  the  Metropolitan  Special 
Constabulary.  They  had  two  daughters,  one  of 
whom  died  in  childhood  (1952).  Dickson  died  12 
September  1987  at  the  RAF  Hospital, 
Wroughton. 

[Official  records.  Air  Historical  Branch,  Ministry  of 
Defence,  London;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Henry  A.  Probert 

DONALD,  Ian  (1910-1987),  obstetrician  and 
pioneer  of  the  use  of  ultrasound  in  medicine,  was 
born  27  December  1910  in  Liskeard,  Cornwall, 
the  eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  two 
daughters  of  John  Donald,  medical  practitioner, 
and  his  wife,  Helen  Barrow  Wilson,  concert 
pianist.  His  education  was  at  Warriston  School, 
Moffat,  and  Fettes  College,  Edinburgh,  and  then 
in  South  Africa  at  the  Diocesan  College,  Ron- 
debosch,  and  Capetown  University  (where  he 
obtained  a  BA  in  French,  Greek,  English,  and 
music).  On  his  return  to  England  he  entered  St 
Thomas's  Hospital  Medical  School  (MB,  BS, 
1937)- 

He  served  in  the  Royal  Air  Force  medical 
branch  from  1942  to  1946  and  was  mentioned  in 
dispatches  and  appointed  MBE  (military,  1946) 
for  acts  of  gallantry.  He  returned  to  St  Thomas's 
Hospital  and  qualified  MD  and  MRCOG  in  1947 
(FRCOG,  1955).  In  1952  he  became  reader  at 
Hammersmith  Hospital,  where  he  devised  a 
respirator  for  the  resuscitation  of  the  new  born. 
In  1954  he  was  appointed  to  the  regius  chair  of 
midwifery  in  the  University  of  Glasgow.  The 
first  edition  of  his  eminently  readable  textbook, 
Practical  Obstetric  Problems,  was  published  in 
1955.  It  reflected  his  motto,  'the  art  of  teaching  is 
the  art  of  sharing  enthusiasm',  his  sparkling  wit, 
and  his  deep  knowledge  of  English  literature  and 
the  Bible. 

Familiar  with  radar  and  sonar  from  his  RAF 
days,  his  mind  turned  to  the  idea  that  sonar 
could  be  used  for  medical  diagnosis.  With  T.  G. 
Brown  of  the  electronics  company  Kelvin 
Hughes  he  produced  the  first  successful  diag- 
nostic ultrasound  machine,  and  with  Dr  John 
MacVicar  the  findings  were  reported  in  the 
Lancet  of  7  June  1958  under  the  title  'Investiga- 
tion of  Abdominal  Masses  by  Pulsed  Ultra- 
sound'. The  idea  of  applying  the  principles  of 
metal  flaw  detection  to  human  diagnosis  was 
received  at  first  with  scepticism  and  some  hilar- 
ity, but  Donald's  vision  of  ultrasound  as  a  new 
diagnostic  science  never  faded  and  work  with 
various  colleagues  followed,  exploring  the  whole 
subject  of  foetal  development.  The  impact 
of  ultrasound  on  obstetric  practice  has  been 
enormous  and  in  later  life  Donald  wrote:  'the 
innumerable  difficulties,  set-backs  and  disap- 
pointments have  been  more  than  compensated 
for  by  those  who  have  turned  the  subject  from  a 


108 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Downie 


laughable  eccentricity  into  a  science  of  increasing 
exactitude.' 

In  1964  the  department  moved  from  Glasgow 
Royal  Maternity  Hospital  to  a  new  hospital  (the 
Queen  Mother's  Hospital),  which  he  had  cam- 
paigned for  and  helped  to  design.  There  he 
directed  everything  with  verve  and  panache,  like 
a  great  actor-manager  of  the  old  school.  Striding 
its  corridors  he  was  an  impressive  figure,  six  feet 
two  inches  tall  with  red  hair,  blue  eyes,  and 
strong  personal  magnetism.  He  was  impulsive, 
witty,  and  quick-tempered,  but  his  sudden  anger 
evaporated  almost  instantly.  He  had  a  great  sense 
of  fun  and  at  the  most  solemn  occasions  could 
dissolve  into  helpless  laughter.  His  hobbies  were 
sailing,  which  he  persisted  in  despite  a  cardiac 
condition,  piano-playing  (Chopin  was  his  favour- 
ite composer),  and  landscape  painting  in  water- 
colour.  All  these  were  pursued  with  character- 
istic enthusiasm. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1973  and  received 
the  Order  of  the  Yugoslav  Flag  with  gold  star  in 
1982.  He  received  honorary  D.Sc.  degrees  from 
London  (1981)  and  Glasgow  (1983),  the  Eardley 
Holland  gold  medal  (1970),  Blair  Bell  gold  medal 
(1970),  Victor  Bonney  prize  (1970-2),  and 
MacKenzie  Davidson  medal  (1975).  Other  dis- 
tinctions included  FCOG  (SA)  (1967),  honorarv 
FACOG  (1976),  honorary  FRCOG  (1982),  and 
honorary  FRCP  Glasgow  (1984). 

In  1937  he  married  Alix  Mathilde,  daughter 
of  Walter  Wellesley  Richards,  a  farmer  in  the 
Orange  Free  State,  South  Africa.  Happily  mar- 
ried for  fifty  years,  he  was  the  loving  father  of 
four  daughters  and  was  devoted  to  his  women 
patients,  as  they  were  to  him.  From  1 961  he  was 
hampered  by  ill  health,  but  continued  active 
despite  having  three  major  heart  operations.  He 
showed  enormous  courage  throughout  and  was 
greatly  sustained  by  his  profound  Christian  faith. 
His  opposition  to  the  Abortion  Act  of  1967  and 
its  consequences  stemmed  from  a  deep  respect 
for  human  life.  He  was  opposed  to  experiments 
on  embryos.  His  last  research  effort,  pursued  in 
retirement,  was  an  attempt  to  achieve  a  perfect 
method  of  natural  family  planning  using  a  device 
to  warn  the  woman  of  the  approach  of  ovulation. 
He  died  at  his  home  in  Paglesham,  Essex,  19 
June  1987. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

James  Willocks 

DOWNIE,  Allan  Watt  (1901-1988),  professor  of 
bacteriology,  was  born  5  September  1901  in 
Rosehearty,  Aberdeenshire,  the  fifth  child  in  the 
family  of  seven  sons  and  one  daughter  of  William 
Downie,  deep  sea  fisherman,  and  his  wife  Mar- 
garet Watt,  daughter  of  a  fisherman  from  Fife. 
He  was  the  younger  of  identical  twins.  Allan  and 
his  twin  Ricky  grew  up  close  to  Rosehearty 
harbour  and  became  familiar  with  the  sea.  Thev 


were  educated  at  Rosehearty  School,  where  their 
unusual  talent  was  spotted,  and  Fraserburgh 
Academy.  In  1918  they  entered  Aberdeen  Uni- 
versity Medical  School,  from  which  in  1923  they 
graduated  MB,  Ch.B.  with  first-class  honours 
and  the  distinction  of  collecting  between  them 
every  subject  prize  in  every  year  of  the  course. 

From  1924  to  1926  Allan  Downie  was  a 
lecturer  in  bacteriology  at  Aberdeen  University. 
He  obtained  his  MD  in  1929  and  D.Sc.  in  1938. 
In  1927  he  moved  to  the  department  of  patho- 
logy in  Manchester  University,  where  he  turned 
to  the  new  science  of  virology.  With  a  veterinary 
pathologist  he  for  the  first  time  demonstrated,  in 
tissue  culture,  the  cellular  changes  which  charac- 
terized in  its  natural  animal  host,  the  disease 
mousepox,  a  model  for  human  smallpox.  This 
little-noted  paper  opened  a  new  chapter  in  meth- 
ods for  studying  viruses  and  virus  diseases. 

In  1935  Downie  won  the  senior  Freedom 
research  fellowship  at  the  London  Hospital 
Medical  School.  First,  however,  he  had  to  spend 
a  nine-month  academic  year  at  the  Rockefeller 
Institute  in  New  York  City,  under  O.  T.  Avery 
and  alongside  the  future  leaders  of  American 
microbiology.  At  the  London  Hospital  Downie 
initiated  work  on  pox  viruses  and  defined  for  the 
first  time  the  distinction  between  vaccinia  and 
cowpox  viruses.  This  later  led  him  on  to  small- 
pox and  to  its  ultimate  eradication.  The  outbreak 
of  World  War  II  stalled  his  work  on  pox  viruses 
when  he  was  directed  to  head  the  emergency 
Public  Health  Service  laboratory  in  Cambridge, 
one  of  the  regional  laboratories  providing  ex- 
pertise in  public  health  for  disease  control, 
water-supply  monitoring,  and  possibly  bacterial 
warfare.  The  east  coast  was  a  probable  front  line 
should  invasion  happen.  Downie  was  in  Cam- 
bridge till  1943,  when  he  was  appointed  pro- 
fessor of  bacteriology  in  Liverpool. 

Returning  troops  and  the  resumption  of  for- 
eign trade  after  the  war  brought  numerous 
imports  of  smallpox  into  Britain.  Downie's  labo- 
ratory in  Liverpool  became  the  world  centre  for 
the  study  of  smallpox:  of  how  the  virus  entered 
its  victims,  spread  inside  them,  and  then  passed 
to  others;  of  precisely  when  the  patient  became 
infectious  and  for  how  long.  These  studies  pro- 
gressed for  twenty-two  years,  and  then  the 
World  Health  Organization  recognized  that  an 
effective  smallpox  eradication  plan  was  possible. 
With  Downie's  guidance  the  intensified  and 
successful  programme  was  launched  in  1966,  the 
year  of  his  retirement.  Since  1978  there  has  been 
no  smallpox  case;  there  are  no  human  carriers 
and  no  animal  cases  or  carriers.  The  disease 
which  in  the  1960s  was  killing  ten  million  people 
per  year  has  ceased  to  exist.  Many  thousands  of 
public  health  workers  took  part  and  the  credit,  as 
Downie  would  have  wished,  is  spread  worldwide. 


109 


Downie 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


None  can  doubt  that  in  the  laboratory  in  Liver- 
pool, in  the  field  in  India,  at  WHO  at  Geneva, 
and  in  training  courses  in  Denver  Downie's 
contribution  was  paramount.  It  was  the  greatest 
medical  triumph  of  the  century. 

Downie  helped  to  train  over  3,000  doctors  and 
published  no  outstanding  papers.  A  founder 
fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of  Pathologists,  he 
had  an  honorary  LL  D  from  Aberdeen  (1957). 
He  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1955 
and  FRCP  in  1982. 

Short  and  wiry,  Downie  had  a  great  affection 
for  sport.  In  Manchester  he  played  left-half  for 
Whalley  Range  Football  Club  in  the  Lancashire 
amateur  league.  Every  summer  found  him  in 
Rosehearty,  with  Ricky  and  his  family,  sailing  in 
the  heavy  old  family  sailboat,  with  grandchildren 
or  friends,  happy  to  be  on  the  water  and  under 
sail.  Downie  loved  to  fish  and  to  identify  sea 
birds,  but  it  was  at  golf  on  the  Royal  Birkdale 
course  that  he  excelled  and  was  never  satisfied, 
striving  always  to  reduce  his  (most  enviable) 
handicap.  When  he  retired  from  his  Liverpool 
chair  in  1966,  the  Southport  Visitor  heralded  the 
news  with  the  headline  'Noted  Local  Golfer 
Retires'. 

In  1935  he  married  Annie  ('Nancy'),  school- 
teacher and  daughter  of  William  Alan  McHardy, 
wood  engineer.  They  had  two  daughters  and  a 
son.  Downie  died  in  Southport  26  January  1988. 
His  twin  brother  had  predeceased  him  in  1978. 
Both  were  smokers,  both  victims  of  lung  can- 
cer. 

[Independent,  1  February  1988;  Journal  of  Medical 
Microbiology,  vol.  lxxxviii,  1989,  pp.  291-5;  D.  A.  J. 
Tyrrell  and  K.  McCarthy  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxv,  1990;  Sir  Cyril 
Clarke's  tribute  on  Downie's  retirement,  University  of 
Liverpool  Recorder,  1966;  personal  knowledge.] 

K.  McCarthy 

DREYER,  Rosalie  (1 895-1987),  nursing  leader, 
was  born  3  September  1895  m  Berne,  Switzer- 
land, the  eldest  child  in  the  family  of  four 
daughters  and  one  son  of  Johann  Dreyer,  man- 
ager of  a  dairy  co-operative,  and  his  wife,  Elisa- 
beth Neuenschwander.  The  father's  work 
necessitated  travel  in  the  Lausanne  area,  and  this 
Lutheran  family's  two  eldest  daughters  received 
their  education  from  Roman  Catholic  nuns.  The 
young  'Rosa'  was  encouraged  to  travel  by  a 
cosmopolitan  aunt.  She  went  to  England  in  19 14 
as  an  au  pair  girl  to  the  Saltzburgers,  a  Swiss 
family  settled  there.  She  kept  links  with  her 
young  charges  for  many  years. 

In  May  191 8  she  began  to  train  as  a  nurse  at 
Guy's  Hospital,  London.  Despite  a  bout  of 
glandular  fever,  she  gained  her  state  registration 
certificate  in  March  1922,  excelling  in  practical 
nursing  and  sickroom  cookery.  After  a  year's 
private  nursing  she  went  back  to  Switzerland  to 


work  in  the  Rollier  Clinic,  a  tuberculosis  sanat- 
orium in  Leysin. 

In  1924  she  returned  to  the  staff  of  Guy's.  She 
gained  her  midwifery  qualification  in  1926  and 
rose  through  the  nursing  hierarchy  to  become 
assistant  matron  in  1931.  In  1934  she  secured  the 
post  of  matron  at  the  Bethnal  Green  Hospital, 
since  the  1929  Local  Government  Act  under  the 
control  of  the  London  county  council.  The  next 
fifteen  years  of  her  career  were  spent  in  the 
service  of  the  LCC,  as  principal  matron 
(1935-40),  principal  matron  in  charge  (1940-8), 
and  chief  nursing  officer  (1948-50). 

The  move  to  the  LCC  was  to  a  world  vastly 
different  from  Guy's  and  the  voluntary  sector. 
The  LCC  nursing  service  had  been  built  up 
from  over  120  different  institutions,  employing 
approximately  8,000  female  nursing  staff.  It 
offered  a  comprehensive  training,  uniformity  of 
conditions  of  employment,  and  probably  the 
most  integrated  service  in  existence  prior  to  the 
inception  of  the  National  Health  Service.  In  the 
course  of  her  work  Rosalie  Dreyer  frequently 
met  Herbert  *Morrison  (later  Baron  Morrison  of 
Lambeth),  leader  of  the  LCC  from  1934  to  1940. 
She  was  well  aware  of  her  uniquely  powerful 
position,  seeing  herself  as  a  policy-maker  and 
using  her  opportunities  to  promote  nursing  and 
to  professionalize  the  former  workhouse  infir- 
mary staff.  Younger  women  at  London  matrons' 
meetings  and  her  own  ward  sisters  were  in  awe  of 
her. 

During  World  War  II  her  organizational  abili- 
ties were  fully  utilized.  She  had  to  deal  with  the 
immense  challenges  presented  by  the  urgent 
need  to  evacuate  and  disperse  hospitals  into  the 
surrounding  countryside.  Personnel  and  equip- 
ment had  to  be  relocated  and  both  had  eventually 
to  return  together.  Her  memos  give  eloquent 
testimony  to  her  managerial  skills  as  patients, 
many  of  them  chronically  sick,  staff,  student 
nurses,  their  teachers,  equipment,  anatomical 
charts,  and  life-sized  mannequins  were  moved 
about  London  and  the  Home  Counties  in  what 
was  logistically  the  most  difficult  task  to  face  a 
nurse  manager  so  far  this  century.  With  a  car  and 
a  driver  at  her  disposal,  she  visited  bombed  and 
evacuated  hospitals,  to  assess  the  extent  of  dam- 
age and  morale  of  her  staff.  Her  opinion  was 
esteemed  by  her  LCC  colleagues,  for  she  had  an 
acute  grasp  of  the  realities  of  the  situation.  In 
negotiations  with  the  Ministry  of  Health  on  the 
production  of  a  nursing  recruitment  film  to  be 
shown  in  cinemas,  she  stressed  the  need  for  the 
filming  to  be  undertaken  in  a  hospital  where  the 
uniform  was  up  to  date  and  visually  appealing  to 
potential  new  nurses. 

Rosalie  Dreyer  had  become  a  British  citizen  in 
1934,  shortly  before  her  appointment  to  Bethnal 
Green  Hospital.  Her  wartime  experience  was 
marred  by  the  xenophobic  agitation  of  Ethel 


no 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Dudgeon 


Bedford  *Fenwick,  who  described  her  appoint- 
ment as  matron  in  chief  as  unpatriotic.  Rosalie 
Dreyer  received  messages  of  support  from  the 
Royal  College  of  Nursing  and  was  publicly 
defended  by  the  LCC  leader,  Charles  (later  first 
Baron)  *Latham. 

After  the  war  she  supervised  the  assimilation 
of  the  LCC  nursing  service  into  separate  new 
National  Health  Service  units,  which  had  their 
own  hospital  management  committees.  She 
became  chief  nursing  officer,  in  charge  of  domi- 
ciliary nursing  services,  but  she  disliked  this 
work,  which  was  in  no  way  comparable  with  her 
previous  post,  and  in  1950  she  moved  to  the 
World  Health  Organization  as  nursing  adviser, 
touring  the  war-torn  countries  of  Europe  and 
advising  on  nursing  reconstruction,  until  her 
retirement  in  1953.  Despite  her  significant  con- 
tribution to  the  health  provision  for  Londoners, 
she  received  no  civic  or  public  honours. 

Rosalie  Dreyer  was  a  life  member  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Nursing,  president  of  one  of  its 
London  branches  (South  East  Metropolitan), 
and  a  member  of  the  RCN  committee  on  the 
assistant  nurse,  chaired  by  the  first  Baron  *Hor- 
der.  She  believed  in  the  formal  recognition  of 
the  second-level  nurse,  and  was  chosen  as  first 
president  of  the  National  Association  of  State 
Enrolled  Nurses. 

Within  the  NHS  she  served  on  three  hospital 
management  committees  (South  West  Middlesex 
in  1950-8,  Stepney  in  1952-64,  and  Lewisham  in 
1955-64)  and  was  a  governor  and  honorary 
secretary  to  the  Friends  of  the  Royal  Ear,  Nose 
and  Throat  Hospital  on  the  Whidey  council. 

She  was  bird-like,  tall  and  slim  (until  she 
worked  for  the  WHO),  with  dark  hair,  which  she 
complained  was  squashed  by  nurses'  caps.  While 
at  Guy's  she  was  an  avid  theatre-goer,  with  a 
wide  circle  of  friends.  She  regarded  her  nurses  as 
her  family.  Her  retirement  was  an  active  one, 
sustained  by  her  love  of  sewing,  cooking,  and 
travelling.  She  travelled  to  Australia  in  her  six- 
ties, partly  by  mail  boat.  She  kept  up  her  lifelong 
links  with  nursing  friends,  such  as  Dame  Eliz- 
abeth *Cockayne.  During  her  last  illness  she  was 
nursed  by  one  of  her  sisters  and  district  nurses, 
some  of  whom  knew  her  background.  She  died  at 
her  flat  in  Wimbledon  21  May  1987,  from  the 
effects  of  a  cerebral  tumour. 

[Guy's  Hospital  records;  London  county  council 
records;  Royal  College  of  Nursing  membership 
archives;  private  information.]         Stephanie  Kirby 

DROGHEDA,  eleventh  Earl  of  (1910-1989), 
chairman  of  the  Financial  Times  and  the  Royal 
Opera  House,  Covent  Garden.  [See  Moore, 
(Charles)  Garrett  (Ponsonby).] 

DUDGEON,  (John)  Alastair  (19 16-1989), 
microbiologist,  was  born  9  November  1916  in 


Stanhope  Place,  Bayswater,  London,  the  young- 
est in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  one  daughter  of 
Leonard  Stanley  *Dudgeon  (later  CMG  and 
CBE),  professor  of  pathology  and  dean  of  St 
Thomas's  Hospital,  and  his  wife  Norah  Edith, 
daughter  of  Sir  Richard  Orpen,  solicitor  and 
later  president  of  the  Irish  Law  Society.  His 
childhood  was  spent  in  London,  and  his  summer 
holidays  in  Aldeburgh,  a  place  which  was  to 
mean  much  to  him  throughout  his  life.  He  was 
educated  at  Repton  and  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  obtained  a  second  class  in  part 
i  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1937).  He  then 
went  to  St  Thomas's  Hospital  Medical  School. 

He  had  joined  the  Territorial  Army  in  1936 
and  at  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  in  1939  he 
interrupted  his  medical  studies  to  serve  as  a 
combatant  officer.  His  career  in  the  North  Africa 
campaign  as  a  company  commander  in  the  7th 
Rifle  Brigade  was  distinguished.  In  1942  he  was 
awarded  the  MC,  to  which  a  bar  was  added  in 
1943.  Having  been  wounded  twice,  he  was  evac- 
uated back  to  Britain  in  1943.  His  army  service 
left  a  deep  imprint  on  him.  He  cared  for  the 
soldiers  under  his  command  with  the  sense  of 
responsibility  which  he  was  later  to  feel  for 
patients,  colleagues,  research  workers,  and  tech- 
nicians, and  his  friendships  made  in  the  army 
were  lasting. 

He  completed  his  medical  studies  at  St  Tho- 
mas's, qualifying  MRCS,  LRCP  and  MB,  B.Ch. 
in  1944.  He  transferred  to  the  Royal  Army 
Medical  Corps  in  1944  and  served  in  the  Territo- 
rial Army  until  1962,  gaining  the  rank  of  colonel 
and  the  Territorial  Decoration  and  three  clasps 
(1947).  He  received  a  Cambridge  MD  in  1947. 
After  qualification  he  specialized  in  microbio- 
logy, particularly  virology.  In  1945-6  he  worked 
at  the  National  Institute  for  Medical  Research, 
under  (Sir)  Christopher  *Andrewes.  In  1948  he 
was  appointed  assistant  pathologist  (virus  dis- 
eases) at  the  Hospital  for  Sick  Children,  Great 
Ormond  Street — another  institution  to  benefit 
from  his  lifelong  loyalty.  In  1953  he  became 
senior  lecturer  in  virology  at  St  George's  Hospi- 
tal, keeping  his  links  with  Great  Ormond  Street 
as  honorary  consultant  virologist.  From  1958 
to  i960  he  was  director  of  virus  research  at 
the  Glaxo  laboratories.  He  returned  to  Great 
Ormond  Street  in  i960,  as  consultant  micro- 
biologist and  lecturer  at  the  Institute  of  Child 
Health.  He  built  up  a  splendid  department  and 
in  1972  became  professor  of  microbiology  and  in 
1974  dean  of  the  institute.  In  1963  he  had 
become  FRCPath.  He  was  an  excellent  adminis- 
trator, serving  on  many  hospital  and  institute 
committees,  usually  as  chairman. 

His  researches  related  to  viral  diseases  of  the 
foetus  and  newborn  child.  His  most  original 
contribution  concerned  the  trials  of  a  vaccine 
against  the  rubella  virus.  After  a  link  between  an 


Dudgeon 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


attack  of  rubella  during  the  early  weeks  of 
pregnancy  and  malformations  in  the  offspring 
had  been  demonstrated,  a  live  vaccine  against  the 
virus  was  produced  in  1967  in  the  United  States 
and  was  awaiting  clinical  trials.  Dudgeon  thought 
that  the  trials  should  be  undertaken  in  closed 
religious  communities,  in  order  to  avoid  acci- 
dental transferral  of  rubella  to  pregnant  women. 
With  the  enthusiastic  co-operation  of  those  com- 
munities he  showed  that  the  vaccine  was  not 
transmitted  from  person  to  person  and  was  safe, 
and  that  the  resulting  immunity  lasted  for  many 
years.  These  studies  laid  the  foundation  for  the 
vaccine's  routine  use  and  resulted  in  the  declin- 
ing incidence  of  rubella  malformations.  For  this 
contribution  Dudgeon  received  the  Harding 
award  (1972)  and  the  Bissett  Hawkins  medal  of 
the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  (1977),  of  which 
he  had  become  a  member  in  1970  and  a  fellow  in 

!974- 

His  expertise  in  the  field  of  immunization  was 
recognized  internationally  and  he  became  chair- 
man of  several  government  and  World  Health 
Organization  committees.  He  was  appointed  an 
officer  of  the  Order  of  St  John  of  Jerusalem 
(1958),  DL  of  Greater  London  (1973),  and  CBE 
(1977).  After  his  retirement  in  1981  he  worked 
for  medical  charities  and  South-East  Kent 
Health  Authority.  He  became  senior  warden 
(1984-5)  and  master  (1985-6)  of  the  Society  of 
Apothecaries. 

Dudgeon  valued  tradition.  He  had  a  rocklike 
dependability  and  a  strong  sense  of  right.  On 
first  acquaintance  he  appeared  austere,  but 
underneath  he  had  great  warmth,  a  sense  of 
humour,  and  a  humility  which  prevented  him 
from  mentioning  his  achievements.  He  enjoyed 
gardening  and  collected  antique  porcelain,  glass, 
silver,  and  apothecary  jars.  Always  correctly 
dressed,  he  was  of  medium  height,  with  a  fine 
head  of  black  hair,  which  remained  unchanged 
into  old  age,  and  dark  brown  eyes. 

In  1945  he  married  Patricia  Joan,  daughter  of 
Gilbert  Ashton,  schoolmaster.  They  had  two 
sons.  She  died  in  1969.  In  1974  he  married  Joyce 
Kathleen,  widow  of  Stanley  Tibbetts  and  daugh- 
ter of  James  Counsell,  farmer  and  businessman. 
Dudgeon  died  9  October  1989  at  home,  Cherry 
Orchard  Cottage,  Bonnington,  Kent. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Otto  Wolff 

DU  MAURIER,  Dame  Daphne  (1907-1989), 
novelist,  was  born  13  May  1907  at  24  Cumber- 
land Terrace,  Regent's  Park,  London,  the  second 
of  three  daughters  (there  were  no  sons)  of  Sir 
Gerald  Hubert  Edward  Busson  *du  Maurier, 
actor-manager,  and  his  wife  Muriel,  actress, 
daughter  of  Harry  Beaumont,  solicitor.  She  was 
educated  mainly  at  home  by  governesses,  of 
whom  one,  Maud  Waddell,  was  highly  influen- 


tial, and  afterwards  spent  three  terms  at  a  finish- 
ing school  near  Paris. 

She  began  writing  stories  and  poetry  in  her 
childhood  and  was  encouraged  by  her  father, 
with  whom  she  had  a  very  close  relationship.  He 
longed  for  her  to  emulate  her  grandfather, 
George  *du  Maurier,  artist  and  author  of  three 
novels,  including  the  best-selling  Trilby  (1894). 
But  the  circumstances  of  her  upbringing,  with  its 
constant  emphasis  on  pleasure  and  distraction, 
called  for  self-discipline  of  a  kind  she  did  not 
manage  to  exert  until  she  was  twenty-two,  when 
she  finally  completed  several  short  stories.  The 
first  published  story  was  'And  now  to  God  the 
Father',  which  appeared  in  the  Bystander  (May 
1929),  a  magazine  edited  by  her  uncle.  It  was  a 
cynical  view  of  society  as  she  saw  it. 

Her  ambition  then  was  to  write  a  novel.  She 
settled  down  to  do  so  in  the  winter  of  1929-30  at 
Bodinnick-by-Fowey  in  Cornwall,  where  her 
parents  had  bought  Ferryside  to  be  their  country 
home.  Here  she  wrote  The  Loving  Spirit,  the 
story  of  four  generations  of  a  Cornish  family, 
which  was  published  to  considerable  acclaim  by 
Heinemann  in  February  1931.  She  immediately 
wrote  second  and  third  novels  which  confounded 
expectations  by  differing  radically  from  her  first, 
but  it  was  her  fourth  book,  Gerald,  a  frank 
biography  of  her  father,  written  when  he  died  in 
1934,  which  made  the  greatest  impact.  It  was 
published  by  (Sir)  Victor  *Gollancz,  with  whom 
she  then  began  a  long  and  fruitful  partnership. 

Gollancz  recognized  that  her  strengths  lay  in 
narrative  drive  and  the  evocation  of  atmosphere. 
He  encouraged  her  to  develop  these  and  the 
result  was  Jamaica  Inn  (1936),  an  instant  best 
seller.  At  this  point  in  her  career  she  was  obliged, 
as  an  army  wife,  to  go  abroad,  to  Egypt,  with  her 
husband,  Major  (Sir)  Frederick  Arthur  Mon- 
tague ('Boy')  *Browning,  the  son  of  Frederick 
Henry  Browning.  The  latter  ran  various  busi- 
nesses and  also  worked  for  MI5,  as  well  as  having 
a  distinguished  army  career.  They  had  married 
in  1932  and  in  1933  had  a  daughter,  Tessa,  who 
was  later  to  marry  the  son  of  the  first  Viscount 
•Montgomery  of  Alamein  (her  second  mar- 
riage). 

This  was  a  deeply  unhappy  period  in  Daphne 
du  Maurier's  life — she  was  an  untypical  army 
wife,  being  very  anti-social,  and  she  loathed 
Egypt  and  was  profoundly  homesick — but  it 
produced  Rebecca  (1938).  This  was  meant  to  be  a 
psychological  study  of  jealousy,  and  was  based  on 
her  own  feelings  of  jealousy  towards  a  former 
fiancee  of  her  husband's,  Jan  Ricardo,  but  was 
hailed  as  a  romantic  novel  in  the  tradition  of  Jane 
Eyre.  She  was  astonished  by  the  success  of 
Rebecca — hardback  copies  in  Britain  alone  passed 
the  million  mark  in  1992 — and  mystified  by  the 
readers'  interpretation  of  the  novel.  In  1941  she 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Dunderdale 


produced  Frenchman's  Creek  and  in  1043  Hungry 
Hill. 

In  1943,  while  her  husband  was  away  righting 
in  the  war,  she  went  to  live  in  Cornwall  with  her 
three  children,  daughters  Tessa  and  Flavia 
(1937),  and  son  Christian  (1040).  She  took  on  the 
lease  of  Menabillv,  a  house  (owiied  by  the 
Rashleigh  family)  with  which  she  had  become 
obsessed.  The  war  years  affected  her  marriage 
deeply  and  adversely.  She  felt  estranged  from  her 
husband,  in  spite  of  her  love  for  him,  and  wrote 
a  play.  The  Years  Between  (performed  in  1044), 
about  how  war  affected  marriages. 

After  the  war  her  husband  became  comptroller 
of  the  household  and  treasurer  to  Princess  Eliz- 
abeth, which  meant  that  he  lived  in  London 
while  she  stayed  in  Cornwall,  with  only  week- 
ends shared.  This  led  to  tensions  which  heavily 
influenced  her  work.  Outwardly  charming,  witty, 
and  light-hearted,  she  was  struggling  inwardly 
with  feelings  of  rejection  and  uncertainty  about 
her  personal  life.  In  two  collections  of  short 
stories,  The  Apple  Tree  (1952)  and  The  Breaking 
Point  (1959),  she  expressed  the  extent  of  her 
confusion  and  frustration.  These  stories  are  of 
great  biographical  significance. 

Her  career  flourished,  though  not  precisely  in 
the  way  she  wished.  My  Cousin  Rachel  appeared 
in  195 1.  Her  novels  translated  well  into  films  and 
Jamaica  Inn  (1939),  Rebecca  (1940),  Frenchman's 
Creek  (1944),  and  Hungry  Hill  (1946)  were  nota- 
ble successes.  Her  short  story,  The  Birds,  became 
famous  in  the  hands  of  (Sir)  Alfred  *Hitchcock 
in  1963.  Rebecca  had  made  her  a  popular,  world- 
wide, best-selling  author,  but  she  felt  her  later, 
more  serious,  work  was  not  given  its  due.  In  The 
Scapegoat  (1957)  she  was  writing  at  a  deeper 
level,  but  the  novel  was  treated  as  a  romantic 
thriller.  She  turned  to  biography,  partly  in  an 
attempt  to  show  she  could  do  serious  work, 
though  it  was  also  true  that  she  had  tempor- 
arily lost  the  creative  urge  to  write  fiction.  The 
Infernal  World  of  Branwell  Bronte  (i960)  gave 
her  tremendous  satisfaction,  and  was  well 
researched,  but  did  little  to  alter  her  image. 

In  1965  her  husband  died.  Her  grief,  together 
with  the  distress  caused  by  her  fear  that  her 
imagination  was  deserting  her,  made  her 
depressed.  The  news  that  she  could  not  renew 
her  lease  on  Menabillv  again  added  to  her  misery 
but  in  1969,  the  year  in  which  she  was  appointed 
DBE,  she  moved  to  Kilmarth,  the  dower  house 
of  Menabillv,  and  wrote  The  House  on  the  Strand 
(1969),  which  restored  her  confidence.  Her  last 
novel,  Rule  Britannia  (1972),  destroyed  it  again. 
She  was  unable  to  write  any  more  fiction 
afterwards.  In  1977  she  wrote  a  slim  volume 
of  autobiography  (Growing  Pains),  which  she 
regretted  producing.  In  1981  she  had  a  nervous 
breakdown  and  then  a  mild  coronary.  The  last 
eight  years  of  her  life  were  spent  mourning  her 


lost  talent,  without  which  she  felt  her  days  were 
empty  and  meaningless. 

Daphne  du  Maurier  was  in  her  youth  an 
extremely  beautiful  woman,  of  medium  height, 
fine-boned  and  slender,  with  thick  blonde  hair 
and  arresting  eyes  of  a  startlingly  bright,  clear 
blue.  She  was  a  very  complex  person,  well  aware, 
through  constant  self-analysis,  that  she  acted  out 
her  life  to  an  extraordinary  degree.  Her  novels 
were  her  fantasies  and  seemed  more  real  to  her 
than  her  actual  life.  She  needed  them,  to  give 
expression  to  what  she  called,  through  her  fasci- 
nation with  Jungian  theory,  her  'no.  2'  self.  This 
was  a  darker,  violent  self,  which  she  suppressed 
in  a  most  determined  manner.  Part  of  this 
suppression  was  sexual:  she  believed  she  should 
have  been  born  a  boy  and  that  she  had  to  keep 
this  masculine  side  of  herself  hidden,  which  she 
did,  except  while  writing,  for  most  of  her  life. 
The  problem  of  her  life  she  herself  defined  as  'a 
fear  of  reality'.  Only  when  she  was  alone,  and 
especially  alone  in  Menabillv,  was  she  able  to  still 
this  fear. 

Her  work  has  been  consistendy  underrated,  in 
spite  of  critical  acknowledgement  that  Rebecca 
and  The  Scapegoat,  at  least,  are  of  literary  worth. 
Her  influence  on  the  growth  of  'women's  writ- 
ing' as  a  separate  division,  and  on  writing  for  the 
cinema  (eight  of  her  novels  and  stories  were 
made  into  successful  films),  was  significant  in  the 
1930s  and  1940s,  but  it  is  as  a  popular  novelist 
that  her  position  remains  secure,  especially 
among  the  young.  She  died  at  her  home  in  Par, 
Cornwall,  19  April  1989. 

[Margaret  Forster,  Daphne  du  Maurier,  1993;  private 
information;  family  papers.]         Margaret  Forster 

DUNCAN-SANDYS,  Baron  (1908-1987),  poli- 
tician. [See  Sandys,  (Edwin)  Duncan.] 

DUNDERDALE,  Wilfred  Albert  (1899-1990), 
intelligence  officer,  was  born  in  Russia  24 
December  1899,  the  son  of  Richard  Albert  Dun- 
derdale, a  British  shipowner,  whose  vessels 
traded  between  Constantinople  and  the  Russian 
ports  on  the  Black  Sea,  and  his  wife,  Sophie.  He 
was  educated  in  Russia,  at  the  gymnasium  in 
Nikolayev,  and  was  studying  naval  engineering  at 
Petrograd  University  when  the  Russian  revolu- 
tion broke  out  in  19 17.  Much  of  the  Russian  navy 
remained  in  White  Russian  hands.  Dunderdale 
was  contacted  by  the  Royal  Navy,  who  found  his 
great  knowledge  of  the  Russian  language  and  the 
Russian  navy  invaluable. 

At  this  time  Constantinople,  where  Dunder- 
dale had  numerous  friends,  had  been  occupied 
by  the  Allies.  On  one  occasion  in  19 19  a  subma- 
rine was  being  handed  over  by  the  Allies  to  the 
White  Russian  navy.  Dunderdale  discovered  that 
the  crew  were  Bolsheviks  who  intended  to  mur- 
der the  tsarist  officers  together  with  the  liaison 


"3 


Dunderdale 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


officer  (himself)  as  soon  as  the  vessel  sailed. 
The  crew  were  arrested  and  Dunderdale  was 
appointed  MBE  (1920).  In  the  same  year  he 
became  a  sub-lieutenant  in  the  Royal  Naval 
Volunteer  Reserve.  During  this  period  he  was 
also  sent  as  the  British  observer  and  interpreter 
to  accompany  the  imperial  procurator  on  his 
investigation  into  the  murder  of  the  Russian 
imperial  family  at  Ekaterinburg,  which  had  been 
recaptured  by  the  White  Russian  army.  As  a 
result  he  remained  convinced  of  the  falseness  of 
the  pretender  Anastasia,  who  he  said  was  merely 
the  Polish  girlfriend  of  one  of  the  Bolshevik 
gaolers,  who  occasionally  did  some  sewing  for  the 
tsarina. 

The  world  of  Constantinople,  from  the  end  of 
the  war  until  Kemal  Atatiirk  deposed  Sultan 
Muhammad  in  1922,  was  one  of  classical  Byzan- 
tine intrigue  on  a  grand  scale.  The  only  stabiliz- 
ing factor  was  the  heavy  guns  of  the  Royal  Navy, 
which  were  trained  on  the  centre  of  the  city. 
Dunderdale  was  in  his  element  and  in  1921  he 
was  recruited  by  MI6,  with  whom  he  remained 
until  1959.  He  had  found  his  spiritual  'home'.  He 
always  maintained  that  his  first  job  for  MI6  was 
to  pay  off,  with  gold  sovereigns,  all  the  foreign 
members  of  the  sultan's  harem,  and  to  repatriate 
them  through  the  good  offices  of  the  Royal 
Navy. 

In  1926  he  was  posted  to  Paris  to  represent 
MI6's  interests,  and  to  liaise  with  the  French 
Deuxieme  Bureau.  He  stayed  in  Paris  until  1940. 
The  central  weapon  in  his  armoury  was  his  own 
personality.  He  spoke  several  languages  well,  and 
was  debonair  and  a  wonderful  host.  There  was 
about  him  an  element  of  the  pirate;  he  was  a 
romantic  with  enormous  vitality  and  a  gift  for 
friendship.  If  the  truth  of  past  dramatic  events 
was  occasionally  expanded  in  telling  the  story, 
his  friends  readily  forgave  him.  His  flat  in  Paris 
became  a  meeting  place  for  international  visitors 
and  political  gossip.  His  relations  with  the  Deux- 
ieme Bureau  became  close  and  he  played  a  major 
role  in  one  great  intelligence  coup.  He  had 
become  a  close  personal  friend  of  Colonel  Gus- 
tave  Bertrand,  the  Deuxieme  Bureau  chief  sig- 
nals officer.  They  were  both  friendly  with  the 
Polish  intelligence  service  in  Paris.  Shortly  after 
the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  in  1939,  they 
managed  to  smuggle  out  of  Poland  to  Paris  a 
model  of  the  top  secret  German  encoding 
machine  known  as  'Enigma'.  Dunderdale 
brought  it  over  to  London  himself,  in  romantic 
circumstances.  It  was  the  biggest  single  contribu- 
tion to  the  vital  intelligence  results  achieved  by 
the  British  decoding  centre  at  Bletchley  Park, 
and  was  perhaps  the  greatest  Allied  intelligence 
coup  of  the  war.  Dunderdale  was  appointed 
CMG  (1942). 

In  the  summer  of  1940  he  had  to  return  to 
London.  He  ran  a  small  group  of  agents  into 


French  seaports,  but  his  contribution  gradually 
diminished.  Part  of  the  reason  for  this  was  that, 
as  Charles  de  Gaulle  became  increasingly  power- 
ful in  London  and  set  up  his  own  intelligence 
organization,  Dunderdale's  contacts  with  the  old 
Deuxieme  Bureau  became  an  object  of  suspicion: 
a  number  of  its  officers  were  indeed  working  with 
the  Vichy  government. 

After  the  war  Dunderdale  refused  to  have  an 
office  in  MI6's  headquarters  because  the  aura  of 
Whitehall  was  intolerable  to  him;  he  was  allowed 
to  set  up  a  small  office  nearby.  There,  with  lovely 
oriental  carpets,  portraits  of  the  queen  and  the 
tsar,  a  whiff  of  incense,  and  a  fine  model  of  a 
Russian  destroyer  of  1912,  he  provided  a  home 
from  home  for  many  foreign  visitors  from  pre- 
war days.  He  made  two  further  contributions. 
When  de  Gaulle  resigned  early  in  1946  an 
intelligence  amalgamation  took  place  in  Paris 
between  those  who  worked  for  de  Gaulle  and  the 
pre-war  professionals.  Dunderdale  played  a  use- 
ful role  in  bridging  the  gap  between  the  new 
generation  of  MI6  officers  and  his  pre-war 
French  colleagues.  Secondly,  in  his  final  period 
with  MI6  his  company  and  his  worldly  know- 
ledge was  a  constant  pleasure  and  profit  to  his 
younger  colleagues.  He  was  an  officer  of  the 
French  Legion  of  Honour,  a  holder  of  the 
French  croix  de  guerre  (with  palm),  and  an 
officer  of  the  US  Legion  of  Merit. 

Always  known  as  'Biffy',  Dunderdale  was 
neat,  dark,  immaculately  dressed,  stubby  in 
build,  and  always  with  a  Balkan  cigarette,  in  a 
long,  black,  ivory  holder,  in  his  hand.  In  1928  he 
married  June  Woodbridge  Ament-Morse,  of 
Washington,  USA.  The  marriage  was  dissolved 
in  1947  and  in  1952  he  married  Dorothy  Mabel 
Brayshaw  Hyde,  daughter  of  James  Murray 
Crofts,  D.Sc,  CBE.  The  marriage  was  very 
happy  and  they  lived  in  London  until  her  death 
in  1978.  After  his  wife  died  there  was  little  left  to 
keep  Dunderdale  in  England  and  he  went  to  live 
in  New  York,  where  he  had  some  old  friends.  In 
1980  he  married  Deborah,  widow  of  Harry  McJ. 
McLeod  and  daughter  of  Eugene  B.  Jackson,  of 
Boston,  Massachusetts.  There  were  no  children 
of  any  of  the  marriages.  Dunderdale  died  13 
November  1990  in  New  York. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  John  Bruce  Lockhart 

DU  PRE,  Jacqueline  Mary  (1 945-1 987),  cellist, 
was  born  26  January  1945  in  Oxford,  the  younger 
daughter  and  second  of  three  children  of  Derek 
du  Pre,  financial  writer  and  editor,  who  became 
secretary  to  the  Institute  of  Cost  and  Works 
Accountants,  and  his  wife,  Iris  Greep,  who 
taught  piano  at  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music. 
The  family  name  had  twelfth-century  origins  in 
Jersey.  In  1948  the  family  went  to  settle  in 
Purley,  a  suburb  south  of  London.  At  four  years 
of  age,  Jacqueline  heard  a  cello  for  the  first  time 


114 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


DuPre 


and  wanted  to  have  such  an  instrument;  she  was 
given  one  for  her  fifth  birthday.  Her  mother  soon 
recognized  that  her  daughter  showed  unusual 
talent;  even  when  singing,  neither  her  intonation 
nor  her  rhythms  could  be  faulted.  She  arranged 
lessons  and  jotted  down  little  tunes  for  her.  With 
such  support,  coupled  with  Jacqueline's  own 
outstanding  talent  and  enthusiasm,  the  girl's 
early  music  lessons  could  not  but  succeed.  After 
one  year  the  six-year-old  Jacqueline  began  study- 
ing at  the  London  Cello  School,  directed  by 
Herbert  Walenn;  when  seven,  she  gave  her  first 
public  performance  at  a  children's  concert. 

The  well-known  teacher  William  Pleeth 
entered  her  life  when  she  was  ten;  she  was  to  stay 
with  him  for  the  next  seven  years.  It  was  from 
him,  she  said  later,  that  she  learned  to  love  the 
big  concertos  she  was  to  play  with  unmatched 
brio,  as  well  as  the  chamber  music  for  which  she 
always  had  a  particular  affection.  She  had  a 
private  tutor  for  general  schooling.  When  she 
was  eleven  Jacqueline  du  Pre  won  London's  first 
Suggia  gift,  an  international  cello  prize,  a 
remarkable  result  in  a  competition  which  set  its 
age  limit  at  twenty-one.  From  then  on  her  tuition 
was  financially  secure,  enabling  her  to  study  in 
Paris  with  Paul  Tortelier,  who  predicted  a  great 
future  for  her.  After  being  awarded  all  possible 
prizes  at  the  Guildhall  School  of  Music,  London, 
including  the  gold  medal  'for  the  outstanding 
instrumental  student  of  the  year',  Jacqueline  du 
Pre  gave  her  first  recital  in  March  1961,  at  the 
Wigmore  Hall  in  a  sonata  programme,  accom- 
panied by  Ernest  Lush.  This  recital  brought  her 
to  the  attention  of  the  public  and  of  professional 
musicians,  and  from  then  on  her  career  was 
assured. 

In  her  first  appearance  in  a  chamber  music 
recital  for  the  National  Trust  Concert  Society, 
she  was  joined  by  Yehudi  (later  Baron)  Menuhin 
and  his  sister  Hephzibah  at  Osterley  Park.  In 
March  1962  she  played  with  the  BBC  Symphony 
Orchestra,  at  London's  South  Bank,  Sir  Edward 
•Elgar's  Cello  Concerto,  which  she  was  to  repeat 
at  two  Promenade  Concerts  under  Sir  Malcolm 
•Sargent  and  which  was  to  become  the  work  with 
which  her  audiences  would  associate  her  for 
years  to  come.  She  then  launched  into  a  career 
that  was  to  take  her  to  the  Continent  and  the 
USA.  In  1966  there  followed  an  intense  time  of 
study  with  Mstislav  Rostropovich  at  the  Con- 
servatoire of  Moscow,  from  where  she  wrote  to 
Yehudi  Menuhin:  'Cher  the  past  two  years  I  have 
felt  extremely  lost  with  my  work  and  generally 
fatigued  by  it.  Now,  under  Rostropovich's  tui- 
tion, I  am  finding  a  new  freshness  in  it,  and  the 
old  desire  to  go  ahead  with  what  I  love  so  deeply 
is  returning.'  From  this  honest  declaration  it 
would  appear  that  her  meteoric  rise  to  fame  had 
taken  its  toll.  The  following  year  saw  her  return 
to  London  for  concerts  with  the  BBC  Symphony 


Orchestra.  An  extensive  tour  of  'the  United 
States  and  Canada  further  established  the  fame 
which  had  followed  her  first  visit  in  1965.  Amer- 
ican critics  wrote  about  'waves  of  intensity  and 
love',  her  'awesome  gifts',  her  'dazzling  tech- 
nique'. Beyond  her  cultivated  and  deeply  musical 
approach  to  her  playing  she  almost  compelled  the 
music  to  yield  its  utmost  intensity,  passion,  and 
emotional  abandon  and  was  at  one  with  it. 

A  first  casual  meeting  with  the  young  Argen- 
tinian-born Israeli  pianist  Daniel  Barenboim 
(only  son  of  Enrique  and  Aida  Barenboim,  pian- 
ists) turned  out  to  lead  not  only  to  a  musical 
partnership  which  was  to  become  legendary  but 
to  Jacqueline  adopting  his  Jewish  faith  before 
their  marriage  on  15  June  1967  in  Israel,  a 
country  then  at  war.  The  following  day  they 
were  the  soloists  in  a  concert  with  the  Israel 
Philharmonic  in  Tel  Aviv.  On  the  programme 
were  Schumann's  Cello  Concerto,  which  Baren- 
boim conducted,  and  a  Mozart  Piano  Concerto 
which  he  played,  the  conductor  being  Zubin 
Mehta.  From  then  on  the  young  Barenboims 
were  involved  in  three  musical  careers:  his,  hers, 
and  theirs.  Their  knowledge  of  each  other's 
interpretive  ideas  was  almost  uncanny;  they 
thought  as  one  and  their  performances  radiated 
this  complete  understanding.  Though  visual 
opposites — Jacqueline  tali,  with  long,  flowing, 
blonde  hair  and  lively  light-blue  eyes,  Daniel 
slim  and  slightly  shorter  with  dark  curly  hair  and 
intense  brown  eyes — they  were  beautiful  to 
behold  as  a  pair;  their  exuberance  and  joy  in 
music-making  and  their  deep  respect  for  com- 
poser and  score,  together  with  their  love  of 
performance,  never  failed  to  reach  the  audience. 
Their  musical  partnership,  which  began  at  great 
speed,  was  to  last  for  just  four  years,  but  this 
short  period  was  filled  with  recitals,  concerts,  and 
recordings,  the  latter  embracing  a  large  cata- 
logue, mainly  on  the  EMI  label,  with  which 
Jacqueline  du  Pre  had  an  exclusive  agreement. 
She  recorded  virtually  the  entire  cello  concerto 
repertoire  with  the  greatest  orchestras  and  con- 
ductors of  her  time,  as  well  as  numerous  sonatas 
and  other  cello  pieces  with  eminent  pianists, 
amongst  them  Gerald  *Moore. 

YA  hen  in  the  autumn  of  1973  odd  symptoms, 
which  had  begun  to  disturb  her  playing  two  years 
earlier,  were  diagnosed  as  signs  of  the  beginning 
of  the  crippling  illness  multiple  sclerosis,  which 
allows  only  brief  periods  of  remission,  all  happi- 
ness and  hope  for  the  future  were  taken  away  and 
the  musical  world  was  stunned.  Jacqueline  du 
Pre  took  this  fatal  blow  without  complaint.  With 
typical  spirit  she  taught,  gave  master  classes, 
cooked,  and,  whenever  possible,  played  chamber 
music  with  her  husband  and  friends.  Her  gen- 
erosity of  character  and  unselfish  nature  made 
her  an  ideal  chamber  music  player.  She  became  a 
familiar  and  beloved  sight  in  her  wheelchair  at 


"5 


Du  Pre 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


many  London  concerts,  and  she  would  ask  peo- 
ple to  come  and  play  to  her.  Alexander  Goehr 
wrote  his  Romanze  for  her  (1968). 

She  was  appointed  OBE  in  1976,  was  a  fellow 
of  the  Guildhall  School  of  Music  (1975)  and  the 
Royal  College  of  Music  (1977),  and  was  an 
honorary  fellow  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music 
(1974)  and  of  St  Hilda's  College,  Oxford  (1984). 
She  won  the  gold  medal  of  the  Guildhall  School 
of  Music  and  the  Queen's  prize  (both  i960),  the 
City  of  London  midsummer  prize  (1975),  and 
the  Incorporated  Society  of  Musicians'  musician 
of  the  year  award  (1980).  She  had  honorary 
doctorates  from  Salford  (1978),  London  (1979), 
the  Open  University  (1979),  Sheffield  (1980), 
Leeds  (1982),  Durham  (1983),  and  Oxford 
(1984).  She  had  no  children.  In  her  final  years 
she  was  saddened  by  her  husband's  relationship 
with  Helena  Bachkirev  and  the  birth  of  their  two 
children.  At  times  she  gave  way  to  depression. 
She  died  19  October  1987  in  her  flat  at  Chepstow 
Villas,  and  was  buried  at  the  Jewish  cemetery  in 
Golders  Green. 

[Carol  Easton,  Jfac  que  line  du  Pre,  1089;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  Yehudi  Menuhin 

DURRELL,  Lawrence  George  (1912-1990), 
author  and  poet,  was  born  27  February  19 12  at 
Jullundur  in  the  Punjab,  the  eldest  child  in  the 
family  of  three  sons  and  a  daughter  of  Lawrence 
Samuel  Durrell,  civil  engineer,  and  his  wife, 
Louise  Florence  Dixie,  who  was  of  Irish  descent. 
Both  families  had  worked  in  India  for  several 
generations.  Gerald  Durrell  (died  1995),  the 
zoologist  and  author,  was  a  younger  brother. 
Early  days  in  the  Himalayas  left  memories  of  'a 
kind  of  nursery-rhyme  happiness',  the  opposite 
of  his  reaction  to  England  when  he  was  sent  there 
for  his  schooling.  He  felt  stifled.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  St  Joseph's  College,  Darjeeling,  and  St 
Edmund's  School,  Canterbury.  To  his  great 
disappointment  he  failed  to  be  accepted  for 
Cambridge.  He  threw  himself  into  London  bohe- 
mian  life,  tried  motor  racing,  made  friends  with 
poets,  and  in  1935  married  Nancy  Myers,  who 
left  the  Slade  School  of  Art  to  help  things  out  by 
acting,  while  he  played  jazz  in  a  Soho  nightclub, 
jumping  out  of  the  window  during  police  raids. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  Thomas  Cyril  Myers, 
dentist. 

His  family's  migration  to  Corfu  in  1934  was 
hilariously  recounted  by  Gerald  in  My  Family 
and  Other  Animals  (1956).  'It  was  pure  gold';  and 
the  luminous  but  measured  ecstasy  of  Law- 
rence's poems  about  the  Ionian,  the  Aegean,  and 
the  Cyclades  caught  this  exactly.  His  verse  repre- 
sented a  wholly  new  approach  to  the  Greek 
world.  (The  magic  was  recaptured  later  on  in 
Prospero's  Cell,  1945.)  Nobody  could  have  been 
better  equipped  for  running  wild  among  olive 
groves.   Fast  as  a  dolphin  in  the  sea,  short, 


compact,  and  vigorous,  Durrell  would  work  and 
read  all  day,  swim  a  couple  of  miles,  then  feast 
with  island  friends  most  of  the  night.  He  had  an 
amusing  and  engaging  face,  a  charming  voice, 
skill  at  languages  and  painting  and  all  stringed 
instruments,  and  an  unhesitating  fluency,  which 
he  attributed  to  his  mother's  Irish  blood.  He  put 
new  oxygen  into  the  air;  nothing  seemed  impos- 
sible; and  his  alert  comic  sense  was  balanced  by  a 
certain  quiet  authority. 

For  censorship  reasons,  because  it  was 
regarded  as  risque,  his  first  published  volume, 
The  Black  Book  (1938),  was  brought  out  in  Paris 
by  the  Obelisk  Press,  and  wider  contacts  and 
friendships  soon  began.  On  a  return  to  London, 
T.  S.  *Eliot  helped  and  advised,  and  then 
launched  him  at  Faber  &  Faber;  and  a  stay  in 
Paris  turned  his  correspondence  with  Henry 
Miller  into  lifelong  friendship.  Back  in  Greece 
his  closest  friends  were  the  naturalist  Theodore 
Stephanides,  the  poet  Seferis  (George  Sefer- 
iades),  and  the  polymath  storyteller  George  Kat- 
simbalis  (Miller  met  him  when  visiting  Durrell 
and  immortalized  him  in  The  Colossus  of  Mar- 
oussi,  1942).  He  gravitated  to  the  British  Council, 
which  sent  him  to  Kalamata  to  teach  English. 
When  World  War  II  broke  out,  he  wanted  to  join 
the  Royal  Air  Force,  but  the  British  embassy 
commandeered  him  for  press  officer  in  Athens. 

After  a  last  minute  escape  to  Egypt  in  April 
1 94 1,  with  his  wife  and  baby  daughter,  the  only 
child  of  the  marriage,  he  worked  for  the  British 
embassy  in  Cairo  and  Alexandria,  where  the 
Greek  poet  Constantine  P.  Cavafy  and  E.  M. 
*Forster  were  his  spiritual  guides.  He  helped  to 
edit  Personal  Landscape  (1945),  an  impressive 
Middle  Eastern  equivalent  of  Horizon,  with 
Robin  Fedden  and  Bernard  Spencer;  and  when 
the  Aegean  was  set  free  in  1944,  he  became  press 
officer  for  the  Dodecanese,  based  on  Rhodes. 
After  a  divorce  in  1947  he  married  in  the  same 
year  Eve  Cohen,  a  Shulamitish  Alexandrian 
beauty;  their  only  child,  a  daughter,  was  called 
Sappho.  Eve  was  the  daughter  of  Moise  Cohen 
Arazi,  jeweller  and  money-changer.  The  archi- 
pelago soon  inspired  Reflections  on  a  Marine 
Venus  (1953)  and  a  new  crop  of  poems;  then  the 
British  Council  sent  him  to  Argentina  (1947)  for 
two  unprofitable  years,  and  in  1949  he  was  put  in 
charge  of  the  British  embassy  press  office  in 
Belgrade,  where  the  siege  atmosphere  of  embassy 
life  later  on  prompted  several  comic  novels  about 
diplomacy. 

In  1952,  aged  forty  now,  he  settled  down  in 
Cyprus  to  write,  but  the  EOKA  unrest  drove 
him  to  Nicosia,  where  he  was  press  officer  once 
again.  It  was  a  depressing  time  of  conflicting 
loyalties,  and  his  second  marriage  was  breaking 
up;  it  only  ended  when  he  met  Claude  Forde,  a 
Frenchwoman  who  shared  his  literary  bent.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  Jacques  Marie  Vincendon, 


116 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Dwyer 


banker.  They  married  in  1957,  the  year  of  his 
divorce  from  Eve  Cohen,  moved  to  France,  and 
finally  put  down  roots  near  Nimes,  in  the  old 
Provencal  town  of  Sommieres.  They  had  no 
children. 

In  a  single  year,  1957,  he  brought  out  Bitter 
Lemons,  his  account  of  the  Cyprus  troubles; 
Esprtt  de  Corps,  his  first  diplomatic  novel;  White 
Eagles  over  Serbia,  an  adventure  story;  and, 
momentously ,  Justine.  This,  followed  hot-foot  by 
Balthasar  (1958),  Mountolive  (1958),  and  Clea 
(i960) — 'The  Alexandria  Quartet' — made  him 
world  famous.  There  was  no  need  for  the  reader 
to  concur  with  the  aphorisms  or  the  philosophy , 
or  to  puzzle  over  the  author's  claim  to  an 
underlying  Einsteinian  framework;  there  was  so 
much  more  besides:  the  interlock  of  real  Alexan- 
dria with  an  imaginary  city  populated  by  fantas- 
tic but  believable  denizens,  books  within  books, 
shifts  of  angle  and  focus  and  voice,  shock  twists 
of  plot,  tortuous  erotic  mazes,  the  brio  and  colour 
of  the  Levant,  and,  above  all,  atmospheric 
effects,  which  burst  on  that  grey  period  like  the 
ascent  of  a  phoenix.  It  was  an  astonishing 
achievement. 

It  is  tempting  to  try  and  pigeon-hole  the  stages 
of  his  progress;  but  whatever  the  influences  at 
work — whether  they  were  the  Austrian  psycho- 
analyst Georg  Groddeck  (about  whom  Durrell 
wrote  a  book  in  1 961)  or  Cavafy,  an  arcane  school 
of  philosophy,  some  dark  historical  byway,  or 
hints  from  the  Gnostics  or  the  Manichees — the 
results  cohered  in  something  new,  original,  and 
hard  to  classify.  If  English  critical  opinion  lagged 
behind  his  lasting  fame  in  Europe,  and  especially 
in  France,  geography  is  partly  to  blame;  also, 
perhaps,  faults  on  both  sides. 

Claude's  death  (1967)  was  a  hard  knock  and 
Tunc  (1968)  and  Nunquam  (1970),  published 
together  as  The  Revolt  of  Aphrodite  (1974), 
reflected  this  mood.  (His  daughter  Sappho's 
suicide  in  1984  was  another  sombre  rime.)  His 
1973  marriage  to  Ghislaine  (daughter  of  Bernard 
de  Boysson,  landowner)  was  dissolved  in  1979, 
but  the  subsequent  companionship  of  Francoise 
Kestsman  lit  up  the  rest  of  his  life.  This  was 
largely  devoted  to  The  Avignon  Quintet  (1974-85, 
published  in  one  volume  in  1992),  into  which, 
with  undiminished  vigour,  he  wove  the  whole 
drama  of  the  Knights  Templar.  Meanwhile  his 
books  won  numerous  prizes  and  the  long  list  of 
his  publications  includes  his  correspondence 
with  Henry  Miller  (1963  and  1988)  and  Richard 
•Aldington  (1981);  his  assembled  essays  had 
appeared  in  Spirit  of  Place  (1969)  and  his  Col- 
lected Poems,  igji-ig/4  in  1980.  Exhibitions  of 
his  paintings  had  been  well  received  and  his  verse 
dramas  were  acted  and  broadcast  with  success. 
Later,  emphysema  was  an  intermittent  infliction 
but  it  left  his  diligence  and  his  spirits  trium- 
phantly intact.  He  died  in  Sommieres  7  Novem- 


ber 1990,  and  Caesar's  Vast  Ghost,  the  last  of 
several  books  inspired  by  Provence,  came  out  a 
few  days  later.  His  house  became  the  Centre 
d'Etudes  et  Recherches  Lawrence  Ehirrell. 

[Ian  S.  MacNiven  and  Carol  Peirce,  in  Twentieth 
Century  Literature  (journal),  parts  i  and  ii,  Hofstra 
University,  New  York,  1987;  Independent,  9  November 
1990;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Patrick  Leigh  Fermor 

DWYER,  George  Patrick  (1 908-1 987),  seventh 
Roman  Catholic  archbishop  of  Birmingham,  was 
born  in  Manchester  25  September  1908,  the 
eldest  in  the  family  of  five  sons  and  two  daugh- 
ters of  John  William  Dwyer,  a  wholesale  egg  and 
potato  merchant,  and  his  wife,  Jemima  ('Ima') 
Chatham.  He  was  educated  at  St  Bede's  College, 
Manchester  (1919-26),  and  was  then  accepted  as 
a  candidate  for  the  priesthood  in  the  diocese  of 
Salford  and  sent  to  study  at  the  Venerable 
English  College,  Rome.  He  soon  proved  out- 
standing academically  and  was  awarded  doc- 
torates in  philosophy  and  theology  at  the 
Gregorian  University,  Rome,  being  ordained 
priest  on  1  November  1932.  On  his  return  to 
England  the  following  year  he  was  sent  to 
Christ's  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  was  Lady 
Margaret  scholar  and  obtained  second  classes 
(division  I)  in  both  parts  of  the  modern  and 
medieval  languages  tripos  (1935  and  1937).  In 
1937  he  began  a  ten-year  stint  on  the  staff"  of  St 
Bede's,  Manchester,  where  he  taught  French. 

Whilst  in  Rome  Dwyer  established  a  firm 
friendship  with  a  fellow  student  three  years  his 
senior,  John  Carmel  *Heenan,  and  their  names 
were  linked  in  partnership  over  nearly  fifty  years. 
Some  saw  Dwyer  as  frequently  following  in 
Heenan's  footsteps,  yet  each  achieved  greatness 
in  his  own  right.  Possessing  complementary 
talents,  they  were  very  different  characters:  Hee- 
nan,  the  brilliant  communicator  and  preacher; 
Dwyer,  the  outstanding  theologian  and  linguist, 
with  a  phenomenal  memory,  and  an  outspoken 
clarity  of  expression,  which  at  times,  especially  in 
his  younger  days,  reflected  his  inability  to  suffer 
fools  gladly .  Yet  both  had  a  wide  circle  of  friends 
and  were  renowned  for  great  personal  kindness 
towards  those  less  gifted  than  themselves. 

In  1947  Heenan  was  invited  to  re-establish  the 
Catholic  Missionary  Society,  a  group  of  dio- 
cesan clergy  charged  with  preaching  parish  mis- 
sions throughout  England  and  Wales.  Heenan 
promptly  chose  Dwyer  as  his  principal  assistant 
and  together  they  organized  a  general  mission 
nationwide  in  1949.  When  Heenan  was  ap- 
pointed bishop  of  Leeds  in  195 1,  Dwyer  was  the 
automatic  choice  as  superior  of  the  Catholic 
Missionary  Society.  In  this  role  he  showed  both 
leadership  and  initiative,  and  established  the 
Catholic  Enquiry  Centre.  He  himself  wrote  the 


"7 


Dwyer 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


series  of  pamphlets  used  to  answer  postal  enquir- 
ies about  the  Catholic  faith.  The  success  of  this 
venture  owed  much  to  his  clear  style,  human 
understanding,  and  sound  theology. 

In  1957  Heenan  was  appointed  archbishop  of 
Liverpool  and  Dwyer  was  named  as  his  successor 
in  Leeds.  He  was  consecrated  bishop  on  24 
September  and  set  about  the  task  of  calming 
what  had  become  known  under  Heenan  as  'the 
cruel  see'.  His  episcopal  motto  Spe  Gaudentes 
described  well  his  strong  and  joyful  faith.  By  his 
energy,  zeal,  and  learning  he  did  much  to  prepare 
northern  Catholics  for  their  church's  call  for 
renewal.  When  the  second  Vatican  Council  was 
convened  in  1962,  Dwyer  was  elected  to  the 
commission  for  the  rule  of  dioceses,  where  his 
polyglot  prowess  and  pastoral  common  sense 
proved  of  great  value. 

At  the  end  of  the  Council  Dwyer  was 
appointed  to  Birmingham,  where  he  was  in- 
stalled as  archbishop  on  21  December  1965.  Of 
average  height,  stocky  build,  and  cheerful 
expression,  he  became  in  later  years  stout  and 
florid  in  appearance,  yet  he  was  never  the  Rabe- 
laisian character  suggested  by  his  relative 
Anthony  Burgess  in  the  latter's  two-volume 
autobiography.  He  had  a  deep,  straightforward, 
and  traditional  piety,  with  little  sympathy  for 
post-conciliar  excesses.  Yet,  when  the  newly 
established  Bishops'  Conference  of  England  and 
Wales  entrusted  to  him  oversight  of  the  revision 
of  the  church's  liturgy,  he  insisted,  no  matter 
what  his  personal  feelings,  on  following  each  new 
decree  of  the  church. 

In  the  ten  years  which  followed,  Dwyer's 
influence     throughout     the     country     steadily 


increased.  He  took  a  firm  line  in  dealing  with 
Irish  Republican  Army  troubles  in  Birmingham, 
yet  increasingly  won  the  admiration  and  affection 
of  his  priests,  to  whom  he  was  known  as  'Instant 
Wisdom'.  Age  added  warm  compassion  and  sup- 
port to  the  strict  disciplinarian.  As  Heenan 
suffered  a  series  of  heart  attacks,  Dwyer  naturally 
supplied  leadership  to  the  Bishops'  Conference, 
for  which  he  wrote  the  widely  acclaimed  state- 
ment on  moral  questions. 

When  Heenan  died  in  November  1975,  it  was 
inevitable  that  people  should  wonder  whether 
once  again  Dwyer  would  follow  him,  this  time  to 
Westminster.  But  he  recognized  the  danger  and 
publicly  informed  the  apostolic  delegate  that  at 
sixty-seven  he  felt  too  old  to  be  considered  for 
the  post.  But  he  did  not  escape  entirely.  Whilst 
Archbishop  Basil  Hume  became  used  to  episco- 
pal leadership,  Dwyer  was  elected  president  of 
the  Bishops'  Conference  for  a  three-year  period, 
the  only  non-archbishop  of  Westminster  ever  to 
have  filled  that  position.  It  was  after  this  that  his 
own  health  began  to  fail  and  in  1981,  suffering 
from  circulatory  problems,  he  resigned  his  arch- 
diocese, continuing  as  apostolic  administrator 
until  the  appointment  of  his  successor  in  March 
1982.  He  had  honorary  degrees  from  Keele 
(1979)  and  Warwick  (1980).  He  lived  another  five 
years  in  retirement  at  St  Paul's  Convent,  Selly 
Park,  Birmingham,  showing  exemplary  patience 
as  he  lost  the  use  of  one  faculty  after  another.  He 
died  17  September  1987  at  the  Alexian  Brothers' 
Nursing  Home  in  Manchester. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Derek  Worlock 


118 


E 


EASTON,  Sir  James  Alfred  (1908- 1990),  Royal 
Air  Force  officer  and  intelligence  officer,  was 
born  in  Winchester  11  February  1908,  the 
youngest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  five 
daughters  of  William  Coryndon  Easton,  chemist 
and  botanist,  and  his  wife,  Alice  Summers.  He 
was  educated  at  Peter  Symonds  School,  Win- 
chester. He  passed  into  the  Royal  Air  Force 
College  at  Cranwell  in  1926,  and  was  commis- 
sioned into  the  RAF  in  1928.  He  held  a  series  of 
flying  appointments,  including  a  spell  in  biplanes 
co-operating  with  the  army  on  the  North-West 
Frontier  of  India  (1929-32)  and  duties  in  Egypt 
(1934-6).  He  was  also  increasingly  regarded  as  an 
able  young  officer  with  a  promising  future.  In 
1937  he  was  posted  to  Canada  as  RAF  armament 
liaison  officer  with  the  Canadian  National  Minis- 
try of  Defence  (1937-9).  There  he  met  and 
married  in  1939  Anna  Man-,  daughter  of  Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel John  Andrew  McKenna,  of  the 
Royal  Canadian  Engineers,  from  Ottawa.  Not 
only  was  it  a  very  happy  marriage,  but  it  had  a 
strong  influence  on  his  subsequent  career. 

'Jack'  Easton  returned  to  England  early  in 
1940,  having  been  mentioned  in  dispatches  that 
year,  and  was  posted  to  the  intelligence  depart- 
ment at  the  Air  Ministry.  He  gradually  concen- 
trated on  the  problem  of  technical  innovations 
introduced  by  the  Luftwaffe,  particularly  in  the 
held  of  navigational  aids  and  radar.  In  1943  he 
became  an  air  commodore,  and  was  director  of 
the  intelligence  (research)  department  at  the  Air 
Ministry.  He  represented  the  RAF's  interests  on 
(Sir)  Winston  *Churchill's  Crossbow  committee, 
whose  function  was  to  consider  all  means  of 
countering  the  threat  of  the  V 1  flying  bomb  and 
the  V2  rockets.  He  also  became  involved  in  the 
allocation  of  RAF  aircraft  for  the  clandestine 
dropping  of  agents  into  north-west  Europe.  All 
this  brought  him  increasingly  in  touch  with 
organizations  and  individuals  outside  the  Air 
Ministry,  including  the  Special  Operations  Exec- 
utive and  MI6,  where  he  worked  closely  with  the 
gifted  young  Professor  R.  V.  Jones.  His  clear 
mind,  considerable  administrative  ability,  cool 
temperament,  and  gift  for  getting  the  best  out  of 
different  groups  with  differing  vested  interests, 
made  him  an  increasingly  respected  figure  in  the 
intelligence  world. 

Immediately  after  the  war  Easton  was  guided 


towards  MI6,  for  which  he  had  excellent  quali- 
fications. Sir  Stewart  *Menzies,  the  chief  of  the 
service  at  that  time,  was  glad  to  accept  him. 
When  Menzies  retired  in  195 1,  and  Major- 
General  (Sir)  John  A.  'Sinclair  took  over  as  'C 
or  head  of  the  service,  Easton  was  appointed  his 
deputy,  with  the  clear  understanding  that  he 
would  eventually  take  over. 

He  made  a  substantial  contribution  towards 
rationalizing  and  uniting  a  service  that  had  devel- 
oped too  fast  in  the  war.  Within  the  service  he 
was  liked  and  trusted.  His  one  possible  weakness 
was  that,  except  for  North  America  and  Aus- 
tralia, foreign  politics  did  not  gready  interest 
him.  When  the  treachery  of  H.  A.  R.  ('Kim') 
*PhiIby,  Guy  *Burgess,  and  Donald  *Maclean 
was  discovered  in  195 1,  Easton  was  one  of  those 
whose  minds  remained  calm  and  objective  at  a 
time  when  Whitehall  in  general,  and  the  Foreign 
Office  in  particular,  were  just  wringing  their 
hands.  He  decided  in  the  summer  of  195 1,  after 
a  careful  review  of  the  evidence,  that  Philby  was 
guilt)'.  It  was  in  this  context  that  he  first  worked 
closely  with  (Sir)  Dick  White  of  MI5.  He  dealt 
with  the  Americans  pragmatically  over  the  case. 
He  understood  the  clear  distinction  in  Britain 
between  a  firm  belief  in  guilt  and  the  many 
difficult  security  problems  involved  in  an  open 
trial  in  a  public  court  before  a  British  jury.  The 
fact  that  the  Philby  case  did  not  destroy  relations 
between  MI6  and  the  CIA  for  very  long  was 
partly  due  to  Eastern's  calm  pragmatism. 

For  the  next  few  years  Easton  worked  closely 
with  Sinclair.  However,  the  world  was  changing 
and  the  influence  of  the  armed  services  in  White- 
hall was  gradually  declining.  The  year  1956  was 
a  climacteric,  with  the  twentieth  party  congress 
in  Moscow,  the  disaster  and  folly  of  the  Suez 
affair,  the  Commander  Lionel  Crabbe  incident, 
and  the  Soviet  invasion  of  Hungary.  The  Crabbe 
case,  in  which  Easton  was  in  no  way  involved, 
was  in  itself  of  little  importance  and  did  not 
upset  the  Russians.  But  time  and  chance  turned 
it  into  a  political  and  govermental  time  bomb, 
and  it  was  used  as  a  reason  for  dismissing 
Sinclair.  Dick  White,  the  head  of  MI5,  was 
appointed  to  replace  him  late  in  1956.  Easton 
served  him  loyally,  and  with  grace,  as  his  deputy, 
but  he  was  told  that  the  succession  would  not  be 
his.  He  was  not  prepared  to  accept  this.  That  he 


119 


Easton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


did  not  become  chief  of  MI6,  as  planned,  was  not 
due  to  any  failure  on  his  part,  but  was  the  result 
of  an  inevitable  switch  of  power  in  Whitehall 
from  the  armed  forces  to  the  Cabinet  Office  and 
the  Foreign  Office. 

In  1958  Easton  was  offered  a  respectable  job  as 
consul-general  in  Detroit,  Michigan.  His  wife 
had  many  friends  in  the  area,  and  he  accepted  the 
post  without  outward  bitterness.  It  worked  out 
well,  and  he  was  for  ten  years  a  popular  consul- 
general  in  a  thriving,  dynamic  community.  On 
his  retirement  in  1968  he  decided  to  remain  in 
the  area  which  he  had  found  so  congenial.  He 
became  a  much  respected  member  of  various 
Detroit-based  industrial  concerns,  and  a  conviv- 
ial golfing  companion  at  the  Grosse  Pointe  Coun- 
try Club.  In  1988  he  caused  a  sensation  when  he 
publicly  discussed  the  Kim  Philby  affair  with  the 
author  Anthony  Cave  Brown  before  the  latter's 
biography  of  Sir  Stewart  Menzies  was  published 
(The  Secret  Servant,  1988).  Easton  died  19  Octo- 
ber 1990  at  Grosse  Point,  Michigan. 

Easton  was  neat,  slim,  dark,  and  convention- 
ally dressed.  He  was  appointed  an  officer  of  the 
US  Legion  of  Merit  in  1945,  CBE  in  1945,  CB  in 
1952,  and  KCMG  in  1956.  His  wife,  Anna,  died 
in  1977.  They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  In  1980 
he  married  Jane,  widow  of  William  H.  Walker,  of 
Detroit,  and  daughter  of  Dr  Joseph  Stanley 
Leszynski,  surgeon,  also  of  Detroit. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Bruce  Lockhart 

EDE,  Harold  Stanley  ('Jim')  (1 895-1 990), 
curator,  lecturer,  and  creator  of  Kettle's  Yard, 
Cambridge,  was  born  7  April  1895  in  Penarth, 
Glamorgan,  the  younger  son  and  second  of  three 
children  of  Edward  Hornby  Ede,  solicitor,  of 
Penarth,  and  his  wife  Mildred  Mary  Furley, 
sometime  schoolteacher,  only  daughter  of  Joseph 
Blanch,  Methodist  minister.  At  the  Leys  School, 
Cambridge  (1909-12),  where  he  began  a  lifelong 
friendship  with  Donald  *Winnicott,  he  devel- 
oped an  interest  in  early  Italian  art  which  had 
burgeoned  on  a  trip  to  Paris  as  a  fourteen-year- 
old.  He  retained  this  passion  throughout  his  life 
and  in  1926  published  Florentine  Drawings  of  the 
Quattrocento. 

Ede  was  a  somewhat  rebellious  child  who 
enjoyed  reverie  and  nature  rather  than  academic 
discipline.  In  his  unpublished  memoir  Ede 
described  himself  as  an  effeminate  young  man. 
As  he  grew  older  he  placed  particular  value  on 
male  friendships.  However,  he  enjoyed  the  com- 
pany of  his  maternal  grandmother  and  of  his  aunt 
Maud,  a  painter  whom  he  visited  in  Paris.  He 
gained  a  passion  for  reading  from  his  mother  and 
his  father  was  a  bibliophile. 

Leaving  the  Leys  early  he  began  to  train  as  a 
painter  at  Newlyn  and  then  Edinburgh  College 
of  Art  before  war  service  interrupted  his  studies. 


In  1914  he  joined  the  6th  battalion  (Pioneers)  of 
the  South  Wales  Borderers.  He  served  as  a 
lieutenant  in  France,  was  invalided  back,  and  was 
posted  to  Cambridge  (officer  cadet  battalion)  and 
then  India,  where  he  suffered  serious  illness  for 
several  months.  He  returned  via  Alexandria, 
which  he  described  as  the  first  place  in  which  he 
felt  at  home.  Earlier  generations  of  his  family  had 
lived  around  the  Mediterranean. 

In  1919  Ede  enrolled  at  the  Slade  School  of 
Fine  Art,  leaving  in  March  1921  to  become  the 
photographer's  assistant  at  the  National  Gallery 
and  then,  in  1922,  an  assistant  at  the  Tate 
Gallery.  During  his  fourteen  years  at  the  Tate 
(1922-36)  Ede  established  close  contacts  with 
avant-garde  artists  in  Paris  but  served  under  a 
director,  J.  B.  *Manson,  who  was  unable  to 
recognize  his  talents.  Had  his  friendships  with 
Picasso,  Braque,  Chagall,  Brancusi,  Miro,  and 
others  been  exploited,  the  Tate  could  have  had 
an  unrivalled  collection  of  early  twentieth-cen- 
tury art.  Similarly  his  friendships  with  younger 
British  artists  such  as  Ben  *Nicholson  and  (R.) 
Winifred  *Nicholson,  (Dame)  (J.)  Barbara  •Hep- 
worth,  Henry  *Moore,  David  *Jones,  and  Chris- 
topher Wood  were  also  ignored. 

Ede  met  the  Nicholsons  in  1923  and  it  was 
they  who  kindled  his  interest  in  contemporary 
art.  Others  whom  he  acknowledged  as  important 
influences  on  his  life  were  Gertrude  Harris 
(widow  of  Frederick  Leverton  *Harris),  Lady 
Ottoline  *Morrell,  Helen  Sutherland,  and  T.  E. 
*Lawrence,  with  whom  he  regularly  corre- 
sponded. Indeed,  correspondence  was  a  central 
activity  in  Ede's  life. 

In  1 92 1  Ede  married  Helen,  daughter  of  Otto 
Schlapp,  professor  of  German  at  the  University 
of  Edinburgh.  Scottish  by  birth,  Helen  began  to 
call  him  Jim,  a  name  which  he  was  to  adopt  for 
the  remainder  of  his  life.  Together  they  had  two 
daughters.  Within  two  years  Ede  acquired  1  Elm 
Row,  Hampstead,  with  the  help  of  his  father,  and 
there  he  and  his  wife  entertained  relentlessly, 
creating  something  of  a  salon  for  artists,  collec- 
tors, and  dignitaries.  Ede  was  a  collector  of 
people  as  much  as  of  art. 

In  1926  Ede  discovered  the  work  of  the 
sculptor  Henri  Gaudier-Brzeska  (1810-1915), 
when  his  estate  was  offered  to  the  Tate,  but  there 
was  little  enthusiasm  for  his  work.  After  persuad- 
ing a  number  of  collectors  to  purchase  sculptures 
and  drawings,  Ede  was  given  permission  to 
acquire  the  remainder.  From  that  year  onwards 
he  championed  the  cause  of  Gaudier-Brzeska  by- 
publishing  books — A  Life  of  Gaudier-Brzeska 
(1930),  which  was  republished  as  Savage  Messiah 
(1931 V — and  making  generous  gifts  to  museums, 
notably  the  Tate  Gallery,  the  Musee  des  Beaux- 
Arts  in  Orleans  (1959),  and  the  Musee  National 
d'Art  Moderne  in  Paris  (1967).  He  was  nomi- 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Edrich 


nated  chevalier  (1959)  and  officer  (1967)  of  the 
Legion  of  Honour. 

In  October  1936  Ede,  a  leading  contender  to 
be  the  next  director,  resigned  from  the  Tate  on 
grounds  of  ill  health,  unable  to  work  further  with 
Manson.  Supporting  himself  by  American  lec- 
ture tours,  and  with  financial  aid  from  his  father, 
he  and  his  family  moved  to  Tangier.  He  spent 
the  war  years  in  Tangier,  North  America,  and 
England. 

The  Edes  sold  their  house  in  1952  and 
acquired  a  large,  old  farmhouse  in  the  Loire 
valley.  They  returned  to  England  in  1956  and  in 
1957  purchased  a  row  of  four  derelict,  sev- 
enteenth-century cottages  in  Cambridge.  Ede 
converted  them  into  a  single  dwelling  and  named 
it  Kettle's  Yard.  Here  he  arranged  his  by  then 
considerable  collection  of  works  of  art,  some 
given  to  him  by  his  mother,  who  had  purchased 
them  on  his  advice,  in  a  manner  which  would 
make  modern  art  not  merely  approachable  but 
alive,  combining  his  twentieth-century  enthu- 
siasms with  his  love  of  artefacts  and  materials 
from  the  past.  Works  of  art  by  Ben  Nicholson 
and  Brancusi  would  sit  alongside  antique  country 
furniture,  ancient  stones,  flints,  and  amphora. 
Old  floorboards,  tiles,  and  windows  salvaged 
from  demolished  buildings  found  a  natural  home 
in  a  building  which  harmonized  the  modernist 
spirit  of  the  1930s  with  the  experience  of  living  in 
north  Africa.  A  respect  for  light  and  space  were 
the  hub  of  Ede's  vision.  The  house  was  infused 
with  the  spirituality  which  formed  the  core  of  his 
and  his  wife's  life.  They  kept  open  house  every 
afternoon  and  those  fortunate  to  be  there  at 
closing  time  were  invited  to  tea.  In  1966  Ede 
gave  Kettle's  Yard  to  the  University  of  Cam- 
bridge. He  also  endowed  a  student  travel  fund. 
Ede  remained  in  residence  until  1973,  when  he 
and  his  wife  removed  themselves  to  Edinburgh. 
She  died  in  1977.  He  maintained  links  with  the 
curators  of  Kettle's  Yard  and  published  a  book 
on  it,  A  Way  of  Life  (1984). 

Although  he  was  converted  to  the  Church  of 
England  during  his  time  in  Cambridge,  Ede's 
belief  in  God  was  unbound  by  the  strictures  of 
any  one  denomination  or  by  his  early  Methodist 
formation.  He  believed  in  God's  all-pervasive- 
ness and  Ketde's  Yard  was  for  him  a  manifesta- 
tion of  God.  Determination,  obstinacy,  and  a 
sense  of  rightness,  mixed  with  a  twinkling  charm, 
were  important  traits  of  his  character.  His  own 
description  of  David  Jones  best  encapsulates 
him:  'Someone  with  a  strange  force  which  comes, 
not  out  of  the  strength  of  his  body,  but  from  the 
strength  of  his  intention.'  He  died  in  Edinburgh, 
15  March  1990. 

[L  npublished  memoir  in  the  possession  of  the  family; 
information  from  relatives;  personal  knowledge.] 

Jeremy  Lewison 


EDRICH,  William  John  ('Bill')  (1916-1986), 
cricketer,  was  born  26  March  19 16  in  Lingwood, 
Norfolk,  the  second  son  and  second  child  in  the 
family  of  four  sons  and  a  daughter  of  William 
Archer  Edrich,  tenant  farmer,  and  his  wife, 
Edith  Mattocks,  originally  of  Cumbrian  fanning 
stock,  whose  family  had  moved  to  Norfolk. 
Educated  at  Bracondale  School,  Norwich,  where 
his  cricketing  prowess  soon  became  evident,  Bill 
Edrich  was  a  member  of  a  noted  family  of 
cricketers,  which  was  able  to  field  an  entire 
eleven  under  the  family  name.  His  three  broth- 
ers— Geoffrey,  Eric,  and  Brian — all  played  first- 
class  cricket,  whilst  his  cousin,  John  McHugh 
Edrich,  MBE,  was  to  be  a  well-known  Surrey 
and  England  batsman. 

After  several  successful  seasons  with  Norfolk 
in  the  Minor  Counties  championship,  he  was 
advised  to  seek  an  engagement  with  Middlesex. 
He  qualified  for  Middlesex  and  lived  in  London, 
playing  variously  for  the  Marylebone  Cricket 
Club  and  Norfolk.  He  made  his  first-class  debut 
for  Minor  Counties  in  1934,  and  such  was  his 
progress  that,  in  his  first  full  season  for  Middle- 
sex in  1937,  he  scored  over  2,000  runs,  and  was 
chosen  to  accompany  the  third  Baron  Tenny- 
son's tour  of  India  the  following  winter.  In  spite 
of  several  failures,  he  retained  his  test  place,  and 
in  South  Africa  in  the  winter  of  1938-9  he  scored 
a  match-saving  219  at  Durban.  In  1938  he 
managed  the  unusual  feat  of  1,000  runs  before 
the  end  of  May.  During  World  War  II  he  served 
as  a  pilot  with  No.  21  Squadron,  Coastal  Com- 
mand, rising  from  flight  lieutenant  to  acting 
squadron-leader,  and  his  bravery  was  rewarded 
with  the  DFC  (1941). 

Returning  to  the  cricketing  fray  in  1946,  he 
eventually  regained  his  England  place — his  test 
career  was  always  dogged  by  selectors'  incon- 
sistencies— and  in  1947  he  changed  status  from 
professional  to  amateur.  The  year  1947  proved  to 
be  his  greatest.  In  partnership  with  the  mercurial 
Denis  Compton,  he  broke  many  records,  and 
Middlesex  and  England  flourished  accordingly. 
In  that  summer  he  made  3,539  runs,  including  12 
centuries,  and  averaged  80.43.  He  captained 
Middlesex  from  195 1  to  1957,  initially  in  harness 
with  Denis  Compton,  and,  after  his  retirement 
from  first-class  cricket  in  1959,  played  for  his 
native  Norfolk  until  1971. 

In  his  571  games  in  first-class  cricket,  Edrich 
scored  36,965  runs,  including  86  centuries,  with 
an  average  of  42.39.  His  highest  score  was  269, 
not  out,  versus  Northamptonshire  in  1947.  He 
also  took  479  wickets  and  529  catches,  and  made 
a  solitary  stumping.  In  39  test  matches  he  scored 
2.440  runs  for  an  average  of  40,  and  took  41 
wickets. 

Edrich  approached  his  cricketing  duties  with 
much  the  same  fervour  with  which  he  tackled  his 
romantic  ventures.  Gusto  and  valour  were  his 


Edrich 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


watchwords.  As  a  batsman,  he  was  a  courageous 
player  of  quick  bowling,  relishing  the  hook  and 
the  pull-drive,  and  dealing  plainly  and  author- 
itatively with  much  that  he  faced.  As  a  bowler,  he 
rushed  intrepidly  into  the  attack,  hurling  the  ball 
awkwardly  at  often  startled  opponents.  He  was  a 
most  effective  fielder,  initially  in  the  out-field, 
but  mainly  in  the  slips.  Above  all,  he  was,  in 
cricket  as  in  his  domestic  life,  abundantly  cheery 
and  optimistic.  A  Robert  *Bruce  among  cricket- 
ers, he  was  ever  ready  to  try  again.  A  very 
popular  sportsman,  he  was  only  a  little  short  of 
the  highest  rank  of  cricketers,  and  his  fame  was 
very  much  bound  up  with  his  sparkling  relation- 
ship with  Denis  Compton.  The  sports  journalist 
R.  C.  Robertson-Glasgow  wrote  that,  while 
Compton  was  poetry,  Edrich  was  'prose,  robust 
and  clear'. 

Edrich  was  short,  dark,  and  keen-eyed,  with 
brisk,  lithe  movements.  A  man  of  ardent  amo- 
rous energies,  he  was  married  five  times,  each  for 
relatively  short  periods.  His  first  four  marriages 
ended  in  divorce,  and  his  fifth  wife  outlived  him 
briefly.  His  first  marriage,  in  1936,  was  to  Betty, 
typist,  daughter  of  Sydney  William  Hobbs,  rail- 
way official.  The  marriage  ended  in  divorce  in 
1944  and  in  the  same  year  he  married  Marion,  an 
officer  in  the  Women's  Auxiliary  Air  Force,  the 
divorced  wife  of  Edward  Reginald  Fish  and 
daughter  of  Albert  Ernest  Forster,  works  man- 
ager. They  were  divorced  in  1948  and  in  1949  he 
married  Jessy  Shaw,  the  divorced  wife  of  Harold 
Tetley  and  daughter  of  Hubert  Gomersall,  build- 
ing society  manager.  They  had  one  son  and  the 
marriage  ended  with  divorce  in  i960.  In  the  same 
year  he  married  Brenda  Valerie  Terry,  insurance 
consultant,  whose  previous  marriage  had  been 
dissolved,  the  daughter  of  Constant  Wells  Pon- 
der, medical  practitioner.  They  had  one  son  and 
the  marriage  ended  with  divorce  in  1973.  His 
fifth  and  final  marriage,  in  1983,  was  to  Mary 
Elizabeth  Somerville,  hairdresser,  whose  pre- 
vious marriage  had  been  dissolved,  daughter  of 
Frederick  Vincent  Wesson,  sales  manager. 
Edrich  died  in  Chesham  as  the  result  of  a  fall 
down  the  stairs  around  midnight  at  home,  fol- 
lowing a  St  George's  day  celebration,  23  or  24 
April  1986. 

[Ralph  Barker,  The  Cricketing  Family  Edrich,  1975; 
Alan  Hill,  Bill  Edrich,  a  Biography,  1994;  rVisden 
Cricketers'  Almanack,  1948  and  1987.] 

Eric  Midwinter 

EDWARDS,  James  Keith  O'Neill  ('Jimmy') 

(1920-1988),  entertainer,  was  born  23  March 
1920  in  Barnes,  London,  the  fifth  of  five  sons  and 
eighth  of  nine  children  of  Reginald  Walter  Ken- 
rick  Edwards,  professor  of  mathematics  at  King's 
College,  London,  and  his  wife,  Phyllis  Katherine 
Cowan,  who  was  from  New  Zealand.  He  was 
educated  at  St  Paul's  Cathedral  Choir  School 


and  King's  College  School,  Wimbledon,  where 
he  first  developed  what  was  to  become  a  lifelong 
enthusiasm  for  brass  instruments  and  learned  to 
play  the  trombone.  In  1938  he  went  to  St  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  read  history  and 
developed  a  mock  'professor'  act  for  the  Cam- 
bridge Footlights,  in  which  he  gave  a  musical 
lecture  on  the  trombone. 

His  university  career  was  interrupted  by 
World  War  II  and  in  1939  he  joined  the  Royal 
Air  Force,  eventually  succeeding  in  his  ambition 
to  become  a  pilot.  In  1944  he  was  flying  a 
hazardous  mission  towing  gliders  and  dropping 
supplies  to  the  beleaguered  troops  at  Arnhem 
when  his  Dakota  was  badly  hit  by  a  German 
Focke-Wulf.  He  made  a  successful  landing,  sav- 
ing the  lives  of  two  men  on  board  and  sustaining 
burns  to  his  face  which  he  later  disguised  by 
growing  the  magnificent  'handlebar'  moustache 
that  was  to  become  his  trademark.  He  was 
awarded  the  DFC  in  1945  for  his  skill  and 
bravery. 

Throughout  his  RAF  career  he  had  success- 
fully entertained  the  troops  with  his  'professor' 
act,  and  so  after  demobilization  in  1946  he 
contemplated  life  as  an  entertainer.  He  served  his 
apprenticeship  at  London's  Windmill  theatre, 
where  he  met  Frank  Muir,  who  with  Denis 
Norden  was  to  write  his  most  successful  comedy 
material.  In  1948  Muir  and  Norden  created  one 
of  Edwards's  best  loved  characters,  the  bibulous 
belligerent  Pa  Glum  in  the  BBC  radio  comedy 
programme  Take  It  From  Here.  Take  It  From 
Here  ran  from  1948  until  1959,  commanding 
audiences  of  over  twenty  million  and  making 
Edwards  a  wealthy  man.  He  bought  polo  ponies, 
an  aeroplane,  and  a  farm  in  Fittleworth,  Sussex, 
which  was  run  by  his  elder  brother  Alan  while 
Edwards  played  the  local  squire.  Fox-hunting 
was  one  of  his  favourite  pastimes  and  he  was 
proud  to  be  made  master  of  foxhounds  of  the  Old 
Surrey  and  Burstow  Hunt.  In  195 1  he  was 
elected  lord  rector  of  Aberdeen  University,  an 
appointment  he  held  until  1954. 

From  1957  until  1977  he  appeared  in  Does  the 
Team  Think?,  a  radio  panel  game  he  had  devised 
in  which  four  comedians  answered  light-hearted 
questions  from  a  studio  audience.  He  attempted 
some  'straight'  acting,  turning  in  a  creditable  Sir 
Toby  Belch  in  Twelfth  Night  and  Falstaff  in  The 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor  for  BBC  radio  (both 
1962).  On  television  he  found  a  tailor-made  role 
in  the  series  Whack-O!  (1957-61  and  1971-2),  in 
which  he  played  the  corpulent,  conniving  head- 
master of  Chiselbury  School.  His  films  included 
Three  Men  in  a  Boat  (1957),  Bottoms  Up  (i960), 
The  Plank  (1979),  and  It's  Your  Move  (1982). 
Perhaps  most  surprising  of  all,  in  1964  he  stood 
as  Conservative  candidate  for  Paddington  North, 
and  although  he  did  not  win  his  seat,  he  polled 


122 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Elias 


10,639  votes — more  than  his  predecessor  had 
gained. 

His  private  life  was  less  satisfactory.  In  1958 
he  married  Valerie,  a  British  Overseas  Airways 
Corporation  ground  stewardess,  daughter  of 
William  Seymour,  small  landowner.  They  had 
no  children  and  eventually  divorced  in  1969.  She 
later  told  the  press  that  on  their  honeymoon  he 
had  admitted  that  he  was  a  homosexual  'trying  to 
reform'.  In  1976  Ramon  Douglas,  an  Australian 
female  impersonator,  told  the  tabloid  newspapers 
that  for  the  past  ten  years  he  and  Edwards  had 
shared  a  'loving  relationship'.  Even  though  he 
was  personally  devastated  by  the  resulting  pub- 
licity, Edwards  found  that  his  career  did  not 
suffer  and  in  1978  he  was  invited  to  reinvent  his 
Pa  Glum  character  when  the  Glums  were  revived 
for  television.  In  1984  he  published  his  memoirs, 
Six  of  the  Best,  which  followed  an  earlier  auto- 
biography, Take  It  From  Me  (1953). 

By  the  early  1980s  Edwards's  blustering  style 
of  comedy  was  going  out  of  fashion  and  he 
concentrated  on  touring  in  plays  such  as  Big  Bad 
Mouse  with  his  friend  Eric  Sykes.  He  spent  more 
time  in  the  house  he  had  bought  in  Perth, 
Western  Australia,  and  it  was  there  in  1988  that 
he  became  ill  with  bronchial  pneumonia.  He 
returned  to  England  and  died  in  the  Cromwell 
Hospital,  London,  7  July  1988. 

[Jimmy  Edwards,  Take  It  From  Me,  1953,  and  Six  of 
the  Best,  1984  (autobiographies);  information  from 
family  and  friends.]  Veronica  Davis 

ELIAS,  Norbert  (1897-1990),  sociologist,  was 
born  22  June  1897  in  Breslau,  Germany  (which 
later  became  Wroclaw,  Poland),  the  only  child  of 
Hermann  Elias,  businessman,  and  his  wife, 
Sophie  Galevski.  He  attended  the  Johannesgym- 
nasium,  Breslau,  and,  after  service  in  the  Ger- 
man army  during  World  War  I,  read  philosophy 
and  medicine  at  Breslau  University.  He  was 
awarded  a  doctorate  in  philosophy  at  Breslau  in 
January  1924  for  a  thesis  entitled  Idee  und  Indi- 
vtduum.  Financial  difficulties  caused  by  the  great 
German  inflation  of  1922-3  interrupted  his  stud- 
ies, but  in  1925  he  went  to  Heidelberg  to  work 
for  his  Habituation  in  sociology,  at  first  with 
Alfred  Weber  (1868-1958).  In  1930,  when  Karl 
Mannheim  (1 893-1 947)  moved  to  Frankfurt  as 
professor,  Elias  accompanied  him  as  academic 
assistant.  His  Habituation  was  rushed  through 
early  in  1933,  after  Adolf  Hitler  came  to  power, 
but  shortly  afterwards  Elias,  as  a  Jew,  sought 
refuge  first  in  Paris  (1933-4)  and  then  in  London 
(from  1935),  eventually  becoming  a  British  cit- 
izen in  1952. 

In  Paris  and  London  Elias  completed  the  two 
volumes  of  his  magnum  opus,  liber  den  Prozess  der 
Ztvilisation  (The  Civilizing  Process,  1994);  they 
were  published  obscurely  in  Basle  in  1939,  and 
received  very  little  notice  at  that  unpropitious 


moment.  In  1939  Elias  was  awarded  a  senior 
research  fellowship  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics,  interrupted  by  a  period  of  intern- 
ment as  an  enemy  alien,  and  'made  himself 
useful'  to  the  British  security  services.  After  the 
war  he  made  a  meagre  living  by  extramural 
lecturing  in  London,  and  helped  found  the 
Group  Analytic  Society.  Only  in  1954,  aged 
fifty-seven,  did  he  obtain  a  post  in  a  British 
university — at  Leicester,  from  where  he  formally 
retired  as  reader  in  1962.  In  1962-4  he  was 
professor  of  sociology  at  the  University  of 
Ghana. 

His  international  reputation  was  gained  in  his 
long  and  productive  old  age.  Uber  den  Prozess  der 
Zniltsation  was  republished  in  1969,  to  acclaim 
in  Germany,  the  Netherlands,  and  France.  His 
later  books,  in  their  English  versions,  include 
The  Established  and  the  Outsiders  (1965),  What  Is 
Sociology?  (1978),  The  Court  Society  (on  the  court 
of  Louis  XIV,  1983),  The  Loneliness  of  the  Dying 
(1985),  Involvement  and  Detachment  (essays  on 
the  sociology  of  knowledge  and  the  sciences, 
1987),  Quest  for  Excitement  (essays  on  the  socio- 
logy of  sport,  1986),  The  Symbol  Theory  ( 1991), 
Time:  an  Essay  (1992),  Mozart:  Portrait  of  a 
Genius  (1993),  and  The  Germans  (1995).  A  selec- 
tion of  his  poems,  Los  der  Menschen,  appeared  in 
1987. 

The  Civilizing  Process  underlies  all  Elias's  later 
work.  The  first  volume  begins  by  examining 
how  the  word  'civilization',  derived  from  civilite, 
denoting  the  manners  of  courtiers,  came  to 
be  used  by  nineteenth-century  Europeans  to 
express  their  sense  of  superiority  over  lower 
ranks  or  other  cultures.  The  characteristics  taken 
as  evidence  of  this  superiority  had  come  to  seem 
innate,  and  the  Europeans  were  unaware  that 
their  own  ancestors  had  acquired  them  through  a 
long  process  of  civilization.  Through  books  about 
manners,  from  the  Middle  Ages  to  the  nine- 
teenth century,  Elias  traced  the  changing  stan- 
dards of  good  behaviour  in  matters  such  as 
spitting,  nose-blowing,  undressing,  the  toilet, 
and  table  manners.  The  threshold  of  repugnance 
had  advanced,  the  expected  standard  of  self- 
constraint  had  become  more  demanding,  and 
many  matters  were  hidden  behind  the  scenes  of 
social  and  mental  life.  Elias  was,  however,  con- 
cerned not  just  with  outward  bodily  propriety, 
but  with  violence  and  cruelty  and  changing 
feelings  towards  them.  This  provided  a  link  to 
his  second  volume,  dealing  with  state-formation 
processes,  including  the  'taming  of  warriors'. 
The  monopolization  of  violence  by  the  state,  and 
longer  chains  of  social  interdependence,  were 
associated  with  gradual  changes  in  typical  per- 
sonality make-up. 

Controversy  about  Elias's  theory  has  con- 
cerned whether  it  is  'Eurocentric',  whether  twen- 
tieth-century 'permissive  society'  represents  a 


123 


Elias 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


reversal  of  the  civilizing  process,  and  whether  his 
ideas  are  refuted  by  events  such  as  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  Jews  during  World  War  II.  Yet  The 
Civilizing  Process  in  part  represents  Elias's  own 
attempt  to  grapple  with  unfolding  events  in  Nazi 
Germany.  The  fact  that  his  own  mother  died  in 
Auschwitz  was  the  cause  of  the  major  psycho- 
logical trauma  of  Elias's  life,  and  may  possibly 
be  one  reason  why  he  published  little  between 
1939  and  1965.  He  could  be  quarrelsome,  and 
in  relation  to  his  work  was  very  sensitive. 
At  the  same  time  he  was  delightful  company, 
immensely  knowledgeable  and  stimulating,  a  fas- 
cinating conversationalist  with  a  puckish  interest 
in  the  trivial  details  of  life.  He  was  short  in 
suture,  stronger  than  he  looked,  and  swam  daily 
until  his  late  eighties.  Photographs  can  be  found 
in  Human  Figurations,  the  1977  Festschrift, 
edited  by  Peter  Gleichmann  et  al. 

In  1 97 1  Elias  was  given  the  title  and  pension  of 
professor  emeritus  of  the  University  of  Frank- 
furt. He  was  the  first  recipient  of  the  Theodor 
W.  Adorno  prize,  conferred  by  the  city  of  Frank- 
furt in  1977,  and  had  honorary  doctorates  from 
the  universities  of  Bielefeld  and  Strasburg  II.  He 
was  also  awarded  the  German  Grosskreuz  des 
Bundesdienstordens  (1986)  and  was  a  com- 
mander of  the  Order  of  Orange-Nassau  (1987). 
In  his  adopted  country  of  citizenship  he  enjoyed 
only  a  succes  d'estime;  from  the  mid-1970s  he 
spent  little  time  in  Britain.  Elias  never  married. 
He  died  peacefully  in  his  study  in  Amsterdam,  1 
August  1990. 

[Norbert  Elias,  Reflections  on  a  Life,  1994;  Hermann 
Korte,  IJber  Norbert  Elias,  Suhrkamp,  1988;  personal 
knowledge.]  Stephen  Mennell 

ELLIOT,  Sir  John  (1898-1988),  railway  manager 
and  chief  of  London  Transport,  was  born  John 
Elliot  Blumenfeld  6  May  1898  at  Albert  Bridge 
Road,  London,  the  younger  son  and  third  of  four 
children  of  Ralph  David  *Blumenfeld,  journalist 
and  later  editor  of  the  Daily  Express,  and  his  wife, 
Teresa  ('Daisie'),  nee  Blumfeld  [sic],  a  cousin. 
He  was  educated  at  Marlborough  College  and  the 
Royal  Military  College,  Sandhurst.  In  19 17  he 
was  commissioned  in  the  3rd  King's  Own  Hus- 
sars and  went  to  France  in  October.  He  took  part 
in  the  battles  of  Cambrai,  Amiens,  and  Selle, 
returning  to  England  in  autumn  19 19  as  an 
acting  adjutant.  Reluctant  to  depend  upon  his 
family  for  the  private  income  he  would  need  as  a 
cavalry  officer,  he  resigned  his  commission  and 
went  to  the  United  States  to  take  up  his  father's 
profession  of  journalism. 

After  three  years  in  New  York  on  the  New 
York  Times  he  was  recruited  by  the  first  Baron 
*Beaverbrook,  the  proprietor  of  the  Daily 
Express,  as  assistant  editor  of  the  London  Evening 
Standard.  Knowing  the  disadvantage  of  having  a 
German  name,  he  had  changed  his  name  by  deed 


poll  in  1922,  taking  his  second  forename  as  his 
surname.  Within  two  years  Beaverbrook  sacked 
him  and  in  1925  he  was  taken  on  by  Sir  Herbert 
Walker,  general  manager  of  the  Southern  Rail- 
way, to  improve  that  railway's  image,  as  a  public 
relations  and  advertising  assistant.  He  soon 
moved  from  public  relations  to  the  traffic  depart- 
ment, becoming  deputy  general  manager  of  the 
Southern  Railway  in  1937.  As  such  he  played  a 
major  role  in  the  electrification  of  the  Southern 
Railway,  the  establishment  of  its  World  War  II 
headquarters  in  Dorking,  the  evacuation  of  the 
children  of  London,  and  the  transport  of  the 
survivors  of  Dunkirk.  For  his  work  in  the  war 
he  became  an  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour 
and  received  the  American  Medal  of  Freedom 

(i945)- 

After  the  end  of  the  war,  in  1947  he  became 
general  manager  of  Southern  Railways,  and,  a 
year  later,  upon  nationalization,  chief  regional 
officer  of  the  Southern  Region  of  British  Rail- 
ways. He  moved  to  the  same  position  in  the 
London  Midland  Region  in  1950  and  in  1951 
became  chairman  of  the  Railway  Executive, 
which  was  abolished  in  1953.  In  that  year  he 
became  chairman  of  London  Transport,  a  post 
he  held  until  1959,  when  he  had  to  leave  after  the 
great  seven-week  London  bus  strike  in  mid- 
1958.  He  was  responsible  for  the  introduction  of 
the  Routemaster  bus  and  the  construction  of  the 
Victoria  Line  for  the  underground  railway.  He 
then  assumed  the  chairmanship  of  Thomas  Cook 
(1959-67)  and  the  directorships  of  other  organi- 
zations. Throughout  this  period  he  had  travelled 
abroad  extensively,  to  study  other  transport 
industries  and  to  advise  foreign  governments  on 
their  transport  problems.  He  was  president  of 
the  Institute  of  Transport  in  1953-4  an0<  was 
knighted  in  1954.  He  was  also  colonel  (com- 
manding) of  the  Engineer  and  Railway  Staff 
Corps,  Royal  Engineers  (1956-63).  His  last  pub- 
lic appointment  was  as  a  director  of  the  British 
Airports  Authority  in  1965-9,  at  the  same  time  as 
he  was  campaigning  against  Stansted  airport. 

Elliot  had  a  large  circle  of  friends  and  many 
outside  interests.  He  reviewed  books  on  military 
history;  wrote  a  newspaper  column;  shot,  fished, 
and  hunted;  studied  the  campaigns  of  Napoleon, 
the  American  civil  war,  and  the  domestic  life  of 
Victorian  London;  and  founded  a  dining  club.  In 
his  late  seventies  he  succumbed  to  the  temptation 
to  buy  a  small  open  sports  car.  He  wrote  three 
books — Where  Our  Fathers  Died  (1964),  about  the 
western  front  fifty  years  after  World  War  I;  On 
and  Off  the  Rails,  an  autobiography  (1982);  and, 
perhaps  his  best,  The  Way  of  the  Tumbrils  (1958), 
a  picture  of  the  French  revolution  as  seen  from 
the  streets  of  Paris  in  the  1950s,  which  The  Times 
said  should  prove  popular  'with  every  wanderer 
in  Paris  who  wants,  in  kindred  mood,  to  find 
history  in  stones'. 


124 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ellmann 


'Goo'  Elliot  was  a  short,  stocky  man,  five  feet 
six  inches  in  height,  and  lost  most  of  his  hair  by 
the  time  he  was  thirty.  He  lived  in  Great  Easton, 
Essex,  where  he  had  a  beautiful  garden.  In  1924 
he  married  Elizabeth  ('Betty'),  daughter  of  Dr 
Arthur  Stanbury  Cobbledick,  a  general  practi- 
tioner who  later  specialized  in  ophthalmology. 
He  practised  in  a  house  in  Bolton  Street,  London 
Wi,  in  which  Betty  grew  up.  The  Elliots  had  a 
son  and  a  daughter.  As  Elliot  approached  the  end 
of  his  life  he  remained  always  sprucely  turned 
out,  although  he  was  physically  frail.  He  died  18 
September  1988  at  St  Stephen's  Hospital,  Ful- 
ham. 

[Sir  John  Elliot,  On  and  Off  the  Rails  (autobiography), 
1082;  The  Times,  20  September  1088;  Independent,  21 
September  1988.]  C.  S.  Nicholls 

ELLMANN,  Richard  David  (1918-1987),  liter- 
ary biographer  and  critic,  was  born  15  March 
19 1 8  in  Highland  Park,  Detroit,  Michigan,  the 
second  of  the  three  sons  (there  were  no  daugh- 
ters) of  James  Isaac  Ellmann,  lawyer,  a  Jewish 
Romanian  immigrant,  and  his  wife,  Jeanette 
Barsook,  an  immigrant  from  Kiev.  He  attended 
local  schools  before  going  to  Yale,  where  he 
graduated  with  exceptional  distinction  in  English 
(1939),  and  completed  an  MA  dissertation  in 
1941. 

On  America's  entry  into  World  War  II  in  1942 
he  joined  the  Office  of  Strategic  Services,  but 
that  August  he  began  his  academic  career  as  an 
instructor  at  Harvard.  This  was  interrupted  in 
1943  when  he  enlisted  in  the  US  navy  and  was 
posted  to  a  construction  battalion.  Although  he 
disliked  military  service,  he  was  to  turn  it  to 
account  in  1945  when  he  unexpectedly  found 
himself  seconded  to  the  OSS  in  London.  That 
September  he  visited  the  widow  of  W.  B.  *Yeats 
in  Dublin.  Impressed  by  his  knowledge  of  her 
husband's  work,  she  gave  him  access  to  her 
immense  archive.  He  returned  to  Ireland  imme- 
diately on  his  discharge  from  the  navy  in  May 
1946,  and  wrote  a  Litt.B.  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin,  while  simultaneously  undertaking  a  Yale 
Ph.D.  on  Yeats's  life  and  writings.  This,  the  first 
Yale  doctorate  on  a  twentieth-century  writer, 
was  published  in  1 949  as  Yeats:  the  Man  and  the 
Masks  and  remains  one  of  the  best  introductions 
to  the  poet's  work. 

In  1947  he  returned  to  teach  at  Harvard, 
where  he  met,  and  in  August  1949  married,  a 
talented  Irish-American  feminist  critic,  Mary 
Donahue,  the  daughter  of  William  Henry  Dona- 
hue, baker,  of  Newburyport,  Massachusetts. 
Two  years  later  he  was  appointed  professor  of 
English  at  Northwestern  University,  Evanston, 
Illinois.  He  had  already  begun  research  for  his 
biography  of  James  *Joyce,  but  his  next  book  was 
a  sophisticated  critical  study  of  Yeats's  poetry, 
The  Identity  of  Yeats  (1954).   His  magisterial 


James  Joyce  appeared  in  1959  and  immediately 
confirmed  his  reputation  as  the  outstanding  liter- 
ary biographer  of  his  generation,  its  research, 
narrative  control,  and  wit  setting  new  standards 
in  the  genre.  His  growing  distinction  was 
reflected  in  a  series  of  academic  honours,  fellow- 
ships, and  visiting  professorships,  and  in  1963  by 
his  promotion  to  the  Franklin  Bliss  Snyder  chair 
at  Northwestern,  which  he  held  until  1968. 
Deeply  involved  in  editing  Joyce's  writings  and 
letters,  he  also  found  time  to  co-edit  The  Modern 
Tradition  (1965),  a  collection  of  key  Modernist 
texts,  as  well  as  anthologies  of  modern  poetry.  In 
1967  he  published  Eminent  Domain,  a  series  of 
elegant  essays  on  Yeats's  various  literary  relation- 
ships. The  following  year  he  moved  to  Yale  as 
professor  of  English,  and  it  was  supposed  that  he 
would  see  out  his  career  at  his  old  Alma  Mater. 
But  after  only  two  years  he  was  invited  to  apply 
for  the  Goldsmiths'  chair  of  English  literature  at 
Oxford  and  was  duly  elected  (1970),  with  a 
fellowship  at  New  College.  The  move  to  Oxford 
was  partly  prompted  by  his  proposed  biography 
of  Oscar  *Wilde,  but  was  also  because,  estab- 
lished at  Yale,  he  could  predict  exactly  which 
meetings  he  would  be  attending  on  any  given  day 
in  the  foreseeable  future;  Oxford  offered  no  such 
predictability. 

The  move  was  marred  when  his  wife  suffered 
a  cerebral  haemorrhage  that  permanently  con- 
fined her  to  a  wheelchair.  Of  their  three  children, 
the  eldest,  Stephen,  remained  in  America  while 
the  two  daughters,  Maud  and  Lucy,  settled  in 
England  with  their  parents.  The  new  professor 
delivered  his  inaugural  lecture,  Literary  Bio- 
graphy, on  4  May  1971,  and  in  1972  he  pub- 
lished Ulysses  on  the  Liffey,  which  examined  the 
principles  of  construction  of  Joyce's  novel.  A 
book  of  essays  of  the  following  year,  Golden 
Codgers,  ranged  from  George  *Eliot  to  T.  S. 
*Eliot,  and  The  Consciousness  of  Joyce  appeared  in 
1977.  At  once  bemused  and  delighted  by  Oxford, 
Ellmann's  forte  was  the  seminar  rather  than 
the  lecture,  and  he  excelled  in  his  supervision  of 
graduate  students. 

In  1984  he  retired  as  Goldsmiths'  professor 
and  took  up  the  Woodruff  chair  at  Emory  Uni- 
versity in  Georgia.  But  he  remained  resident  in 
Oxford,  holding  both  an  honorary  fellowship  at 
New  College  (1987)  and  an  extraordinary  fellow- 
ship at  Wolfson  College  (1984),  and  he  and  his 
wife  continued  to  keep  open  house  at  39  St  Giles 
to  a  wide  circle  of  friends.  All  this  time  he  had 
been  working  on  his  biography  of  Oscar  Wilde, 
garnering  new  information  and  drafting  and 
redrafting  the  book.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  British  Academy  in  1979.  He  had  honorary- 
degrees  from  several  American  universities  and 
from  Goteborg. 

He  was  a  tall  man,  balding,  bespectacled,  and 
tending  to  plumpness,  with  a  warm  smile  and  an 


125 


Ellmann 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


infectious  laugh.  It  was  in  the  summer  of  1986 
that  his  friends  began  to  notice  a  slight  slurring 
of  speech  and  an  awkwardness  of  posture.  These 
symptoms  became  more  pronounced  and  motor 
neurone  disease  was  diagnosed.  With  typical 
fortitude  he  refused  to  be  intimidated  by  this 
terrible  illness,  and  when  speech  finally  failed  he 
communicated  through  a  tickertape  machine,  the 
messages  showing  that  he  had  lost  nothing  of  his 
intellectual  edge  and  personal  kindness.  His  final 
days  were  occupied  with  preparing  Oscar  Wilde 
(1987)  for  the  press  and  he  was  able  to  read  the 
proofs  shortly  before  he  died  in  Oxford  13  May 
1987. 

[Susan  Dick  et  al.  (eds.).  Omnium  Gatherum:  Essays  for 
Richard  Ellmann,  1989;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  John  Kelly 

ELWYN-JONES,  Baron  (1900-1989),  lawyer 
and  politician.  [See  Jones,  (Frederick) 
Elwyn.] 

EMETT,  (Frederick)  Rowland  (1906- 1990), 
cartoonist,  depicter  of  fantastic  trains,  and  inven- 
tor of  whimsical  machines,  was  born  22  October 
1906  as  Frederick  Rowland  Emett  in  New 
Southgate,  Middlesex,  the  elder  son  (there  were 
no  daughters)  of  Arthur  Emett,  proprietor  of  a 
small  advertising  business,  a  perpetually  opti- 
mistic, always  disappointed,  spare-time  inventor, 
and  his  wife,  Alice  Veale.  He  was  the  grandson  of 
William  Henry  Emett,  lithographer  and  some- 
time court  engraver  to  Queen  *Victoria. 

Emett  did  not  achieve  fame  until  his  late 
thirties,  although  from  his  youngest  days  his 
future  was  well  signposted.  He  was  educated  at 
Waverley  Grammar  School,  Birmingham. 
Described  as  a  lazy  pupil,  he  invariably  came  top 
of  the  school  in  drawing  and  caricatured  not  only 
his  masters,  but  also,  prophetically,  machinery 
and  vehicles.  At  the  age  of  eleven  he  wrote 
publishable  poems;  at  fourteen  he  took  out  a 
world  patent  on  a  pneumatic  volume-control  for 
the  acoustic  gramophone.  While  studying  briefly 
at  Birmingham  School  of  Arts  and  Crafts  Emett 
aspired  to  become  a  landscape  painter  and  in 
1 93 1  his  'Cornish  Harbour'  was  hung  on  the  line 
at  the  Royal  Academy.  During  the  depression  he 
worked  for  an  advertising  agency,  failed  as  a 
freelance  commercial  artist,  then  returned  to 
agency  work  until  his  career  was  interrupted  by 
World  War  II,  throughout  which  he  worked  as  a 
draughtsman  for  the  Air  Ministry.  At  the  same 
time  he  discovered  and  perfected  his  gift  for 
drawing  cartoons. 

On  12  April  1 94 1  he  married  Mary,  daughter 
of  Albert  Evans,  silversmith,  at  Kings  Norton 
church,  Birmingham.  They  had  one  daughter, 
Claire.  Mary  Emett,  a  formidable  personality 
who  was  methodical  and  firm  in  business  mat- 
ters, was  shocked  by  her  husband's  insouciant 


attitude  towards  bookkeeping.  Her  offer  to 
untangle  his  business  affairs  was  gratefully 
accepted  and  from  then  until  the  end  of  his  life 
she  successfully  propelled  and  managed  his  busi- 
ness interests. 

Emett  first  contributed  to  Punch  in  1939;  there 
the  originality  of  his  humour  was  quickly  recog- 
nized by  the  art  editor,  (C.)  Kenneth  *Bird 
('Fougasse').  Soon  his  strange,  bumbling, 
increasingly  attenuated  trains,  called  Nellie,  or 
Bard  of  Avon,  or  Humphrey,  unsteadily  rode 
branch  lines  through  the  pages  of  Punch  from 
Paddlecombe  to  Prawnmouth,  from  Friars 
Ambling  to  Little  Figment.  There  was  warmth 
in  these  endearing  creations,  which  generally 
appeared  as  half-page  drawings,  some  of  them 
packed  with  gossamer-fine  cross-hatching,  others 
bathed  in  subtle  washes.  His  occasional  full-page 
colour  work  displayed  a  mastery  of  water-colour 
and  gouache.  Seeking  a  resident  cartoonist, 
Arthur  *Christiansen,  the  editor  of  the  Daily 
Express,  favoured  Emett  for  the  post,  but  the 
artist  realized  that  his  work,  in  which  delicacy  of 
line  and  thought  played  a  major  part,  would 
suffer  under  the  rigours  of  daily  newspaper 
journalism  and  sensibly  refused  the  offer.  Among 
Emett's  publications  were  Engines,  Aunties,  and 
Others  (1943),  Sidings  and  Suchlike  (1946),  Satur- 
day Slow  (1948),  The  Early  Morning  Milk  Train 
(1976),  and  Emett's  Ministry  of  Transport 
(1981). 

In  195 1  'Nellie',  Emett's  most  famous  steam 
engine — the  first  of  three — was  created  in  beaten 
copper  and  mahogany  and  rode  the  rails  from 
Far  Twittering  to  Oyster  Creek  to  become  one  of 
the  most  popular  attractions  in  the  Festival  of 
Britain.  Emett's  name  began  to  spread  beyond 
Britain  and  his  work  was  much  in  demand  in  the 
United  States  and  elsewhere.  Punch  had  diffi- 
culty grasping  the  extent  to  which  his  reputation 
had  increased  and  was  unhappy  at  the  encroach- 
ment upon  his  time  and  energy.  In  1944  he  had 
signed  a  contract  to  draw  exclusively  for  the 
magazine,  but  in  195 1,  after  several  polite  dis- 
agreements, financial  and  editorial,  they  parted 
company.  Although  Emett  never  entirely  gave  up 
drawing,  he  lost  interest  in  drawing  cartoons  and 
devoted  his  energies  to  designing  and  naming  the 
inventions  which  he  called  his  'things'. 

The  reality  of  Nellie  had  led  to  commissions 
for  the  Astro  Terremare  (for  Shell  Oil),  the 
Hogmuddle  Rotatory  Niggler  and  Fidgeter,  the 
Featherstone  Openwork  Basket-weave  Gentle- 
man's Flying  Machine,  and  many  others.  In  1968 
he  designed  machines  for  the  film  Chitty  Chitty 
Bang  Bang.  Emett's  work — Emettland — trav- 
elled around  the  world,  leaving  behind  trails  of 
laughter,  and  these  large  creations  were  destined 
to  be  housed  in  museums  and  galleries,  not  only 
in  Britain  but  in  the  USA  and  Canada.  The 
Smithsonian  Institution,  Washington,  DC;  the 


126 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Evans 


Ontario  Science  Centre,  Toronto;  and  the 
Museum  of  Science  and  Industry,  Chicago,  hold 
some  of  them.  Nottingham's  Victoria  Centre  has 
his  Rhythmical  Time  Fountain  (1974). 

Devising,  designing,  and  ultimately  making 
the  'things'  devoured  Emeu's  time  and  energy. 
He  rose  at  5.15  each  morning.  In  summer  he 
might  bicycle  the  three  miles  to  the  forge  at 
Streat,  where  with  several  talented  assistants  he 
would  shape  his  creations  into  their  daft  reality. 
Otherwise  he  would  draw  or  paint  in  the  studio- 
cum-guesthouse  behind  Wild  Goose  Cottage  at 
Ditchling,  the  home  he  had  bought  on  the 
proceeds  of  a  multi-page  spread  in  Life  magazine. 
A  conventional  man,  who  dressed  formally  for 
formal  occasions,  he  would  wear  an  artist's 
smock  when  painting,  or  more  usually,  shirt,  tie, 
sweater,  old  corduroys,  and  expensive,  comfort- 
able leather  shoes.  He  kept  in  trim  all  year  round 
by  swimming  in  the  heated  pool  in  his  garden. 
Emett  rarely  took  holidays  (claiming  that  his 
work  was  a  holiday)  and  then  only  when  a  'thing' 
had  been  completed.  Then,  drained  of  energy 
and  sometimes  speechless  with  exhaustion,  he 
would,  with  Man-,  rest  and  recuperate  in  France, 
or  at  a  health  farm,  for  a  week  or  two. 

A  naturally  shy,  charming,  mild-mannered 
person,  Emett  was  occasionally  mistaken  for  the 
actor-comedian  Danny  Kaye,  to  whom  he  bore  a 
strong  physical  resemblance.  Fair-haired  and 
fresh-faced,  even  in  old  age  he  looked  much 
younger  than  his  years.  He  enjoyed  classical 
music  and  would  sometimes  whistle  with  excep- 
tional clarity  excerpts  from  Beethoven  and 
Mozart.  In  1978  he  was  appointed  OBE.  Emett 
died  in  a  nursing  home  in  Hassocks  13  Novem- 
ber 1990. 

[Punch  library  archives,  Ludgate  House,  Blackfriars 
Road,  London;  Reuter's  archives,  Reuters  Ltd.,  Fleet 
Street,  London;  Rowland  Emett:  from  'Punch'  to  'Chitty 
Chitty  Bang  Bang  and  Beyond'  (exhibition  catalogue). 
Beetles,  1988;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] John  Jensen 

EVANS,  George  Ewart  (1909-1988),  historian 
and  writer,  was  born  1  April  1909  in  Abercynon, 
Glamorgan,  one  of  the  eleven  children,  seven 
boys  and  four  girls,  of  William  Evans,  shop- 
keeper, of  Abercynon.  He  was  one  of  the  eight 
children  of  his  father's  second  marriage,  to  Janet 
Hitchings,  of  Maesteg.  He  was  educated  at 
Mountain  Ash  Grammar  School  and  then  Uni- 
versity College,  Cardiff,  where  he  went  as  a 
trainee  teacher  on  a  Glamorgan  count)  council 
scholarship,  winning  a  college  bursary  en  route. 
He  read  classics  and  graduated  in  the  summer  of 
1930  with  a  lower  second-class  degree.  There 
followed  a  year  of  professional  training,  at  the 
end  of  which  he  obtained  his  Dip.Ed.  and 
became  unemployed.  As  he  himself  bitterly 
remarked  in  his  autobiography:  'You  swore  to 


teach  but  the  Board  of  Education.. .could  not 
provide  you  with  the  opportunity.' 

When  he  finally  found  work  in  1934  it  was 
quite  another  aspect  of  his  career  which  gave  him 
the  necessary  qualifications.  From  his  bte  boy- 
hood Evans  had  been  a  fine  rugby  player  and  an 
excellent  runner.  He  had  played  rugby  for  both 
the  renowned  Mountain  Ash  'Old  Firm'  before 
university  and  for  University  College  as  an 
undergraduate.  His  running  was  in  the  rougher 
school  of  the  old  Welsh  working-class  semi- 
professional  track,  where,  by  side  bets,  he  gained 
the  money  to  finance  part  of  his  university 
career.  It  was  this  athleticism  which  got  him  his 
first  job  in  1934,  as  a  games  master  at  the  newly 
opened  Sawston  Village  College,  Cambridge- 
shire, where  he  met  Florence  Knappett,  who  was 
later  to  become  his  wife. 

His  move  to  East  Anglia,  although  it  happened 
by  chance,  was  to  prove  momentous  in  what  was 
to  be  his  final  career — that  of  writer  and  historian 
of  rural  life.  By  1934  he  had  already  decided,  as 
he  later  wrote,  that  'I  did  not  care  ultimately 
what  kind  of  job  I  took.  I  determined  that  my  real 
work  henceforth  would  be  to  write.'  In  the 
following  years  he  published  a  number  of  short 
stories,  poems,  and  articles  and  became  closely 
associated  with  the  group  around  Keidrych 
Rhys's  magazine  Wales  and  the  London-based 
Left  Review.  These  pieces  are,  in  some  ways,  very 
much  of  their  time,  and  yet  they  also  show  a 
close  sense  of  the  realities  of  life  in  south  Wales 
which  distinguish  them  from  the  run-of-the-mill 
socialist-realist  fiction  of  the  period. 

In  October  1941  Evans  was  called  up  into  the 
Royal  Air  Force.  Restricted  because  of  his 
increasing  deafness  to  home-based  and  ground- 
based  duties,  he  served  as  a  radio  technician  in 
No.  206  Squadron,  Coastal  Command.  After  his 
wartime  service  Evans  published  a  full-length 
novel,  The  Voices  of  the  Children,  in  1947,  but  it 
was  badly  received  outside  Wales.  In  the  1940s 
he  suffered  recurrent  moods  of  black  depression, 
in  which  he  constandy  questioned  his  own  abili- 
ties, and  felt  a  despair  which  was  exacerbated  by 
his  deafness,  which  made  it  virtually  impossible 
to  find  work  as  a  teacher. 

In  1948  he  moved  to  Blaxhall  in  Suffolk, 
where  his  wife  had  been  appointed  village 
schoolteacher,  and  it  was  out  of  Blaxhall  that  his 
first  book  about  English  rural  life,  Ask  the  Fellows 
Who  Cut  the  Hay,  came  in  1956.  The  book  was 
based  on  interviews  with  the  older  inhabitants  of 
the  village  about  their  fives,  their  work,  and  their 
communities.  This  was  a  technique  used  in  folk- 
life  studies,  and  one  which  was  beginning  to  find 
favour  in  the  world  of  radio,  but  it  was  still  well 
outside  the  bounds  of  conventional  academic 
history.  The  book,  however,  was  a  success  and  in 
the  next  ten  years  three  more  followed.  Part  of 
their  popularity  certainly  rested  on  the  English 


127 


Evans 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


nostalgia  for  a  lost  rural  past,  but,  like  Evans's 
earlier  fiction,  they  contained  a  great  deal  more 
than  that.  Evans  also  lectured  widely,  particu- 
larly for  the  Workers'  Educational  Association. 
In  the  late  1960s,  with  the  emergence  of  the 
technique  of  oral  history  in  British  academic  life, 
there  followed  a  period  of  stimulating,  if  not 
always  easy,  contact  with  academic  life,  especially 
the  University  of  Essex,  where  Evans  was  Major 
Burrows  lecturer  in  1972  and  a  visiting  fellow 
from  1973  to  1978. 

His  books  from  this  period,  particularly  Where 
Beards  Wag  All  (1970),  The  Days  That  We  Have 
Seen  (1975),  and  From  Mouths  of  Men  (1976), 
represent  his  best  work.  Careful  and  beautifully 
crafted,  they  remind  the  reader  that  Evans 
remained  a  writer  as  much  as  a  historian.  In  the 
1980s  his  relationship  with  academe,  never  easy, 
became  more  tense.  His  book  on  the  myth  of  the 
hare,  The  Leaping  Hare,  written  in  1972  with 
David  Thomson,  had  been  dismissed  by  aca- 
demic anthropology,  and  he  felt  that  oral  history 
was  moving  away  from  its  roots,  into  ever  wilder 
areas  of  theory  while  neglecting  the  ordinary 
people.  Some  of  these  feelings  are  present  in  his 
fine  volume  of  autobiography,  The  Strength  of  the 
Hills  (1983),  and  in  his  last  book,  the  much  less 
satisfactory  Spoken  History  (1987). 

Through  all  this  Evans  retained  much  of  his 
Welshness.  Although  not  tall,  he  was  an  upright 
figure  who  kept  his  rugby-playing  physique  until 
late  in  life.  He  was  a  native  Welsh  speaker,  and 
retained  a  clear  Welsh  accent  all  his  life,  which 
was  often  a  shock  to  those  who  knew  him  only 
through  his  books  and  assumed  he  was  East 
Anglian.  His  past  also  shaped  him  in  other,  more 
fundamental,  ways.  Politically  he  was  born  into  a 
radical  family;  he  was  named  Ewart  after  *Glad- 
stone,  and  that  radicalism  never  left  him.  He  was 


a  member  of  the  Communist  party  in  the  1930s 
and  remained  very  close  to  communism  through- 
out his  life.  His  politics  and  his  Welshness  drew 
him  back  in  the  1970s  to  the  subject-matter  of 
Wales,  and  in  his  last  books  he  became  a  chroni- 
cler of  the  end  of  the  south  Wales  coal  industry, 
as  he  had  earlier  been  the  recorder  of  the  end  of 
horse-based  agriculture  in  England. 

Evans  remained  very  much  an  outsider  to  the 
academic  world.  His  honesty,  which  was  often 
blunt,  and  always  based  on  a  deep  distrust  of  the 
English  ruling  elite,  ill  fitted  him  for  English 
universities,  and  it  is  perhaps  not  surprising  that 
it  was  at  the  politically  radical  University  of 
Essex  of  the  1970s  that  he  seemed  happiest.  He 
was  awarded  an  honorary  DU  by  Essex  in  1982 
and  an  honorary  D.Litt.  by  the  University  of 
Keele  in  1983.  In  1971  he  was  president  of  the 
anthropology  section  of  the  British  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science  meeting  at 
Swansea. 

In  1938  Evans  married  Florence  Ellen,  daugh- 
ter of  Albert  George  Knappett,  clerk  in  the  Stock 
Exchange.  They  had  a  son,  who  became  a  direc- 
tor of  Faber  &  Faber,  Evans's  publishers,  and 
three  daughters,  one  of  whom  married  David 
Gentleman,  who  illustrated  many  of  Evans's 
books.  Florence  was  a  key  figure  in  Evans's  life, 
supporting  him  with  her  teaching  in  the  1940s 
and  early  1950s,  when  otherwise  he  would  not 
have  been  able  to  write,  as  well  as  being  a  gentle 
but  firm  commentator  on  his  work,  of  which  she 
said  once,  '[it  wasj  a  bit  creepy... listening  to  all 
those  dead  voices'.  Evans  died  1 1  January  1988  at 
Brooke  in  Norfolk,  where  he  had  lived  since  the 
1970s. 

[George  Ewart  Evans,  The  Strength  of  the  Hills,  1983; 
Gareth  Williams,  George  Ewart  Evans,  1991;  personal 
knowledge.]  Alun  Howkins 


128 


F 


FAIRBAIRN,  Sir  Robert  Duncan  (1910-1988), 
chairman  of  the  Clydesdale  Bank,  was  born  25 
September  1910  in  Longhirst,  near  Morpeth, 
Northumberland,  the  youngest  of  three  sons  and 
fourth  of  five  children  of  Robert  Fairbairn  and 
his  wife,  Christina  Robertson.  His  father  was  a 
Borderer  who  moved  to  Perth  not  long  after 
Robert's  birth  to  become  head  gamekeeper  to  the 
Dewar  family.  His  mother,  from  the  Highlands 
and  a  Gaelic  speaker,  had  been  a  lady's  maid. 
Fairbairn  grew  up  in  the  strict  but  benign 
atmosphere  of  a  happy,  relatively  simple,  rural 
home,  while  mixing  on  terms  of  easy  familiarity 
with  the  family  his  father  served.  His  natural 
talent  for  ball  games,  and  for  cricket  in  particular, 
was  developed  in  family  games  on  the  Dewar 
estate,  where  he  benefited  from  tuition  by  the 
professional  engaged  in  the  summers  for  his  son 
by  the  first  Baron  Forteviot.  Fairbairn  had  many 
and  varied  talents,  a  robust  character,  and  an 
attractive  personality  that,  allied  to  his  enthu- 
siasm and  industry,  brought  him  distinction,  and 
many  friends,  in  widely  different  fields. 

He  was  educated  at  Perth  Academy,  where  he 
showed  an  aptitude  for  science.  His  teachers  had 
intended  him  to  develop  this  interest  at  St 
Andrews  University,  but  when  he  left  school  in 
1927  he  secured  an  apprenticeship  in  the  Perth 
branch  of  the  Clydesdale  Bank.  By  1930  he  had 
taken  second  place  in  the  members'  examination 
of  the  Institute  of  Bankers  in  Scotland  and  he 
was  in  due  course  transferred  to  the  head  office  of 
the  bank  in  Glasgow.  Whilst  there  he  studied  for 
the  examinations  of  the  English  Institute  of 
Bankers  and  in  the  finals  of  1934  won  the  Beckett 
memorial  prize  for  first  place  overall,  the  White- 
head prize  for  practice  and  law  of  banking,  and 
other  distinctions. 

In  1920  the  Clydesdale  had  become  affiliated 
with  the  Midland  Bank,  then  in  a  period  of 
acquisitive  expansion,  and  in  1934  Fairbairn  was 
invited  by  the  Midland  to  work  in  London.  He 
gained  experience  in  London,  Liverpool,  and 
Bradford  until  1939  when,  having  earlier  joined 
the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve  in  Liverpool, 
he  was  mobilized  for  war  service  in  the  Royal 
Navy.  He  served  for  six  years,  attaining  the  rank 
of  lieutenant-commander  (S)  RNYR,  and  saw 
service  first  at  Scapa  Flow,  then  in  the  Admi- 
ralty, and  finally,  until  the  war  ended,  in  India. 


Fairbairn  returned  to  the  Midland  Bank  in 
1946  and  gained  rapid  promotion  there,  but  in 
1950  he  was  needed  in  Scotland  to  help  with  the 
amalgamation  of  the  Clydesdale  with  another 
Midland  'affiliate',  the  North  of  Scotland  Bank. 
After  a  period  in  Aberdeen  on  this  assignment  he 
was  brought  back  to  Glasgow  as  assistant  general 
manager  (1951)  and  in  1958  he  was  appointed 
general  manager  in  succession  to  Sir  John  Camp- 
bell. In  1967  he  was  elected  to  the  board  and 
when  he  retired  as  general  manager  in  1971  he 
was  invited  to  become  vice-chairman.  He  was 
appointed  chairman  in  1975  and  retired  in  1985. 
It  was  a  rare  distinction  at  that  time  for  a 
practising  Scottish  banker  to  become  chairman  of 
the  bank  in  which  he  had  served  and  clear 
evidence  of  the  high  esteem  in  which  Fairbairn 
was  held. 

Throughout  his  career  Fairbairn  made  his 
presence  and  his  opinions  powerfully  and  per- 
suasively felt  in  many  areas,  not  least  in  defend- 
ing the  distinctiveness  of  Scottish  banking  within 
the  United  Kingdom.  Among  his  more  notable 
initiatives  at  the  Clydesdale  was  the  radical 
review  he  instigated  of  the  bank's  public  appear- 
ance and  'image',  particularly  as  influenced  by 
design,  leading  in  the  1960s  to  the  introduction 
of  a  fresh,  modern,  and  much  admired  'house 
style'.  His  academic  and  practical  abilities  as  a 
banker,  his  interest  in  matters  of  design,  and  his 
concern  for  the  economic  development  of  Scot- 
land brought  him  many  awards  and  appoint- 
ments, public  and  private.  He  was  a  director  of 
several  major  companies  including  the  Midland 
Bank,  Scottish  Amicable  Life  Assurance  Society, 
British  National  Oil  Corporation,  and  Newarthill 
Ltd.  He  held  senior  offices  in  many  banking  and 
business  organizations  and  was  a  distinguished 
and  effective  chairman  from  1972  until  1 981  of 
the  Scottish  Industrial  Development  Advisory 
Board  established  under  the  Industry  Act  of 
1970.  In  1975  he  was  knighted  in  recognition  of 
his  services  to  economic  development  in  Scot- 
land. 

Fairbairn 's  distinguished  business  career  was 
matched  by  the  development  of  his  early  promise 
as  a  sportsman.  As  a  young  man  he  played 
cricket — for  Perthshire,  West  of  Scotland, 
Cheshire,  and  eventually  for  the  MCC  and 
Scotland.  His  involvement  in  football  led  to  his 


129 


Fairbairn 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


membership  of  Queens  Park  Football  Club  and 
of  the  celebrated  Corinthian  Casuals,  for  whom 
he  played.  When  he  turned  to  golf  he  was  as 
competitive  and  as  successful,  winning  the  Silver 
Boomerang  in  his  first  year  as  a  member  of  the 
Royal  and  Ancient  and  later  captaining  Royal 
Troon  Golf  Club. 

Fairbairn  was  five  feet  ten  inches  in  height,  a 
strongly  built,  handsome  man  with  a  large  head, 
blue-grey  eyes,  and  a  winning  smile.  He  never 
lost  his  plentiful  golden  (later  silver)  hair,  nor  his 
robust,  competitive,  and  cheerful  athleticism  and 
vitality.  He  had  a  quiet  Scottish  voice  and  an  air 
of  calm  authority.  In  1939  he  married  Sylvia 
Lucinda,  daughter  of  Henry  Coulter,  a  parish 
minister  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  in  Glasgow. 
Their  house  in  Bridge  of  Weir,  Renfrewshire, 
bore  witness  to  Fairbairn's  interest  in  the  visual 
arts.  It  was  typical  of  his  energy  and  zest  even  in 
retirement  that  when  he  was  over  seventy-five  he 
and  his  wife  enrolled  as  students  at  the  Glasgow 
School  of  Art,  where  he  was  remembered  as  an 
assiduous  and  talented  pupil.  He  died  26  March 
1988  in  Guildford,  Surrey,  at  his  daughter's 
home,  following  a  hip  replacement  operation. 

[Charles  W.  Munn,  Clydesdale  Bank:  the  First  One 
Hundred  and  Fifty  Years,  1988;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Thomas  Risk 

FAIRLIE,  Henry  Jones  (1 924-1 990),  political 
journalist  and  author,  was  born  13  January  1924 
in  Crouch  End,  London,  the  second  son  and  fifth 
child  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  four  daugh- 
ters of  James  Fairlie,  journalist,  and  his  wife, 
Marguerita  Vernon.  He  was  educated  at  High- 
gate  School  and  Corpus  Christi  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  read  modern  history,  obtaining  second- 
class  honours  in  1945  and  becoming  secretary  of 
the  Union  in  the  Trinity  term  of  1945.  A  weak 
heart  disqualified  him  from  any  form  of  military 
service,  both  during  the  war  and  after  it,  but  an 
interest  in  Liberal  politics  led  to  his  being 
appointed  a  lobby  correspondent  for  the  Man- 
chester Evening  News  at  the  remarkably  early  age 
of  twenty-one.  He  progressed  from  there  to  the 
Observer  in  1948  and  then  in  1950  to  The  Times, 
where  he  wrote  political  leaders. 

Anonymity,  however,  did  not  suit  Fairlie  and 
in  1954  he  accepted  an  invitation  to  join  the  staff 
of  the  Spectator.  Building  there  on  the  founda- 
tions laid  by  his  former  colleague,  Hugh  Mas- 
singham  of  the  Observer,  he  perfected  the 
journalistic  art  form  of  the  modern  political 
column.  Irreverent,  witty,  and  seldom  anything 
but  well  informed,  Fairlie's  weekly  columns 
(appearing  first  under  the  pseudonym  of  'Trim- 
mer' and  later  under  his  own  byline)  became 
required  reading  for  politicians  of  all  parties. 
This  achievement  was  all  the  more  notable  as  the 
time  he  spent  at  the  Spectator  was  relatively 
short,  barely  two  years  in  duration.  But  it  was 


during  this  period  that  Fairlie  made  perhaps  his 
most  lasting  contribution  to  the  vocabulary  of 
British  politics,  putting  into  circulation  the  term 
'the  Establishment'  to  describe  those  who,  while 
often  unelected,  controlled  the  power  points  of 
British  public  life. 

In  some  ways,  it  was  an  uncharacteristic 
notion  for  Fairlie  to  have  propagated — the 
phrase  had,  in  fact,  first  been  coined  by  A.  J.  P. 
•Taylor — since  by  the  mid-1950s  his  own  polit- 
ical stance  had  become  that  of  a  romantic,  if 
radical,  Tory.  It  was  this  which  gave  him  his 
curious  affinity  with  Harold  *Macmillan  (later 
the  first  Earl  of  Stockton),  to  whom,  especially 
after  he  started  writing  for  the  Daily  Mail,  he 
enjoyed  regular  access.  Fairlie,  however,  was 
often  wayward  in  his  political  judgements  and  it 
was  typical  of  this  flaw  in  his  journalistic  make- 
up that  he  should  have  predicted  in  the  Mail  that 
Labour  under  Hugh  *Gaitskell  would  defeat 
Macmillan  in  the  1959  general  election.  The 
Mail,  after  the  Tories  had  won  a  majority  of  100, 
soon  dispensed  with  his  services.  Thereafter  he 
found  an  impecunious  refuge  in  the  columns  of 
Time  and  Tide,  where  (as  in  Encounter)  some  of 
his  more  penetrating  longer  articles  appeared  in 
the  early  1960s.  He  also  enjoyed  a  brief  Indian 
summer  in  another  mass-circulation  paper,  the 
Daily  Express,  with  some  notable  news  scoops  in 
the  turbulent  political  year  of  1963.  Well  before 
this,  however,  his  personal  difficulties  had  ten- 
ded to  overshadow  his  professional  success,  as 
marked  in  television  and  radio  as  it  had  originally 
been  in  the  press.  Always  hospitable  and,  when 
in  funds,  generous  to  a  fault,  Fairlie  exercised 
only  the  loosest  control  over  the  management  of 
his  own  life.  Pursued  by  debt,  hounded  by  libel 
writs,  and  regularly  the  subject  of  bankruptcy 
proceedings  (leading  on  one  occasion  to  his 
imprisonment  in  Brixton),  he  eventually  left 
Britain  for  the  United  States  in  1965,  never  to 
return  to  his  native  land. 

In  America  he  built  up  a  fresh,  if  equally 
controversial,  journalistic  reputation.  Moving 
now  steadily  to  the  left,  he  early  on  attacked  the 
power  of  money  in  US  politics,  as  symbolized  by 
the  Kennedys.  His  assault  on  the  funding  of  the 
Kennedy  Library  in  Boston — originally  pub- 
lished in  the  Sunday  Telegraph — briefly  became  a 
cause  celebre  in  American  newspapers,  making 
him  for  a  time  something  of  a  pariah  in  a 
Kennedy-nostalgic  Washington.  But  even  when 
denied  his  customary  access  to  the  power  struc- 
ture, Fairlie  could  feel  that  his  own  fame  was 
secure.  His  first,  and  best,  book,  The  Life  of 
Politics  (published  in  1968  but  largely  written 
before  he  left  Britain),  drew  on  all  his  experience 
of  Westminster  and  remains  one  of  the  most 
vivid  defences  of  the  parliamentary  system.  His 
subsequent  two  books — The  Kennedy  Promise 
(1973)  and  The  Spoiled  Child  of  the  Western  World 


130 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Fair 


(1976) — concentrated  on  critical  American 
themes  but  were  respectfully  received  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic. 

Boyish  in  looks  and  capable,  when  sober,  of 
being  captivating  in  conversation,  Fairlie  exerted 
a  powerful  charm,  particularly  upon  women.  He 
was  married  in  1949  to  Lisette  Todd,  daughter  of 
Arthur  Todd  Phillips,  architect.  They  had  a  son 
and  two  daughters.  Fairlie's  bohemian  streak 
never  allowed  him  to  accept  the  normal  con- 
straints of  matrimony.  (Although  never  divorced, 
he  and  his  wife  separated  in  1967.)  The  tales  of 
his  various  affaires  were  legendary  but  were 
usually  related,  even  by  his  romantic  victims, 
with  affection  mingled  with  exasperated  amuse- 
ment. 

Fairlie's  last  years  were  spent  working  for  the 
New  Republic  in  Washington,  in  whose  offices  he 
was  eventually  afforded  the  unusual  facility  of  a 
bedroom  in  which  to  sleep.  It  was  a  striking 
testimony  of  the  regard  in  which  he  was  held  by 
all  those  who  shared  his  consuming  interest  in 
'the  life  of  polities'.  He  died  in  a  Washington 
hospital  25  February  1990,  of  heart  failure. 

[The  Times  and  Independent,  27  February  1990;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Anthony  Howard 

FARR,  Thomas  George  ('Tommy')  (ig^- 
1986),  boxer,  was  born  12  March  191 3  at  3 
Railway  Terrace,  Blaenclydach,  Rhondda,  the 
sixth  of  eight  children  (four  sons  and  four 
daughters)  of  George  Farr,  miner,  and  his  wife. 
Sarah  Ann  Owen.  Fair's  mother  died  when  he 
was  ten,  and  his  father  was  soon  afterwards 
struck  with  paralysis,  dying  a  few  years  later. 
Tommy,  who  grew  up  in  extreme  poverty  and 
was  always  thereafter  careful  with  money,  was  a 
schoolboy  boxer,  then  briefly  a  miner,  before  he 
met  a  disabled  miner  turned  saddler,  Job 
Churchill,  who  unofficially  guided  his  career 
throughout  the  interwar  years. 

At  the  age  of  fifteen  Farr  joined  the  boxing 
booth  of  Joe  and  Daisy  Gess  at  Tylorstown  as  a 
handyman.  As  he  grew,  he  boxed  as  'Kid'  Farr, 
occasionally  facing  five  opponents  in  an  evening. 
Beyond  the  booth,  he  was  paid  3s.  6d.  for  a 
contest  of  six  rounds,  and  when  he  had  saved 
£109  in  his  Post  Office  account,  he  bought  a 
house  at  59  Court  Street,  Tonypandy,  for  him- 
self and  his  younger  brother  and  sister.  By  1929 
Farr  was  boxing  contests  of  ten  rounds  all  over 
the  Rhondda  Valley,  and  in  the  next  five  years  he 
won  and  lost  as  a  'small  hall'  boxer  whose  style 
('in-fighting  was  my  speciality')  did  not  appeal  to 
major  promoters.  In  Jack  *Petersen,  Wales  had 
produced  its  first  ever  British  heavyweight  cham- 
pion in  1932,  and  he  had  the  attractive  style  that 
Farr  lacked.  In  the  economic  depression  Farr 


could  get  few  matches,  and  in  1933  he  ignomini- 
ously  lost  his  first  London  contest.  At  Tony- 
pandy he  won  the  Welsh  light-heavyweight  title, 
and  in  February  1935  at  Mountain  Ash  chal- 
lenged unsuccessfully  for  this  British  title,  losing 
for  the  third  time  to  the  same  man.  Farr  was  not 
beaten  again,  however,  until  he  met  Joe  Louis  at 
the  Yankee  stadium  in  New  York  City  in  August 

1937- 

Seeking  bigger  purses  in  1935,  Farr  signed 
with  an  experienced  London  manager,  Ted 
Broadribb,  and  moved  house  to  Slough.  The 
boxer-manager  relationship  was  stormy  through- 
out the  three  years'  contract,  and  Farr  relied  on 
the  advice  of  Churchill,  returning  often  to  Tony- 
pandy. Broadribb  knew  everybody,  and  he  got  a 
match  with  the  former  world  light-heavyweight 
champion,  Tommy  Loughran  of  Philadelphia, 
whom  Farr  outpointed  over  ten  rounds  at  the 
Royal  Albert  Hall.  Farr's  earnings  in  1936  were 
modest  by  boxing  standards,  less  than  £150  a 
fight,  though  he  outpointed  another  former  world 
title  holder,  and  won  the  Welsh  heavyweight 
championship  by  a  knockout.  His  jabbing  and 
spoiling  and  clever  inside  work  did  not  please 
spectators,  and  Farr  remained  in  Petersen's 
shadow. 

Farr's  glory  came  in  his  five  contests  of  1937. 
Petersen  had  lost  twice,  including,  surprisingly, 
to  Ben  Foord  for  his  British  and  Empire  heavy- 
weight titles.  Farr  was  Foord's  first  challenger, 
and  gained  the  points  decision  in  a  pedestrian 
match  at  the  recently  opened  Harringay  arena. 
The  Harringay  promoters  had  brought  over  Max 
Baer,  a  charismatic  Nebraskan  who  had  been 
world  heavyweight  champion  in  1935,  and  whom 
they  had  to  match  with  a  British  boxer.  Farr  was 
his  only  feasible  opponent,  and  a  month  after  the 
Foord  fiasco,  with  the  arena  packed,  he  out- 
pointed Baer  over  twelve  rounds.  Two  months 
later,  with  the  British  boxing  market  in  his 
pocket,  Farr  decisively  stopped  Walter  Neusel, 
the  hefty  German  who  had  thrice  beaten 
Petersen,  and  Harringay  rang  with  Welsh  song. 
Aged  twenty-four,  he  signed  to  meet  Max 
Schmeling  at  Harringay  for  a  guaranteed  £7,000, 
but  broke  this  contract  to  sail  to  the  USA  with 
Broadribb  for  a  $50,000  match  (win,  lose,  or 
draw)  with  the  new  world  heavyweight  cham- 
pion, Joe  Louis. 

The  twenty  -three-year-old  Louis  had  been  the 
first  black  man  allowed  to  box  for  the  world's 
heavyweight  title  since  1915,  and  he  was  a 
formidable  champion.  Possibly  only  Farr  and 
Churchill  fancied  the  challenger's  chances.  At 
fourteen  and  a  half  stones,  Farr  boxed  brilliantly, 
never  went  down,  and  was  outpointed  over 
fifteen  hard  rounds.  The  fight  commentary  was 
broadcast  by  the  BBC,  the  first  sporting  event  to 
be  relayed  by  transatlantic  cable,  and  wirelesses 


131 


Fair 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


were  switched  on  in  halls  and  homes  in  the  early 
hours  all  over  Britain.  Farr's  gritty  loss  was 
sporting  memory's  gain. 

Farr  lost  as  many  contests  as  he  won  between 
this  and  retirement  in  1940.  He  enlisted  in  the 
RAF  but  was  soon  discharged  unfit.  He  tried  to 
come  back  to  boxing  in  1950,  but  gave  up  after 
two  years.  As  a  fighter,  he  was  awkward  for 
opponents  and  difficult  for  promoters  and  man- 
agers; as  a  person,  six  feet  tall  and  with  a  craggy 
face,  he  was  a  raconteur  and  could  sing  well 
enough  to  make  six  popular  records.  His  Welsh- 
ness  stuck,  and  he  retained  his  love  of  sport. 

In  1939  he  married  Muriel  Montgomery, 
daughter  of  Herbert  Nicholas  Germon,  engineer. 
They  had  a  daughter  and  two  sons.  Farr  and  his 
wife  lived  happily  in  Sussex  until  he  died  in 
Worthing,  1  March  1986. 

[Gary  Farr  (ed.),  Thus  Farr,  by  Tommy  Farr,  1989;  Ted 
Broadribb,  Fighting  Is  My  Life,  1951;  Fred  Deakin, 
Tommy  Farr,  1989;  BBC  television  interview  shown  in 
May  1982.]  Stan  Shipley 

FELL,  Dame  Honor  Bridget  (1900- 1986),  cell 
biologist,  was  born  22  May  1900  at  Fowthorpe 
near  Filey  in  Yorkshire,  the  youngest  in  the 
family  of  seven  daughters  and  two  sons  of 
Colonel  William  Edwin  Fell,  soldier,  landowner, 
and  farmer,  and  his  wife,  Alice  Pickersgill-Cun- 
liffe,  carpenter  and  architect,  who  designed  the 
house  at  Fowthorpe.  Her  father  was  keenly 
interested  in  nature  and  animals  and  she  may 
have  inherited  her  deep  commitment  to  biology 
from  him.  She  was  educated  at  Wychwood 
School  in  Oxford,  Madras  College  in  St 
Andrews,  and  Edinburgh  University,  where  she 
was  awarded  a  B.Sc.  in  zoology  in  1923,  a  Ph.D. 
in  1924,  and  a  D.Sc.  in  1932. 

She  moved  to  Cambridge  in  1923  to  become 
scientific  assistant  to  T.  S.  P.  Strangeways,  with 
a  grant  from  the  Medical  Research  Council.  She 
was  to  remain  in  Cambridge  for  the  rest  of  her 
working  life,  holding  research  fellowships  until 
she  was  appointed  to  a  Royal  Society  research 
professorship  in  1963,  having  been  elected  FRS 
in  1952. 

Honor  Fell  and  Strangeways  worked  together 
on  biomedical  research  at  the  Cambridge 
Research  Hospital,  until  Strangeways  died  sud- 
denly in  December  1926.  In  1929  Fell  was 
appointed  director  of  the  hospital,  which  was 
renamed  the  Strangeways  Research  Laboratory 
in  honour  of  its  founder.  She  was  to  remain 
director  until  1970  and  during  her  tenure  the 
laboratory  developed  into  a  unique  institution  for 
studies  in  cell  biology,  with  an  emphasis  on  in 
vitro  techniques.  Its  staff  rose  from  thirteen  in 
1933  to  121  in  1970,  and  various  additions  were 
made  to  the  original  building.  It  attracted  many 


visitors  from  all  over  the  world,  who  came  not 
only  to  learn  the  techniques  of  tissue  and  organ 
culture,  but  also  to  collaborate  with  Honor  Fell 
and  to  gain  from  her  imaginative  and  enthusiastic 
approach  to  biological  research.  In  her  own  work 
she  always  stressed  the  importance  of  the  appli- 
cation of  a  range  of  different  disciplines  in  a 
research  project.  In  consequence  the  staff  of 
the  laboratory  came  to  include  radiobiologists, 
immunologists,  biochemists,  and  electron  micro- 
scopists.  She  continually  encouraged  collabora- 
tions among  the  members  of  the  laboratory, 
including  the  visitors,  and  with  scientists  in  the 
University  of  Cambridge  and  other  institutions. 
She  was  best  known  for  her  work  on  the  histoge- 
nesis of  bone  and  cartilage,  the  action  of  vitamin 
A  on  bone,  skin,  and  membranes,  the  breakdown 
of  tissues  by  lysosomal  enzymes,  and  the  role  of 
synovial  tissue  in  the  breakdown  of  cartilage  and 
bone. 

She  retired  from  the  directorship  of  the 
Strangeways  Research  Laboratory  in  1970  and 
then  joined  R.  R.  A.  Coombs  in  the  division  of 
immunology  of  the  department  of  pathology  in 
Cambridge  University.  Her  research  continued 
unabated  and  she  now  initiated  a  whole  new 
series  of  investigations  on  the  effects  of  antiserum 
and  complement  on  pig  cartilage  and  bone  in 
organ  culture  and  on  the  role  of  synovial  tissue 
in  the  breakdown  of  cartilage  and  bone.  She 
returned  to  the  Strangeways  Laboratory  in  1979, 
as  a  research  worker,  and  continued  to  be  active 
in  research  until  a  month  before  her  death.  Her 
work  resulted  in  the  publication  of  over  140 
research  papers  and  reviews.  She  was  deeply 
interested  in  the  education  and  training  of  young 
scientists  and  travelled  as  far  afield  as  India  and 
Japan  to  participate  in  courses  on  tissue  and 
organ  culture.  She  also  made  a  major  contribu- 
tion to  the  development  of  societies  for  cell 
biology  and  tissue  culture,  and  was  elected  into 
honorary  membership  or  fellowship  of  many  of 
them. 

She  received  many  honours,  medals,  and 
prizes  and  was  appointed  DBE  in  1963.  She  was 
awarded  eight  honorary  degrees.  She  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  Girton  College  in  1955  and  a  life 
fellow  in  1970,  honorary  fellow  of  Somerville 
College,  Oxford,  in  1964,  and  a  life  fellow  of 
King's  College,  London  (1967),  where  she  was 
senior  biological  adviser  to  the  Medical  Research 
Council  biophysics  unit  for  many  years. 

She  was  unmarried  and  throughout  her  work- 
ing life  lived  alone,  looked  after  at  times  by  her 
old  nanny  and  a  succession  of  devoted  daily 
ladies.  As  a  young  woman  she  was  slim,  with 
dark  hair  neatly  brushed  back.  She  changed  very 
little  with  age  and  throughout  her  life  her  joy  in 
science,  her  capacity  for  friendship,  and  her 
sense  of  fun  were  reflected  in  the  brightness  of 


132 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ferranti 


her  looks  and  the  warmth  of  her  smile.  She  died 
22  April  1986  in  Cambridge. 

[Dame  Janet  Vaughan  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fel- 
lows of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiii,  1087;  Nature,  vol. 
cxcvi,  1962,  pp.  316-18;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Audrey  Glalert 

FERRANTI,  Basil  Reginald  Vincent  Ziani  de 
(1930-1988),  industrialist  and  politician,  was 
born  2  July  1930  in  Alderley  Edge,  Cheshire,  the 
younger  son  and  youngest  of  five  children  of 
(Sir)  Vincent  Ziani  de  Ferranti,  industrialist,  of 
Henbury  Hall,  Macclesfield,  and  his  wife  Doro- 
thy Hettie  Campbell,  daughter  of  Reginald  Page 
Wilson,  consultant  engineer.  'Boz'  was  educated 
at  Gilling  Castle,  the  preparatory  school  for 
Ampleforth  College,  and  Eton.  He  did  his  mili- 
tary service  with  the  4th  /7th  Royal  Dragoon 
Guards  in  1949-50  and  then  went  to  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  obtained  a  third 
class  in  part  i  of  the  mechanical  sciences  tripos 
(1953).  He  was  sent  by  his  father  to  D.  T.  Napier 
&  Sons,  a  Glasgow  engineering  firm,  to  continue 
his  training  in  preparation  for  entering  the  family 
business,  Ferranti  Ltd. 

Ferranti  Ltd.  had  been  established  by  Boz's 
grandfather,  Sebastian  Ziani  de  *Ferranti,  a  lead- 
ing electrical  pioneer,  and  the  firm  had  been  built 
into  a  major  electrical  and  electronics  manu- 
facturer by  his  father,  Vincent.  Boz  joined  Fer- 
ranti Ltd.  in  1953  after  having  developed  a 
domestic  water-heating  pump,  and  rose  to  the 
post  of  domestic  appliances  manager  in  the  next 
year.  It  was  always  apparent,  however,  that  he 
would  play  a  subordinate  role  in  the  company, 
his  elder  brother  Sebastian  becoming  chairman 
and  managing  director,  and,  although  he  was 
elevated  to  the  board  in  1957,  he  decided  to 
pursue  other  interests. 

A  fascination  with  international  affairs  was 
later  to  dominate  his  life,  but  in  the  1950s 
Ferranti  was  extremely  keen  to  enter  domestic 
politics,  unsuccessfully  fighting  the  Exchange 
division,  Manchester,  as  a  Conservative  at  the 
1955  general  election.  He  eventually  gained  a 
seat,  at  a  1958  by-election  for  the  Morecambe 
and  Lonsdale  division,  and  in  July  1962  rose  to  a 
junior  ministerial  post  as  parliamentary  secretary 
at  the  Ministry  of  Aviation.  The  inevitable  con- 
flict of  interest  this  created  forced  his  resignation 
from  the  post  in  October. 

With  little  prospect  of  a  ministerial  career, 
Ferranti  gave  up  his  seat  at  the  1964  general 
election,  returning  full-time  to  industry  as  dep- 
uty managing  director  (later  sole  managing  direc- 
tor) of  International  Computers  and  Tabulators, 
the  company  which  had  recently  purchased  the 
Ferranti  computer  department.  It  was  this 
experience  in  a  high-technology  company  which 
convinced  him  of  the  need  to  create  a  single 
European  trading  area  as  a  basis  for  competing 


against  powerful  American  corporations  like 
IBM.  He  incorporated  this  message  into  a  report 
commissioned  by  the  Confederation  of  British 
Industry  in  1968,  prompting  that  influential 
body  into  supporting  (Sir)  Edward  Heath's  suc- 
cessful application  to  join  the  European  Eco- 
nomic Community. 

When  Britain  became  a  member  of  the  EEC  in 

1973,  Heath  invited  Ferranti  to  sit  on  the  eco- 
nomic and  social  committee,  and  such  was  his 
enthusiasm  for  European  affairs  that  in  1976  he 
was  elected  chairman  of  that  body.  He  thus 
gained  an  opportunity  to  publicize  his  ideas  on 
the  need  to  build  an  integrated  market  as  the  key 
to  future  prosperity.  This  message  he  also  took 
into  the  first  elections  for  the  European  Parlia- 
ment in  1979,  when  he  became  Conservative 
MEP  for  Hampshire  West  (from  1984,  Hamp- 
shire Central),  and  his  influence  increased  after 
becoming  vice-president  of  the  Parliament 
(1979-82). 

As  an  MEP  Ferranti  worked  tirelessly  for  the 
cause  of  European  integration,  helping  Karl  von 
Wogau  (the  German  Christian  Democrat  MEP) 
to  form  the  Kangaroo  Group,  so-called  because  it 
wanted  companies  to  be  able  to  leap  over  trade 
barriers.  Although  Ferranti  did  not  live  to  see  the 
achievement  of  this  dream  in  1992,  the  Kangaroo 
Group  of  MEPs  played  an  active  role  in  persuad- 
ing national  governments  to  accept  the  need  for 
European  trading  unity,  and  Ferranti  was 
regarded  as  a  major  influence  on  the  British 
Conservative  government's  policy.  His  natural 
charm  and  sunny  disposition  were  always  to  the 
fore,  and  while  he  had  a  sturdily  built  figure  his 
rounded  face  often  carried  a  disarming  smile, 
which  he  was  able  to  use  to  good  effect  in 
conveying  his  message. 

Ferranti  became  non-executive  chairman  of 
Ferranti  Ltd.  in  1982.  The  company  had  been 
semi-nationalized  by  the  Labour  government  of 

1974,  after  suffering  serious  losses  in  its  trans- 
former business,  and  his  brother  Sebastian,  never 
at  ease  with  the  non-executive  role  he  was  given 
thereafter,  decided  to  leave  in  1982.  When  Fer- 
ranti Ltd.  merged  with  the  American  company, 
International  Signals  and  Control,  in  1988,  Fer- 
ranti was  appointed  president  of  the  new  busi- 
ness, Ferranti  International,  but  a  massive  fraud 
perpetrated  by  the  American  partner  eventually 
resulted  in  its  demise. 

Ferranti  received  an  honorary  D.Sc.  from  the 
City  University,  London,  in  1970.  He  married 
three  times,  firstly  Susan  Sara  in  1956,  the 
daughter  of  Sir  Christopher  Gore,  landowner; 
they  had  three  sons,  before  divorcing  in  1963.  In 
1964  he  married  Simone,  daughter  of  Colonel 
Henry  James  Nangle;  they  had  one  daughter.  He 
divorced  her  in  1971  to  marry  in  the  same  year 
Jocelyn  Hilary  Mary,  an  Olympic  skier,  daughter 
of  Wing  Commander  Arthur  Thomas  Laing. 


133 


Ferranti 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ferranti  died  of  cancer  at  home  in  Ellisfield, 
Hampshire,  4  September  1988. 

[Ferranti    archives;    private    information;    personal 
knowledge.]  John  F.  Wilson 

FIGGURES,  Sir  Frank  Edward  (1910-1990), 
civil  servant,  was  born  5  March  19 10  in  Merton, 
London,  the  only  son  and  elder  child  of  Frank 
Thomas  Figgures,  an  administrative  assistant 
with  the  Crown  Agents,  and  his  wife,  Alice 
Biggin.  He  passed  from  Rutlish  School,  Merton, 
to  New  College,  Oxford,  where  he  took  a  first 
class  in  modern  history  (1931),  became  a  Harms- 
worth  senior  scholar  at  Merton  College  (1931), 
and  received  a  much  coveted  Henry  fellowship  to 
Yale,  where  he  attended  the  law  school  in  1933. 
After  being  called  to  the  bar  (Lincoln's  Inn)  in 
1936,  he  practised  up  to  the  outbreak  of  World 
War  II.  There  followed  military  service  in  the 
Royal  Artillery  from  1940  to  1946,  where  he 
attained  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel. 

His  public  service  began  in  1946  with  entry  to 
the  Treasury.  He  had  a  particularly  happy  start, 
not  only  because  of  the  overriding  importance  of 
that  department,  but  also  because  the  Treasury 
was  called  upon  to  face  quite  new  policy  chal- 
lenges at  home  and  abroad.  This,  and  the  Treas- 
ury's traditional  tolerance  of  individualism,  was 
propitious  for  the  exercise  of  Figgures's  special 
talents  and  inclinations.  He  was  concerned  at 
once  with  overseas  matters  and  was  seconded  to 
the  recently  created  Organization  of  European 
Economic  Co-operation  (to  which  was  later 
added  'and  Development'),  the  heir  of  the 
Marshall  plan,  in  the  important  post  of  director 
of  trade  and  finance  (1948-51).  There  he 
acquired  an  abiding  skill  in  multilateral,  inter- 
national negotiation,  and  the  ability  to  work 
harmoniously  with  a  group  of  international  pub- 
lic servants  and  politicians  despite  the  clash  of 
national  interests. 

In  195 1  he  returned  to  the  Treasury  and  was 
promoted  to  under-secretary  (1955-60).  This 
was  the  period  when  the  British  government  had 
to  decide  how  to  deal  with  the  movement  for 
European  integration,  which  would  culminate  in 
the  Treaty  of  Rome  and  the  creation,  by  six 
countries,  of  the  European  Economic  Commu- 
nity. Figgures  was  chosen  as  the  chief  developer 
and  first  director-general  (1960-5)  of  the  British 
government's  European  alternative,  the  Euro- 
pean Free  Trade  Association,  set  up  in  May 
i960.  In  1964  he  branded  the  British  import 
surcharge  policy  as  'illegal'.  To  his  relief  (he  had 
suffered  two  near-breakdowns),  he  returned  in 
1965  to  the  Treasury  as  third  secretary.  He  was 
promoted  in  1968  to  second  permanent  secretary, 
a  new  post.  He  retired  in  1971. 

After  his  retirement  from  the  Civil  Service  he 
became  director-general  of  the  National  Eco- 


nomic Development  Office  (1971-3),  at  a  time 
when  it  was  hoped  that  this  institution  might 
make  a  decisive  difference  to  the  country's  well- 
being,  through  developments  such  as  an  incomes 
policy.  In  1973  Figgures  was  chosen  to  be 
chairman  of  the  Pay  Board,  which,  however,  had 
no  better  success  in  these  matters  and  was  wound 
up  after  one  year.  This  also  marked  his  definite 
retirement  from  the  public  domain,  with  the 
exception  of  his  membership  of  the  BBC  general 
advisory  council  (1978-82),  but  he  continued  to 
be  active  in  the  private  sector  as  director  and 
chairman  of  a  number  of  companies. 

Figgures  had  great  abilities,  particularly  evi- 
dent in  the  area  of  negotiation,  especially  in 
international  matters.  A  large  and  affable  man,  he 
had  an  attractive  personality,  with  a  lively,  amus- 
ing, kind,  and  understanding  disposition.  He 
knew  much  about  music  and  his  slight  embon- 
point, twinkling  eyes,  and  widely  cultured  mind 
made  him  an  agreeable  companion.  He  was 
appointed  CMG  in  1959,  CB  in  1966,  and  KCB 
in  1970.  He  was  an  honorary  D.Sc.  of  Aston 
University  (1975). 

In  December  1941  he  married  Aline  Martina, 
daughter  of  Professor  Hugo  Frey,  an  eminent 
Viennese  laryngologist;  they  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  His  wife  died  in  1975  and  in  the  same 
year  he  married  a  friend  of  the  family  and  a 
matron  at  Uppingham  School,  Ismea,  daughter 
of  George  Napier  Magill,  a  rubber  planter  in 
Malaysia  who  had  died  in  a  Japanese  prisoner- 
of-war  camp,  and  widow  of  John  Stanley  Barker, 
a  band  leader  and  entertainment  manager.  Fig- 
gures died  27  November  1990  in  Glaston,  Rut- 
land. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Eric  Roll 

FINKELSTEIN,  Moses  (1912-1986),  historian 
and  sociologist.  [See  Finley,  Sir  Moses  I.] 

FINLEY,  Sir  Moses  I.  (1912-1986),  historian 
and  sociologist,  was  born  in  New  York  20  May 
191 2,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and 
one  daughter  of  Nathan  Finkelstein,  mechanical 
engineer,  of  New  York,  and  his  wife,  Anna 
Katzenellenbogen.  Around  1936  he  took  the 
surname  Finley.  He  had  no  second  forename,  but 
used  the  initial  T. 

He  was  educated  at  Central  High  School, 
Syracuse,  New  York,  and  at  Syracuse  Uni- 
versity, where  in  1927,  aged  fifteen,  he  graduated 
BA  magna  cum  laude,  majoring  in  psychology, 
and  was  elected  to  Phi  Beta  Kappa.  After  taking 
an  MA  in  public  law  at  Columbia  University, 
New  York,  in  1929,  he  worked  as  a  legal  clerk 
before  holding  several  research  posts  (1930-9). 
Now,  under  W.  L.  Westermann,  he  began  to 


134 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Finley 


study  ancient  history.  Between  1930  and  1933  he 
was  research  assistant  to  A.  A.  Schiller  at  Colum- 
bia and  also  on  the  editorial  staff  of  the  Encyclo- 
paedia of  the  Social  Sciences.  In  1934-5  he  was  a 
research  fellow  at  Columbia,  while  also  teaching 
(1934-42)  at  the  City  College  of  New  York. 
From  1937  to  1939  he  was  an  editor  and  trans- 
lator at  the  Institute  for  Social  Research,  which 
Max  Horkheimer  had  brought  from  Frankfurt  in 

1934- 

After  working  for  various  war  relief  agencies 
(1942-7)  Finley  returned  to  Columbia  in  1948 
and  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  American  Council 
of  Learned  Societies.  From  1948  to  1952  he  was 
lecturer,  then  assistant  professor,  at  Rutgers 
University,  Newark,  New  Jersey.  Simultane- 
ously he  was  working  in  the  history  faculty  at 
Columbia  for  his  Ph.D.,  which  he  took  in  1950 
with  a  thesis  on  'Land  and  Credit  in  Ancient 
Athens'  (published  in  1953).  From  1952  onwards 
he  was  active  in  a  group  around  the  Hungarian 
scholar,  Karl  Polanyi,  who  was  then  developing 
views  on  the  pre-market  economy,  which  had 
some  influence  on  Finley. 

In  1954,  having  come  under  attack  for  his  left- 
wing  opinions  in  the  notorious  committee  run  by 
Joseph  McCarthy,  he  emigrated  to  England. 
Here  he  was  appointed  university  lecturer  in 
classics  at  Cambridge  (1955-64)  and,  in  1957, 
elected  to  a  fellowship  at  Jesus  College.  Finley 
spent  the  rest  of  his  life  domiciled  in  Cambridge 
(until  1976),  becoming  a  British  subject  in  1962. 
He  was  reader  in  ancient  social  and  economic 
history  (1964-70)  and  professor  of  ancient  his- 
tory (1970-9),  and  from  1976  to  1982  master  of 
Darwin  College,  Cambridge.  He  was  knighted  in 

1979- 

Finley's  many  writings  on  the  society,  econ- 
omy, and  political  forms  of  ancient  Greece  were 
influential  among  fellow  scholars  and  the  general 
public  alike.  His  vast  published  output  included 
over  a  score  of  books  and  countless  articles  and 
reviews;  and  he  was  highly  regarded  abroad, 
especially  in  France  and  Italy,  where  he  fre- 
quendy  lectured  and  organized  conferences.  His 
training  in  history  and  law  had  familiarized  him 
with  the  ideas  of  such  scholars  as  Marc  Bloch, 
Henri  Pirenne,  Thorstein  Yeblen,  and  the  Freu- 
dians; and  his  association  with  the  Frankfurt 
school  reinforced  his  interest  in  Karl  Marx. 
Later,  however,  he  became  dissatisfied  with 
Marxism,  preferring  Max  Weber's  emphasis  on 
status  rather  than  class  as  a  tool  of  social  analysis. 
By  employing  Weber's  concept  of  'ideal  types' 
and  the  controlled  use  of  comparative  material 
from  other  societies,  he  tried  to  overcome  the 
disadvantages  of  working  on  ancient  Greece, 
where  he  found  the  evidence  traditionally 
employed  defective  in  range,  variety,  and  quality. 
He  insisted  on  regarding  society  as  a  whole; 


institutions  must  be  assessed  within  their  own 
social  context,  and  all  anachronistic  comparisons 
between  primitive  and  more  advanced  societies 
avoided.  Though  strongly  influenced  by  theoret- 
ical constructs,  Finley  never  set  out  to  discuss 
theory  and  method  per  se,  preferring  always  to  let 
his  attitude  emerge  from  examples  of  actual 
historical  analysis. 

A  high  point  in  his  career  and  one  that  gave 
him  great  satisfaction  was  the  invitation  to  return 
to  the  USA  in  1972  to  deliver  the  Sather  lectures 
at  Berkeley  in  California  (published  as  The 
Ancient  Economy,  1973,  2nd  edn.  1985)  and  the 
Mason  Welch  Gross  lectures  at  Rutgers  Uni- 
versity (published  as  Democracy  Ancient  and 
Modern,  1973).  These  two  sets  of  lectures,  which 
earned  him  the  W'olfson  literary  award  in  history 
(1974),  along  with  The  Use  and  Abuse  of  History 
(*975K  best  exemplify  his  most  mature  work; 
though  perhaps  his  most  original  book  is  The 
World  of  Odysseus  (1956,  2nd  edn.  1977). 

Finley's  distinction  was  widely  recognized.  He 
delivered  endowed  lectures  in  England,  France, 
the  USA,  and  Denmark.  He  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  Historical  Society  (1970),  of  the 
British  Academy  (1971),  and  of  the  Royal  Society 
of  Arts  (197 1 ).  He  was  a  foreign  member  of  the 
Royal  Danish  Academy  of  Sciences  and  Letters 
(I975)»  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Sciences  (1979),  and  the  Accademia  Nazionale 
dei  Lincei  (1982),  and  received  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Leicester  (1972),  Shef- 
field (1979),  and  Saskatchewan  (1979),  and  from 
the  City  College  of  New  York  (1982).  He  was 
president  of  the  Classical  Association  (1973-4), 
the  Cambridge  Philological  Society-  (1974-6), 
and  the  Joint  Association  of  Classical  Teachers 
(198 1 -3);  and  he  was  a  trustee  of  the  British 
Museum  from  1977  to  1984. 

An  insatiable  controversialist  in  discussion  and 
in  print,  Finley  relished  polemic.  His  inter- 
jections, usually  introduced  by  a  drawled  'I'm 
sorry,  but...',  were  characterized  by  hard  hitting. 
But  to  friends,  colleagues,  and  students  he  was 
warm-hearted  and  generous  and  he  built  up  a 
productive  school  to  which  he  was  both  patron 
and  Socratic  gadfly.  Finley  was  of  medium 
height,  with  a  dark  complexion,  slightly  rugged 
features,  and  a  lively  countenance,  expressive  of 
his  sharp  mind.  For  most  of  his  life  he  was  a 
chain-smoker  and,  even  after  he  stopped  smok- 
ing for  reasons  of  health,  from  ingrained  habit  he 
would  hold  the  fingers  of  his  right  hand  bent,  as 
if  still  clutching  a  cigarette. 

From  1932  Finley  enjoyed  a  happy  and  mutu- 
ally reinforcing  marriage  with  his  wife  Mary  (nee 
Moscowitz,  who  later  changed  to  her  mother's 
surname,  Thiers),  schoolteacher.  They  had  no 
children.  On  the  day  of  her  death  he  suffered  a 
cerebral  haemorrhage  and  he  died  the  following 


135 


Finley 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


day,  23  June  1986,  at  Addenbrooke's  Hospital, 
Cambridge. 

[B.  D.  Shaw  and  R.  P.  Sailer,  introduction  to  M.  I. 
Finley,  Economy  and  Society  in  Ancient  Greece,  1981; 
P.  D.  A.  Garnsey,  The  Black-well  Dictionary  of  Histori- 
ans, 1988;  information  from  Lawrence  H.  Finley 
(brother);  personal  knowledge]         F.  W.  Walbank 

FISHER,  Alan  Wainwright  (1922- 1988),  trade- 
union  leader,  was  born  in  Birmingham  20  June 
1922,  the  fourth  of  five  sons  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Thomas  Wainwright  Fisher, 
accountant,  and  his  wife,  Ethel  Agnes  Guest.  He 
was  educated  at  Sparkhill  Commercial  College, 
Birmingham.  He  went  to  work  at  the  National 
Union  of  Public  Employees  (NUPE),  becoming  a 
junior  clerk  in  1939.  On  the  outbreak  of  World 
War  II  that  year,  he  began  to  serve  in  the  Fleet 
Air  Arm.  After  demobilization  in  1945,  he 
returned  to  NUPE. 

By  1953  Fisher  had  become  the  midlands 
divisional  officer  and  in  1962  he  was  appointed 
assistant  general  secretary.  NUPE  was  the  fast- 
est-growing trade  union  at  the  time,  its  develop- 
ment assisted  by  Fisher  in  three  main  ways. 
First,  as  assistant  general  secretary  in  the  early 
1960s,  he  saw  more  clearly  than  most  that  NUPE 
needed  to  break  with  the  organizational  princi- 
ples and  oppositional  ideology  of  the  previous 
general  secretary,  the  'Welsh  fire-eater',  Bryn 
Jones.  Jones  was  an  old-time  centralist-socialist, 
never  so  happy  as  when  denouncing  other 
Trades  Union  Congress  leaders  who  refused  to 
take  seriously  his  version  of  militant  industrial 
unionism.  Fisher  saw  that  NUPE  must  make  its 
peace  with  the  leaders  of  the  'general  unions' 
within  the  general  council  of  the  TUC,  seeking 
for  allies  in  a  common  struggle  against  public 
sector  employers  and  hostile  governments. 

Second,  after  involvement  in  his  first  major 
national  dispute,  the  'dirty  jobs'  strike  of  1970, 
Fisher,  who  had  become  general  secretary  in 
1968,  sensed  that  NUPE  itself  was  in  need  of 
radical  reform.  As  he  saw  it,  the  key  lay  in  the 
development  and  training  of  lay  activists,  inte- 
grated into  union  government  as  accredited  shop 
stewards.  He  even  came  to  argue  that  member- 
ship growth  was  a  function  of  organizational 
effectiveness,  and  that  this  probably  involved  a 
process  of  constant  change  and  adaptation.  To 
this  end  he  sponsored,  and  sought  to  implement, 
the  findings  of  the  1974  'Warwick  report',  a 
radical  plan  for  constitutional  change  written  by 
three  friendly  sociologists.  Most  members  of  the 
general  council  would  not  have  dared  to  commis- 
sion and  publish  such  an  investigation  into  the 
working  of  their  union.  Nobody  but  Fisher 
would  have  handed  the  job  to  students  of  the 
subject. 

Fisher's  third  major  contribution  was  double- 
edged  and  ill-timed.  He  decided  NUPE  needed  a 


rallying  cry,  to  help  to  achieve  real  progress  for 
its  lowest  paid  members  and  attract  further 
recruits.  This  took  the  form  of  a  campaign  for  a 
national  minimum  wage,  high  enough  to  benefit 
the  union's  membership,  and  potential  member- 
ship, in  the  National  Health  Service  and  local 
government.  It  was  to  be  achieved  partly  by 
militant  wage  bargaining  and  partly  by  legisla- 
tion. Unfortunately  he  converted  the  TUC  to 
this  policy  just  before  Labour's  prime  minister, 
James  Callaghan  (later  Baron  Callaghan  of  Car- 
diff), committed  his  government  to  a  pay  limit  of 
5  per  cent  in  1978. 

In  the  mythology  of  the  Labour  movement, 
the  difference  between  Fisher's  aspirations  and 
Callaghan's  inflexibility  led  inevitably  to  the 
series  of  disputes  known  as  the  'winter  of  dis- 
content'. This  ended  in  the  return  of  a  Con- 
servative government  in  April  1979.  Of  course 
the  truth  was  more  complex.  The  5  per  cent  limit 
was  unacceptable  to  many  employers  as  well  as  to 
all  other  unions.  Once  into  the  dispute  Fisher  did 
his  best  to  secure  a  settlement  that  would  avoid  a 
total  government  defeat.  All  the  same,  he  could 
not  quite  escape  some  blame.  He  enjoyed  his 
moment  of  history,  until  he  realized  the  cost. 

Fisher  remained  as  NUPE's  general  secretary 
until  1982.  He  was  a  member  of  the  TUC's 
general  council  from  1968  to  1982,  and  chairman 
of  the  TUC  in  1 980-1.  He  was  also  a  member  of 
the  board  of  the  British  Overseas  Airways  Cor- 
poration (1970-2),  British  Airways  (1972-82), 
and  the  London  Electricity  Board  (1970-80).  He 
was  a  director  of  Harland  &  Wolff,  shipbuilders 
(1975-83),  a  governor  of  Henley  Administrative 
Staff  College  (1977-83),  and  a  member  of  the 
board  of  the  Council  for  Educational  Develop- 
ment Overseas  (governor  from  1970). 

Fisher  was  a  modest  and  extremely  funny- 
man, with  the  best  line  in  trade-union  repartee  of 
any  union  leader  of  his  generation.  He  had  an 
effortless  fluency,  and  his  high-speed  loquacity 
added  to  his  charm.  He  was  of  average  height, 
and  until  his  long  and  fatal  illness  he  looked 
younger  than  his  years.  Despite  his  illness,  his 
high  spirits  and  good  nature  did  not  desert  him. 
He  was  married  three  times.  In  1946  he  married 
Peggy,  daughter  of  Oscar  Kinipple,  technical 
representative.  There  were  no  children.  Peggy 
died  in  1956  and  in  1958  he  married  Joyce 
Tinniswood,  whose  father  was  a  farmer.  They 
had  two  sons  and  one  daughter.  The  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1976  and  in  1978  he  married 
Ruth,  formerly  Woollerton,  the  daughter  of 
Walter  Henry  Olliver,  bank  courier.  There  were 
no  children  of  the  third  marriage.  Fisher  died  of 
leukaemia  20  March  1988  in  Maelor  Hospital, 
Wrexham. 

[Private  information.]  William  McCarthy 

C.  S.  Nichoi.i.s 


136 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Fleming 


FLEMING,  (William)  Launcelot  (Scott) 
(1906- 1 900),  geologist  and  bishop,  was  born  7 
August  1906  in  Edinburgh,  the  youngest  of  four 
sons  (the  second  of  whom  died  at  the  age  of  five 
months)  and  fifth  of  five  children  of  Robert 
Alexander  Fleming,  MD,  LL  D,  surgeon,  of 
Edinburgh,  and  his  wife  Eleanor  Mary,  daughter 
of  the  Revd  William  Lyall  Holland,  rector  of 
Comhill-on-Tweed.  Educated  at  Rugby  and 
Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge,  he  obtained  a  second 
class  in  part  i  and  a  first  in  part  ii  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (1927  and  1929),  specializing  in 
geology,  and  won  a  Commonwealth  Fund  fellow- 
ship to  Yale  University  (1929-31).  He  then 
entered  Westcott  House,  Cambridge,  being 
ordained  deacon  in  1933  and  priest  1934,  as 
chaplain  and  fellow  of  Trinity  Hall  (1933-49). 

Having  accompanied  summer  university  expe- 
ditions to  Iceland  (1932)  and  Spitsbergen  (1933), 
with  his  dean's  encouragement  he  joined  the 
British  Graham  Land  expedition  to  Antarctica 
(1934-7),  as  chaplain  and  geologist,  and  was  one 
of  the  three-man  dog-sledge  party  which 
explored  the  King  George  VI  sound  (including 
the  Fleming  glacier),  thus  proving  that  Graham 
Land  was  a  peninsula.  Returning  to  Trinity  Hall 
as  dean  in  1937,  he  contributed  to  the  Geo- 
graphical jfournaFs  accounts  (April,  May,  and 
June  1938,  and  September  1940)  of  the  expedi- 
tion's scientific  findings.  Commissioned  as  a 
chaplain  in  the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve  in 
1940,  his  service  included  three  years  (of  which 
1941-2  were  spent  in  the  Mediterranean)  in 
HMS  Queen  Elizabeth.  In  1944  he  became  direc- 
tor of  service  ordination  candidates.  He  returned 
to  Cambridge  in  1946  and  became  director  of  the 
Scott  Polar  Research  Institute  there  in  1947.  In 
1949  he  was  appointed  bishop  of  Portsmouth, 
and  in  1959  bishop  of  Norwich.  Struck  by  a  rare 
spinal  disorder,  which  seriously  affected  both 
legs,  he  resigned  the  see  in  1971.  The  queen 
appointed  him  dean  of  Windsor  and  her  domes- 
tic chaplain;  he  retired  in  1976. 

A  great  gift  for  friendship  made  him  out- 
standingly effective  pastorally;  he  genuinely 
cared  about  people.  A  remarkable  rapport  with 
young  people  led  to  his  being  made  chairman  of 
the  Church  of  England  Youth  Council 
(1950-61).  He  helped  plan  the  Duke  of  Edin- 
burgh Award  Scheme  in  1954;  was  co-founder, 
with  Dr  Alec  Dickson,  of  Voluntary  Service 
Overseas  in  1958;  and  played  a  part  in  inaugurat- 
ing Atlantic  College,  the  Prince's  Trust,  Project 
Trident,  Outward  Bound,  and  many  similar 
projects  to  bring  out  young  people's  potential. 
The  governor  of  numerous  schools,  he  was  much 
in  demand  for  school  confirmations. 

Although  he  became  a  bishop  without  paro- 
chial experience  or  any  great  gift  for  preaching, 
his  unassuming  friendliness  and  humility  won 


over  clergy  and  laity.  Portsmouth  became  an 
exceptionally  well-run  diocese,  with  more  than 
its  share  of  young  clergy  and  ordinands.  Nor- 
wich, with  650  churches  and  a  shortage  of  clergy, 
presented  greater  problems;  he  tackled  them 
resolutely  and  imaginatively,  developing  rural 
group  ministries  and  again  attracting  good 
clergy.  He  also  played  a  significant  part  in 
planning  the  University  of  East  Anglia  (which, 
unusually,  has  its  own  university  chapel).  He  was 
an  uncanny  judge  of  character,  excellent  in  'one- 
to-one'  situations.  His  desk  might  look  chaotic, 
but  he  was  a  shrewd  administrator  with  a  clear 
grasp  of  priorities. 

In  1968,  most  unusually  for  a  bishop,  he 
piloted  a  Bill  (the  Antarctic  treaty)  through  the 
House  of  Lords.  Well  informed  on  environ- 
mental and  ecological  issues  (he  was  a  pre-war 
glaciologist  of  repute),  he  constantly  urged 
responsible  stewardship  of  the  world  (his  maiden 
House  of  Lords  speech  was  about  cruelty  to 
whales),  and  the  need  for  international  co-opera- 
tion. He  became  vice-chairman  of  the  parliamen- 
tary group  for  world  government  in  1969-71  and 
a  member  of  the  government  standing  advisory 
committee  on  environmental  pollution  (1970-3). 
At  Windsor,  he  consolidated  the  reputation  of  St 
George's  House.  His  influence  on  church  policy 
would  have  been  greater  but  for  synodical  gov- 
ernment: off-the-cuff  debate  was  not  his  forte. 

Private  means,  which  made  his  polar  explora- 
tion possible,  enabled  him  occasionally  to  inau- 
gurate administrative  improvements  without 
waiting  for  official  ecclesiastical  sanction;  and  he 
was  generous  and  hospitable.  Proud  of  being  a 
Scot,  he  loved  the  Highlands,  where  his  holiday 
home  at  Innerhadden  welcomed  many  under- 
graduates and  clergy.  His  other  enduring  love 
was  Trinity  Hall,  especially  its  Boat  Club.  His 
degrees  included  the  MS  (Yale,  1931),  DD 
(Lambeth,  1950),  and  honorary  DCL  (East 
Anglia,  1976).  He  became  an  honorary  fellow  of 
Trinity  Hall  (1956),  FRSE  (1971),  and  honorary 
vice-president  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society 
(1961),  and  was  awarded  the  Polar  medal  (1940). 
In  1976  he  was  appointed  KCVO. 

Fleming  was  slightly  built,  wiry,  alert,  and 
energetic.  He  still  played  a  good  game  of  squash 
in  his  fifties:  it  was  physical  fitness  as  well  as 
mental  discipline  that  made  his  prodigious  work- 
load possible.  He  was  fifty-eight  before  he  mar- 
ried in  1965,  and  then  he  contracted  a  happy 
union  which  lasted  for  twenty-five  years.  His 
wife  was  Jane,  widow  of  Anthony  Agutter  and 
daughter  of  Henry  Machen,  landowner.  There 
were  no  children.  Fleming  retired  to  Dorset  and 
died  in  Sherborne,  30  July  1990. 

[Donald  Lindsay,  Friends  for  Life,  Lindel  Publishing 
Company,  1081;  Geographical  Journal,  vol.  xcvi,  no.  3, 
September  1940;  personal  knowledge.]     Giles  Hunt 


137 


Foot 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


FOOT,  Hugh  Mackintosh,  Baron  Caradon 
(1907-1990),  colonial  administrator  and  diplo- 
mat, was  born  8  October  1907  in  Plymouth,  the 
second  son  and  second  child  in  the  family  of  five 
sons  and  two  daughters  of  Isaac  *Foot,  solicitor 
and  Liberal  MP  for  Bodmin,  Cornwall,  and  his 
wife  Eva,  daughter  of  Dr  Angus  Mackintosh, 
DPH,  of  Fincastle,  Perthshire.  Isaac  Foot's  life 
centred  on  Liberal  politics  and  Methodism.  His 
children  were  brought  up  in  a  devout  Christian 
home,  over-brimming  with  books  and  the  schol- 
arship of  radical  philosophy.  Hugh  was  the  tallest 
and  strongest  of  the  children  and  the  only  one  to 
win  a  scholarship  to  his  school  (the  Quaker 
Leighton  Park  School  in  Reading).  Unlike  his 
father  and  three  of  his  brothers,  he  did  not  enter 
the  law,  and  whereas  Dingle,  John,  Michael,  and 
Christopher  studied  at  Oxford,  Hugh  went  to  St 
John's  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  rowed  and 
played  cricket.  Politics  and  public  speaking  were 
a  busy  part  of  his  life  and,  following  his  father's 
radical  liberalism,  he  became  president  of  the 
Liberal  Club  at  Cambridge.  Michael  wrote  of 
him  later:  'He  had  acquired  strange  tastes  and 
was  ready  to  indulge  in  pastimes  which  the  rest 
of  us  wouldn't  be  seen  dead  at — such  as  rowing, 
playing  polo,  dressing  up  in  Goering-like  uni- 
forms and  enjoying  it,  and  occasionally  even — at 
a  pinch — placing  some  trust  in  the  word  of  Tory 
Prime  Ministers.'  Four  of  the  Foot  brothers, 
including  Hugh  (1929),  became  presidents  of 
their  university  unions.  Hugh  Foot  obtained  a 
second  class  (division  I)  in  part  i  of  the  history 
tripos  (1927)  and  a  second  class  (division  II)  in 
part  ii  of  the  law  tripos  (1929). 

In  1929  Foot  joined  the  Colonial  Service  and 
was  posted  to  Palestine.  He  became  an  Arab 
linguist  and  learned  about  the  stresses  and  strains 
of  the  Middle  East,  developing  an  understanding 
which  was  invaluable  when  in  later  years  he 
worked  at  the  United  Nations.  He  was  back  in 
London  in  the  Colonial  Office  in  1938-9.  On  the 
outbreak  of  war  he  was  appointed  assistant  Brit- 
ish resident  in  Trans-Jordan,  where  he  stayed 
until  1942.  In  1943  he  became  lieutenant-colonel 
in  charge  of  military  administration  in  Cyrenaica 
and  later  in  the  same  year  was  sent  as  colonial 
secretary  to  Cyprus,  which  was  dangerously  near 
to  German-occupied  Greece,  Rhodes,  and 
Crete. 

In  1945  he  went  happily  to  Jamaica  as  colonial 
secretary  and  in  1947  he  was  posted  to  Nigeria  as 
chief  secretary.  The  preparatory  work  he  did 
there  contributed  to  Nigerian  independence  in 
1962.  He  returned  to  Jamaica  in  195 1  as  governor 
and  captain-general.  He  was  disappointed  that 
plans  for  a  federation  of  the  West  Indies  were 
unsuccessful,  Jamaica  (which  attained  full  inde- 
pendence in  1 961)  preferring  to  proceed  alone. 

Foot  left  the  Caribbean  in  1957  to  become 
governor  of  the  violent,  riven  island  of  Cyprus, 


which  had  changed  dramatically  since  1943. 
Greece  and  the  Greek  Cypriots  wanted  Enosis 
(union),  Turkey  and  the  Turkish  Cypriots 
desired  partition,  and  the  British  government 
insisted  on  holding  on  to  all  of  Cyprus.  By  i960, 
after  years  of  difficult  diplomacy,  independence 
was  attained,  with  Britain  retaining  two  sover- 
eign bases  on  the  island.  The  Conservative  colo- 
nial secretary  paid  tribute  in  the  House  of 
Commons  to  Foot's  'unfailing  imagination,  cour- 
age and  leadership'.  Cyprus  was  Foot's  last 
colony.  For  over  thirty  years  he  had  moved  with 
authority  in  lands  of  daunting  complexity  and 
engineered  their  metamorphoses  from  colonies 
into  free  countries,  working  as  a  mediator  rather 
than  a  ruler.  He  believed  that  the  only  way  to 
teach  people  responsibility  was  to  give  it  to  them. 
Everywhere  he  respected  the  individual  dignity 
of  his  subjects,  never  patronizing  them,  and 
never  remote  from  their  human  condition. 

Foot's  next  move  to  the  United  Nations  was 
consistent  with  his  experience  and  his  passionate 
belief  that  the  UN  was  the  only  alternative  to  the 
division  and  destruction  of  the  world.  In  1961  he 
became  the  British  representative  on  the  trustee- 
ship council,  with  special  responsibility  for 
Africa.  However,  Foot  could  not  support  the 
Conservative  government's  policy  on  Rhodesia. 
Deeply  troubled,  he  resigned  in  1962,  writing:  i 
do  not  feel  able  to  speak  in  the  UN  or  elsewhere 
in  defence  of  our  position  in  this  matter.  I  simply 
cannot  do  it.'  Foot  was  well  aware  that  this  might 
end  his  UN  career.  Yet  his  international  reputa- 
tion and  popularity  were  such  that  he  was  invited 
by  the  UN  to  remain  in  charge  of  its  own 
development  programme. 

After  the  Labour  party's  victory  in  1964  Har- 
old Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx) 
appointed  Foot  minister  of  state  at  the  Foreign 
Office  and  ambassador  to  the  UN  (1964-70).  He 
was  created  a  life  peer  as  Baron  Caradon  (1964) 
and  spoke  on  occasion  forcefully  in  the  House  of 
Lords,  particularly  on  the  role  of  the  UN  charter 
in  dealing  with  the  world's  dilemmas  of  violence 
and  poverty.  His  efforts  produced  resolution  242 
which  formed  the  basis  of  the  Egyptian-Israeli 
peace  treaty.  In  New  York  his  energy  and  robust 
optimism  could  be  demanding  and  sometimes 
colleagues  and  staff  could  not  keep  up  with  the 
speed  of  his  thinking  and  vision  of  his  argu- 
ments. He  certainly  tried  to  implement  the  ideals 
of  the  charter.  From  1971  he  was  consultant  to 
the  UN  development  programme,  a  post  from 
which  he  retired  in  1975,  but  he  continued  to 
advise  in  the  troubled  places  of  the  world.  He 
had  a  rare  adaptability  to  peoples  and  places, 
which  he  happily  shared  with  his  talented,  dedi- 
cated wife. 

He  was  appointed  OBE  (1939),  CMG  (1946), 
KCMG  (195 1 ),  and  GCMG  (1957).  He  became 
an  honorary  fellow  of  St  John's  College,  Cam- 


138 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Forbes 


bridge,  in  i960  and  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  1968.  Foot  was  often  regarded  as  a 
colonial  governor  who  ran  out  of  colonies.  He 
rejoiced  that  every  colony  he  governed  became 
independent.  He  was  at  the  axis  of  an  old  empire 
swinging  through  conciliation  to  freedom  and 
independence,  enfranchising  over  six  million 
people  in  twenty  years. 

In  1936  he  married,  in  Haifa,  (Florence)  Sylvia 
(died  1985),  daughter  of  Arthur  White  Millar 
Tod,  OBE,  director  of  the  Steam  Navigation 
Company  of  Baghdad.  They  had  three  sons,  one 
of  them  the  writer  and  journalist  Paul  Foot,  and 
a  daughter.  Caradon  died  5  September  1990  in 
Plymouth. 

[Hugh  Foot,  A  Start  in  Freedom,  1964;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  Lena  M.  Jeger 

FORBES,  Sir  Archibald  Finlayson  (1903- 
1989),  industrialist  and  banker,  was  born  6 
March  1903  in  Johnstone,  Renfrewshire,  the 
elder  child  and  only  son  of  Charles  Forbes,  chief 
constable  of  Johnstone,  and  his  wife  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  James  Robertson,  slater  and  plas- 
terer, also  of  Johnstone.  He  was  educated  at 
Paisley  Grammar  School  and  then  joined  the 
Glasgow  firm  of  accountants,  Thomson  Mc- 
Lintock,  and  as  part  of  his  training  attended 
Glasgow  University.  In  1927  he  qualified  as  a 
member  of  the  Scottish  Institute  of  Chartered 
Accountants;  his  incisive  brain,  rapid  grasp  of 
detail,  and  capacity  for  hard  work  soon  attracted 
the  notice  of  Sir  William  *McLintock  and 
marked  the  start  of  a  close  working  relationship 
that  continued  for  eight  years.  In  1930  he  moved 
to  the  London  office  as  McLintock  s  assistant. 

In  1935  he  was  offered  a  partnership,  but 
instead  of  taking  this  significant  promotion  he 
elected  to  accept  an  invitation  to  join  Spillers, 
one  of  the  milling  clients,  as  finance  director. 
This  decision  to  leave  the  profession  was  an 
important  milestone  in  his  career,  and  was 
prompted  partly  by  a  realization  that  exceedingly 
able  and  more  senior  partners  would  succeed  Sir 
William,  and  partly  by  his  attraction  to  the 
challenge  of  and,  at  that  time,  more  lucrative  life 
in  industry.  Between  1939  and  1953  the  food 
industry  was  under  close  operational  control  and 
the  scope  for  the  able  and  ambitious  young 
finance  director  in  Spillers  was  therefore  very 
limited.  In  1940  Forbes  was  seconded  to  the  Air 
Ministry  as  director  of  capital  finance,  but  soon 
afterwards  he  joined  the  first  Baron  •Beaver- 
brook,  who,  with  a  small  hand-picked  team,  was 
charged  by  (Sir)  Winston  *Churchill  with  cut- 
ting through  bureaucracy  and  red  tape  to  speed 
up  the  production  and  repair  of  Spitfires  and 
Hurricanes.  He  became  first  deputy  secretary  at 
the  Ministry  of  Aircraft  Production,  where  the 
stimulating  and  unorthodox  life  fully  extended 
his  talents.  From  1943  until  1945  he  was  con- 


troller of  repair,  equipment,  and  overseas  sup- 
plies and  from  1942  to  1945  a  member  of  the 
Aircraft  Supply  Council. 

In  1946  Forbes  was  appointed  chairman  of  the 
Iron  and  Steel  Board,  which  was  disbanded  on 
nationalization  in  1949.  After  returning  to  office 
in  195 1,  the  Conservatives  denationalized  steel, 
recreated  the  Board,  and  reappointed  Forbes  as 
chairman  for  a  further  six  years  (1953-9).  He  was 
president  of  the  Federation  of  British  Industries 
(subsequently  the  CBI)  from  1951  10-1953,  and 
on  decontrol  in  1953  returned  to  more  active 
participation  in  Spillers's  affairs,  playing  a  major 
role  in  its  growth  and  diversification;  he  became 
deputy  chairman  in  i960,  chairman  (1965-8), 
and  president  (1969-80).  His  financial  acumen 
and  experience  were  much  in  demand  by  other 
companies  and  between  1954  and  1964  he  vari- 
ously served  as  a  non-executive  director  on  the 
boards  of  Shell,  English  Electric,  and  Dunlop. 
From  1959  to  1964  he  was  chairman  of  the 
Central  Mining  and  Investment  Corporation.  In 
1959  he  was  appointed  to  the  board  of  Midland 
Bank,  whose  deputy  chairman  he  became  in 
1962.  This  signalled  the  final  phase  of  his  busi- 
ness career,  which  was  to  be  devoted  to  the 
banking  world.  In  1964  he  became  chairman,  but 
he  suffered  a  minor  heart  attack  in  1966  and  was 
advised  to  cut  back  his  activities.  He  gave  up  his 
other  directorships,  including  in  1968  the  chair- 
manship of  Spillers. 

As  chairman  of  the  Midland  Bank  he  changed 
the  traditional  role  of  the  office  to  one  of  a  more 
executive  character,  while  bringing  the  board 
much  more  closely  in  touch  with  the  manage- 
ment. He  was  a  strong  advocate  of  diversification 
and  between  1967  and  1974  played  a  direct 
personal  part  in  negotiating  some  major  deals. 
From  his  retirement  in  1975  until  1983  he  was 
president,  an  honorary  office.  While  chairman  of 
the  Midland  he  served  as  chairman  of  the  Com- 
mittee of  London  Clearing  Bankers  and  presi- 
dent of  the  British  Bankers'  Association  (both 
1970-2).  He  also  sat  on  several  government 
review  bodies  and  committees,  and  was  on  the 
governing  body  of  Imperial  College,  London 
(1959-75),  an^  president  of  Epsom  College 
(from  1964).  He  was  knighted  in  1943  and 
appointed  GBE  in  1957. 

Forbes  was  urbane,  courteous,  and  immacu- 
lately dressed,  with  a  slim  figure  and  iron-grey 
hair  always  in  place;  with  a  ready  smile  and  at 
times  acerbic  wit  he  had  great  charm,  particularly 
for  women,  who  also  found  his  soft  Scottish 
accent  an  attraction.  Occasionally  he  could 
infuriate  his  business  colleagues  by  being  indeci- 
sive or  over-playing  the  role  of  'devil's  advocate', 
but  his  even  temper  ensured  that  this  never  led 
to  bitterness.  By  no  account  mean,  he  had  few 
extravagances  and,  despite  his  proclaimed  enjoy- 
ment of  golf,  fishing  on  the  Test,  and  playing 


139 


Forbes 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


bridge  at  Brooks's,  his  work  was  his  paramount 
interest  in  life.  Making  money  was  never  an 
ambition  nor,  considering  his  attainments,  did  he 
do  so  in  any  substantial  way. 

In  1937  he  married  Bina,  daughter  of  Major 
Ronald  Elliott,  of  Krickenbeek.  They  had  no 
children.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1943 
and  in  the  same  year  he  married  Angela  Ger- 
trude, daughter  of  Horace  Ely,  of  private  means, 
of  Arlington  House,  London  SWi.  They  had 
two  daughters  and  a  son.  His  second  wife 
brought  him  a  happy  social  life  that  could  other- 
wise so  easily  have  been  subordinated  to  his 
demanding  career  activities.  Her  sudden  and 
untimely  death  in  1969  was  a  tremendous  blow  to 
him.  He  continued  to  lead  an  active  life  until 
about  1987,  when  he  was  confined  increasingly  to 
his  flat  in  Portman  Square,  where  he  had  lived 
for  over  fifty  years.  He  died  there  2  June  1989, 
from  a  heart  condition. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

W.  Michael  Vernon 

FORD,  Edmund  Brisco  (1 901 -1988),  geneticist, 
was  born  23  April  1901  in  Dalton,  near  Ulver- 
ston  in  Lancashire,  the  only  child  of  the  Revd 
Harold  Dodsworth  Ford,  curate  at  Dalton  in 
Furness,  and  his  wife,  Gertrude  Emma  Bennett. 
His  interest  in  butterflies  started  as  a  boy,  when 
he  and  his  father  observed  each  season  a  colony 
of  the  marsh  fritillary  butterfly  in  Cumberland. 
The  numbers  fluctuated  greatly  and  in  periods  of 
rapid  increase  there  was  an  extraordinary  out- 
burst of  variability  in  pattern.  When  the  popula- 
tion decreased  again  the  common  form  was 
recognizably  distinct  from  that  which  had  pre- 
vailed before  the  period  of  abundance.  An  oppor- 
tunity for  evolution  had  occurred  and  the  insect 
had  made  use  of  it.  Ford  was  educated  at  St  Bees 
School  in  Cumberland  and  then  as  an  under- 
graduate at  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
gained  a  second  class  in  zoology  in  1924.  He 
became  a  demonstrator  in  zoology  and  compar- 
ative anatomy  at  Oxford  in  1930,  then  lecturer 
and  later  reader  (1939)  in  genetics. 

From  1952  to  1969  he  was  director  of  the 
genetics  laboratory  and  from  1963  to  1969  pro- 
fessor of  ecological  genetics  at  Oxford.  He  was 
president  of  the  Genetical  Society  of  Great 
Britain  from  1946  to  1949,  and  was  elected  to  the 
Royal  Society  in  1946.  From  1958  to  1971  he  was 
a  fellow  of  All  Souls  College,  Oxford  (serving 
two  terms  as  senior  dean);  this  was  the  first 
occasion  for  well  over  a  century  that  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society  had  been  an  All  Souls  man. 

Ford  devised  elaborate  techniques  of  mark- 
release-recapture,  which  enabled  his  team  to 
estimate  changes  in  frequency  of  particular  forms 
of  moths  and  butterflies,  and  of  the  genes  con- 
trolling them,  and  to  assess  migration.  This  was 
classic  work,  done  with  Sir  R.  A.  *Fisher,  and 


had  a  far-reaching  effect  on  population  genetics. 
The  surveys  were,  however,  characterized  by  a 
famous  controversy  with  the  American  geneticist 
Sewell  Wright  over  natural  selection  versus 
genetic  drift — a  chance  process  which  can  occur 
particularly  in  small  populations.  The  moths 
provided  an  excellent  example  of  Ford's  concep- 
tion of  balanced  polymorphism  applied  to  the 
study  of  ecological  genetics  and  of  evolution  in 
the  wild.  He  was  the  first  to  predict  that  the 
human  blood  group  polymorphic  systems  would 
influence  susceptibility  to  disease.  The  associa- 
tion of  cancer  of  the  stomach  and  group  A,  and  of 
duodenal  ulcer  and  group  O,  bore  this  out.  In  the 
sickle  cell  haemoglobinopathy  the  dictum  of  the 
advantage  of  the  heterozygote  was  excellently 
demonstrated,  as  this  genotype  protected  chil- 
dren against  malaria. 

Ford  was  an  inspiring  teacher  and  his  influ- 
ence on  genetics  was  worldwide.  He  had  a 
particular  gift  for  picking  good  research  workers 
and  then  giving  them  their  heads.  Philip  *Shep- 
pard,  with  (Sir)  C.  A.  Clarke,  applied  Ford's 
suggestion  about  the  human  blood  groups  to  the 
Rh  (rhesus)  system,  and  with  other  researchers  in 
the  department  of  medicine  at  Liverpool  Uni- 
versity devised  a  successful  method  of  preventing 
Rh  haemolytic  disease  of  the  newborn.  It  was  for 
this  type  of  research  that  the  Nuffield  Founda- 
tion, of  which  Ford  was  a  trustee,  set  up  the  Unit 
of  Medical  Genetics  in  Liverpool:  Ford  himself 
(he  was  always  most  generous)  made  a  large 
personal  contribution  to  this.  It  was  a  nice  quirk 
that  in  the  Rh  polymorphism,  when  the  mother 
is  Rhesus  negative,  her  heterozygous  baby  does 
not  obey  the  rules,  for  it  is  always  at  a  dis- 
advantage. 

In  his  later  years  Ford  became  interested  in 
the  genetics  of  the  gypsy  moth,  Lymantria  dispar, 
in  relation  to  pest  control.  Using  the  hetero- 
pyknotic  body  technique,  he  and  C.  A.  Clarke 
snowed  that  R.  B.  Goldschmidt  was  wrong  in 
thinking  that  unusual  sex  ratios  in  race  crosses  of 
the  moth  were  the  result  of  complete  sex  rever- 
sal. In  fact  the  all-male  broods  were  fully  fertile 
and  the  result  of  the  Haldane  effect.  Gold- 
schmidt had  thought  his  explanation  would  mean 
that  these  males  were  sterile  and  therefore  would 
be  useful  in  combating  the  pest,  but  this  was  not 
the  case. 

Known  as  'Henry'  to  his  friends,  Ford's  inter- 
ests were  very  wide  and  included  heraldry  and 
archaeology.  He  contributed  much  to  the  Pre- 
historic Society,  and  with  J.  S.  Haywood  pro- 
duced Church  Treasures  in  the  Oxford  District  in 
1974.  The  titles  of  his  genetics  books  also  dem- 
onstrate his  versatility — Mendelism  and  Evolution 
(1931),  The  Study  of  Heredity  (1938),  Genetics  for 
Medical  Students  (1942),  Butterflies  (1945),  Moths 
(1955),  Ecological  Genetics  (1964),  Genetic  Poly- 
morphism (1965),  Genetics  and  Adaptation  (1976), 


140 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Fox 


Understanding  Genetics  (1979),  and  Taking  Genet- 
ics into  the  Countryside  (1981).  Several  went  into 
many  editions  and  every  one  is  characterized  by 
lucid  prose.  Butterflies,  much  to  his  surprise, 
proved  a  best  seller. 

He  travelled  widely,  but  in  spite  of  this  he 
knew  virtually  nothing  about  the  wider  political 
world,  and  cared  for  it  even  less.  He  would  not 
allow  radio  and  television  in  his  house  and  he  did 
not  look  at  newspapers.  In  some  respects  time 
stood  still  for  him  and  he  regarded  molecular 
geneticists  as  incomprehensible  interlopers.  He 
had  a  prickly  manner  and  a  feline  skill  in  making 
his  disapproval  felt.  Lecturing  to  an  audience  of 
mixed  sex,  he  always  began  'gentlemen';  once, 
when  only  women  were  present,  he  is  said  to 
have  walked  out. 

In  1954  he  was  awarded  the  Darwin  medal  of 
the  Royal  Society.  He  won  the  Weldon  memorial 
prize  at  Oxford  University  in  1959  and  the  medal 
of  Helsinki  University  in  1967.  He  became  an 
honorary  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physi- 
cians of  London  in  1974  and  was  elected  an 
honorary  D.Sc.  of  Liverpool  University  in  the 
same  year.  He  was  also  an  honorary  fellow  of 
Wadham  College  (1974)  and,  from  1977,  senior 
dean  and  distinguished  fellow  of  All  Souls.  He 
was  a  homosexual  and  misogynist,  and  he  never 
married.  He  died  in  Oxford,  21  January  1988. 

[Munk's  Roll,  vol.  viii,  1989;  R.  Creed  (ed.),  Ecological 
Genetics  and  Evolution:  Essays  in  Honour  of  E.  B.  Ford, 
1071;  personal  knowledge]  C.  A.  Clarke 

FOX,  Felicity  Lane-,  Baroness  Lane-Fox 
(1918-1988),  champion  of  the  disabled.  [See 
Lane-Fox,  Felicity.] 

FOX,  Sir  Theodore  Fortescue  (1899- 1989), 
medical  editor,  was  born  26  November  1899  at 
Srrathpeffer  spa,  Inverness-shire,  the  youngest  in 
the  family  of  two  sons  and  three  daughters  of  Dr 
Robert  Fortescue  Fox,  a  rheumatologist  at  the 
spa  hospital,  and  his  wife,  Catharine  Stuart 
McDougall.  After  Leighton  Park  School  'Rob- 
bie' served  with  the  Friends'  Ambulance  Unit 
in  19 1 8,  and  then  in  1919  won  a  scholarship 
to  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
achieved  a  second  class  in  part  i  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (1921).  He  then  obtained  his 
LRCS  and  MRCP  at  the  London  Hospital  in 
1924.  After  one  appointment  as  a  houseman  at 
the  same  hospital,  he  became  a  ship's  surgeon 
before  joining  the  Lancet  in  1925.  There  he 
remained  until  1964,  save  for  his  service  in  the 
Royal  Army  Medical  Corps  in  1939-44.  He 
became  B.Chir.  in  1926,  proceeded  MD  in  1936, 
and  was  elected  FRCP  in  1946,  two  years  after 
becoming  editor  of  the  Lancet. 

Fox  was  an  excellent  medical  editor.  He  w  rote 
well,  could  readily  reduce  a  full-length  book  to  a 
three-page  article,  and  conducted  negotiations 


with  wit  and  urbanity.  The  rate  at  which  his 
assistant  editors  came  and  went  reflected  his 
exceptionally  high  standards.  Fox's  Lancet  cru- 
cially influenced  two  major  medical  issues:  the 
equitable  delivery  of  health  care,  and  publishing 
and  interpreting  breakthroughs  in  medical 
research.  During  negotiations  about  the  setting 
up  of  a  National  Health  Service  in  1944-8  his 
low-key  editorials  balanced  the  advantages  and 
disadvantages  and  eventually  helped  to  persuade 
the  profession  to  join  the  scheme.  So  esteemed 
then  were  Fox's  contributions,  both  publicly  and 
behind  the  scenes,  that  he  was  offered  a  knight- 
hood, but  declined  lest  he  compromised  the 
Lancet's  independence.  He  thought  that  any  state 
system  might  threaten  the  doctor-patient  rela- 
tionship, something  he  had  found  in  the  USSR 
in  1936  and  recorded  in  the  Lancet  and  his  MD 
thesis;  this  theme  resurfaced  in  postwar  accounts 
of  visits  to  the  USA,  China,  and  the  USSR  again, 
as  well  as  in  major  lectures  (including  the  Harve- 
ian  oration  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  in 
1965).  The  Lancet's  scientific  articles  reported 
man)  postwar  revolutionary  discoveries,  includ- 
ing the  antibiotic  explosion  and  unrecognized 
childhood  conditions  from  adverse  influences 
during  pregnancy,  such  as  thalidomide  or  X-irra- 
diation.  Fox  judged  papers  without  asking  for 
expert  opinions,  a  challengeable  policy,  but  he 
took  only  a  few  days  to  decide  w  hether  to  publish 
a  piece,  and,  equally  attractively,  the  Lancet 
printed  articles  within  a  few  weeks  of  receipt. 

Fox  recruited  experts  to  explain  difficult  con- 
cepts in  editorials  (whose  anonymity  also  chal- 
lenged current  practices),  which  were  then 
rewritten  for  non-experts.  His  Lancet  also  had 
space  for  debate,  for  developing  new  hypotheses, 
and  for  reminding  readers  that  the  traditional 
killers,  such  as  famine,  still  coexisted  with  dis- 
eases of  affluence.  Unlike  many  editors,  Fox 
insisted  that  campaigns  should  be  short  and 
crisp — -to  bore  readers  was  to  risk  losing  every- 
thing. He  explained  these  policies  in  his  Heath 
Clark  lectures  in  1063  (published  in  1965  as 
Crisis  in  Communication),  suggesting  that  the 
literature  explosion  could  be  contained  by  divid- 
ing journals  into  archival  and  newspaper  forms. 

All  this  made  Fox's  Lancet  acknowledged  as 
the  best  medical  journal  in  the  world,  a  most 
readable  and  prestigious  exemplar,  a  fact  that  was 
reflected  by  the  highest  citation  rate  of  any 
journal.  Moreover,  his  public  persona  as  a  fighter 
of  causes  and  as  an  engaging  after-dinner  speaker 
enabled  him  to  promote  new  concepts  (such  as 
universal  family  planning,  health  centres,  and 
postgraduate  medical  education)  in  other  ways. 
Fox  was  prominent  in  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  and,  uniquely  for  a  non-clinician,  was 
a  (narrowly  defeated)  candidate  for  the  presi- 
dency in   1962.  Knighted  in   1962,  and  given 


141 


Fox 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


honorary  degrees  by  the  universities  of  Birming- 
ham (D.Litt.,  1966)  and  Glasgow  (LL  D,  1958), 
after  retirement  in  1964  he  was  director  of  the 
Family  Planning  Association  (I965-7). 

Tall  and  thin,  with  a  slight  stoop,  Fox  had  an 
attractive  mild  stammer,  often  (like  his  lifelong 
friend  Russell  *Brain)  speaking  after  a  discon- 
certing and  lengthy  silence,  but  then  with  good 
sense  and  wit.  A  puritan  in  most  things,  particu- 
larly clothes,  food,  and  drink,  his  main  interests 
after  the  Lancet  were  genealogy,  the  countryside, 
and  his  garden  in  Rotherfield,  Sussex.  As  prizes 
for  his  pre-war  intellectual  parlour  games  he 
produced  old  copies  of  the  rival  British  Medical 
Journal  still  in  their  wrappers. 

In  1935  he  married  Margaret  Eveline,  daugh- 
ter of  William  McDougall,  Presbyterian  minis- 
ter. They  had  four  sons,  the  youngest  of  whom, 
Robin,  became  editor  of  the  Lancet  in  1991.  His 
wife  died  in  1970  and  his  eldest  and  second  sons 
died  in  1983  and  1970  respectively.  Fox  died  at 
Rotherfield  19  June  1989. 

[Guardian,  22  June  1980;  The  Times,  23  June  1989; 
British  Medical  Journal,  1  July  1989;  Lancet,  1  July 
1989;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Stephen  Lock 

FRANCIS,  Sir  Frank  Chalton  (1901-1988), 
director  and  principal  librarian  of  the  British 
Museum,  was  born  5  October  1901  in  Liverpool, 
the  only  child  of  Frank  William  Francis,  provi- 
sion broker,  who  died  in  1914,  and  his  wife, 
Elizabeth  Chalton,  furrier;  both  parents  were 
from  Liverpool.  He  was  educated  at  Liverpool 
Institute;  at  Liverpool  University,  where  he  took 
a  first  in  classics;  and  at  Emmanuel  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  spent  two  years  (1923-5) 
engaged  in  research  upon  early  Greek  philosophy 
and  of  which  he  became  an  honorary  fellow  in 

1959- 

In  1925-6  he  taught  at  Holyhead  County 
School,  but  in  the  latter  year  entered  the  British 
Museum  as  an  assistant  keeper  in  the  department 
of  printed  books.  He  remained  in  the  museum 
for  the  rest  of  his  career.  His  work  lay  in  the 
routines  of  the  department,  including,  from 
1930,  the  revision  of  the  general  catalogue,  but 
like  many  of  his  colleagues  he  was  also  required 
to  perform  special  language  duties.  For  this 
purpose  he  acquired  a  knowledge  of  Swedish 
through  classes  at  University  College  London.  In 
1936  he  joined  the  Bibliographical  Society  and  in 
the  same  year  became  editor  of  its  transactions, 
The  Library.  Francis  served  as  secretary  of  the 
British  Museum  from  1946  to  1947,  and  in  the 
following  year  was  appointed  keeper  of  printed 
books.  He  had  already  served  as  chairman  of  the 
Library  Association's  committee  on  central  cata- 
loguing, and  played  a  major  part  in  the  establish- 
ment of  the  British  National  Bibliography,  which 
was  first  issued  in  1950.  He  was  also  largely 


responsible  for  terminating  the  revision  of  the 
museum's  general  catalogue,  and  replacing  it 
with  a  photolithographically  produced  edition  of 
the  working  copy  of  the  catalogue.  This  was 
published  between  i960  and  1966,  when  Francis 
had  already  become  (in  1959)  director  and  prin- 
cipal librarian  of  the  museum  (until  1968). 

Within  the  Bibliographical  Society,  his  editor- 
ship of  The  Library  (until  1953)  was  combined 
with  the  honorary  secretaryship,  which  he  held 
jointly  or  solely  from  1938  to  1964,  guiding  the 
society  through  World  War  II,  and  editing  its 
Studies  in  Retrospect  (1945).  His  position  in  the 
museum,  his  willingness  to  advise  others,  and  his 
knowledge  of  historical  bibliography  involved 
him  in  the  reconstruction  and  cataloguing  of 
a  number  of  older  libraries,  notably  Lambeth 
Palace  library  and  the  cathedral  libraries.  He 
lectured  in  historical  bibliography  at  University 
College  London  from  1945  to  1959. 

The  British  Museum  had  been  severely  dam- 
aged in  the  war  of  1939-45,  and  as  director 
Francis  continued  the  work  of  his  predecessors 
in  restoring  galleries  and  in  opening  new  ones 
(notably  the  Duveen  gallery  for  the  display  of  the 
Elgin  marbles  in  1962).  He  was  particularly 
concerned  to  make  the  museum's  collections 
more  accessible  to  the  public,  and  a  feature  of  his 
directorship  was  the  expansion  of  the  museum's 
design,  educational,  and  publication  services.  A 
notable  example  of  the  new  attitude  towards 
display  was  the  Greek  and  Roman  life  room 
(i960).  The  museum's  collections  were  greatly 
enriched,  and  one  for  which  he  had  particular 
enthusiasm  was  the  Ilbert  collection  of  clocks 
(1958).  Exhibitions  were  also  brought  in  from 
outside  the  museum.  The  growth  and  improved 
display  of  both  library  and  antiquities  made  the 
museum's  need  for  more  space  imperative. 

In  line  with  his  wish  to  make  the  collections  of 
antiquities  more  accessible,  Francis  was  also 
sympathetic  to  the  growing  demands  that  the 
museum's  library  should  serve  a  wider  public 
than  its  traditional  clientele  of  scholars  who 
sought  manuscripts  and  older  books  in  the 
humanities.  In  particular,  a  need  had  been  voiced 
for  a  greatly  improved  reference  service  in  the 
natural  sciences.  He  believed  that  this  must  be 
met  with  the  aid  of  the  museum's  existing 
privilege  of  legal  deposit,  and  without  jeopardiz- 
ing the  unity  of  the  museum's  library  collec- 
tions. 

The  British  Museum  Act  of  1963,  upon  which 
he  had  a  direct  influence,  embodied  much  of  this 
thinking.  Besides  changing  the  composition  of 
the  body  of  trustees,  it  empowered  them  to  house 
parts  of  the  collections  outside  the  museum 
buildings,  thus  enabling  the  transformation  of 
the  department  of  ethnography  into  the  Museum 
of  Mankind,  creating  a  legal  basis  for  a  new 


142 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Fraser 


library,  and  permitting  the  establishment  of  a 
National  Library  of  Science  and  Invention.  The 
integration  of  the  Patent  Office  library  into  the 
department  of  printed  books,  as  the  basis  of  the 
new  scientific  service,  was  one  of  the  landmarks 
of  his  directorship.  Francis  also  initiated  serious 
planning  for  a  new  library  building.  Architects 
were  engaged,  and  plans  for  a  new  building  on 
the  south  side  of  Great  Russell  Street  had 
reached  an  advanced  stage  when  in  1967  the 
government  revoked  the  decision  to  build  on  the 
Bloomsbury  site.  Thus  the  establishment  of  the 
universal  library  for  which  he  had  worked  was  set 
back,  though  not  permanendy,  by  the  govern- 
ment's ruling,  and  by  the  subsequent  setting  up 
of  the  national  libraries  committee. 

Upon  retirement  in  1968  Francis  moved  to 
Nether  Winchendon  near  Aylesbury,  while  main- 
taining his  links  with  the  bibliographical  and 
library  worlds,  and  in  particular  with  facsimile 
publishing.  He  continued  to  visit  the  United 
States,  where  he  was  highly  regarded  and  had 
many  friends. 

He  was  president  of  the  Association  of  Special 
Libraries  and  Information  Bureaux  (1965-6), 
Bibliographical  Society  (1964-6),  Library  Asso- 
ciation (1965),  Museums  Association  (1965-6), 
and  International  Federation  of  Library  Associa- 
tions (1963-9).  Honorary  degrees  were  awarded 
by  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  by  other  uni- 
versities in  Britain,  Ireland,  and  North  America. 
He  was  appointed  CB  in  1958  and  KCB  in 
i960. 

In  appearance  he  was  strong  of  profile,  of 
medium  height,  and  heavily  built.  He  was  handi- 
capped by  arthritis  in  later  life.  Genial  and 
hospitable  in  private,  he  could  be  forceful  and 
indeed  dominating  in  public  and  official  life. 
He  married  in  1927  Katrina  Florence  ('Kitty'), 
daughter  of  Thomas  McLennon,  warehouseman. 
They  had  two  sons  and  one  daughter.  Francis 
died  15  September  1988  in  Chilton  House, 
Buckinghamshire . 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.J.  Roberts 

FRASER,  Sir  Hugh,  second  baronet  (1936- 
1987),  businessman,  was  born  18  December  1936 
in  Bearsden,  Dunbartonshire,  the  only  son  and 
younger  child  of  Hugh  *Fraser,  later  first  Baron 
Fraser  of  Allander,  warehouseman  and  later 
chairman  and  managing  director  of  the  House  of 
Fraser,  and  his  wife  Kate  Hutcheon,  daughter  of 
Sir  Andrew  Jopp  Williams  Lewis,  of  Aberdeen, 
shipbuilder  and  former  lord  provost  of  Aber- 
deen. He  was  educated  at  St  Mary's  School, 
Melrose,  and  Kelvinside  Academy.  He  left 
school  at  sixteen  to  go  into  the  family  business, 
which  he  joined  on  his  seventeenth  birthday, 


starting  work  in  McDonalds  store  in  Buchanan 
Street,  Glasgow. 

Fraser  worked  closely  with  his  father,  and  in 
1957  he  was  given  overall  responsibility  for  the 
stores  in  Scotland,  to  prepare  him  for  when  he 
would  take  over  the  whole  business.  He  was 
made  assistant  managing  director  in  i960.  Fol- 
lowing his  father's  heart  attack  in  1965,  he  was 
appointed  deputy  chairman. 

Fraser  was  elected  chairman  of  the  House  of 
Fraser  and  of  the  Scottish  Universal  Investment 
Trust  (SUITS),  his  father's  investment  com- 
pany, in  1966,  just  before  his  thirtieth  birthday, 
following  his  father's  death.  He  renounced  the 
peerage,  but  was  not  able  to  disclaim  the  bar- 
onetcy. He  was  the  fourth  Hugh  Fraser  to  head 
the  family  business,  which  his  father  had  built  up 
from  a  group  of  drapery  stores  in  Scotland  into  a 
chain  of  seventy-five  department  stores  headed 
by  Ha r rods  Ltd.  Embarking  on  a  policy  of 
expansion  and  modernization,  he  introduced  a 
new,  more  youthful  style  into  existing  stores.  At 
Barkers  of  Kensington  he  staged  a  Youthquake, 
where  models  danced  along  the  catwalk  to  pop 
music  before  a  large  audience  of  young  people. 
He  opened  boutiques,  shops  within  department 
stores,  in  an  effort  to  revolutionize  the  sale  of 
fashion  wear  in  department  stores  and  attract 
younger  fashion-conscious  people.  One  of  the 
first,  Way-In,  opened  in  Harrods  in  1967.  At  the 
same  time,  while  selling  some  stores,  such  as 
Pontings  in  1970,  he  was  buying  more  stores, 
including  James  Howell  &  Co.  in  Cardiff  and  E. 
Dingle  &  Co.,  a  group  of  stores  in  the  south- 
west, with  the  intention  of  making  the  House  of 
Fraser  the  best  store  in  every  large  town  in 
Britain. 

Between  1966  and  1973  sales  doubled  to  over 
£200  million,  and  profits  doubled  to  over  £10 
million.  But  Fraser  was  fighting  against  competi- 
tion from  smaller  specialist  chains  such  as  Laura 
Ashley,  and  when  the  recession  began  to  bite  in 
1973  he  was  ready  to  give  up  the  House  of 
Fraser,  partly  because  he  had  no  son  to  whom  to 
pass  on  the  business,  but  also  because  he  was 
tired  of  the  relentless  pressure  of  his  hectic 
business  life.  When  Boots  Ltd.  proposed  a 
merger,  Fraser  supported  the  idea,  intending  to 
give  up  the  chairmanship  of  the  House  of  Fraser 
and  concentrate  on  developing  SUITS,  but  the 
proposed  merger  was  blocked  by  the  Monopolies 
and  Mergers  Commission  in  1974,  and  Fraser 
decided  to  stay  on. 

The  years  after  1973  were  difficult,  and  a 
Stock  Exchange  enquiry  in  1976  revealed  that 
Fraser  had  been  selling  his  House  of  Fraser 
shares  to  finance  his  gambling.  In  1976  he  was 
fined  £600  under  the  Companies  Act  for  the 
misclassification  of  a  loan,  and  for  improper 
share  dealings. 


H3 


Fraser 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


The  company  Lonrho  first  became  involved  in 
the  fortunes  of  the  House  of  Fraser  in  1977, 
when  it  acquired  nearly  30  per  cent  of  the  shares, 
and  Roland  ('Tiny')  Rowland,  the  managing 
director,  and  Baron  *Duncan-Sandys,  the  chair- 
man, joined  the  board  of  directors.  Lonrho 
gained  control  of  SUITS  in  1978  after  buying 
Fraser's  personal  stake,  and  in  1980  turned  its 
attention  to  acquiring  the  House  of  Fraser,  and 
especially  Harrods.  In  1980  Lonrho  started  to 
harass  the  House  of  Fraser  board,  questioning 
decisions  and  circularizing  shareholders.  After 
Fraser  and  Rowland  were  reconciled  in  January 
1 98 1,  Fraser  lost  the  support  of  the  directors, 
and  he  was  removed  as  chairman  at  the  end  of 
January.  He  subsequently  resigned  from  the 
chairmanship  of  Harrods,  which  he  had  just 
resumed,  after  giving  it  up  in  1973.  Lonrho  then 
launched  a  take-over  bid,  which  was  turned 
down  by  the  Monopolies  and  Mergers  Commis- 
sion in  December  1981.  Fraser  resigned  from  the 
board  in  February  1982. 

After  1 98 1  Fraser  spent  most  of  his  time  in 
Scotland,  settling  into  a  quieter  business  life  once 
he  had  severed  his  connections  with  the  House  of 
Fraser.  He  built  up  a  chain  of  menswear  shops, 
the  Sir  Hugh  &  Sir  group,  which  he  later  sold, 
and  he  held  a  number  of  directorships,  mainly  in 
Scotland,  as  well  as  the  chairmanship  of  Dum- 
barton Football  Club. 

Fraser  was  popular  in  Glasgow.  He  worked 
hard  on  behalf  of  the  charitable  trust  set  up  by 
his  father,  the  Hugh  Fraser  Trust,  through 
which  he  bought  the  island  of  Iona  for  the 
National  Trust  of  Scotland  as  a  memorial  to  his 
father,  and  he  gave  his  Mugdock  estate  near 
Glasgow  to  form  the  Mugdock  country  park. 
Although  he  was  not  interested  in  politics,  he 
joined  the  Scottish  National  Party  in  1974,  partly 
out  of  anger  at  the  Conservative  government, 
which  had  referred  the  Boots  merger  to  the 
Monopolies  Commission.  He  served  for  a  time 
on  the  Scottish  Development  Council. 

A  man  of  great  personal  charm  and  charisma, 
described  by  'Tiny'  Rowland  as  'a  charming  man 
but  a  professional  loser',  Fraser  worked  long 
hours  and  was  totally  committed  to  the  expan- 
sion and  success  of  the  House  of  Fraser.  But, 
especially  after  1973,  he  became  addicted  to 
gambling,  playing  for  high  stakes,  and  was 
rumoured  to  have  lost  over  £1  million.  He  was 
chosen  as  Young  Businessman  of  the  Year  by  the 
Guardian  in  1973,  and  was  awarded  an  honorary 
doctorate  by  the  University  of  Stirling  in  1985. 

He  was  very  handsome  as  a  young  man,  dark 
haired  and  popular  with  the  sales  assistants  in 
the  House  of  Fraser  stores,  which  he  visited 
regularly.  In  1962  he  married  Patricia  Mary, 
daughter  of  John  Bowie,  of  Milngavie,  Dunbar- 
tonshire, from  an  old  Glasgow  family.  They  were 
divorced  in   1971  and  in   1973  he  married  an 


international  showjumper,  Aileen  Margaret  (died 
1984),  daughter  of  George  Paterson  Ross.  They 
were  separated  some  years  before  the  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1982.  There  were  three  daugh- 
ters from  the  first  marriage.  In  1979  Lynda 
Taylor,  whom  his  friends  thought  would  become 
his  third  wife,  died  of  carbon  monoxide  poison- 
ing in  a  garage  of  his  lodge  on  Loch  Lomond.  In 
1982  he  was  to  marry  Annabell  Finlay,  but  he 
cancelled  the  marriage  a  few  days  before  it  was 
due  to  take  place.  Fraser  died  from  lung  cancer  5 
May  1987  in  Mugdock,  near  Milngavie,  Dunbar- 
tonshire, Scotland. 

[The  Times,  5  January  1981  and  6  May  1987;  Guardian, 
22  February  1973;  Michael  Moss  and  Alison  Turton,  A 
Legend  of  Retailing:  House  of  Fraser,  1989;  House  of 
Fraser  archives  in  the  Business  Records  Collection, 
Glasgow  University.]  Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

FRASER,  (Walter)  Ian  (Reid),  Baron  Fraser 
of  Tullybelton  (1911-1989),  lord  of  appeal, 
was  born  in  Glasgow  3  February  191 1,  the  only- 
child  of  Alexander  Reid  Fraser,  stockbroker,  and 
his  wife,  Margaret  Russell  MacFarlane.  He  was 
educated  at  Repton,  where  he  distinguished  him- 
self academically.  He  then  became  a  scholar  of 
Balliol  College,  Oxford,  and,  after  taking  a  first- 
class  honours  degree  in  philosophy,  politics,  and 
economics  (1932),  completed  his  education  in  the 
University  of  Glasgow,  where  he  graduated 
LL  B  in  1935. 

In  1936  he  was  admitted  to  the  Faculty  of 
Advocates  and  soon  demonstrated  the  remark- 
able breadth  of  his  legal  quality  both  in  practice 
and  in  lecturing  in  constitutional  law,  first  at 
Glasgow  University  (1936)  and,  after  World  War 
II,  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh  (1948).  His 
book,  Outline  of  Constitutional  Lam  (first  edn. 
1938  and  second  edn.  1948),  became  one  of  the 
standard  textbooks  of  the  law  degree  courses  in 
Glasgow  and  elsewhere,  and  was  a  work  which 
readily  found  its  place  in  the  libraries  of  practi- 
tioners. He  was  intellectually  agile,  clear  and 
simple  in  his  use  of  language,  and,  although  not 
the  outstanding  advocate  of  his  generation, 
excelled  in  debate  and  in  appellate  work,  partic- 
ularly in  those  cases  which  appealed  to  his 
academic  cast  of  mind. 

In  1939  his  legal  career  was  interrupted  by  the 
war.  On  its  outbreak  he  was  a  subaltern  in  a 
Territorial  Army  anti-aircraft  battery  com- 
manded by  a  fellow  member  of  the  faculty.  He 
joined  the  Royal  Artillery,  reached  the  rank  of 
major,  and  served  in  Burma,  becoming  deputy 
assistant  adjutant-general  in  1945.  After  the  war, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  his  practice  was  almost 
exclusively  civil,  he  accepted  service  as  an  advo- 
cate depute,  finally  becoming  home  depute,  the 
senior  figure  in  the  Crown  Office  under  the  law 
officers.  In  1953  he  took  silk  and  in  1959  was 


144 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Flicker 


elected  dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Advocates,  an 
office  which  he  held  until  1964,  when  he  became 
a  senator  of  the  College  of  Justice  in  Scotland 
(until  1974),  with  the  judicial  title  of  Lord 
Fraser. 

As  a  judge  he  was  not  only  respected  but  liked 
by  the  bar,  and  in  both  the  Outer  House  and  the 
Inner  his  acute  intellect,  coupled  with  the  inher- 
ent diffidence  of  his  quiet  personality,  was 
matched  by  his  invariable  courtesy,  charm,  and  a 
healthy  appetite  for  hard  work.  In  1974  he 
became  a  lord  of  appeal  in  ordinary,  privy 
councillor,  and  life  peer,  and  in  the  eleven 
succeeding  years  in  which  he  sat  in  the  appellate 
committee  of  the  House  of  Lords  (until  1985) 
and  in  the  Privy  Council,  he  made  a  notable 
contribution  to  the  development  and  clarification 
of  the  law,  delivering  many  lucid  speeches  on 
Scots  appeals  to  the  House  of  Lords.  For  exam- 
ple, in  1980  he  clarified  the  duty  of  care  owed  by 
the  occupier  of  premises  to  firemen  fighting  a  fire 
there  and  in  1983  declared  that  the  Court  of 
Session's  supervisor}  jurisdiction  over  decisions 
of  administrative  bodies  was  not  enjoyed  by  the 
Sheriff  Court. 

While  he  was  an  advocate  he  was  active  in 
politics  and  unsuccessfully  contested  the  East 
Edinburgh  constituency  as  a  Unionist  in  the 
general  election  of  1955.  He  became  a  member  of 
the  law  reform  committee  (Scodand)  in  1954, 
and  of  the  royal  commission  on  the  police 
(1960-2).  After  he  entered  the  House  of  Lords 
he  was  much  concerned  with  legislation,  espe- 
cially with  bills  dealing  with  the  administration 
of  justice.  When  he  retired  from  full-time  judi- 
cial work  he  became  chairman  of  the  university 
commissioners,  dealing  with  university  and  col- 
lege constitutions  which  had  been  affected  by  the 
Education  Reform  Act  of  1988. 

Fraser  was  a  member  of  the  Queen's  Body 
Guard  for  Scotland  (Royal  Company  of  Arch- 
ers). In  1975  he  became  an  honorary  master  of 
the  bench  at  Gray's  Inn,  and  in  1981  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  Balliol.  He  also 
became  an  honorary  LL  D  of  Glasgow  (1970) 
and  Edinburgh  (1978). 

He  was  a  competent  yachtsman  but  his  main 
hobbies  were  shooting  and  walking,  which  he 
undertook  on  his  small  estate  at  Tullybelton  in 
Perthshire.  On  foot,  indeed,  the  normal  pace  of 
his  tall  spare  frame  over  the  ground  was  too  rapid 
for  most  of  his  friends,  who  preferred  to  meet 
him  when  he  had  come  to  rest.  Shy  and  reserved, 
he  loved  music  and  conversation.  On  8  Novem- 
ber 1943  he  married  (Mary  Ursula)  Cynthia 
(Gwendolen),  the  only  daughter  of  Colonel  Ian 
Harrison  Macdonell,  of  the  Highland  Light 
Infantry.  They  had  one  son.  On  17  February 
1989  Fraser  died  in  a  road  accident  en  route  from 
Tullybelton  House  in  Bankfoot  to  Edinburgh,  on 


the  M90  between  Perth  and  Edinburgh.  He  had 
been  driving  his  car  in  blizzard  conditions. 

{Balliol  College  Record,  1989;  records  of  the  Faculty  of 
Advocates,  Advocates'  library,  Parliament  House, 
Edinburgh;  personal  knowledge.]  Em  sue 

FRICKER,  Peter  Racine  (1 920-1 990),  com- 
poser and  teacher,  was  born  5  September  1920  in 
Ealing,  London,  the  elder  child  and  only  son  of 
Edward  Racine  Flicker,  civil  servant,  and  his 
wife,  Deborah  Alice  Parr,  nurse.  His  middle 
name  came  from  his  great-grandmother,  who 
was  a  direct  descendant  of  the  French  dramatist. 
He  was  educated  at  St  Paul's  School,  London. 
His  father  died  when  Peter  was  fifteen  and  about 
to  enter  the  merchant  navy,  but  this  plan  was 
prevented  by  his  poor  eyesight.  He  began  study- 
ing organ  as  a  schoolboy  with  Henry  Wilson, 
then  entered  the  Royal  College  of  Music  in  1937, 
where  he  continued  his  organ  studies  with  (Sir) 
Ernest  *Bullock  and  piano  with  Henry  Wilson. 
He  was  assistant  organist  to  Wilson  while  con- 
tinuing his  studies.  Before  the  war,  he  also 
attended  classes  at  Morley  College.  An  early 
distinction  was  his  election  as  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Organists  at  the  age  of  nineteen. 
He  studied  theory  and  composition  with  R.  O. 
Morris. 

In  1940  his  studies  were  interrupted  by  the 
war,  during  which  he  served  as  a  radio  operator 
in  the  Royal  Air  Force,  in  signals  and  intelli- 
gence. It  was  at  the  RCM  that  he  had  met 
(Audrey)  Helen,  a  pianist,  the  daughter  of  Ray- 
monde  William  Lee  Clench,  chartered  account- 
ant. They  married  in  1943,  the  same  year  he  was 
posted  to  India  to  serve  as  an  intelligence  officer. 
There  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 

After  the  war  years  he  resumed  his  composi- 
tion studies  with  Matyas  Seiber,  who  became  a 
strong  influence  and  a  close  friend  and  colleague 
at  Morley  College,  in  London.  During  his  years 
there  he  conducted,  acted  as  rehearsal  pianist  for 
the  choir,  and,  together  with  his  wife,  made  a 
living  copying  and  arranging  music.  From  1952 
to  1964  he  held  a  dual  post  as  director  of  music 
at  Morley  College,  where  he  succeeded  (Sir) 
Michael  Tippett,  and  was  also  professor  of  com- 
position at  the  RCM.  His  career  as  a  composer 
was  launched  when  he  won  the  A.  J.  Clements 
prize  for  his  Wind  Quintet  in  1947,  which  was 
quickly  followed  by  the  Koussevitzky  prize  for 
his  First  Symphony  in  1949,  and  by  winning  the 
Arts  Council  Festival  of  Britain  competition  for 
young  composers  prize  for  his  Violin  Concerto  in 
195 1.  These  distinctions  made  him  one  of  the 
most  prominent  British  composers  of  his  gen- 
eration. 

His  music  represented  a  departure  from  the 
nationalistic  pastoralism  coined  by  Ralph 
•Vaughan  Williams,  for  he  was  one  of  the  first  in 
England  to  assimilate  the  contributions  of  Bela 


145 


Fricker 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Bartok,  Arnold  Schoenberg,  and  Igor  Stravinsky, 
and  to  synthesize  these  influences  with  an 
expressively  dissonant  style  of  his  own.  During 
the  1950s  he  composed  seven  him  scores  and  six 
works  for  radio.  Other  important  works  during 
this  highly  prolific  period  include  two  more 
symphonies  (nos.  2  and  3),  'Dance  Scene'  (1954), 
'Litany'  (1955),  and  the  large  oratorio  'The 
Vision  of  Judgement'  (1956-8). 

In  1964  he  was  invited  to  the  University  of 
California  at  Santa  Barbara,  as  visiting  professor. 
He  became  enamoured  of  the  school  and  its 
surroundings  and  excited  about  the  possibility  of 
establishing  a  centre  for  compositional  study  at 
the  university.  In  1965  he  was  appointed  pro- 
fessor. His  wife  joined  him  in  Santa  Barbara,  and 
they  lived  in  nearby  Goleta  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 
He  held  the  Dorothy  and  Sherill  C.  Corwin  chair 
in  music  and  had  a  joint  appointment  in  the 
university's  innovative  College  of  Creative  Stud- 
ies. He  was  a  dedicated,  patient  teacher,  and 
provided  guidance  to  many  composition  students 
over  the  years.  He  was  a  tall,  imposing  figure  of 
a  man,  but  gentle  and  rather  shy  and  reserved. 
His  interests  included  bird-watching,  word  puz- 
zles, mystery  novels,  travel,  and  cats. 

His  compositional  output  was  extensive,  and 
he  was  steadily  prolific  throughout  his  entire 
career.  His  oeuvre  included  five  symphonies, 
three  string  quartets,  a  ballet,  an  oratorio,  con- 
cern, various  choral  works,  numerous  chamber 
works,  and  others  in  all  genres  except  staged 
opera,  comprising  a  total  of  over  160  works  in  all. 
His  reputation  was  international,  and  he  com- 
posed works  for  important  performers  and 
ensembles  such  as  Julian  Bream,  Dennis  Brain, 
Henryk  Szering,  the  Amadeus  Quartet,  and  the 
Royal  Philharmonic  Orchestra.  In  1976  his  Sym- 
phony no.  5  was  given  its  premier  by  the  BBC 
Symphony  Orchestra  to  commemorate  the 
twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  the  Royal  Festival 
Hall. 

His  honours  and  awards  included  an  honorary 
RAM  (1966),  an  honorary  doctorate  in  music 
from  the  University  of  Leeds  (1958),  the  free- 
dom of  the  City  of  London,  and  the  Order  of 
Merit  of  West  Germany  (1965).  He  was  an 
honorary  professional  fellow  and  research  pro- 
fessor in  the  Institute  of  Creative  Arts  of  Uni- 
versity College,  Cardiff,  as  well  as  an  active 
member  of  the  International  Society  for  Contem- 
porary Music,  the  Society  of  Composers  Inter- 
national (formerly  the  American  Society  of 
University  Professors),  and  the  Composers' 
Guild  of  Great  Britain  (of  which  he  was  elected 
vice-president  in  1986).  During  the  summers  of 
1984-6  he  served  as  president  of  the  Cheltenham 
international  festival. 

In  1989  he  was  appointed  composer-in-resi- 
dence  of  the  Santa  Barbara  Symphony  Orches- 
tra, for  which  he  composed  an  orchestral  work, 


'Walk  by  Quiet  Waters'  (1988).  It  was  while  he 
was  working  on  a  second  work  for  them  and 
looking  forward  to  retirement  that  he  died  1 
February  1990  in  Santa  Barbara,  of  cancer  of  the 
throat  and  larynx. 

[New  Grove  Dictionary  of  Mustc  and  Musicians,  ed. 
Stanley  Sadie,  vol.  vi,  1980;  Dictionary  of  Contemporary 
Music,  ed.  John  Vinton,  1974;  Fricker  archives,  Arts 
Library,  University  of  California,  Santa  Barbara;  pri- 
vate information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  J.  Carbon 

FROST,  Dora  (1901-1989),  UK  representative 
at  the  United  Nations  in  the  1960s,  and  wife  of 
Hugh  Gaitskell,  leader  of  the  Labour  party.  [See 
Gaitskell,  Anna  Deborah  ('Dora').] 

FRY,  (Edwin)  Maxwell  (1899-1987),  architect, 
was  born  2  August  1899  in  Wallasey,  Cheshire, 
the  second  of  four  children  and  elder  son  of 
Ambrose  Fry,  commercial  traveller  and  later 
chemical  manufacturer,  and  his  wife,  Lily 
Thomson.  Fry  was  educated  at  the  Liverpool 
Institute.  He  served  in  the  King's  Liverpool 
Regiment  at  the  end  of  World  War  I  and  in  the 
Allied  occupation  of  Germany.  An  ex-service- 
man's grant  enabled  him  to  enter  Liverpool 
University  school  of  architecture  in  1920,  under 
Professor  (Sir)  Charles  *Reilly.  A  distinguished 
graduate  of  1924,  Fry  worked  in  New  York 
before  joining  the  office  of  Thomas  Adams  and 
F.  Longstreth  Thompson,  specialists  in  town 
planning,  becoming  a  partner  in  1930,  after  a 
period  away  as  chief  assistant  in  the  architect's 
department  of  Southern  Railways.  His  interest  in 
planning,  an  important  component  of  the  Liver- 
pool course,  was  to  remain  with  him.  As  a 
partner  in  Adams,  Thompson  &  Fry,  he 
designed  a  garden  village  at  Kemsley  near  Sit- 
tingbourne  in  1929,  and  a  house  at  Wentworth, 
Surrey,  in  1932,  in  the  refined  neo-Georgian 
style  typical  of  the  Liverpool  school  in  the 
1920s. 

The  Canadian  designer  Wells  Coates  met  Fry 
while  working  in  the  Adams  and  Thompson 
office  in  1924,  and  encouraged  him  to  set  aside 
his  classical  training  and  follow  the  example  of 
Le  Corbusier,  but  Fry's  conversion  to  Modern- 
ism was  gradual,  and  came  principally  through 
his  membership  of  the  Design  and  Industries 
Association,  which  introduced  him  to  modern 
German  housing.  He  was  also  influenced  by  the 
Congres  International  de  l'Architecture  Mod- 
erne,  and  was  closely  involved  in  its  English 
branch,  the  Modern  Architectural  Research 
Group  (MARS),  following  its  establishment  in 
1933.  The  conversion  is  evident  at  Sassoon 
House  in  Peckham  (1934),  a  block  of  working- 
class  flats  he  designed  with  the  engineer  Kirk- 
wood  Dodds. 

Fry  became  well  known  for  two  of  the  most 
elegant  white  Modernist  houses  of  the  mid- 


146 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Fuchs 


1930s:  Sun  House,  Frognal  Lane,  Hampstead 
(1936)  and  Miramonte  in  Kingston  upon 
Thames  (1937).  With  the  housing  consultant 
Elizabeth  Denby  he  carried  out  an  extensive 
social  housing  scheme  at  Kensal  House,  Lad- 
broke  Grove  (1936),  with  curving  blocks  of  flats 
and  a  circular  nursery  school,  a  model  of  pro- 
gressive architecture  well  publicized  by  the  cli- 
ents, the  Gas  Light  and  Coke  Company. 

Fry  assisted  Walter  Gropius  (1883-1969),  the 
former  director  of  the  Bauhaus  at  Weimar  and 
Dessau,  on  his  arrival  in  England  in  1934,  by 
setting  up  a  partnership  which  enabled  Gropius 
to  practise  in  England  until  his  emigration  to  the 
USA  in  March  1937.  This  was  a  distinction  from 
which  Fry  benefited,  and  his  graphic  skills  and 
sympathetic  attitude  helped  in  the  realization  of 
Gropius's  ideas  in  an  alien  culture.  Their  designs 
were  not  fully  collaborative  and  can  be  separately 
attributed.  To  reduce  its  cost,  Fry  reworked 
Gropius's  design  for  Impington  Village  College, 
Cambridgeshire,  and  supervised  its  construction 
after  Gropius's  departure.  In  1939  he  became  a 
fellow  of  the  Royal  Institute  of  British  Archi- 
tects, of  which  he  was  vice-president  in 
1961-2. 

Fry  served  in  the  Royal  Engineers  from  1939 
to  1944,  reaching  the  rank  of  major,  and  ended 
the  war  as  town-planning  adviser  to  the  resident 
minister  in  west  Africa.  He  worked  during  the 
early  period  of  the  war  on  a  plan  for  London 
presented  by  MARS,  some  of  which  is  described 
in  his  book  Fine  Building  (1944),  a  testimony  to 
his  desire  to  efface  the  urban  forms  of  the 
northern  working-class  suburbs  known  in  his 
childhood. 

In  the  immediate  postwar  period,  Fry  gath- 
ered a  group  of  talented  young  assistants,  and 
thereafter  was  to  work  in  partnership  with  his 
second  wife,  the  architect  Jane  Drew.  The  part- 
nership designed  Passfield  Flats,  Lewisham 
(1949),  the  Riverside  restaurant  for  the  South 
Bank  exhibition  (1951),  and  many  educational 
buildings  and  offices  in  Ghana  and  Nigeria 
between  1946  and  1961,  notably  Ibadan  Uni- 
versity, Nigeria.  These  displayed  the  adaptability 
of  Modernist  methods  to  local  climatic  and 
cultural  conditions,  and  Fry  and  Drew  were 
instrumental  in  the  establishment  of  a  school  of 
tropical  architecture  at  the  Architectural  Associa- 
tion in  London. 

In  1 95 1  Fry  and  Drew  were  invited  to  join  the 
design  team  for  the  new  capital  of  the  Punjab  at 
Chandigarh  and  were  influential  in  causing  Le 
Corbusier  and  Pierre  Jeanneret  to  be  invited  as 
architects  for  the  secretariat  and  law  courts.  Fry 
and  his  wife  stayed  in  India  for  three  years, 
working  mainly  on  housing  within  Le  Corbu- 
sier's  masterplan.  Fry,  who  was  unique  in  his 
connection  with  two  of  modern  architecture's 
masters,  was  content  to  take  a  less  conspicuous 


role.  He  continued  to  work  until  the  early  1970s, 
designing  notable  buildings  such  as  the  head 
offices  for  Pilkington  Brothers  at  St  Helen's 
(1959-65)  and  the  mid-Glamorgan  crematorium, 
a  romantic  late  design  revealing  Fry's  attachment 
to  Scandinavian  architecture.  In  retirement  he 
devoted  much  time  to  painting.  Autobiographical 
Sketches  (1975),  the  last  of  his  many  publications, 
revealed  an  emotional,  even  sentimental  aspect  of 
his  character  which  could  hardly  be  deduced 
from  his  buildings.  His  friends  and  colleagues 
remember  him  as  an  ebullient,  optimistic,  uncon- 
ventional but  practical  man.  He  was  slim  and 
elegant  in  appearance,  with  a  high  forehead  and 
expressive  mouth.  In  1964  he  was  awarded  the 
RIB  A  Royal  gold  medal.  He  was  an  honorary 
LL  D  of  Ibadan  Universitv.  He  was  appointed 
CBE  (1955),  ARA  (1966),  and  RA  (1972). 

In  1926  Fry  married  Ethel,  a  secretary,  the 
divorced  wife  of  Charles  Leese  and  daughter  of 
Walter  Speakman,  schoolteacher.  She  was  his 
elder  by  twelve  years;  they  had  one  daughter. 
The  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1942,  and  in  the 
same  year  Fry  married  Joyce  Beverly  ('Jane'), 
divorced  wife  of  James  Thomas  Alhston  and 
daughter  of  Harry  Guy  Radcliffe  Drew,  caterer. 
There  were  no  children  of  this  marriage.  Fry- 
died  3  September  1987  at  Darlington  Memorial 
Hospital. 

[Maxwell  Fry,  Autobiographical  Sketches,  1975,  and  Art 
in  a  Machine  Age,  1969;  private  information.] 

Alan  Powers 

FUCHS,  (Emil  Julius)  Klaus  (1911-1988),  the- 
oretical physicist,  was  born  29  December  191 1  in 
Russelsheim,  Germany,  the  third  child  in  the 
family  of  two  sons  and  two  daughters  of  Emil 
Fuchs  and  his  wife,  Else  Wagner.  His  father, 
renowned  for  his  high  Christian  principles,  was  a 
pastor  in  the  Lutheran  church  who  joined  the 
Quakers  later  in  life  and  eventually  became 
professor  of  theology  at  Leipzig  University.  The 
women  in  the  family  were  all  mentally  unstable. 
His  grandmother,  mother,  and  one  sister  all  took 
their  own  lives,  while  his  other  sister  was  diag- 
nosed as  schizophrenic. 

He  went  to  school  in  Eisenach  and  continued 
his  education  in  the  universities  of  Leipzig  and 
Kiel.  It  was  at  the  latter  that  he  became  involved 
in  politics  and,  after  some  soul-searching,  doubt- 
less inspired  by  his  father's  idealistic  attitude,  the 
Communist  party.  After  an  altercation  with  the 
Nazis  in  1933  he  crossed  the  border  into  France 
and  then,  with  the  help  of  family  connections, 
travelled  to  Bristol,  where  he  studied  under  (Sir) 
Nevill  Mott  and  obtained  a  Ph.D.  He  took  a 
D.Sc.  at  Edinburgh  University  under  the  guid- 
ance of  Max  Born,  one  of  the  pioneers  of  the  new 
quantum  mechanics.  After  the  outbreak  of  war  in 


H7 


Fuchs 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


1939  he  was  interned  with  other  German  refu- 
gees in  camps  on  the  Isle  of  Man  and  in  Canada 
from  June  to  December  1940. 

In  1 94 1  he  was  recruited  by  (Sir)  Rudolf 
Peierls  to  work  on  Tube  Alloys,  the  code  name 
for  the  British  project  to  develop  the  atomic 
bomb.  The  following  year,  in  spite  of  wartime 
restrictions,  he  was  granted  British  nationality  as 
a  special  case,  and  signed  the  Official  Secrets  Act. 
In  1943  he  went  with  Peierls  to  join  the  Man- 
hattan District,  which  was  the  code  name  given 
to  the  American  atomic  bomb  programme.  He 
was  posted  to  New  York  and  then  to  Los  Alamos 
in  New  Mexico,  where  he  remained  until  after 
the  resulting  bombs  had  destroyed  Hiroshima 
and  Nagasaki.  In  1946  he  returned  to  England, 
where  he  was  appointed  by  (Sir)  John  *Cockcroft 
as  head  of  the  theoretical  physics  division  at  the 
newly  created  Atomic  Energy  Research  Estab- 
lishment at  Harwell,  then  under  the  Ministry  of 
Supply.  He  was  given  the  Civil  Service  rank 
of  principal  scientific  officer.  He  soon  became 
senior  principal  and  in  1949  deputy  chief  scien- 
tific officer.  He  took  personal  charge  of  the 
mathematical  work  which  underpinned  the 
development  of  nuclear  power. 

In  January  1950  he  was  arrested  for  transmit- 
ting significant  information  about  Anglo-Amer- 
ican work  on  nuclear  weapons,  including  the 
hydrogen  bomb,  to  secret  agents  of  the  Soviet 
Union.  This  he  had  been  doing  continuously 
since  1941,  after  Germany  invaded  Russia.  He 
had  felt  so  strongly  that  the  details  of  atomic 
research  should  be  shared  with  the  Soviet  Union 
that  he  made  contact  with  a  communist  colleague 
he  had  known  in  Germany.  He  had  been  put  in 
touch  with  someone  working  for  the  Soviet 
embassy.  He  .was  sentenced  to  fourteen  years' 
imprisonment  in  February  and  his  British  cit- 
izenship was  revoked  in  December  1950.  Fuchs 
was  released  on  23  June  1959  after  serving  nine 
years  and  four  months.  Immediately  after  leaving 
Wakefield  prison  he  joined  his  father  and  one  of 
his  nephews  in  what  had  become  the  German 
Democratic  Republic,  where  he  was  appointed 
deputy  director  of  the  Institute  for  Nuclear 
Research  in  Rossendorf  near  Dresden;  he  retired 
in  1979.  He  never  returned  to  the  West. 

In  1959  he  married  a  friend  from  his  student 
days,  a  fellow  communist  called  Margarete 
('Greta')  Keilson,  the  widow  of  Max  Keilson, 
president  of  the  Association  of  Journalists  in  the 
GDR.  They  had  no  children.  Fuchs  achieved 
great  prominence  in  East  Germany  and  was 
elected  to  the  Academy  of  Sciences  and  the 
Communist  Party  Central  Committee.  He  was 
decorated  with  both  the  Order  of  Merit  of  the 
Fatherland  and  the  Order  of  Karl  Marx.  He  had 
probably  saved  the  Soviet  Union  two  years'  work 
on  nuclear  weapons. 

Of  slight  build,  five  feet  nine  inches  in  height, 


with  fast  receding  hair,  he  was  physically  attrac- 
tive with  a  warm  smile,  although  he  often  seemed 
frail.  Always  tidily  dressed  and  with  impeccable 
manners,  he  could  be  kind  and  sensitive  towards 
his  friends.  His  legendary  shyness  and  aloof 
manner,  however,  did  not  always  quite  succeed 
in  concealing  his  innate  arrogance  and  conceit 
and  his  belief  that  he  was  uniquely  valuable.  He 
was  possessed  of  formidable  self-control.  Short- 
sighted and  noticeably  left-handed,  he  was  also  a 
heavy  smoker,  drank  quite  a  lot,  and  suffered 
from  respiratory  problems,  as  did  his  older 
brother,  who  had  tuberculosis  for  many  years. 

Whilst  in  the  USA  and  Britain  he  enjoyed 
social  occasions  and  prided  himself  on  being  a 
good  dancer.  He  was  also  keen  on  family  life  and 
frequently  dropped  in  on  his  married  friends. 
Although  he  deliberately  kept  his  distance  from 
eligible  women  of  his  own  age,  he  was  not 
homosexual.  It  is  believed  that  he  formed  a 
relationship  at  Harwell  with  an  older  woman  who 
had  psychiatric  problems.  She  was  married  to  a 
senior  colleague  of  his  at  Harwell  who  was  also 
his  close  friend.  Fuchs  died  in  Dresden,  28 
January  1988. 

[Kmil  Fuchs,  Mein  Leben,  2  vols.,  Leipzig,  1959; 
Norman  Moss,  Klaus  Fuchs,  1987;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Mary  Flowers 

FULLER,  Peter  Michael  (1947- 1990),  art  critic 
and  magazine  editor,  was  born  31  August  1947  in 
Damascus,  the  second  child  and  elder  son  in  the 
family  of  two  sons  and  a  daughter  of  Harold 
William  Charles  Fuller,  general  medical  practi- 
tioner, and  his  wife,  Marjorie  Dale  Noyes,  mid- 
wife. His  childhood  was  largely  spent  in 
Eastleigh,  a  Hampshire  railway  town,  where  the 
family  attended  the  Union  Baptist  church  on 
Sundays.  Fuller  was  baptized  by  complete 
immersion  in  1961,  just  before  he  went  away  to 
board  at  Epsom  College,  a  public  school  closely 
connected  with  the  medical  profession.  Although 
he  liked  the  fact  that  both  John  Piper  and 
Graham  *Sutherland  went  to  Epsom  College, 
Fuller  was  unhappy  there.  He  doubted  his  reli- 
gious convictions  and  felt  bewildered  by  the  loss 
of  earlier  certainties. 

The  sense  of  confusion  intensified  while  he 
read  English  at  Peterhouse,  Cambridge,  between 
1965  and  1968.  He  obtained  a  second  class 
(division  II)  in  both  parts  of  the  English  tripos 
(1967  and  1968).  He  later  described  his  time  at 
Cambridge  as  'a  period  of  personal  crisis',  and 
found  his  Baptist  faith  increasingly  inadequate. 
Psychiatric  problems  aggravated  his  disquiet, 
and  he  consulted  a  psychoanalyst  in  his  last  year 
at  Cambridge.  By  that  time  Fuller  had  fallen 
under  the  influence  of  Marxism  and  the  far  left. 
Revolution  was  in  the  air,  and  Marxist  literature 
formed  much  of  his  reading.  But  he  also  staged 
an  exhibition  of  his  paintings  at  the  Cambridge 


148 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Fulton 


Union,  and  in  1967  met  his  future  wife,  Colette 
Marie  Mejean,  a  French  student  whose  father 
was  a  village  postmaster.  They  married  in  1971, 
and  five  years  later  their  only  child,  Sylvia  Leda, 
was  born. 

After  Cambridge  Fuller  worked  at  first  as  a 
journalist  on  City  Press,  a  City  of  London  news- 
paper, whose  motto  was  'The  Voice  of  Honest 
Capitalism1.  His  interest  in  Marxism  intensified, 
and  he  began  writing  for  the  underground 
press — most  notably,  Black  Dwarf  and  Seven 
Days.  A  visit  to  Argentina  allowed  him  to  witness 
a  struggle  for  national  liberation,  and  he  became 
an  avid  reader  of  the  New  Left  Review.  But  his 
involvement  with  theoretical  debate  overlaid 
what  he  afterwards  termed  'a  deep  sense  of 
fragmentation'.  Gambling  and  masochism  grew 
into  compulsive  obsessions,  and  he  began  a  five- 
year  period  of  psychoanalysis  in  1972. 

Apart  from  editing  a  book  on  The  Psychology 
of  Gambling  (1974),  with  Jon  Halliday,  Fuller 
became  a  regular  contributor  to  Arts  Review, 
Connoisseur,  Art  and  Artists,  Art  Monthly,  and 
Studio  International.  Some  of  his  most  substantial 
reviews  appeared  in  New  Society,  to  which  he 
had  been  introduced  by  the  writer  who  influ- 
enced him  most  powerfully  during  the  1970s, 
John  Berger.  They  became  friends,  and  Fuller 
also  got  to  know  the  American  painter  Robert 
Natkin,  about  whom  he  wrote  articles,  cata- 
logues, and  finally  a  book  (Robert  Natkin,  1981). 
The  most  impressive  outcome  of  his  work  during 
the  1970s  was  Art  and  Psychoanalysis  (1980). 

The  advent  of  a  new  decade  brought  momen- 
tous changes.  Colette  left  him  in  1981,  and  they 
were  divorced  four  years  later.  John  Berger's 
influence  was  superseded  by  that  of  John 
•Ruskin,  whose  ideas  dominated  Fuller's  book 
Theoria:  Art,  and  the  Absence  of  Grace  (1988).  He 
repudiated  Marxism,  along  with  most  of  the 
friends  he  had  made  in  the  1970s.  Berger  came 
under  particularly  virulent  attack,  and  Fuller 
revised  an  earlier  publication  called  Seeing  Berger 
(1980)  under  the  new,  caustic  title  Seeing 
Through  Berger  (1988).  New  friends,  like  the 
philosopher  Roger  Scruton,  now  aligned  him 
more  with  the  right  than  the  left.  He  became  a 
fierce  opponent  of  the  avant-garde,  calling 
instead  for  a  return  to  the  romantic  and  figura- 
tive tradition  in  British  art. 

Marriage  to  the  Australian  sculptor  Stephanie 
Jane  Burns  in  1985  brought  him  enormous  hap- 
piness as  well  as  a  son,  Laurence  Ruskin  Fuller, 
who  was  born  in  1986.  Stephanie  was  the  daugh- 
ter of  Alan  Robert  Burns,  company  chairman  and 
inventor.  Two  years  later  Fuller  founded  his  own 
art  magazine  with  the  suitably  Ruskinian  title 
Modern  Painters,  as  a  pulpit  for  his  views.  It  was 
an  immediate  success,  not  only  because  of  Full- 
er's combative  and  controversial  editorials,  but 
also  on  account  of  his  willingness  to  publish  a 


lively  range  of  views  from  novelists  as  well  as 
critics.  The  attention  attracted  by  the  magazine 
helped  to  make  Fuller  more  widely  known,  and 
his  appointment  as  art  critic  of  the  Sunday 
Telegraph  in  1989  gave  him  another  public  plat- 
form. A  regular  column  there  enabled  him  to 
champion  artists  like  the  painter  John  Bellany 
and  the  sculptor  Glynn  Williams,  both  of  whom 
Fuller  saw  upholding  the  values  he  cherished. 

Slight  in  build,  and  invariably  pale,  Fuller 
often  looked  as  if  he  had  just  emerged  from  a 
long  period  incarcerated  in  his  study.  Behind 
spectacles,  his  eyes  would  often  narrow  as  if  to 
cope  with  the  unaccustomed  glare  of  daylight. 
Living  in  Bath,  with  a  country  cottage  at  Stow- 
langtoft  in  Suffolk,  he  enjoyed  his  greatest  period 
of  success  and  notoriety.  But  a  motorway  acci- 
dent on  28  April  1990,  when  he  was  forty-two, 
cut  everything  short.  His  chauffeur-driven  car 
crashed  into  a  field  off  the  M4  motorway,  near 
Theale.  Fuller  died  at  the  scene,  of  head  and 
neck  injuries.  His  wife,  thirty-three  weeks  preg- 
nant, broke  a  hip,  damaged  her  spine,  and  lost 
her  unborn  child  Gabriel  as  a  result  of  the 
accident.  Both  Gabriel  and  Fuller  were  buried 
together  at  St  George's  church,  Stowlangtoft.  A 
large  sculpture  called  'Opening  Chestnut',  by 
Glynn  Williams,  stands  at  the  head  of  the 
grave. 

[Peter  Fuller,  Marches  Past,  1986;  John  McDonald 
(ed.),  Modern  Painters:  Reflections  on  British  Art  by  Peter 
Fuller,  1993;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Richard  Cork 

FULTON,  John  Scott,  Baron  Fulton  (1902- 

1986),  university  administrator  and  public  ser- 
vant, was  born  in  Dundee  27  May  1902,  the 
younger  son  and  youngest  of  three  children  of 
Angus  Robertson  Fulton,  principal  of  University 
College,  Dundee,  and  his  wife,  Annie  Scott. 
He  was  educated  at  Dundee  High  School, 
St  Andrews  University,  and  Ballioi  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  was  awarded  a  second  class  in 
both  classical  honour  moderations  (1924)  and 
Itterae  humaniores  (1926).  After  two  years  as  a 
lecturer  at  the  London  School  of  Economics 
(1926-8),  he  returned  to  Ballioi  in  1928  as  a 
fellow  and  tutor  in  philosophy.  In  1935,  when 
'modern  Greats'  (philosophy,  politics,  and  eco- 
nomics) had  established  itself,  particularly  in 
Ballioi,  the  'philosophy'  in  his  title  was  changed 
to  'polities'.  Fulton  remained  in  that  position 
until  1947,  although  during  World  War  II  he 
greatly  widened  his  political  and  administrative 
experience,  as  principal  assistant  secretary  in  the 
mines  department  and  later  in  the  Ministry  of 
Fuel  and  Power.  Already  a  friend  and  admirer  of 
Sir  William  (later  Baron)  *Beveridge,  he  now 
added  to  his  range  of  friends  and  colleagues 
Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx), 


149 


Fulton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


who  worked   with   him  as  an  economist  and 
statistician. 

Such  personal  relationships  mattered  greatly 
to  Fulton  and  strongly  influenced  his  career.  Yet 
his  success  depended  essentially  on  his  own 
remarkable  energy  and,  when  inspired,  his 
boundless  enthusiasm.  He  demonstrated  these 
qualities,  not  to  universal  acclaim,  in  his  first, 
somewhat  circumscribed,  postwar  field  of  action, 
as  principal  for  twelve  years  (1947-59)  °f  tne 
University  College  of  Swansea,  with  two  spells, 
in  1952-4  and  1958-9,  as  vice-chancellor  of  the 
University  of  Wales.  While  in  Swansea,  he 
encouraged  university  expansion  and  furthered 
his  interest  in  adult  education,  which  had  been 
stimulated  in  the  past  by  Balliol's  master,  A.  D. 
•Lindsay  (Baron  Lindsay  of  Birker).  He  was 
chairman  of  the  Universities'  Council  for  Adult 
Education  and  the  council  of  the  National  Insti- 
tute of  Adult  Education  (both  1952-5). 

An  unprecedented  opportunity  to  bring  all  his 
gifts  into  play  came  in  1959,  when  he  was 
appointed  principal  of  the  University  College  of 
Sussex,  the  first  of  seven  new  English  university 
institutions.  When  it  took  in  its  first  students  in 
1 96 1,  its  name  had  happily  been  changed  from 
University  College  to  University  and  his  own 
title,  his  second  significant  change  of  title,  from 
principal  to  vice-chancellor.  By  then,  too,  Fulton 
had  assembled  a  small  team  of  academics  and 
administrators,  most  of  them  as  energetic  and 
enthusiastic  as  he  was,  all  of  them  sharing  his 
vision.  Together  they  were  committed  to  creat- 
ing a  university  which  from  the  start  would 
reshape  university  curricula  and  organizational 
structures  and  develop  a  strong  identity  of  its 
own.  Critics  were  sceptical — or  jealous — but  the 
new  university,  which  was  sometimes  called, 
though  it  never  was,  'Balliol  by  the  sea',  proved 
highly  attractive  to  applicants.  Indeed,  it  came  to 
symbolize  the  spirit  of  the  1960s.  Fulton  inspired 
the  institution  rather  than  managed  it.  He  won 
friendship  as  well  as  loyalty. 

Brighton  was  a  more  useful  base  than  Swansea 
had  been  for  the  'outside'  activities  which  Fulton 
enjoyed.  Some  of  them  were  directly  concerned 
with  university  education  in  Britain  and  abroad. 
He  was  largely  responsible  in  1961,  for  instance, 
for  speedily  bringing  into  existence  the  Uni- 
versity Central  Council  on  Admissions  (of  which 
he  was  chairman  in  196 1-4),  which  transformed 
the  system  of  university  entrance,  and  a  year  later 
he  became  chairman  of  the  BBC  and  ITA  com- 
mittees on  adult  education  (both  1962-5).  The 
BBC,  of  which  he  was  to  become  vice-chairman 
in  1965,  was  uneasy  about  this  dual  role:  Fulton, 
however,  saw  the  two  chairmanships  as  com- 
plementary. Later,  he  intervened  personally  with 
Harold  Wilson,  then  prime  minister,  after  pro- 


posals had  been  made  in   1964  that  the  BBC 
should  accept  advertising. 

Before  he  became  chairman  of  the  Inter- 
University  Council  for  Higher  Education  Over- 
seas (1964-8),  Fulton  had  already  been  involved 
in  university  policy-making  in  Malta,  Africa 
(Sierra  Leone  and  Nigeria),  and  Asia.  He  was 
most  successful  in  Hong  Kong,  where  in  1962  he 
chaired  the  committee  that  established  the  new 
Chinese  University.  Its  four-year  pattern  of 
courses  was  to  survive  him. 

Fulton's  major  non-university  public  assign- 
ment concerned  Britain's  Civil  Service.  Invited 
by  Wilson  in  1966  to  chair  a  departmental 
inquiry  into  it,  he  and  his  colleagues  produced  a 
report  which  criticized  the  dependence  of  the 
service  on  generalist  all-rounders  and  pressed  for 
a  more  professional  and  more  specialized  Civil 
Service.  Other  influences  were  brought  to  bear 
upon  him  in  reaching  this  conclusion,  notably 
that  of  Norman  *Hunt  (later  Baron  Crowther- 
Hunt),  but  the  tone  of  the  report,  published  in 
1968,  was  his  own.  He  always  believed  in  open- 
ing access  and  in  provoking  change.  Much  criti- 
cized in  Whitehall,  his  report  had  only  limited 
results,  although  it  was  followed  by  the  setting 
up  of  a  new  Civil  Service  department  and  to 
Fulton  what  was  even  more  to  the  point — a  Civil 
Service  College. 

Fulton  was  knighted  in  1964  and  became  a  life 
peer  in  1966.  He  was  an  honorary  fellow  of 
Balliol  (1972)  and  Swansea  (1985),  and  had 
honorary  degrees  from  ten  universities. 

A  strong  and  confident  believer  in  the  claims 
of  public  service,  official  and  voluntary,  Fulton 
considered  rightly  that  the  various  activities  of 
his  strenuous  public  life  were  all  of  one  piece. 
Yet  in  private  he  owed  much  to  the  support  of 
his  wife  Jacqueline,  daughter  of  Kenneth  Edward 
Towler  Wilkinson,  solicitor,  of  York.  They  mar- 
ried in  1939  and  had  three  sons  and  one  daugh- 
ter. It  was  on  his  wife's  initiative  that,  after 
Fulton's  retirement  from  Sussex  University  in 
1967,  the  two  of  them  moved  to  Thornton  le 
Dale  in  Yorkshire,  an  agreeable  base,  if  less 
accessible  than  Brighton.  He  chose,  however,  to 
move  frequently  out  of  it.  The  motto  of  the 
University  of  Sussex  of  his  own  devising  had 
been  'Be  still  and  know',  but  to  the  end  Fulton 
had  little  wish  to  be  still.  He  was  always  full  of 
vitality.  The  last  of  his  big  jobs  was  from  1968  to 
1 97 1  when  he  was  a  not  entirely  successful 
chairman  of  the  British  Council.  In  appearance 
he  was  short  and  wiry  and  in  old  age  he  looked 
far  younger  than  his  years.  He  died  14  March 
1986  at  his  home,  Brook  House,  Thornton  le 
Dale,  Pickering,  north  Yorkshire. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Asa  Briggs 


150 


G 


GAITSKELL,  Anna  Deborah  ('Dora'),  Baron- 
ess Gaitskell  (1901-1989),  UK  representative 
at  the  United  Nations  in  the  1960s,  and  wife  of 
Hugh  *Gaitskell,  leader  of  the  Labour  party,  was 
born  25  April  1901  near  Riga  in  Latvia,  then  part 
of  imperial  Russia,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of  four 
daughters  and  one  son  of  Leon  Creditor,  Hebrew 
scholar  and  writer,  and  his  wife,  Tessa  Jaffe.  Her 
father  emigrated  to  Britain  in  1903  and,  when  his 
wife  and  daughter  followed  shortly  afterwards, 
they  settled  in  Stepney  Green,  in  the  East  End  of 
London.  Dora  Creditor  won  a  scholarship  to 
Coburn  High  School  for  Girls.  She  would  have 
preferred  to  become  a  teacher,  but  was  persuaded 
to  study  medicine,  although  she  abandoned  it 
when  she  married  on  15  March  1921  Isaac 
('David')  Frost,  lecturer  in  physiology,  the  son  of 
Louis  Frost,  mechanical  engineer.  A  son,  Ray- 
mond, was  born  in  1925,  but  the  marriage  ended 
in  divorce  in  1937,  having  only  continued 
because  of  what  she  was  later  to  call  'the  utterly 
shameful  and  disgraceful'  state  of  the  divorce 
laws. 

Dora  Creditor  joined  the  Labour  party  at 
the  age  of  sixteen  and  became  politically 
active.  She  met  Hugh  Gaitskell  at  the  Fitzroy 
tavern  in  Soho,  then  a  popular  haunt  of  art- 
ists, writers,  journalists,  dons,  and  aspiring 
politicians.  Gaitskell  had  lately  arrived  in  Lon- 
don to  take  up  a  teaching  post  at  University 
College  and  was  living  a  Bohemian  social  life 
in  and  around  Fitzrovia,  a  milieu  with  which 
Dora  Frost  was  already  familiar.  Gaitskell, 
who  was  five  years  younger,  soon  made  her 
his  confidante  and,  when  he  went  to  Vienna  in 
1933  on  the  eve  of  the  climax  of  the  counter- 
revolution against  the  Viennese  socialists,  led 
by  Engelbert  Dolfuss,  she  followed  him.  They 
lived  together  and  then  married  at  Hampstead 
town  hall  on  9  April  1937.  Hugh  Todd  Naylor 
Gaitskell  was  the  son  of  Arthur  Gaitskell,  of 
the  Indian  Civil  Service. 

Dora  Gaitskell  settled  easily  to  domestic  life. 
Her  first  child  by  this  marriage,  a  daughter,  Julia, 
was  born  in  1939,  and  a  second,  Cressida,  in 
1942.  She  proved  an  affectionate  and  caring 
mother,  creating  a  family  life  of  a  fairly  tradi- 
tional kind.  She  was  confident  in  her  husband's 
love  and  ultimate  loyalty  and,  in  turn,  became  a 
devoted  wife,  a  tigress  in  defending  him  from  his 


political  enemies,  and  committed  and  affection- 
ate towards  his  friends. 

Elected  as  MP  for  Leeds  South  East  in  1945, 
Gaitskell  was  chosen  as  leader  of  the  Labour 
party  ten  years  later.  This  was  a  stormy  period  in 
Labour's  history,  and  Gaitskell  was  frequently 
the  object  of  bitter  personal  attacks.  His  wife  was 
fierce  in  her  defence  of  her  husband  and  was 
thought,  even  by  some  of  his  friends,  to  exacer- 
bate rather  than  soften  his  more  extreme  senti- 
ments. During  his  lifetime,  her  political  views 
were  not  easily  distinguishable  from  his,  but  after 
his  death  she  supported  the  'yes'  campaign  in  the 
European  referendum  of  1975,  despite  her  hus- 
band's earlier  opposition  to  Britain's  member- 
ship of  the  Common  Market.  But  she  did  not 
break  with  the  Labour  party  when,  in  1981,  most 
of  the  remaining  Gaitskellites  left  to  form  the 
SDP. 

By  that  time  Dora  Gaitskell  had  enjoyed  a 
substantial  career  of  her  own.  Shortly  after  her 
husband's  death,  she  was  made  a  life  peer  in  1963 
on  the  recommendation  of  the  prime  minister, 
Harold  *Macmillan  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Stock- 
ton). Then  when  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron 
Wilson  of  Rievaulx)  became  prime  minister  in 
1964,  he  arranged  for  her  to  become  a  member  of 
the  UK  delegation  to  the  general  assembly  of  the 
United  Nations.  She  became  an  outspoken 
champion  of  human  rights,  critical  of  the  double 
standards  of  some  Afro-Asian  nations,  but  strong 
in  her  advocacy  of  the  needs  of  the  third  world. 
She  caused  some  anxiety  in  Foreign  Office  circles 
through  her  firm  commitment  to  the  state  of 
Israel — but  she  was  not  an  unthinking  Zionist 
and  was  critical  of  the  policies  of  right-wing 
Likud  governments. 

Dora  Gaitskell  was  active  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  Never  afraid  of  controversy  or  of  crossing 
swords,  plump,  a  redhead  in  her  earlier  years, 
and  only  a  little  over  five  feet  tall,  she  was 
spirited  in  her  advocacy  of  libertarian  causes  and 
as  direct  as  ever  in  personal  relationships.  At  the 
time  of  her  husband's  death  in  1963,  Dora 
Gaitskell  had  every  reason  to  believe  that  she 
would  shortly  accompany  him  to  No.  10  Down- 
ing Street.  It  would  be  easy  to  see  the  remaining 
quarter  century  of  her  life  as  a  pianissimo  coda  to 
the  excitement  and  expectations  of  those  earlier 
years.  Yet,  whilst  always  grieving  for  her  lost 


151 


Gaitskell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


husband,  she  established  herself  as  a  woman  in 
her  own  right  and  contributed  bravely  to  causes 
which  were  both  his  and  her  own.  She  died  i 
July  1989  at  her  home,  18  Frognal  Gardens, 
Hampstead,  London. 

[Philip  Williams,  Hugh  Gaitskell,  1979;  Guardian,  3 
July  1989;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

William  Rodgers 

GARDINER,  Gerald  Austin,  Baron  Gardiner 
(1900- 1 990),  lord  chancellor,  was  born  30  May 
1900  at  67  Cadogan  Square,  London  SWi,  the 
second  of  three  sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of 
(Sir)  Robert  Septimus  Gardiner,  a  businessman 
with  interests  in  the  theatre  and  shipping,  and 
his  wife  Alice  Marie,  daughter  of  Hermann  von 
Ziegesar,  a  Prussian  officer.  He  was  educated  at 
Harrow  and  served  briefly  in  191 8  as  a  second 
lieutenant  in  the  Coldstream  Guards.  At  the  end 
of  World  War  I  he  joined  the  Peace  Pledge 
Union.  He  then  entered  Magdalen  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  became  president  of  the  union 
and  of  the  Oxford  University  Dramatic  Society 
(both  1924).  Acting  remained  a  lasting  attraction. 
He  was  rusticated  for  two  terms  in  1921  and  was 
again  threatened  with  rustication  in  November 
1922,  for  publishing  a  pamphlet  attacking  restric- 
tions on  women  undergraduates.  He  gained  a 
fourth  class  in  jurisprudence  (1923)  and  was 
called  to  the  bar  at  the  Inner  Temple  in  1925. 

Initially  supported  financially  by  his  father,  by 
the  end  of  the  1930s  he  had  a  busy  practice.  His 
success  lay  in  meticulous  preparation  of  his  cases 
and  in  the  clarity  and  courteous,  unrhetorical 
style  with  which  he  addressed  judge,  jury,  or 
witnesses,  although  with  the  last  he  could,  if 
necessary,  be  icy.  In  World  War  II  he  was  not 
called  up  for  active  service,  but,  unhappy  with  a 
practice  expanding  at  the  expense  of  absent 
colleagues,  joined  the  Friends'  Ambulance  Unit 
and  served  with,  and  finally  commanded,  its 
sections  on  the  western  front. 

Returning  to  the  bar,  taking  silk  in  1948,  and 
quickly  developing  a  large  practice,  he  served  as 
chairman  of  the  Bar  Council  in  1958  and  1959. 
His  notable  cases  included  the  prosecution  in 
i960  under  the  Obscene  Publications  Act  (1959) 
of  Penguin  Books  for  publishing  Lady  Chatter- 
ley's  Lover  by  D.  H.  *Lawrence,  in  which  the 
acquittal  Gardiner  won  for  the  defendants  led  to 
a  significant  widening  of  the  permissible  bounda- 
ries in  literature;  and  in  1961  the  proceedings 
against  the  Electrical  Trades  Union,  in  which  he 
exposed  the  ballot-rigging  of  its  communist 
officials. 

Gardiner  had  begun  his  law  reform  campaign 
in  his  own  practice  before  the  war  by  circulariz- 
ing solicitors  on  how  they  could  shorten  litiga- 
tion procedures.  On  leaving  for  the  Friends' 


Ambulance  Unit  he  wrote  to  the  lord  chancellor, 
the  first  Viscount  *Simon,  about  the  legal-aid 
crisis  arising  from  the  departure  for  war  service 
of  the  volunteers  who  provided  the  minimal  aid 
then  available.  His  initiative  ultimately  led  to  the 
Legal  Aid  and  Advice  Act  of  1949.  He  had  also 
joined  the  Haldane  Society,  which  supported  law 
reform.  In  1945,  when  threatened  with  a  take- 
over by  communist  sympathizers,  Gardiner  led  a 
secession  to  form  the  Society  of  Labour  Lawyers, 
of  which  he  became  chairman.  In  1963,  with  a 
member  of  the  Society,  Andrew  Martin,  he 
co-edited  and  jointly  contributed  to  Law  Reform 
Now,  which  proposed  a  full-time  permanent  law 
reform  commission  making  recommendations  for 
law  reform  to  Parliament.  It  was  Gardiner's  ten- 
year  experience  of  the  lord  chancellor's  law 
reform  committee  that  had  convinced  him  of  the 
necessity  for  a  full-time  institution. 

Gardiner  had  joined  the  Labour  party  in  the 
1930s.  In  the  195 1  general  election  he  stood 
unsuccessfully  for  Parliament  at  West  Croydon. 
In  1963  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of 
Rievaulx)  nominated  Gardiner  for  a  life  peerage 
and,  after  the  Labour  victory  in  1964,  chose  him 
for  lord  chancellor.  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council  in  the  same  year.  Gardiner  was  then  able 
by  the  Law  Commissions  Act  (1965)  to  realize  in 
its  main  features  the  proposal  made  in  Law 
Reform  Now.  Gardiner  also  set  up  a  royal  com- 
mission (1966-9)  to  overhaul  the  machinery  of 
the  criminal  courts.  Its  far-reaching  recommen- 
dations were  embodied  in  the  1971  Courts  Act. 
He  appointed  the  first  woman  High  Court  judge 
and  instituted  a  compulsory  training  programme 
for  JPs. 

Under  the  auspices  of  the  International  Com- 
mission of  Jurists  Gardiner  travelled  to  South 
Africa,  Portugal,  Tunisia,  and  Greece  investigat- 
ing alleged  breaches  of  the  'rule  of  law',  and  in 
1957  he  helped  to  found  'Justice',  the  British 
branch  of  the  Commission,  which  made  the 
proposals  culminating  in  the  Parliamentary 
Commissioner  ('Ombudsman')  Act  (1967)  and 
the  Rehabilitation  of  Offenders  Act  (1974),  the 
latter's  spirit  being  very  close  to  Gardiner's  own 
view  of  human  nature  as  redeemable.  In  197 1 
Gardiner  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Inter- 
national Commission  of  Jurists.  He  served  on  its 
executive  committee  from  1971  to  1981,  and  on 
his  retirement  in  1986  remained  an  honorary 
member  until  his  death. 

The  reform  from  which  Gardiner  drew  the 
greatest  satisfaction,  however,  was  the  suspen- 
sion of  the  death  penalty  for  murder  in  1965  and 
its  finafabolition  in  1969.  He  had  argued  against 
capital  punishment  in  his  book,  Capital  Punish- 
ment as  a  Deterrent:  and  the  Alternative  (1956) 
and  had  been  joint  chairman  of  the  National 
Campaign  for  the  Abolition  of  Capital  Punish- 


152 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Gardner 


ment.  He  retired  as  lord  chancellor  when  the 
Labour  government  fell  in  1970. 

As  lord  chancellor  Gardiner  laid  great  empha- 
sis on  the  quality  of  judges  at  all  levels.  He 
introduced  systematic  training  for  justices  of  the 
peace  and  sought  to  ensure  that  they  were  drawn 
from  as  wide  as  possible  a  cross  section  of  the 
community.  His  reforming  zeal  stopped  short 
when  considering  the  legal  profession,  and  espe- 
cially the  division  between  barristers  and  solici- 
tors. He  feared  that  in  a  single  profession  it 
would  be  more  difficult  to  maintain  the  pro- 
fessional standards  generally  observed  in  a  bar  of 
limited  size,  and  that,  if  the  selection  for  the 
higher  judiciary  extended  to  the  whole  legal 
profession,  there  would  be  practical  difficulties  in 
ensuring  candidates  were  all  of  the  calibre 
required. 

In  1972  Gardiner  was  one  of  three  privy 
councillors  (the  others  being  the  lord  chief  justice 
and  a  Conservative  politician)  appointed 
to  investigate  the  alleged  abuse  of  interroga- 
tion procedures  in  Northern  Ireland.  The 
majority  were  prepared  to  condone  the  practices 
complained  of,  but  it  was  Gardiner's 
minority  report  which,  in  remarkable  tribute 
to  his  legal  and  moral  authority,  was  accepted 
by  (Sir)  Edward  Heath's  government.  Never- 
theless he  could  make  practical  compromises,  as 
when  as  chairman  of  another  committee  on 
Northern  Ireland  in  1975  he  approved  the  con- 
tinuation for  the  time  being  of  detention  without 
trial. 

He  received  honorary  degrees  from  South- 
ampton, York,  London,  Upper  Canada,  Man- 
itoba, Birmingham,  the  Open  University, 
Melbourne,  and  Surrey.  In  1975  he  was 
appointed  CH. 

Gardiner  was  a  tall,  thin  man,  of  upright 
bearing,  with  finely  chiselled  features.  His  shy 
courtesy  and  painful  inability  to  engage  in  small 
talk  could  be  taken  for  coldness,  but  on  closer 
acquaintance  he  soon  revealed  his  warm  spirit. 
He  supported  a  very  large  number  of  liberal, 
humanitarian,  and  charitable  causes.  When  he 
accepted  the  chancellorship  of  the  Open  Uni- 
versity (1973-8)  he  himself  enrolled  for,  and 
successfully  completed,  a  three-year  degree 
course  in  the  social  sciences  (1977). 

In  1925  Gardiner  married  Doris  ('Lesly') 
(died  1966),  daughter  of  Edwin  Trounson,  corn- 
pan)  director  and  later  mayor  of  Southport;  they 
had  one  daughter.  In  1970  he  married  Mrs 
Muriel  Violette  Box,  a  distinguished  film  pro- 
ducer and  writer,  who  survived  him  but  died  in 
1 991;  they  had  no  children.  She  was  the  daughter 
of  Charles  Baker,  railway  clerk,  and  divorced 
wife  of  Sydney  Box,  of  J.  Arthur  Rank.  Gardiner 
died  7  January  1900  at  home,  Mote  End,  Nan 
Clark's  Lane,  Mill  Hill,  London.  There  is  a 


portrait  by  Norman  Hepple  in  the  Inner  Tem- 
ple. 

[Muriel  Box  (Lady  Gardiner),  Rebel  Advocate,  1983; 
The  Times  2nd  Daily  Telegraph,  9  January  1990;  Guard- 
ian and  Independent,  10  January  1990;  Gardiner  papers, 
Churchill  Archives  Centre,  Cambridge;  private  infor- 
mation; personal  knowledge.]        Norman  S.  Marsh 

GARDNER,  Dame  Helen  Louise  (1908-1986), 
scholar,  university  teacher,  and  literary  critic, 
was  born  in  Finchley,  north  London, '13  Feb- 
ruary 1908,  the  middle  child  and  only  daughter 
of  Charles  Henry  Gardner,  journalist,  of  north 
London,  and  his  wife,  Helen  Mary  Roadnight 
Cockman.  Helen  was  eleven  when  her  father  died 
and  the  family  made  their  home  with  her  grand- 
parents. Mrs  Gardner,  a  very  musical  woman, 
was  ambitious  for  her  gifted  daughter  and  her 
encouragement  was  stimulating  and  sometimes  a 
strain.  Helen's  education  was  at  the  North  Lon- 
don Collegiate  School,  where  she  benefited  from 
the  excellent  teaching  of  her  English  mistress, 
Florence  Gibbons.  In  1926  she  went  to  St 
Hilda's  College,  Oxford,  and  in  1929  obtained 
first-class  honours  in  English  language  and  lit- 
erature. Amateur  dramatics  revealed  talents  that 
could  be  discerned  later  in  her  style  of  lecturing 
and  lively  conversational  habits. 

She  accepted  a  temporary  post  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Birmingham.  After  three  years 
(193 1 -4)  as  an  assistant  lecturer  at  the  Royal 
Holloway  College,  London,  she  seized  the 
chance  of  returning  to  Birmingham  (1934-41), 
as  a  member  of  the  English  department.  She 
extended  the  scope  of  her  lecturing  beyond  the 
university  audience;  canvassed  for  Labour  in  a 
Conservative  area;  agonized  over  the  Spanish 
civil  war  and  refugees  from  Nazi  Germany.  It 
was  on  a  dreary  March  day  in  1940  that  her 
spirits  were  roused  bv  a  first  contact  with  'East 
Coker'  by  T.  S.  *Eliot. 

In  1 94 1  she  sought  and  took  good  advice  and 
left  Birmingham  for  Oxford  to  become  a  tutor 
(1941-54),  and  later  fellow  (1942-66)  at  her  old 
college.  The  next  thirteen  years  she  regarded  as 
her  'golden  years'.  She  was  memorably  steady  in 
her  concern  for  the  welfare  of  her  own  pupils. 
To  the  less  able  her  tutorials  were  formidable, 
but  to  those  who  could  take  the  wit  and  severity 
of  her  criticism  of  their  essays  the  experience 
proved  rewarding.  In  1954  she  was  made  reader 
in  Renaissance  studies  and  after  one  set-back  she 
was  elected  in  1966  Merton  professor  of  English 
language  and  literature,  with  a  fellowship  at  Lady 
Margaret  Hall.  The  distinction  of  being  the  first 
woman  to  hold  this  chair  gave  her  special  satis- 
faction. She  exerted  herself  as  a  supervisor  and 
she  was  as  successful  as  she  was  strict.  Forewords 
in  many  publications  bear  witness  to  her  influ- 
ence. 


'53 


Gardner 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


From  1 96 1  to  1963  she  served  on  the  commit- 
tee on  higher  education  chaired  by  Baron  •Rob- 
bins.  She  relished  the  discussion  and  travel 
involved  and  remained  unabashed  by  some  of  the 
criticism  of  the  extent  of  university  expansion 
which  was  recommended.  She  served  on  the 
Council  for  National  Academic  Awards  (1964-7) 
and  enjoyed  being  a  trustee  for  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery  (1967-78).  As  a  delegate  to  the 
Oxford  University  Press  (1959-^75)  she  made 
herself  felt  to  the  benefit  of  English  studies.  On 
subjects  outside  her  range  her  judgements  were 
sometimes  less  happy. 

Meanwhile  her  work  on  the  two  poets  with 
whom  she  will  chiefly  be  associated — John 
•Donne  and  T.  S.  Eliot — went  on  concurrently. 
Her  masterly  edition  of  Donne's  Divine  Poems 
appeared  in  1952  and  was  revised  in  1978.  The 
parallel  edition  of  his  Elegies  and  Songs  and 
Sonnets  followed  in  1965.  It  was  Helen  Gardner's 
declared  intent  to  supersede  (Sir)  Herbert 
•Grierson's  text.  She  believed  she  had  the 
advantage  of  more  MSS  to  subject  to  the  rig- 
orous method  of  collation  she  favoured.  The 
introductions  and  commentaries  manifest  the 
industry  and  intelligence  she  brought  to  this 
work.  She  continued  to  defend  the  readings  and 
reorderings  she  proposed  against  subsequent 
criticism. 

Her  tribute  to  the  genius  of  T.  S.  Eliot  took 
a  different  form.  In  The  Art  ofT.  S.  Eliot  in  1949 
she  provided  a  way  into  an  originality  in  thought 
and  prosody  in  the  poems  that  both  fascinated 
and  perplexed  many  readers.  It  was  gratifying  for 
her  to  learn  that  she  had  her  author's  approval. 
This  book  was  written  con  amore  and  shows  to 
advantage  her  critical  enthusiasm.  Later,  in  1978, 
she  was  to  take  advantage  of  the  publication  of 
the  drafts  of  Four  Quartets  to  demonstrate  a  poem 
in  the  making  (The  Composition  of  'Four  Quar- 
tets', 1978).  She  also  wrote  on  *Shakespeare  and 
•Milton's  Paradise  Lost.  The  British  Academy 
lectures  on  Othello  ('The  Noble  Moor',  1955) 
and  on  'King  Lear'  (1967)  draw  out  her  best. 
The  introductions  to  the  World's  Classics  selec- 
tions of  Metaphysical  Poets  (1961)  and  of  George 
•Herbert  are  admirable.  She  collaborated  with 
Timothy  Healy  in  selecting  from  Donne's  ser- 
mons (Selected  Prose,  1967),  and  with  G.  M. 
Story  in  an  edition  of  William  *Alabaster's 
poems  (1959). 

The  popularity  of  Helen  Gardner  as  a  lecturer 
in  Britain,  America,  European  capitals,  and  the 
Far  East,  owed  as  much  to  her  style  as  to  her 
subject.  Her  enthusiasm  could  be  infectious.  She 
had  a  clear,  strong  voice  and  was  aware  of  its 
attraction.  The  phrasing  and  rhythms  of  her 
prose  echo  in  some  measure  their  oral  delivery. 
Her  favourite  unit  of  composition  was  about  the 
length  of  a  lecture,  essay,  long  obituary,  or 
university  sermon. 


Criticism  she  regarded  as  a  serving  art.  She 
was  not  an  innovator  but  chose  rather  to  con- 
solidate and  conserve.  Her  endeavour  was  to 
increase  the  understanding  and  enjoyment  of  the 
best  to  be  found  in  the  literature  of  her  own 
language.  Later  in  life  she  was  dismayed  to 
realize  how  strong  was  the  current  of  new  meth- 
ods of  analysis,  in  the  valuation  of  poetry  and 
the  style  of  theatrical  production,  and  the  effect 
it  had  on  the  teaching  of  English.  She  advertised 
her  disapproval  with  fierce  irony  and  then  in 
more  positive  chapters  reasserted  her  own  beliefs 
in  In  Defence  of  the  Imagination  (1982).  As  a 
reviewer  she  was  thorough,  conscientious, 
severe,  and  open:  everything  was  signed.  She 
dealt  with  many  of  the  most  important  publica- 
tions of  her  peers  and  risked  making  enemies  in 
the  process.  Twice  she  took  on  the  thankless  task 
of  an  anthologist  with  good  will.  The  Faber  Book 
of  Religious  Verse  (1972)  was  followed  in  the  same 
year  by  a  more  ambitious  undertaking,  The  New 
Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse  (1972). 

To  her  Oxford  D.Litt.  (1963)  and  Cambridge 
honorary  Litt.D.  (1981)  she  added  honorary 
degrees  from  eight  other  universities.  She  was 
appointed  CBE  (1962)  and  DBE  (1967).  She  was 
made  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in  1958 
and  twice  won  the  Crawshay  prize  (1952  and 
1980).  She  was  FRSL  (1962). 

In  person  she  was  small  and  sturdy.  Vivacious, 
temperamental,  occasionally  overbearing,  she 
appreciated  good  food  and  drink,  liked  to  dress 
well,  and  revelled  in  parties  where  she  talked  well 
but,  as  she  knew  herself,  too  much.  She  was 
kinder  in  her  actions  than  in  her  wit.  She  was 
no  feminist:  she  liked  to  be  a  woman  in  a  man's 
world,  game  to  compete  and  reckoning  that  she 
could  match  anyone  for  scholarly  hard  work  and 
tough  argument.  She  made  no  secret  of  her 
satisfaction  in  her  success.  She  was  brave  in  a 
number  of  illnesses,  and  limped  a  little  after  a 
repeated  hip  replacement.  She  was  a  devout 
Anglican  in  the  tradition  of  the  seventeenth- 
century  divines.  Retirement  in  Eynsham,  near 
Oxford,  in  1975  did  not  greatly  change  her  way 
of  working  except  that  she  had  more  time  to  give 
to  her  pleasure  in  gardens  and  foreign  travel.  She 
died  4  June  1986  in  a  nursing  home  at  Bicester 
after  many  months  of  a  distressing  illness.  She 
never  married. 

[K.  M.  Lea  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol. 
lxxvi,  1990;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

K.  M.  Lea 

GIBBONS,  Stella  Dorothea  (1902- 1989),  nov- 
elist, was  born  5  January  1902  in  Maiden  Cres- 
cent, London,  the  only  daughter  and  eldest  of 
three  children  of  (Charles  James  Preston)  Tel- 
ford Gibbons,  medical  doctor,  and  his  wife, 
Maude  Phoebe  Standish  Williams.  She  grew  up 
in  the  dismal  environment  of  Kentish  Town 


154 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Gibbs 


where  her  father  had  his  medical  practice  in 
Maiden  Crescent.  Her  childhood  was  unhappy 
and  turbulent.  She  withdrew  into  stories  and 
solitary  games  in  her  attic  room  to  avoid  the 
constant  family  rows  which  revolved  around  her 
preposterous  father.  He  was  unfaithful  with  a 
succession  of  governesses,  against  a  noisy  back- 
ground of  self-dramatizing  uncles  and  aunts. 
Fortunately  her  mother  was  quiet  and  sensible, 
so  she  had  some  emotional  refuge  from  the 
storms. 

She  was  educated  at  home  and  then  sent  to  the 
North  London  Collegiate  School  for  Girls.  At 
University  College  London  she  did  a  two-year 
course  on  journalism  (set  up  for  soldiers  who  had 
returned  from  the  war  of  1914-18).  Her  first  job, 
in  1923,  was  as  a  cable  decoder  for  British  United 
Press.  For  the  next  decade  she  worked  as  a 
London  journalist  for  various  publications, 
including  the  Evening  Standard  and  the  Lady. 
Her  first  published  book  was  a  slim  volume  of 
poems  (The  Mountain  Beast,  1930).  No  one  could 
have  guessed  that  the  author  of  this  neo-Geor- 
gian  verse  was  about  to  spring  a  comic  classic 
upon  the  world.  Cold  Comfort  Farm  (1932)  was 
written  as  a  parody  of  the  novels  of  D.  H. 
•Lawrence  and  Mary  *Webb,  with  asterisks 
marking  all  the  purple  passages  for  the  reader's 
delectation  and  mirth.  Her  characters  soon 
became  household  names  and  her  heroine  Flora 
Poste  a  synonym  for  common  sense.  Flora  goes 
to  stay  with  her  cousins,  the  Starkadders,  on 
their  decrepit  farm  in  Sussex.  From  dawn  to 
dusk  the  Starkadders  live  in  a  ferment  of  unruly 
passion  but  she  manages  them  with  cunning  and 
dispatch,  including  the  seething  matriarch  in  the 
attic,  Aunt  Ada  Doom. 

Even  minor  characters  like  Mr  Mybug,  who  is 
unable  to  look  at  a  hill  without  thinking  of 
women's  breasts,  are  a  comic  delight,  as  are  the 
cows,  Feckless,  Graceless,  Pointless,  and  Aim- 
less, who  tend  to  lose  their  legs.  All  over  the 
English-speaking  world  her  fans  quoted  chunks 
of  the  novel  to  each  other,  rocking  with  laughter, 
and  the  expression  'something  nasty  in  the 
woodshed'  has  a  permanent  place  in  the  lan- 
guage. 

After  such  a  towering  success  so  young  the 
rest  of  Stella  Gibbons's  professional  life  was  an 
anti-climax,  despite  her  excessive  industry  and 
talent.  Her  second  novel,  Bassett  (1934),  was 
fuelled  by  an  unhappy  affair  with  a  German 
businessman.  In  1933  she  met  and  married  Allan 
Bourne  Webb,  an  actor  and  singer,  the  son  of  the 
Revd  Charles  Johnston  Bourne  Webb.  They  had 
one  daughter  and  lived  happily  ever  after  (not 
always  grist  to  a  writer's  mill).  Her  subsequent 
writing  (including  poetry  and  short  stories)  was 
published  at  the  rate  of  almost  one  book  a  year, 
until  1970.  There  were  almost  thirty  of  them. 
Some  of  the  novels,  like  Miss  Linsey  and  Pa 


(1936),  My  American  (1939),  and  Here  Be  Drag- 
ons (1956),  were  reasonably  well  received.  The 
novel  she  preferred  was  Ticky  (1943),  a  satire  on 
army  life,  which  flopped.  In  1940  she  tried  to 
revive  the  magic  formula  with  Christmas  at  Cold 
Comfort  Farm,  but  it  lacked  the  panache  of  the 
original,  as  did  Conference  at  Cold  Comfort  Farm 
(short  stories,  1949). 

Stella  Gibbons  took  her  poetry  more  seriously 
than  her  prose  and  some  of  it,  about  nature  and 
the  pollution  of  the  seas,  was  prophetic.  Her 
Collected  Poems  were  published  in  1950.  Long- 
mans were  her  main  publishers  until  1955,  when 
she  moved  to  Hodder  &  Stoughton.  She  was  a 
member  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Literature  (fel- 
low, 1950)  and  was  awarded  the  Femina  Vie 
Heureuse  prize  in  1933  for  Cold  Comfort  Farm. 

After  her  marriage  Stella  Gibbons  had  moved 
to  19  Oakeshott  Avenue,  London  N6,  a  mock- 
Tudor  house  in  a  Hampstead  backwater.  She 
remained  there  after  her  husband's  death  in 
1959.  During  their  long  marriage  the  only  suffer- 
ing he  caused  her  was  his  absence  in  the  army 
during  World  War  II.  In  the  last  part  of  her  life 
she  held  an  'At  Home'  once  a  month.  She  was 
known  to  expel  guests  from  these  tea  parties  if 
they  were  shrill,  dramatic,  or  wrote  tragic  novels. 
The  irony  of  her  creative  life  is  that  the  thing  she 
hated  most,  overheated  emotions,  had  given  her 
the  most  inspiration.  Ordinary  life  and  personal 
goodness,  which  she  enjoyed  writing  about, 
yielded  a  more  pallid  harvest.  Many  of  her  other 
novels  have  been  dismissed  unfairly,  but  some 
have  dated.  Her  great  joys  were  nature,  music, 
and  reading.  She  was  an  intensely  private  person, 
not  easy  to  interview.  Her  appearance  was  of  the 
blue-eyed,  refined  English  variety  and  her  beauty 
endured,  as  did  her  upright  carriage,  typical  of 
Edwardian  ladies  who  were  forced  as  girls  to 
walk  around  with  a  book  balanced  on  their  heads. 
She  died  19  December  1989  at  home  in  Oake- 
shott Avenue,  London. 

[Publishers'  Weekly,  19  May  1934;  Stanley  J.  Kunitz  and 
Howard  Haycraft  (eds.),  Twentieth  Century  Authors, 
1942;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Jill  Neville 

GIBBS,  Sir  Humphrey  Vicary  (1 902-1 990), 
last  governor  of  Southern  Rhodesia,  was  born  22 
November  1902  at  9  Portman  Square,  London, 
the  third  son  and  sixth  and  youngest  child  of 
Herbert  Cokayne  Gibbs,  first  Baron  Hunsdon  of 
Hunsdon,  a  partner  in  the  guano-importing  firm 
of  Antony  Gibbs  &  Sons,  and  his  wife  Anna 
Maria,  fourth  daughter  of  Richard  Durant,  of 
Sharpham.  The  family  was  wealthy  and  both 
his  brothers,  the  fourth  Baron  Aldenham  and 
Sir  Geoffrey  Gibbs,  became  distinguished  City 
bankers.  He  was  educated  at  Eton  and  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  which  he  left  after  a  year.  In 
1928  he  emigrated  to  Southern  Rhodesia  and 


155 


Gibbs 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


bought  a  farm,  some  6,000  acres,  near  Bulawayo. 
He  acquired  a  high  reputation  as  a  farmer  and 
became  a  recognized  leader  in  the  institutions 
concerned  with  agriculture  and  land.  In  1947  he 
was  persuaded  to  enter  the  legislative  assembly 
as  a  member  of  the  United  Party  for  Wankie. 
He  did  not  enjoy  parliamentary  life,  perhaps 
because,  as  his  leader  and  prime  minister  Sir 
Godfrey  *Huggins  (later  first  Viscount  Malvern) 
said,  'he  was  far  too  honest  a  man  to  remain  in 
politics  very  long'.  He  retired  in  1953. 

Five  years  later  he  was  offered  the  post  of 
governor  of  the  colony.  His  integrity,  reputation, 
tall  stature,  and  distinguished  appearance  made 
him  an  obvious  candidate,  with  the  additional 
asset  of  being  a  'Rhodesian',  the  first  to  hold  the 
office.  He  accepted  the  honour,  though  with 
some  reluctance.  Southern  Rhodesia  since  1953 
had  been  a  'territory'  in  the  Federation  of  Rho- 
desia and  Nyasaland — the  area  later  covered  by 
the  independent  states  of  Zimbabwe,  Zambia, 
and  Malawi.  But  it  differed  for  historical  reasons 
from  the  two  northern  territories  in  that  the 
governor  had  only  the  limited  powers  of  a 
constitutional  monarch.  In  1963  the  Federation 
broke  up.  Zambia  and  Malawi  became  independ- 
ent under  black  majority  rule  and  it  seemed  all 
too  likely  that  Southern  Rhodesia  would  seek  the 
same  status,  but  under  white  minority  rule.  No 
British  government  could  agree  to  this,  and  when 
Ian  Smith  made  his  foolish  unilateral  declaration 
of  independence  (UDI)  on  11  November  1965 
Gibbs  found  himself  at  the  centre  of  a  storm  in 
Commonwealth  relations  as  turbulent  as  any- 
thing since  the  Boston  Tea  Party.  His  position 
was  virtually  impossible.  He  was  under  immense 
pressure  to  go  along  with  Smith.  But  he  had  been 
appointed  by  the  queen  and  his  loyalty  to  her  was 
absolute  and  unquestionable.  In  all  the  convo- 
luted, constitutional,  and  legal  problems  which 
followed  he  never  put  a  foot  wrong. 

He  would  gladly  have  retired  in  1965  and  left 
Government  House,  but,  at  the  request  of  Har- 
old Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx),  he 
remained  there  for  four  unhappy  and  increas- 
ingly isolated  years  as  a  possible  intermediary  for 
a  compromise  settlement  which  never  came.  The 
Rhodesian  government  cut  off  his  salary,  his 
telephone,  his  official  car,  and  his  police  escort. 
The  British  government  offered  to  pay  his  salary, 
but  he  refused,  saying  that  he  could  manage 
without  it,  and  he  communicated  with  Whitehall 
through  a  public  telephone  box.  Constitutionally 
he  was,  under  emergency  legislation  passed  in 
Westminster,  the  sole  ruler  of  Rhodesia  since  on 
British  instructions  in  the  name  of  the  queen  he 
had  dismissed  Smith  and  all  his  ministers  from 
office  after  UDI.  But  this  meant  very  little. 
Nevertheless  dinners  at  Government  House  were 
still  conducted  in  the  old  style — black  tie,  and 
the  royal  toast  drunk  at  the  end.  This  tended  to 


be  a  perfunctory  ceremony  in  Britain,  but  in 
Salisbury  it  really  meant  something.  To  drink  to 
the  queen  was  a  hit  at  Smith. 

Gibbs  attended  the  abortive  negotiations  at 
Gibraltar  in  the  warships  Tiger  and  Fearless.  In 
1969  Smith  declared  Rhodesia  a  republic  and 
Gibbs  was  at  last  released.  He  retired  to  his  farm 
in  Matabeleland,  and  served  on  the  boards  of 
various  companies.  He  was  chairman  for  many 
years  of  the  local  representatives  of  the  Beit 
Trust  which  gave  money  to  deserving  causes  in 
the  three  countries  of  the  old  federation.  He  was 
also  very  active  in  the  cause  of  independent 
education.  Disorder  and  crime  in  Matabeleland 
decided  him  in  1983  to  give  up  his  farm  and 
move  to  Harare,  where  he  lived  for  the  rest  of  his 
life. 

He  was  appointed  OBE  (1959),  KCMG 
(i960),  KCVO  (1965),  and  GCVO  (1969),  when 
he  was  also  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council.  He  was 
awarded  £66,000  by  Parliament  as  some  recom- 
pense for  his  financial  sacrifices  as  governor.  He 
had  honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of 
Birmingham  (LL  D)  and  East  Anglia  (DCL)  in 
1969.  He  married  17  January  1934  Molly  Peel, 
second  daughter  of  John  Peel  Nelson,  business- 
man, of  Bulawayo.  She  was  appointed  DBE  in 
1969.  They  had  five  sons.  Gibbs  died  in  Borrow- 
dale,  Harare,  5  November  1990. 
[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.]         Blake 

GILMOUR,  John  Scott  Lennox  (1906- 1986), 
botanist  and  horticulturist,  was  born  28  Sep- 
tember 1906  at  1  St  John's  Wood  Road,  London, 
the  youngest  in  the  family  of  one  daughter  and 
three  sons  of  Thomas  Lennox  Gilmour,  Edin- 
burgh lawyer,  and  his  wife  Elizabeth,  daughter  of 
Sir  John  Scott  *Keltie,  geographer.  He  was 
educated  at  Uppingham  School,  where  he 
showed  an  early  interest  in  botany,  and  then 
went  to  Clare  College,  Cambridge,  to  read  natu- 
ral sciences,  in  which  he  obtained  a  second  class 
in  both  parts  of  the  tripos  (1928  and  1929).  His 
first  appointment  (1930)  was  as  curator  of  the 
university  herbarium  and  botanical  museum  in 
the  botany  school,  where  he  and  other  colleagues, 
notably  Thomas  Turin  and  William  Stearn, 
were  enthusiastic  students  of  that  remarkable 
teacher,  Humphrey  Gilbert-Carter,  the  first  sci- 
entific director  of  the  University  Botanic  Gar- 
den. These  lifelong  friendships  were  largely 
responsible  for  a  considerable  rebirth  of  interest 
in  taxonomic  botany  in  Britain  during  the  expan- 
sion of  universities  after  World  War  II. 

Gilmour  displayed  early  qualities  of  ability, 
tact,  and  charm,  which  undoubtedly  helped  his 
rapid  promotion,  in  193 1,  to  the  post  of  assistant 
director  of  the  Royal  Botanic  Gardens  at  Kew. 
His  career,  interrupted  by  wartime  service  in  the 
Ministry  of  Fuel  and  Power  (1940-5),  took  him 
to  the  directorship  of  the  Royal  Horticultural 


156 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Gingold 


Society's  garden  at  Wisley  (1946-51)  and  then, 
on  the  retirement  of  Gilbert-Carter  in  195 1,  back 
to  Cambridge  as  director  of  the  Botanic  Garden 
and  a  fellow  of  Clare  College.  He  held  the 
directorship  until  his  retirement  in  1973. 

The  postwar  years  in  Cambridge  saw  the 
expansion  of  the  Botanic  Garden:  a  'golden  age' 
made  possible  by  a  very  generous  private  bequest 
and  by  the  talents  of  the  young  director,  whose 
sympathetic  and  humane  administration  edu- 
cated many  young  people,  some  of  whom  became 
leading  horticulturists.  In  this  happy  academic 
environment  Gilmour  made  his  mark  on  national 
and  international  botanical  and  horticultural  sci- 
ence, in  two  particular  directions.  One  of  these 
concerned  the  philosophy  of  classification  and  its 
relevance  to  biology,  a  subject  in  which  he  had 
shown  a  surprisingly  early  interest,  as  evinced  by 
his  presentation  in  1936  to  the  annual  meeting  of 
the  British  Association  in  Blackpool  of  a  paper 
entitled  'Whither  Taxonomy?' 

An  early  friendship  with  (Sir)  Julian  *Huxley 
bore  fruit,  not  least  in  the  publication  of  his  most 
important  paper  in  this  field  in  Huxley's  The 
New  Systematic*  (1940),  a  book  that  stimulated 
much-needed  discussion  involving  botanists  and 
zoologists  in  the  newly  formed  Systematics  As- 
sociation. Radical  ideas  on  the  desirability  of 
making  a  logical  distinction  between  so-called 
'natural  classifications'  and  evolutionary  (phylo- 
genetic)  ones  underlay  Gilmour's  whole  ap- 
proach and,  although  most  biologists  remain 
unconverted,  the  impact  of  his  ideas  is  still 
evident  in  modern  academic  controversies.  His 
1940  paper  is  suitable  for  modern  students  inter- 
ested in  this  area  of  scientific  activity.  Among  his 
other  publications  were  British  Botanists  (1044), 
Wild  Flowers  of  the  Chalk  (1947),  Wild  Flowers 
(jointly  with  S.  M.  Walters,  1954),  and  Some 
Verses  (1977). 

Unusually  for  philosophers  of  science,  Gil- 
mour remained  throughout  a  pragmatist  with  an 
abiding  interest  in  encouraging  people  to  work 
out  by  rational  argument  how  they  should  col- 
lectively proceed.  These  talents  were  much  exer- 
cised in  the  field  of  horticultural  nomenclature 
and  taxonomy,  where  his  second  great  contribu- 
tion was  made.  In  1950  he  and  William  Steam 
represented  the  Royal  Horticultural  Society  in 
the  nomenclature  sessions  of  the  seventh  inter- 
national botanical  congress  held  in  Stockholm; 
from  these  meetings  arose  the  International  Code 
for  the  Nomenclature  of  Cultivated  Plants  (1953). 
His  skill  as  a  chairman  was  widely  appreciated. 
A  Dutch  colleague,  Frans  Stafleu,  who  ran  the 
International  Association  of  Plant  Taxonomy 
during  those  years,  wrote  in  1986  that  'for  many 
of  his  contemporaries  and  colleagues  Gilmour 
was  the  world's  most  charming  botanist'. 

Music  and  books  were  his  main  hobbies,  both 
enjoyed   best   in   the   company   of  family   and 


friends.  He  was  a  founder  editor  of  the  New 
Naturalist  series  of  books  published  by  Collins 
from  1045,  and  put  his  considerable  knowledge 
of  the  second-hand  book  market  to  use  in  build- 
ing the  rich  horticultural  library  in  the  Cam- 
bridge Botanic  Garden.  He  became  a  fellow  of 
the  Linnean  Society  in  1932  and  was  awarded  the 
Royal  Horticultural  Society's  Victoria  medal  of 
honour  in  1957. 

Gilmour  fervently  believed  that  formal  relig- 
ion was  on  balance  'a  bad  thing',  though  charac- 
teristically his  criticisms  of  religious  colleagues 
and  friends  were  full  of  charity.  He  was  a 
founder  member  of  the  Cambridge  Humanists  in 
1955,  and  enjoyed  nothing  so  much  as  a  tolerant, 
rational  discussion  of  religion.  He  was  dark 
haired  and  exceptionally  handsome.  Athletic  in 
his  youth,  he  became  stocky  later.  In  1935  he 
married  Molly,  daughter  of  the  Revd  Maurice 
Berkley,  an  Anglican  vicar.  It  was  a  singularly 
happy  marriage  and  they  had  three  daughters. 
Gilmour  was  troubled  by  incapacity  and  illness 
in  his  later  years  and  died  3  June  1986  at  his 
home,  25  Fitzwilliam  Road,  Cambridge. 

[Memorial  volume  of  Plant  Systematics  and  Evolution, 
vol.  clxvii  (1,  2),  1989;  tribute  by  W.  T.  Steam  in 
Garden  (Journal  of  the  Royal  Horticultural  Society),  vol. 
cxii,  1987;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Max  Walters 

GINGOLD,  Hermione  Ferdinanda  (1897- 
1987),  actress,  was  born  in  London  9  December 
1897,  the  elder  daughter  (there  were  no  sons)  of 
James  Gingold,  stockbroker,  who  had  emigrated 
from  Austria,  and  his  wife,  Kate  Walter.  She 
claimed  Viennese,  Turkish,  and  Romanian  blood 
on  her  father's  side.  Her  mother  was  Jewish. 

La  Gingold,  or  Herman  or  Toni,  as  she  was 
often  called  in  the  theatre,  first  appeared  on  stage 
at  the  age  of  ten  as  the  herald  in  Pinkie  and  the 
Fairies,  produced  by  (Sir)  Herbert  Beerbohm 
•Tree.  She  later  played  the  title  role  on  tour  and 
was  cast  by  Tree  as  FalstafTs  page,  in  The  Merry 
Wives  of  Windsor.  In  1912,  aged  fifteen,  she 
played  Cassandra  at  Stratford-upon-Avon  in 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  adventurously  produced  by 
William  *Poel.  (Dame)  Edith  *Evans  was  Cres- 
sida. For  an  actress  who  was  subsequently  to 
achieve  fame  for  her  flamboyant  personality,  her 
wit,  her  sophisticated  but  often  grotesque  com- 
edy, and  her  basso  profundo  voice,  described  by 
J.  C.  Trewin  as  'powdered  glass  in  deep  syrup', 
her  surprising  billing  in  the  actor's  directory 
Spotlight  in  the  1920s  and  early  1930s  read 
'Shakespearean  and  soprano'.  She  lost  her  high 
notes  after  suffering  nodules  on  her  vocal  chords: 
'One  morning  it  was  Mozart  and  the  next  "Old 
Man  River".' 

She  played  many  parts  in  the  theatre  and  on 
radio  in  the  1930s;  but  she  found  her  true  metier 


157 


Gingold 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


in  revue.  She  was  in  Spread  It  Abroad  at  the 
Saville  in  1936,  The  Gate  Revue  in  1939  which 
transferred  to  the  Ambassadors  theatre,  and  its 
sequel  Swinging  the  Gate  (1940).  Her  legendary 
partnership  with  Hermione  *Baddeley  ('the  two 
Hermiones'),  which  was  shorter  lived  than  mem- 
ory usually  allows,  began  at  the  Comedy  theatre 
in  1 94 1  with  Rise  Above  It  (two  editions)  and 
continued  in  Sky  High  at  the  Phoenix  theatre.  It 
was  during  this  show  that  their  rivalry  escalated 
in  the  press  into  a  famous  feud.  She  moved  back 
to  the  Ambassadors  for  Sweet  and  Low  (1943), 
Sweeter  and  Lower  (1944),  and  Sweetest  and 
Lowest  (1946).  Gingold  became  a  special  attrac- 
tion for  American  soldiers  and  'Thanks,  Yanks' 
was  one  of  her  most  appropriate  numbers.  Dur- 
ing the  astringent,  name-dropping  'Sweet'  series 
she  played  1,676  performances,  before  800,000 
people,  negotiating  17,010  costume  changes. 

She  followed  with  Slings  and  Arrows  at  the 
Comedy  in  1948  and  appeared  in  cameo  roles  in 
English  films,  notably  in  The  Pickwick  Papers 
(1952),  capturing  a  wider  radio  following  with 
her  weekly  show  Home  at  Eight,  which  featured 
Sid  Colin's  Addams-like  family,  the  Dooms. 

However,  in  spite  of  success  with  Baddeley  in 
1949  in  Fallen  Angels,  by  (Sir)  Noel  *Coward, 
achieved  despite  the  author's  disapproval  of  their 
overdoing  the  comic  effects,  she  was  determined 
to  renew  her  American  friendships.  Her  first 
significant  appearance  in  New  York  was  in  John 
Murray  Andersons  Almanac  (Imperial,  1953).  For 
the  rest  of  her  career  she  was  based  in  America 
and  became  particularly  well  known  on  talk 
shows.  She  made  other  appearances  in  revue, 
toured  in  a  number  of  plays  and  musicals — 
taking  over  from  Jo  Van  Fleet  the  role  of 
Madame  Rose  Pettle  in  Arthur  Kopit's  Oh  Dad, 
Poor  Dad,  Mama 's  Hung  You  in  the  Closet  and  I'm 
Feelin  So  Sad.  She  made  many  cameo  appear- 
ances on  television  and  in  films,  notably  Around 
The  World  in  Eighty  Days  (1956);  Bell,  Book  and 
Candle  (1958);  and  The  Music  Man  (1962).  She 
joined  the  San  Francisco  Opera  to  play  the 
Duchess  of  Crackenthorp  in  Donizetti's  La  Fille 
du  Regiment  in  1975  and  attacked  the  concert 
platform  as  a  narrator. 

There  were  two  milestones  in  this  period.  She 
appeared  with  Maurice  Chevalier  in  Gigi  (1958), 
in  which  they  sang  Alan  Jay  Lerner  and  Freder- 
ick Loewe's  song  'I  Remember  It  Well'  with 
exquisite  wit  and  pathos.  In  1973  she  played 
Madame  Armfeldt  in  Stephen  Sondheim's  A 
Little  Night  Music,  triumphing  with  'Liaisons', 
the  memoirs  of  a  grande  horizontale.  Once  again 
she  reminded  audiences  of  her  gift  for  pathos  and 
the  power  of  her  acting. 

In  1977  she  took  over  the  narrator's  role  in 
Side  by  Side  by  Sondheim  on  Broadway.  Over 
eighty,  she  stayed  with  it  gallantly  on  the  gruel- 
ling 'bus  and  truck'  tour  of  one-night  stands, 


travelling  over  30,000  miles  and  visiting  sixty- 
cities  until  she  tripped  over  an  iron  pole  on 
Kansas  City  railway  station  in  the  small  hours.  A 
shattered  knee  and  a  dislocated  arm  effectively 
ended  her  performing  career. 

Hermione  Gingold  was  an  artist  whose  style 
and  wit  were  unmistakable  and  who  always  held 
the  promise  of  laughter  and  outrage.  Adored  as 
an  icon  and  often  underestimated  as  an  actress, 
she  is  secure  in  her  reputation  as  a  queen  of  revue 
and  one  of  the  essential  sights  of  London  during 
World  War  II.  She  was  a  statuesque  woman  who 
exaggerated  her  gargoyle  features  for  comic 
effect  on  the  stage;  but  she  could  achieve  a 
handsome  aspect  in  repose. 

In  191 8  she  married  Michael  Joseph  (died 
1958),  publisher,  the  son  of  Moss  Joseph,  dia- 
mond merchant.  They  had  two  sons,  the  younger 
of  whom,  Stephen  Joseph,  pioneer  of  theatre  in 
the  round  in  Scarborough,  later  Alan  Ayck- 
bourn's  base,  died  in  1967.  They  were  brought 
up  by  her  husband.  The  marriage  was  dissolved 
in  1926,  and  in  the  same  year  she  married 
(Albert)  Eric  Maschwitz  (died  1969),  playwright, 
lyricist,  and  television  executive,  son  of  Albert 
Arthur  Maschwitz,  of  Edgbaston.  The  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1940.  Hermione  Gingold  died  of 
pneumonia  and  heart  disease  in  the  Lennox  Hill 
Hospital,  New  York,  24  May  1987. 

[Hermione  Gingold,  How  To  Grow  Old  Disgracefully 
(autobiography),  1989;  G.  Payn  and  S.  Morley  (eds.), 
The  Noel  Coward  Diaries,  1982;  Gerald  Bordman, 
American  Musical  Theatre,  1978;  personal  knowledge.] 

Ned  Sherrin 

GLASS,  Ruth  Adele  (1912-1990),  sociologist, 
was  born  30  June  1912  in  Berlin,  Germany,  the 
second  of  three  daughters  (there  were  no  sons)  of 
Eli  Lazarus,  described  on  her  marriage  certificate 
as  a  'factory  burner',  a  member  of  a  distinguished 
Jewish  family  with  a  long  rabbinical  tradition, 
and  his  wife,  Lilly  Leszczynska.  She  embarked 
on  a  degree  in  social  studies  at  the  University  of 
Berlin,  and  published  a  study  of  youth  unem- 
ployment in  Berlin  in  1932  (reprinted  in  Cliches 
of  Urban  Doom,  1989),  but  following  the  rise  of 
the  Nazis  she  left  Germany  in  1932  before 
completing  her  degree.  She  studied  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Geneva  and  in  Prague  before  arriving 
in  London  in  the  mid- 1930s,  where  she  resumed 
her  sociological  studies,  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics.  Watling,  a  study  of  a  new  London 
county  council  cottage  estate  in  Hendon,  on  the 
outskirts  of  London,  published  in  1939,  estab- 
lished her  reputation  as  a  social  scientist. 

From  1940  until  1942  she  was  senior  research 
officer  at  the  Bureau  of  Applied  Social  Research, 
Columbia  University,  New  York,  and  was 
awarded  an  MA  degree,  but  she  returned  to 
England  in  1943  and  became  involved  in  town 
planning,  as  lecturer  and  research  officer  at  the 


158 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Glubb 


Association  for  Planning  and  Regional  Recon- 
struction. In  1047-8  she  was  a  research  officer  for 
PEP  (Political  and  Economic  Planning),  and  she 
then  spent  1948-50  at  the  Ministry  of  Town  and 
Country  Planning,  in  charge  of  the  new  towns 
research  section.  She  returned  to  academic  life 
in  1950,  to  University  College  London,  which 
remained  her  academic  base  for  the  rest  of  her 
life. 

In  1 95 1  she  became  director  of  the  social 
research  unit  at  University  College,  working 
under  William  (later  Baron)  Holford,  professor 
of  town  planning,  and  she  founded  the  Centre 
for  Urban  Studies  in  1951,  becoming  director  of 
research  in  1958,  a  post  she  retained  until  her 
death.  In  addition,  she  was  visiting  professor  at 
University  College  in  1972-85,  and  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Essex  in  1980-6.  She  was  chairman  of 
the  urban  sociology  research  committee  of  the 
International  Sociological  Association  (1958-75). 
She  was  also  on  the  editorial  board  of  several 
journals,  including  Sage  Urban  Studies  Abstracts 
and  the  International  Journal  of  Urban  and 
Regional  Research. 

During  the  earlier  part  of  her  career  her 
interests  centred  on  town  planning,  and  The 
Social  Background  of  a  Plan:  a  Study  of  Mid- 
dlesbrough, based  on  a  survey  done  in  1944, 
appeared  in  1948.  She  was  always  concerned 
with  the  social  aspects  of  town  planning,  con- 
stantly anxious  that  planners  should  not  forget 
human  needs,  especially  those  of  people  being 
rehoused  because  their  homes  had  been 
destroyed  during  the  war.  She  studied  housing 
problems  in  London,  editing  London,  Aspects  of 
Change  in  1964,  and  publishing  London's  Housing 
Needs  (1965)  and  Housing  in  Camden  (1969).  She 
gave  evidence  to  several  government  committees 
and  inquiries,  most  notably  the  royal  commission 
on  local  government  in  Greater  London 
(1957-60).  She  invented  the  term  'gentrification' 
in  1962,  giving  warnings  about  the  squeezing  of 
the  poor  out  of  London  and  the  creation  of 
upper-class  ghettos. 

She  became  interested  in  the  consequences  of 
immigration  and  the  position  of  minorities  in 
British  society.  In  Newcomers:  the  West  Indians  in 
London  (i960)  she  started  from  the  premiss  that 
racial  discrimination  is  an  intolerable  insult  both 
to  the  human  dignity  of  an  individual  and  to  the 
dignity  of  the  society  in  which  it  is  practised.  She 
did  a  study  of  the  Notting  Hill  riots  of  1958,  and 
in  the  1960s  she  campaigned  against  the  new 
immigration  laws.  She  was  also  concerned  with 
social  change  in  the  third  world.  In  1968  she  set 
up  a  one-year  postgraduate  course  on  urbaniza- 
tion in  developing  countries.  She  was  particu- 
larly drawn  by  India,  which  she  visited  for  two 
months  even  year  from  1958  onwards. 

Although  she  was  a  key  figure  in  establishing 
urban  sociology  as  an  academic  discipline,  pub- 


lishing Urban  Sociology  in  Great  Britain  in  1955, 
Ruth  Glass  opposed  the  idea  of  research  for  its 
own  sake,  believing  that  the  purpose  of  socio- 
logical research  was  to  influence  government 
policy  and  bring  about  social  change,  and  to  this 
end  she  involved  herself  in  political  debate.  A 
Marxist  all  her  life,  she  was  never  a  member  of 
the  Communist  parry,  and  after  the  compromises 
made  by  the  Labour  party  over  immigration  in 
the  1960s  she  felt  that  radicals  had  no  place  in 
any  political  party  in  Britain. 

Abrasive  and  confident,  with  a  powerful  intel- 
lect, she  could  be  devastating  in  argument,  espe- 
cially where  she  detected  sloppy  thinking.  She 
had  no  time  for  jargon  and  cliches.  She  had  a 
passion  for  justice  and  fought  hard  for  those  she 
believed  to  be  oppressed.  She  was  a  distinctive 
figure,  very  short,  always  dressed  in  blue,  with  a 
strong  German  accent. 

She  was  made  an  honorary  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Institute  of  British  Architects  in  1972  and  was 
awarded  an  honorary  Litt.D.  by  Sheffield  in 
1982.  In  1935  she  married  Henry  William  Dur- 
ant,  statistician  and  pioneer  of  public  opinion 
surveys,  son  of  Henry  William  Durant,  foreman 
in  a  grain  mill.  They  were  divorced  in  1941.  and 
in  1942  she  married  David  Victor  *Glass  (the  son 
of  Philip  Glass,  journeyman  tailor),  demogra- 
pher, who  became  professor  of  sociology  at  the 
London  School  of  Economics  in  1948.  Together 
they  edited  a  series  of  'Studies  in  Society',  and  at 
the  University  of  London  they  were  known  as 
the  Heloise  and  Abelard  of  sociological  research. 
It  was  a  very  close  marriage,  and  she  never 
recovered  from  his  death  in  1978.  They  had  one 
son  and  one  daughter.  In  the  last  ten  years  of  her 
life,  although  she  continued  to  lecture  and  to 
work,  she  became  increasingly  lonely,  and  her 
final  few  years  were  marred  by  illness.  She  died 
7  March  1990  in  Willow  Lodge  Nursing  Home, 
Sutton,  Surrey. 

[Independent,  13  March  1990;  Ruth  Glass,  Cliches  of 
Urban  Doom  and  Other  Essays,  1988;  Kenneth  Leech, 
The  Birth  of  a  Monster,  2nd  edn..  1990.] 

Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

GLUBB,  Sir  John  Bagot  (1897-1986),  soldier, 
Arabist,  and  author,  was  born  16  April  1897  in 
Preston,  Lancashire,  the  only  son  and  younger 
child  of  (Sir)  Frederic  Manley  Glubb,  a  major 
(later  major-general)  in  the  Royal  Engineers,  and 
his  wife,  Frances  Letitia  Bagot.  'Jack'  Glubb  was 
educated  at  Cheltenham  College  and  passed 
second  into  the  Royal  Military  Academy,  Wool- 
wich, in  19 1 4.  He  was  commissioned  in  the  Royal 
Engineers  on  20  April  191 5  and  joined  a  field 
company  of  the  RE  in  France  in  November.  He 
served  there  throughout  World  War  I,  being 
three  times  wounded,  once  nearly  fatally  in  the 
jaw,  and  was  awarded  the  MC  (1917). 


159 


Glubb 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


In  1920  he  was  posted  to  Mesopotamia,  where 
he  later  became  a  ground  intelligence  officer  with 
the  RAF.  This  was  the  beginning  of  his  connec- 
tion with  the  Arabs,  for  whom  he  formed  an 
instant  sympathy,  so  much  so  that  in  1926  he  left 
the  army  to  join  the  British  administration  in 
Iraq.  At  that  time  the  Iraqi  bedouin  and  shep- 
herd tribes  in  the  southern  desert  were  being 
terrorized  by  raids  by  Ibn  Sand's  Wahabis  (Al 
Ikhwan).  Glubb  was  posted  there  in  1928  as 
administrative  inspector. 

Partly  by  persuading  the  bedouin  to  join  his 
armed  police,  and  partly  with  RAF  support, 
Glubb  had  ended  the  raiding  by  1930,  when  he 
was  invited  to  join  the  Arab  Legion  in  Trans- 
Jordan,  with  a  similar  mission.  This  he  accom- 
plished within  three  years,  raising  a  force  of 
bedouin  camel  police,  which  became  famous  as 
the  Desert  Patrol.  In  1939  Amir  Abdullah 
appointed  him  to  command  the  Arab  Legion  as 
Feriq  (lieutenant-general),  although  he  was  better 
known  perhaps  as  Abu  Hunaik  (Father  of  the 
Little  Jaw),  a  reference  to  his  19 17  war  wound. 

Glubb  was  probably  the  first  man  to  succeed 
in  turning  the  bedouin  tribesmen  into  disciplined 
soldiers.  Previously  they  had  been  considered 
untameable.  Glubb  was,  however,  careful  to  train 
his  bedouins  in  accordance  with  their  age-old 
customs.  In  1941  he  led  them  alongside  the 
British  army  in  Syria  and  Iraq,  and  was 
appointed  to  the  DSO.  His  contribution  to  the 
capture  of  Baghdad  in  1941  and  the  subsequent 
capture  of  the  desert  fortress  of  Palmyra  in  Syria 
was  decisive,  for  it  denied  the  eastern  flank  of  the 
Middle  East  to  Hitler.  Later  he  formed  a  com- 
plete mechanized  brigade,  almost  entirely  bed- 
ouin. He  was  now  known  as  Glubb  Pasha,  'pasha' 
being  an  Ottoman  honorific  title. 

On  15  May  1948  Glubb  led  the  Arab  Legion 
across  the  Jordan  to  occupy  the  West  Bank,  as 
laid  down  by  the  United  Nations  partition  reso- 
lution of  November  1947.  He  did  not  expect  to 
have  to  fight  for  it,  which  is  what  actually 
happened.  When  the  fighting  ended  with  an 
armistice  in  March  1949,  Glubb  had  the  respon- 
sibility for  defending  the  West  Bank,  but  with  far 
too  few  troops  with  which  to  do  it.  The  Arab 
Legion  had  to  be  expanded  with  British  financial 
support,  but  with  the  proviso  that  the  British 
officers  serving  in  the  Arab  Legion  should  be 
increased  in  number.  They  occupied  all  the 
important  posts,  which  gave  rise  to  resentment 
among  many  Jordanian  officers.  Glubb  shared 
their  disquiet,  but  the  subsidy  was  vital.  He  was 
greatly  reliant  on  King  Abdullah's  support, 
which  vanished  when  the  king  was  assassinated 
on  20  July  195 1.  His  son  Talal  reigned  only  a  few 
months  before  abdicating,  and  was  succeeded  by 
his  son,  Hussein,  still  only  sixteen  and  a  school- 
boy at  Harrow.  Although  Hussein  respected 
Glubb,  the  gap  between  their  ages  proved  impos- 


sible to  bridge  and  they  soon  fell  out.  Military 
and  political  developments  were  rapidly  out- 
growing Glubb,  and  the  influential  foreign 
adviser  to  an  oriental  monarch  was  becoming  an 
anachronism. 

Hussein,  who  came  of  age  in  1953,  particularly 
disagreed  with  Glubb's  plan  for  the  defence  of 
the  West  Bank.  Glubb  sought  to  gain  time  by  a 
planned  withdrawal  until  Britain  intervened  in 
accordance  with  her  treaty  with  Jordan.  Hussein 
refused  to  countenance  any  withdrawal.  The  two 
views  were  irreconcilable  and  resulted  in  Hus- 
sein's dismissal  of  Glubb  Pasha  on  1  March 
1956.  The  order  giving  him  twenty-four  hours  to 
leave  the  country  was  intended  to  forestall  any 
attempt  to  reinstate  him.  Glubb  had  in  fact 
forbidden  any  bloodshed  and  had  told  his  British 
officers  to  calm  the  situation.  Soon  they  too  were 
on  their  way.  Glubb's  abrupt  dismissal  caused  a 
furore  in  Britain,  and  shocked  many  in  Jordan. 

Although  Glubb  was  deeply  hurt  by  the  man- 
ner of  his  dismissal  he  behaved  with  exemplary 
dignity.  Neither  then  nor  later  did  he  blame  the 
king.  He  arrived  in  Britain  with  only  £5,  and  was 
not  awarded  a  general's  pension  by  either  Britain 
or  Jordan.  He  was  appointed  KCB  (1956)  on  his 
arrival  and  thereafter  the  British  government 
washed  its  hands  of  him.  He  had  been  appointed 
OBE  in  1925  and  CMG  in  1946.  Glubb  turned  to 
his  pen,  and  to  lecturing,  to  provide  for  himself 
and  his  family  of  two  sons  and  two  daughters.  He 
had  married  in  1938  Muriel  Rosemary,  daughter 
of  James  Graham  Forbes,  physician.  They  had  a 
son  in  Jerusalem  in  1939,  whom  they  named 
Godfrey  (later  Faris),  after  the  Crusader  king.  In 
1944  they  adopted  a  baby  bedouin  girl,  and,  after 
the  death  of  another  son  who  was  born  pre- 
maturely in  1947,  adopted  another  daughter  and 
son,  both  Palestinian  refugees.  Glubb  was  not 
impressive  in  appearance  and  was  almost  diffi- 
dent in  manner,  speaking  in  rather  a  high- 
pitched  voice.  Yet  there  was  about  him  an 
unmistakable  air  of  authority,  and  when  in  uni- 
form he  wore  no  fewer  than  five  rows  of  medal 
ribbons. 

Glubb  wrote  twenty-two  books,  mostly  on  the 
Arabs,  and  lectured  in  Britain  and  the  USA.  His 
best  book  is  perhaps  War  in  the  Desert  (i960), 
which  tells  of  his  Iraq  service.  He  had  a  soldier's 
aversion  to  politics — and  to  politicians.  He  had 
tried  hard  not  to  become  involved,  but  as  com- 
mander of  Jordan's  security  forces  some  involve- 
ment was  unavoidable.  His  dismissal  was  a 
political  act,  supported  by  Hussein's  prime  min- 
ister, Samir  Rifai.  Glubb  remained  nevertheless 
throughout  his  life  a  staunch  supporter  of  Jordan 
and  King  Hussein.  He  was  a  devout  Christian,  an 
Edwardian  in  both  manner  and  values.  A  servant 
of  both  Britain  and  Jordan,  he  was  the  last  in  the 
long  line  of  powerful  British  proconsuls.  He  died 


160 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Goldfinger 


from  aplastic  anaemia  17  March  1986  in  May- 
field,  Sussex. 

[Sir  John  Glubb,  The  Changing  Scents  of  Life  (autobio- 
graphy), 1983;  James  Lunt,  Glubb  Pasha,  1984;  Trevor 
Royle.  Glubb  Pasha,  1902;  personal  knowledge.} 

James  Llst 

GOLDFINGER,  Erno  (1902-1987),  architect, 
was  born  11  September  1902  in  Budapest,  sec- 
ond capital  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  empire,  the 
eldest  of  three  sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of 
Oscar  Goldfinger,  lawyer,  landowner,  and  indus- 
trialist, and  his  wife,  Regine  Haiman.  His  early 
years  were  spent  among  the  mountains  of  Tran- 
sylvania, and  later  at  school  at  the  Budapest 
Gymnasium,  but  the  well-to-do  family  left  Hun- 
gary following  the  Communist  putsch  in  1919, 
and  Goldfinger  spent  a  year  at  Le  Rosay  School, 
Gstaad,  before  moving  to  Paris  in  1920  to  pre- 
pare for  admission  to  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts. 
There  he  was  a  student,  first  of  Leon  Jaussely, 
pioneer  in  the  field  of  town  planning,  then  of 
Auguste  Perret,  pioneer  in  the  architectural  use 
of  reinforced  concrete. 

These  two  interests — in  the  wider  problems  of 
planning  and  social  architecture,  and  in  the 
logical  architectural  expression  of  structure — 
were  to  remain  with  him  and  to  define  his  mature 
work.  But  despite  this  apparendy  impersonal 
architectural  commitment,  his  uncompromising 
character  was  inseparable  from  his  work.  The 
force  of  his  personality,  charming  at  times, 
explosive  at  others,  was  at  the  root  of  his  achieve- 
ment, and  during  his  lifetime  was  almost  better 
known  than  his  architecture.  His  late  work  can 
now  be  seen,  however,  as  the  only  major  expres- 
sion in  Britain  of  the  mature  Modern  archi- 
tecture of  the  1950s  and  1960s,  deriving  directly 
from  the  radical  architectural  thought  of  con- 
tinental Europe  in  the  period  of  World  War  I. 

As  a  student  in  Paris  during  the  1920s,  Gold- 
finger moved  in  the  avant-garde  circles  of  the 
Left  Bank,  and  was  friendly  with  artists  such  as 
Man  Ray,  Max  Ernst,  Robert  Delaunay  (with 
whom  he  collaborated  on  film-set  design),  and 
Amedee  Ozenfant  (whose  English  pupil  Ursula 
Blackwell  he  was  later  to  mam),  and  with 
architects  such  as  Adolf  Loos,  Pierre  Charreau, 
and  Le  Corbusier  himself,  with  whom,  as  French 
secretary  of  the  Congres  International  d'Archi- 
tecture  Moderne,  he  collaborated  in  the  organi- 
zation of  the  definitive  Athens  conference  of 
1933.  At  first  in  partnership  with  Andre  Szivessy 
(later  Sive),  he  designed  extremely  austere,  func- 
tional, but  elegant  shops,  apartments,  and  furni- 
ture for  an  intellectually  independent  clientele. 
In  1927  he  visited  Britain  for  the  first  time,  to 
build  a  salon  for  the  cosmetics  pioneer  Helena 
Rubinstein,  which  has  been  described  as  the  'first 
Modern  shop  in  London'. 

Towards  the  end  of  1934  he  moved  perma- 


nently to  London,  perhaps  attracted  by  the 
nucleus  of  Modern  architects  forming  there 
(many  being  refugees  from  Nazi  Germany),  per- 
haps looking  to  his  wife's  family  connections  for 
wider  opportunities.  In  1933  he  had  married 
Ursula  Ruth  (died  1991),  daughter  of  Walter 
Reginald  Blackwell,  gentleman  of  leisure,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  founding  family  of  the  successful 
Crosse  &  Blackwell  food  company.  But  the  work 
he  obtained  was  self-generated.  With -a  young 
family  (finally  two  sons  and  one  daughter),  he 
made  a  speciality  in  design  for  children,  design- 
ing toys  and  toyshops  and  the  children's  section 
of  the  British  pavilion  at  the  Paris  exhibition  of 
1938.  In  1937  he  promoted  the  construction  of  a 
terrace  of  three  houses  in  Hampstead,  London 
(one  being  for  his  own  occupation),  his  first 
significant  building.  These  houses  had  highly 
modelled  brick  and  concrete  facades,  rather  than 
the  smooth,  white-painted  surfaces  favoured  by- 
most  of  his  Modern  architectural  contemporar- 
ies. With  these  houses  he  effectively  established 
his  career,  but  he  was  obliged  to  spend  the 
following  war  years  largely  producing  exhibitions 
on  economic  and  social  themes  for  the  armed 
services  (he  did  not  become  a  British  citizen  till 

1045) 

His  political  sympathies  were  with  the  left, 
and  he  designed  offices  both  for  the  Communist 
party  and  the  Daily  Worker  newspaper  in  the 
1940s;  but  he  was  also  unusual  among  architects 
of  his  background  in  receiving  patronage  from 
private  developers,  who  gave  him  his  first  sub- 
stantial opportunities.  His  small  office  building 
in  Albemarle  Street,  London  (1955-7),  was 
highly  praised  for  its  Classical  poise  in  a  Modern 
idiom,  and  in  1959  he  went  on  to  win  with  the 
same  client  a  development  competition  promoted 
by  London  county  council  for  a  much  larger 
office  block,  conceived  in  the  same  manner,  at  the 
Elephant  and  Casde,  London  (which  was  to 
become  the  Ministry  of  Health).  This  won  the 
Civic  Trust  award  for  architecture  in  1964.  Here 
he  combined  an  emphatic  expression  of  the 
concrete  skeleton  frame  with  an  axial  composi- 
tion, reflecting  his  training  at  the  Ecole  des 
Beaux  Arts,  and  a  powerful  Constructivist  sense 
of  massing  and  spatial  transparency.  During  the 
1960s  he  won  further  commissions  for  two  large 
public  housing  projects  in  London,  each  of 
which  had  as  a  dominant  feature  a  thirty-storey 
slab  of  very  dramatic  outline,  with  a  vertical 
circulation  tower  standing  well  clear  at  one  end. 
The  power  of  the  composition  was  comple- 
mented by  the  elegance  of  the  detail.  He  was 
elected  FRIBA  in  1963  and  R\  in  1975. 

Goldfinger  was  a  tall,  handsome  man,  whose 
tighdy  compressed  features  bespoke  the  tense 
energy  within.  By  the  end  of  the  1960s  his 
uncompromising  commitment  to  concrete  and 


161 


Goldfinger 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


high-rise  housing  solutions  had  become  unfash- 
ionable, and  he  finally  retired  in  1977.  He  died 
15  November  1987  at  his  home  at  2  Willow 
Road,  Hampstead,  London,  the  house  he  had 
built  nearly  fifty  years  before. 

[M.  Major,  Erno  Goldfinger,  Budapest,  1973;  James 
Dunnett  and  Gavin  Stamp,  Catalogue  1Q20-IQ83, 
Architectural  Association  exhibition  catalogue,  1983; 
Architectural  Design,  special  issue,  January  1963;  per- 
sonal knowledge]  James  Dunnett 

GOLDIE,  Grace  Murrell  Wyndham  (1900- 
1986),  television  producer,  was  born  26  March 
1900  in  Arisaig,  Inverness,  the  only  daughter  and 
second  of  three  children  of  Robert  James  Nisbet, 
civil  engineer,  and  his  wife,  Alice  Isabel  Wright. 
Her  father's  work  took  him  to  Egypt  and  Grace's 
first  school  was  the  Convent  of  Notre  Dame  de 
Sion  in  Alexandria.  In  1916  the  family  returned 
to  England  and  she  was  educated  at  Cheltenham 
Ladies'  College.  Despite  a  warning  that  her  early 
schooling  abroad  would  prevent  her  from  going 
on  to  tertiary  education,  she  managed  to  enter 
Bristol  University,  where  she  took  a  first-class 
honours  degree  in  history  (1921).  She  then  went 
to  Somerville  College,  Oxford,  and  achieved  a 
second  class  in  philosophy,  politics,  and  econom- 
ics (1924). 

For  the  next  three  years  she  taught  history  at 
Brighton  and  Hove  School.  Petite  and  bird-like, 
in  1928  she  married  the  handsome  actor  Frank 
Wyndham  Goldie,  the  son  of  Lewis  Alexander 
Goldie,  solicitor.  They  lived  in  Liverpool  for  six 
years,  during  which  she  lectured  on  drama,  acted 
as  an  examiner  in  history,  read  plays  for  the 
repertory  theatre  where  her  husband  was  work- 
ing, and  wrote  a  book  on  its  history  (The  Liver- 
pool Repertory  Theatre,  ign-igj4,  1935). 

In  1934  the  Goldies  moved  to  London  and  for 
the  next  seven  years  she  wrote  radio  criticism  for 
the  Listener,  turning  her  attention  to  television 
when  it  started  in  1936.  During  World  War  II 
she  spent  two  years  (1942-4)  at  the  Board  of 
Trade  before  joining  the  BBC  staff  in  1944  as  a 
talks  producer,  replacing  Guy  *Burgess. 

She  produced  some  major  current  affairs 
series  such  as  Atomic  Energy  (1947)  and  The 
Challenge  of  Our  Time  (1948).  In  1948  she  moved 
to  the  television  talks  department  at  Alexandra 
Palace,  to  the  disappointment  of  Bertrand  (third 
Earl)  *Russell,  who  said  'My  dear  girl,  television 
will  be  of  no  importance  in  your  lifetime  or  mine; 
I  thought  you  were  interested  in  ideas.'  She  was 
indeed;  and  she  managed  to  translate  political  or 
international  ideas  into  effective  television  pro- 
grammes. She  successfully  enlisted  academics, 
such  as  David  Butler  and  Robert  *McKenzie,  to 
take  part  in  the  mammoth  election  results  pro- 
grammes which  she  mounted,  beginning  in  1951 . 
She  also  encouraged  political  ministers  to  appear 
on  the  new  medium  in  Press  Conference. 


In  1949  Goldie  started  Foreign  Correspondent, 
shortly  to  be  followed  by  International  Commen- 
tary, Race  Relations  in  Africa,  and  India 's  Chal- 
lenge, all  well  researched  programmes,  with 
articulate  presenters  such  as  the  war  correspon- 
dents Chester  Wilmot  and  Edward  Ward  (later 
seventh  Viscount  Bangor),  as  well  as  Christopher 
(later  Baron)  Mayhew  and  Aidan  Crawley,  then 
both  former  right-wing  Labour  MPs  with  con- 
siderable experience  of  the  responsibilities  of 
government  and  an  interest  in  communication. 
Her  regular  use  of  these  and  other  former 
Labour  MPs  led  some  Conservatives  to  complain 
that  she  was  a  well-known  socialist.  In  fact  her 
political  instincts  were  conservative,  and  her 
husband  worked  part-time  for  the  Conservative 
Central  Office. 

In  1954  a  new  head  of  television  talks  was 
appointed  and  Goldie  became  the  assistant  head 
of  the  department.  Her  high  standards  and  her 
mastery  of  television  techniques  made  her  a 
valuable  trainer  of  production  staff  who  sought 
attachments  to  an  expanding  and  highly  regarded 
department.  Without  children  herself,  she  par- 
ticularly enjoyed  recruiting  and  training  young- 
sters. She  excelled  at  starting  new  programmes, 
and  making  sure  that  they  began  well,  but  she 
tended  to  interfere  with  the  minutiae  of  pro- 
gramme content,  and  it  was  not  always  easy  for 
producers,  especially  the  women,  to  work  with 
her.  She  was  described  as  having  a  whim  of  iron, 
and  once  a  new  series,  such  as  the  revamped 
current  affairs  vehicle  Panorama,  the  daily  maga- 
zine Tonight,  or  the  arts  programme  Monitor  had 
been  successfully  launched  it  was  imperative  to 
direct  her  restless  energy  elsewhere.  She  con- 
tinued to  produce  major  programmes  herself, 
such  as  the  tribute  on  Sir  Winston  *Churchill's 
eightieth  birthday,  and  Men  Seeking  God. 

After  the  death  of  her  husband  in  1957  she 
found  relaxation  difficult.  Reluctant  to  return  to 
an  empty  flat,  she  would  remain  late  at  the 
studios,  arguing  and  dissecting  programmes. 
Emboldened  in  the  hospitality  room,  she  would 
tell  cabinet  ministers,  with  the  same  asperity  she 
showed  to  producers,  what  she  thought  of  their 
performances.  In  1962  she  became  head  of  talks 
and  current  affairs.  After  retirement  in  June  1965 
she  wrote  Facing  the  Nation  (1977),  a  definitive 
book  about  television  and  politics.  She  was 
appointed  OBE  in  1958.  She  died  in  London,  at 
her  Kensington  flat,  3  June  1986. 

[G.   W.   Goldie,   Facing  the  Nation,    1977;  personal 
knowledge.]  Leonard  Miall 

GOODALL,  Sir  Reginald  (1901-1990),  musi- 
cian and  conductor,  was  born  in  Lincoln  13  July 
1 90 1,  the  elder  son  of  Albert  Edward  Goodall, 
solicitor's  clerk,  and  his  wife,  Adelaide  Jones. 
There  was  also  a  half-sister  from  Albert  Good- 
all's  previous  marriage.  Reginald  went  to  Lincoln 


162 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Goossens 


Cathedral  Choir  School  from  191 0  to  19 14, 
after  which  his  education  continued  at  Spring- 
fields,  Massachusetts,  USA,  and  in  Burlington, 
Ontario,  Canada,  following  the  breakdown  of  his 
parents'  marriage  and  their  decision  to  emigrate, 
his  mother  to  the  United  States  and  his  father  to 
Canada.  He  left  school  at  fifteen  and  undertook  a 
variety  of  work,  as  a  messenger  for  the  railways, 
a  clerk  in  an  engineering  works,  and  in  a  bank  in 
Burlington.  His  earnings  enabled  him  to  study  at 
the  Hamilton  Conservatoire  of  Music,  which  led 
to  his  appointment  as  organist  of  St  Alban  the 
Martyr  Cathedral,  Toronto,  and  as  a  music 
master  at  Upper  Canada  College.  As  the  result  of 
meeting  Sir  Hugh  *Allen  in  Canada,  he  became 
a  student  at  the  Royal  College  of  Music,  London, 
in  1925. 

It  was  not  until  1935  that  Goodall  conducted 
his  first  opera,  Carmen,  with  a  semi-professional 
company  in  London.  In  the  mean  time  he  had 
established  himself  as  organist  and  choirmaster 
of  St  Alban's  church,  Holborn,  and  he  gave  the 
first  performances  in  England  of  Bruckner's  F 
Minor  Mass  and  other  works.  Each  year  he 
travelled  on  the  Continent  as  piano  accompanist 
for  the  teacher  and  lieder  singer  Reinhold  von 
Warlich.  He  was  thus  able  to  hear  some  of  the 
world's  great  conductors,  such  as  Wilhelm  Furt- 
wangler  and  Hans  Knappertsbusch.  In  1936 
Goodall  was  engaged  by  Covent  Garden  to  train 
the  chorus  for  Boris  Godunov,  conducted  by 
Albert  Coates.  He  did  this  so  well  that  he  was 
asked  to  remain  for  the  winter  season.  An  invita- 
tion for  the  1937  summer  season  followed,  but  he 
declined  this  in  favour  of  other  artistically  less 
rewarding  but  financially  more  secure  work.  The 
1930s  were  difficult  for  Goodall  and  the  prospect 
of  war  filled  him  with  gloom,  as  he  envisaged  the 
collapse  of  the  German  culture  which  he  had 
come  to  know  and  love.  Politically  naive,  but  at 
heart  a  serious  pacifist,  he  supported  Sir  Oswald 
*Moslev  and  his  demand  for  negotiations  with 
Hitler.  ' 

Apart  from  a  brief  spell  of  military  service,  in 
the  Royal  Army  Ordnance  Corps  from  April  to 
September  1943,  Goodall  spent  the  war  conduct- 
ing, first  the  Wessex  Philharmonic  Orchestra  and 
then  the  Sadler's  Wells  Opera.  The  latter  intro- 
duced him  to  a  repertoire  with  which  he  was  not 
familiar  and  much  of  which  he  did  not  admire. 
However,  he  conducted  the  premiere  of  Peter 
Grimes  by  Benjamin  (later  Baron)  *Britten,  at  the 
reopening  of  the  Sadler's  Wells  theatre  on  7  June 
1945.  So  impressed  was  the  composer  that  he 
invited  Goodall  to  conduct  the  premiere  of  The 
Rape  of Lucretia  at  Glyndebourne's  first  postwar 
season  the  following  year,  although  he  shared  the 
conducting  with  Ernest  Ansermet.  In  1947 
Goodall  became  second  conductor  with  the 
newly  formed  opera  company  at  Covent  Garden. 
This  was  a  low  period  for  him,  with  much  of  his 


time  devoted  to  conducting  Verdi,  a  composer  he 
despised.  In  195 1  his  contract  as  conductor  was 
terminated  and  he  continued  as  a  coach.  He  was 
an  invaluable  teacher  to  the  many  singers  who 
passed  through  his  hands.  There  were  occasional 
excursions  into  conducting  for  Covent  Garden. 

In  1968  Goodall  conducted  The  Mastersingers 
at  Sadler's  Wells  and  again  revealed  his  under- 
standing of  Richard  Wagner.  Following  this 
huge  success,  Sadler's  Wells  invited  him  to 
conduct  the  four  Ring  operas  at  the  Coliseum. 
These  were  nothing  short  of  triumphant.  He 
then  went  on  to  conduct  Tristan  and  Isolde  with 
the  Welsh  National  Opera  in  1979,  and  Parsifal 
with  the  English  National  Opera.  Critical  and 
public  response  was  ecstatic,  and  both  these 
performances  were  recorded. 

A  small,  dishevelled,  and  sometimes  cantan- 
kerous man,  Goodall  gave  at  first  sight  little 
indication  of  the  strong  inspirational  force  that 
he  undoubtedly  was  as  a  conductor  and  coach. 
His  conducting  technique  in  a  conventional  sense 
was  sketchy,  but  given  time  for  preparation  and 
rehearsal  with  singers  and  orchestra,  which  not 
every  opera  company  could  provide,  the  result- 
ing performances  were  astonishing  and  pro- 
foundly moving  in  their  revelations.  He  had 
a  rare  understanding  of  the  architecture  of 
Wagner's  music.  The  long,  slowly  unfolding 
spans  were  wonderfully  shaped  and  realized  with 
unforced  sonority.  Goodall  allowed  the  music  to 
flow  naturally  and  at  the  same  time  gave  singers 
the  greatest  support  without  drowning  them.  He 
was  appointed  CBE  in  1975  and  knighted  in 
1985.  He  had  honorary  degrees  from  Leeds 
(1974),  Newcastle  (1974),  and  Oxford  (1986). 

In  1932  Goodall  married  Eleanor  Katherine 
Edith  (died  1979),  schoolteacher,  daughter  of 
Montagu  Gipps,  of  independent  means.  They 
had  no  children.  Goodall  died  5  May  1990  in  a 
nursing  home  at  Bridge,  near  Canterbury. 

[John  Lucas,  Reggie:  the  Life  of  Reginald  Goodall,  1093; 
personal  knowledge.]  John  Tooley 

GOOSSENS,  Leon  Jean  (1897-1988),  oboist, 
was  born  12  June  1897  in  Liverpool,  the  third  of 
three  sons  and  the  fourth  of  five  children  of  the 
conductor  Eugene  Goossens  (1867-1958),  him- 
self the  son  of  Eugene  Goossens  (1 845-1906), 
conductor  of  the  Carl  Rosa  Opera  Company.  His 
mother  was  Annie,  daughter  of  the  operatic  bass 
singer  Aynsley  Cook.  Of  Belgian  origin,  the 
family  had  settled  in  England  in  the  1870s  and 
1880s;  Leon's  siblings  were  the  conductor  (Sir) 
Eugene  *Goossens,  the  horn  player  Adolphe 
(who  was  killed  in  World  War  I),  and  the  harpists 
Marie  and  Sidonie.  He  was  educated  at  the 
Christian  Brothers  Catholic  Institute  in  Liver- 
pool and  Liverpool  College  of  Music.  After  some 
study  of  the  piano,  he  began  learning  the  oboe 
with  Charles  Reynolds  at  the  age  of  eight,  and  by 


163 


Goossens 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  time  he  was  ten  had  played  professionally. 
After  further  study  with  William  Malsch  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Music  (1911-14),  he  was 
appointed  principal  oboe  of  the  Queen's  Hall 
Orchestra  at  the  age  of  seventeen.  Throughout 
his  career  (apart  from  a  brief  period  when  it  was 
stolen)  he  played  the  same  oboe,  made  for  him  by 
Loree  of  Paris. 

During  World  War  I  Goossens  volunteered 
in  the  Middlesex  Yeomanry  and  subsequently 
served  in  the  8th  Royal  Fusiliers  before  being 
commissioned  into  the  Sherwood  Foresters.  On 
leaving  for  France  in  191 5  he  was  given  a  silver 
cigarette  case  as  a  keepsake  by  his  brother 
Eugene,  who  had  been  given  it  by  (Dame)  Ethel 
*Smyth  after  a  performance  of  one  of  her  operas; 
it  deflected  a  high-velocity  bullet  from  the  region 
of  his  heart,  still  wounding  him  sufficiently  for 
him  to  be  invalided  home.  He  decided  to  accept 
an  offer  to  join  a  friend  on  an  Argentinian  ranch; 
but,  needing  capital  of  £100,  he  began  earning  it 
by  freelance  oboe  playing,  which  quickly  brought 
so  many  engagements  that  the  Argentinian  plan 
was  cancelled. 

He  rejoined  the  Queen's  Hall  Orchestra  in 
191 8,  moving  to  Covent  Garden  in  1924.  In  the 
same  year  he  became  professor  of  oboe  at  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Music  (until  1935)  and  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Music  (until  1939).  He  also 
played  in  the  Royal  Philharmonic  Society's 
orchestra  and,  on  its  foundation  by  Sir  Thomas 
*Beecham  in  1932,  the  London  Philharmonic 
Orchestra.  His  playing  with  Beecham  lent  added 
distinction  to  a  fine  orchestra,  as  can  be  heard  on 
records  and  was  heard  with  admiration  in  an 
early  broadcast  of  his  music  by  the  aged  Freder- 
ick *Delius.  Fritz  Kreisler  declared  that  among 
his  greatest  musical  pleasures  was  listening  to 
Goossens  playing  the  solo  in  the  Adagio  of 
Brahms's  Violin  Concerto  before  his  own  entry. 
This,  too,  can  be  heard  on  records.  Goossens 
was,  in  his  own  right,  one  of  the  most  popular 
and  prolific  recording  artists  in  the  1920s  and 
1930s.  Recording  companies  were  inexplicably 
slow  to  take  him  up  again  with  the  advent  of  the 
long-playing  record,  but  he  was  making  a  come- 
back with  a  recording  of  J.  S.  Bach's  Violin  and 
Oboe  Concerto,  with  Yehudi  (later  Baron) 
Menuhin,  when  an  accident  interrupted  his 
career. 

Goossens  had  by  now  acquired  a  world  repu- 
tation (he  frequently  toured  abroad)  second  to 
that  of  no  other  oboist.  More,  he  had  given  the 
oboe  standing  as  a  solo  instrument.  He  refined 
the  sound  from  the  conventional  German 
breadth  and  reediness,  while  enriching  the 
French  slenderness  but  elegance  of  tone,  to  a 
warmth  and  sweetness  hitherto  unknown.  By 
this,  and  by  the  highly  personal  elegance  of  his 
phrasing,  he  drew  attention  to  lyrical  possibilities 
that  quickly  excited  the  attention  of  composers, 


while  his  brilliant  finger  technique  opened  up  a 
new  range  of  virtuosity.  Almost  every  English 
composer  of  note  was  drawn  to  write  music  for 
him:  works  which  he  inspired  and  first  per- 
formed included  concertos  by  Ralph  *Vaughan 
Williams  and  Rutland  *Boughton,  chamber 
pieces  by  Sir  Arnold  *Bax,  Sir  Arthur  *Bliss,  and 
Benjamin  *Britten  and  an  uncompleted  suite  by 
Sir  Edward  *Elgar.  He  was  appointed  CBE  in 
1950  and  FRCM  (1962).  He  also  became  hon- 
orary RAM  (1932). 

In  1962,  still  at  the  height  of  his  powers, 
Goossens  suffered  a  car  accident  that  severely 
damaged  his  teeth  and  lips,  rendering  him  inca- 
pable of  playing.  After  many  operations,  borne 
with  great  physical  courage,  and  the  no  less 
courageous  confrontation  of  the  apparent  end  of 
his  career,  he  began  practising  again  with  a  newly 
learned  lip  technique.  He  then  played  in  film  and 
recording  orchestras  away  from  the  public  view, 
always  with  the  affectionate  support  of  his  col- 
leagues. He  was  able  to  resume  his  professional 
life,  though  he  privately  insisted  that  the  stan- 
dard of  his  playing  was  not  what  it  had  been.  He 
continued  playing  into  his  eighties,  sometimes 
with  small  ensembles  and  modest  orchestras  to 
whom  he  felt  an  old  loyalty. 

In  his  prime,  Goossens  had  earned  himself  a 
reputation  as  something  of  a  prima  donna  among 
orchestral  players.  He  would  demand  his  own 
microphone  in  recording  sessions,  on  the 
grounds  that  the  oboe's  tone  needed  special 
consideration.  Colleagues  in  the  wind  section 
would  feel  obliged  to  fit  in  with  phrasing  that  was 
always  personal  and  at  times  became  mannered 
and  unstylish.  But  with  this  awareness  of  his  own 
worth,  seen  in  his  gracious  platform  manner  in 
concertos,  went  an  essential  musical  humility  and 
a  high  degree  of  personal  kindness.  Self-dis- 
ciplined in  his  personal  life,  in  the  interests  of  a 
musical  professionalism  inherited  from  his  strict 
father,  he  enjoyed  physical  activities,  which 
included  yachting  and  farming.  He  was  always 
generous  with  his  time  to  younger  oboists,  while 
sometimes  resisting  those  who  represented  a 
newer  stylistic  wave.  His  charm  and  humour, 
among  friends,  were  unaffected  and  engaging. 
He  was  a  tall,  well-built  man,  with  a  deep  chest 
that  would  have  helped  his  phenomenal  breath 
control.  Like  his  conductor  brother  Eugene,  he 
went  bald  early  and  had  the  family's  character- 
istic slightly  hooded  eyes  and  charming  smile. 

In  1926  he  married  Frances  Alice,  daughter  of 
Harry  Oswald  Yeatman,  a  port  shipper  who 
worked  in  London  for  Taylor,  Fladgate  &  Yeat- 
man. They  had  one  daughter.  This  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1932  and  in  1933  he  married  the 
dancer  Leslie  Burrowes  (died  1985),  daughter  of 
Brigadier-General  Arnold  Robinson  Burrowes, 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Fusiliers.  There  were  two 


164 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Graham 


daughters  of  this  marriage.  Goossens  died  13 
February  1988  in  Tunbridge  Wells. 

[Barry  Wynne,  Music  in  the  Wind:  the  Story  of  Leon 
Goossens,  1967.]  John  Warrack 

GOULD,  Sir  Ronald  (1904-1986),  teacher,  edu- 
cationist, and  trade-union  general  secretary,  was 
born  9  October  1904  in  Midsomer  Norton,  the 
eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  a  daughter  of 
Frederick  Gould,  shoe  worker,  active  trade 
unionist  involved  in  local  politics,  and  later  MP 
for  Frome,  and  his  wife,  Emma  Gay,  who  was  'in 
service'  until  her  marriage.  It  was  a  close-knit 
Methodist  family,  from  Midsomer  Norton,  a 
Somerset  mining  village.  Gould  was  educated,  as 
a  scholarship  pupil,  at  Shepton  Mallet  Grammar 
School,  which  had  fees  of  £$  a  term.  His  parents 
struggled  to  pay  for  his  books  and  daily  travel. 
He  then  trained  at  the  Methodist  Westminster 
College  in  London,  gaining  his  teaching  certifi- 
cate in  1924. 

He  started  teaching  at  Radstock  Council 
School  in  Somerset  (1924-41).  His  career  in  local 
politics  as  a  councillor  began  in  1924  and  he 
became  vice-chairman  of  Norton  Radstock's 
urban  district  council  four  years  later  and  was 
chairman  from  1936  to  1946.  In  1941  he  was 
appointed  headmaster  of  Welton  Council  School 
in  Somerset,  a  post  he  held  until  1946.  Active  in 
the  National  Union  of  Teachers  from  the  start  of 
his  teaching  career,  within  twelve  years  he  was 
elected  to  the  union's  executive  at  the  first 
attempt,  becoming  its  president  in  1943-4. 

His  talents  had  not  gone  unnoticed  elsewhere. 
The  postwar  Labour  government  appointed  him 
a  member  of  the  committee  on  conditions  in  the 
mining  industry  chaired  by  Sir  John  Forster. 
This  was  greeted  with  delight  by  his  local  mining 
community,  who  believed  he  would  ensure  the 
committee  knew  about  the  real  conditions  in  the 
industry.  He  was  also  a  founder  member  of  the 
English  advisory  committee  set  up  under  the 
1944  Education  Act  by  the  minister  for  education 
and  architect  of  the  Act,  R.  A.  *Butler  (later 
Baron  Buder  of  Saffron  Walden).  The  Act  was 
the  subject  of  lengthy  consultation  between  the 
government  and  its  partners  in  education,  not 
least  the  NUT,  in  which  Gould  was  so  promi- 
nent. 

From  1947  to  1970  Gould  was  general  secre- 
tary of  the  NUT,  the  oldest,  largest,  and  most 
influential  teachers'  organization.  Under  his 
leadership  the  union's  influence  grew  further. 
Gould  and  the  union  argued  in  favour  of  com- 
prehensive education,  having  recognized  early  on 
that  every  child  had  talent  which  was  too  often 
left  dormant  or  underdeveloped.  Gould  did  not 
define  ability  narrowly:  in  his  opinion  even  child 
developed  at  different  rates  in  different  areas  of 
knowledge.  His  underlying  philosophy  was  that 
'man  can  be  improved'.  This  principle  encour- 


aged him  to  extend  the  'professional'  education 
work  of  the  NUT,  and  to  help  establish  the 
international  teachers'  organization,  the  World 
Confederation  of  Organizations  of  the  Teaching 
Profession.  He  was  unanimously  elected  presi- 
dent of  WCOTP  in  1952,  and  was  regularly 
re-elected  to  this  post  until  he  retired  in  1970.  By- 
then  WCOTP  represented  six  million  teachers 
and  was  the  teachers'  voice  in  Unesco.  In  his  last 
year  as  NUT  general  secretary  he  backed  to  the 
hilt  a  teachers'  strike,  which  led  to  a -raising  of 
their  salaries. 

Gould  and  his  counterpart  Sir  William  Alex- 
ander (later  Baron  Alexander  of  Potterhill), 
chairman  of  the  Association  of  Education  Com- 
mittees, dominated  postwar  education.  Gould 
described  their  relationship  as  that  of  two  boxers: 
'He's  only  another  brother  earning  a  living,'  he  ' 
said.  Together  they  averted  the  postponement  of 
the  raising  of  the  school  leaving  age  to  fifteen  in 
the  late  1940s.  But  even  they  failed  to  convince  a 
later  Labour  government,  faced  with  another 
financial  crisis  combined  with  a  teacher  shortage, 
not  to  postpone  its  raising  again,  this  time  to 
sixteen.  That  reform  had  to  wait  until  after 
Gould's  retirement.  However,  they  did  prevent 
uncertificated  staff  from  being  brought  in  to  ease 
the  teacher  shortage. 

Gould  was  knighted  in  1955  and  held  hon- 
orary degrees  from  Bristol  (1943),  British 
Columbia  (1963),  McGill  (1964),  St  Francis 
Xavier  (1969),  Leeds  (1971),  and  York  (1972).  A 
tall,  warm-faced  man,  he  was  well  aware  of  his 
own  abilities  but  did  not  fail  to  recognize  the 
talents  of  those  around  him.  His  upbringing  and 
his  years  in  education  had  taught  him  that  wealth 
— or  the  lack  of  it — had  nothing  to  do  with 
intelligence  or  ability.  In  1928  he  married  Nellie 
Denning,  daughter  of  Joseph  William  Fish,  a 
railway  wagon  repairer  for  the  Great  Western 
Railway.  They  had  two  sons.  Nellie  died  in  1979 
and  in  1985  he  married  Evelyn  Little,  daughter 
of  Frederick  Box,  Salvation  Army  officer.  Gould 
died  in  his  sleep  at  home  in  Worthing,  1 1  April 
1986. 

[Ronald  Gould,  Chalk  up  the  Memory,  an  Autobio- 
graphy, 1976;  Teacher  (newspaper  of  the  National 
Union  of  Teachers),  passim;  private  information.] 

Dolg  McAvoy 

GRAHAM,  (William)  Sydney  (1918-1986), 
poet,  was  born  in  Greenock  19  November  1918, 
the  elder  child  and  elder  son  of  Alexander 
Graham,  marine  engineer,  of  Greenock,  and 
his  wife  Margaret  McDermid,  shopkeeper.  After 
leaving  Greenock  High  School  at  fourteen,  he 
completed  an  apprenticeship  in  engineering. 
In  1938-9  he  attended  Newbattle  Abbey- 
Adult  Education  Residential  College,  near  Edin- 
burgh, where  he  responded  enthusiastically  to 
the   literature   and    philosophy   courses.    Early 


165 


Graham 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Scottish  and  Anglo-Saxon  literature,  modern 
writers  including  James  *Joyce,  Ezra  Pound,  and 
T.  S.  *Eliot,  pre-Socratic  philosophers  and  Mar- 
tin Heidegger,  were  important  influences,  to 
which  he  later  added  Arthur  Rimbaud,  Marianne 
Moore,  and  Samuel  Beckett. 

After  casual  jobs  in  Ireland,  he  became  a 
munitions  engineer  in  Glasgow  for  a  time  during 
World  War  II,  when  he  wrote  The  Seven  Journeys 
(published  later  in  1944).  David  Archer,  a  pub- 
lisher and  philanthropist,  provided  him  with 
practical  support,  publishing  Cage  Without 
Grievance  (1942)  and  facilitating  lively  friend- 
ships in  Glasgow  and  London  with,  amongst 
others,  Jankel  Adler,  Robert  *Colquhoun,  Robert 
♦MacBryde,  Dylan  *Thomas,  and  (F.)  John 
•Minton.  Bohemian  life  promoted  both  Gra- 
ham's development  and  heavy  drinking.  2nd 
Poems  (1945)  continued  the  intense,  romantic, 
semi-surreal  language  which  both  he  and  Dylan 
Thomas  had  derived  in  part  from  Joyce.  Graham 
valued  his  early  work  (omissions  from  the  Col- 
lected Poems  ig42-iQ7j,  1979,  arose  from  mis- 
understandings about  available  space),  which  was 
intelligently  evaluated  by  the  critic  Vivienne 
Koch  in  American  journals.  She  became  a  close 
friend.  His  Atlantic  award  for  literature  in  1947 
and  his  teaching  at  New  York  University  in 
1947-8  increased  his  circle  of  friends.  He  also 
visited  Greece  in  1964  and  1977  and  Iceland  in 
the  1960s;  some  of  his  poems  drew  on  those 
experiences. 

Faber  &  Faber  accepted  The  White  Threshold 
(1949)  and  became  his  principal  publishers.  T.  S. 
Eliot,  a  director  there,  admired  his  excellent 
knowledge  and  craftsmanship  and  said  at  one  of 
their  meetings  that  Graham's  poetry  was  difficult 
and  would  sell  slowly  because  people  did  not  like 
to  think.  His  work  certainly  required  the  reader's 
full  attention,  which  he  gained  at  his  impressive 
public  readings  in  Britain  and  abroad,  by  the 
moving  dramatic  art  and  clarity  of  his  definitive 
delivery.  The  Nightfishing  (1955),  Malcolm  Moon- 
ey's  Land  (1970),  and  Implements  in  their  Places 
(1977),  the  last  two  both  Poetry  Book  Society 
choices,  deployed  a  language  increasingly  trans- 
parent and  exactly  tuned  to  explore  the  essential 
separateness  of  each  human  experience  in  a 
world  of  flux.  They  displayed  the  desperate  need 
to  communicate,  and  the  obdurate  strangeness  of 
language  itself  as  medium  and  metaphor.  Gra- 
ham's themes  were  developed  through  sharply 
observed  images,  highly  personal  and  presented 
with  urgency  through  a  musical  poetry  rich  in 
structure  and  feeling.  The  work,  like  his  own 
voice,  had  a  Scottish  timbre.  The  originality  with 
which  he  enlivened  and  disturbed  language  was 
that  of  a  thoroughly  radical,  modern,  inter- 
national tradition.  This  work,  taken  together 
with  his  simpler,  lyrical  pieces,  made  his  achieve- 


ment outstanding  and  of  permanent  import- 
ance. 

His  poems,  which  did  not  fit  any  of  the 
prevailing  fashions,  but  nevertheless  attracted  a 
constant  interest  among  serious  readers,  were 
published  by  several  magazines  in  Britain,  North 
America,  and  Europe,  and  were  broadcast  by  the 
BBC.  After  1944  Graham  lived  chiefly  in  Corn- 
wall, often  writing  during  the  night  after  eve- 
nings spent  with  friends  or  literary  visitors  in  his 
local  pub.  His  work's  excellence,  together  with 
his  own  professional  integrity,  inspired  support 
from  a  number  of  friends,  poets  and  painters  who 
gave  practical  help  or  bought  manuscripts.  His 
remarkable  letters,  mostly  in  private  hands,  run 
parallel  to  his  poetry,  showing  his  loneliness, 
need  to  communicate,  and  deep  feeling  for  his 
many  friends.  They  throw  light  on  his  working 
methods,  often  containing  verse  and  detailed 
criticism.  Full  of  wordplay,  they  are  startling, 
honest,  sharp,  and  deeply  humorous.  He  concen- 
trated on  poetry  almost  exclusively,  having 
worked  only  very  briefly  on  the  land,  as  a 
copywriter,  fisherman,  or  auxiliary  coastguard 
when  living  at  Gurnard's  Head  in  Cornwall. 
Small  grants  from  the  Arts  Council  helped  and  a 
civil  list  pension  of  £500  a  year  was  granted  him 
in  1974. 

Five  feet  eight  inches  in  height,  Graham  had 
curly  dark  hair,  very  piercing  blue  eyes,  and  a 
slim  physique.  He  loved  music  and  had  a  good 
singing  voice.  Proud  to  be  Scottish,  he  was  witty, 
positive,  and  assertive,  dominating  conversations 
and  demanding  patience  from  his  friends,  which 
was  usually  freely  given.  His  generosity  of  spirit 
inspired  much  affection  and  respect.  In  1954  he 
married  Agnes  ('Nessie')  Kilpatrick,  daughter  of 
David  Dunsmuir,  miner,  of  Blantyre.  They  had 
no  children,  but  Graham  acknowledged  a  daugh- 
ter, Rosalind,  born  in  1944  to  Mary  Harris;  he 
saw  little  of  the  child.  Agnes  had  been  a  fellow 
student  at  Newbattle.  During  their  close  rela- 
tionship they  lived  in  distinctly  spartan  condi- 
tions; she  provided  material  as  well  as  moral 
support  and  always  steadfast  encouragement. 
From  1967  they  lived  at  4  Mountview  Cottages, 
Madron,  Cornwall,  where  Graham  died  from 
cancer,  after  a  long  illness,  9  January  1986. 

[Jonathan  Davidson,  The  Constructed  Space,  a  Celebra- 
tion of  the  Poet  W.  S.  Graham,  1994;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]    Michael  Seward  Snow 

GRANT,  Cary  (1904- 1986),  film  actor,  was  born 
18  January  1904  at  15  Hughenden  Road,  Ashley, 
Bristol,  as  Archibald  Alec  Leach,  the  son  of  Elias 
Leach,  tailor's  presser,  and  his  wife,  Elsie  Maria 
Kingdon,  daughter  of  a  shipwright.  An  earlier 
baby  brother  had  died  before  his  birth.  Years 
later,  after  he  had  left  England,  a  half-brother 
was  born.  He  attended  Fairfield  Secondary 
School,  Bristol.  When  he  was  ten,  his  mother 


166 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Granville 


disappeared  and  he  thought  she  had  died.  How- 
ever, she  had  been  committed  to  a  mental  hos- 
pital, where  she  remained  for  many  years. 
Discovering  the  exciting  life  backstage  at  the 
Bristol  Hippodrome,  he  was  fascinated  by  Bob 
Pender's  Knockabout  Comedians,  a  visiting 
troupe  of  slapstick,  acrobatic,  and  stilt  artists, 
and  joined  them  when  he  was  fourteen.  For  two 
years  they  toured  Britain,  and  then  had  a  long 
run  in  New  York  in  1920,  after  which  they  spent 
a  year  touring  the  United  States.  When  the 
troupe  returned  to  England  Leach,  now  eight- 
een, stayed  on  in  America  and  took  various  jobs 
in  vaudeville,  at  Coney  Island  and  as  a  sandwich- 
board  man  on  stilts.  After  a  speaking  part  in 
revue,  Arthur  Hammerstein,  the  producer,  cast 
him  in  an  operetta  by  his  nephew  Oscar  in  1927. 
He  spent  several  years  working  in  Broadway 
musicals,  in  theatrical  touring  companies,  and  in 
repertory.  In  the  1920s  he  went  to  and  fro 
between  England  and  America. 

In  1 93 1  he  easily  obtained  a  Hollywood  con- 
tract with  Paramount,  adopted  the  name  Can 
Grant,  and  began  five  years  as  a  handsome 
romantic  lead  in  many  unremarkable  films. 
Blonde  Venus  (1932)  with  Marlene  Dietrich  and 
two  Mae  West  films  may  not  have  been  great 
pictures,  but  the  exposure  was  good  for  his 
career.  Sylvia  Scarlett  in  1935,  although  another 
indifferent  film,  was  a  turning-point  for  him  as 
he  began  to  evolve  a  style  of  his  own. 

In  1937  he  became  freelance,  which  he 
remained,  choosing  his  films  carefully  and  devel- 
oping a  light  comedy  touch.  Over  the  next  thirty 
years  he  was  to  make  many  huge  box-office 
successes,  taking  a  percentage  rather  than  a  fee. 
He  changed  his  name  legally  in  194 1  and  became 
an  American  citizen  in  June  1942.  Among  his 
many  sophisticated  and  'screwball'  comedies, 
romantic  comedies,  and  comedy  thrillers,  per- 
haps the  best  remembered  are  Bringing  Up  Baby 
(1938)  and  The  Philadelphia  Story  (1940).  He 
w  orked  with  some  of  the  best  directors  and  with 
stars  such  as  Katharine  Hepburn,  Irene  Dunne, 
Ingrid  Bergman,  and  Grace  Kelly.  Above  all,  it 
was  (Sir)  Alfred  *Hitchcock  who  saw  beyond  the 
light  comedian  and  jaunty  man-about-town,  giv- 
ing him  more  subtle  parts  and  being  responsible 
for  three  of  his  best  films,  Suspicion  (1941), 
Notorious  (1946),  and  especially  North  by  North- 
west (1959).  In  1966,  at  the  age  of  sixty-two,  he 
appeared  in  a  part  other  than  romantic  lead  for 
the  first  time.  Not  relishing  the  role  of  elderly 
character  actor,  and  perhaps  bored  after  seventy- 
two  films,  he  made  no  more. 

For  many  years  one  of  the  most  glamorous  and 
wealthy  stars  in  Hollywood,  playing  opposite  top 
actresses  from  Jean  Harlow  in  the  1930s  to  Leslie 
Caron  over  a  generation  later,  he  was  widely  seen 
as  an  amiable  performer  who  always  played 
himself  and,  somewhat  unjustly,  was  not  taken 


seriously  as  an  actor.  He  was  nominated  for  the 
Best  Actor  award  in  194 1  and  1944  but  did  not 
win  the  Oscar.  He  finally  got  recognition  from 
his  peers  in  1969  when,  his  film  career  over,  the 
Academy  belatedly  gave  him  the  survivor's  con- 
solation prize,  an  honorary  award.  The  public 
loved  him,  however,  and  most  of  his  films  did 
well  at  the  box  office,  some  of  them  spectacularly 
so.  He  remained  busy  in  old  age,  having  a 
number  of  active  directorships,  including  of  the 
cosmetic  firm  Faberge  and  Metro-Goldwyn- 
Mayer. 

A  tall,  well-dressed  man  with  thick  dark  hair 
and  a  marked  cleft  in  his  chin,  he  had  a  charming 
screen  personality  and  self-deprecatory  wit.  He 
modified  his  west  country  working-class  tones  to 
an  accent  all  his  own,  clipped  and  acceptable  to 
American  ears  as  upper-class  British.  So  distinc- 
tive was  his  screen  presence  that  it  was  easily 
mistaken  for  the  man  himself,  but  his  private  life 
suggests  a  deeply  troubled  individual.  Rumoured 
to  be  bisexual,  he  had  four  unhappy  marriages 
which  collapsed  quickly,  with  acrimony.  His 
damaged  childhood  and  vagabond  youth  had  not 
equipped  him  for  good  personal  relationships. 
Only  a  fifth  marriage,  when  he  was  seventy- 
seven,  to  a  much  younger  woman,  seems  to  have 
brought  him  some  tranquillity. 

Cary  Grant  was  married  to  actress  Virginia 
Cherrill,  formerly  wife  of  Irving  Adler  and 
daughter  of  James  Edw  ard  Cherrill,  of  independ- 
ent means,  1934-5;  Woolworth  heiress  Barbara 
Hutton,  daughter  of  Franklyn  Laws  Hurton  and 
his  wife  Edna,  one  of  Frank  Winfield  Wool- 
worth's  two  daughters,  1941-5;  actress  Betsy 
Drake  1949-59;  actress  Dyan  Cannon  (whose 
true  name  was  Samile  Dyan  Friesen,  daughter  of 
an  insurance  executive),  by  whom  he  had  his 
only  child,  a  daughter,  1965-8;  and  former 
public  relations  director  Barbara  Harris  in  1981. 
The  first  four  marriages  ended  in  divorce.  He 
died  of  a  stroke  in  Davenport,  Iowa,  29  Novem- 
ber 1986. 

[The  Times  and  Independent,  1  December  1986;  Nicho- 
las Thomas  (ed.).  International  Dictionary  of  Films  and 
Filmmakers,  vol.  iii,  1092;  Chuck  Ashman  and  Pamela 
Trescott,  Cary  Grant,  1087;  William  Currie  Mcintosh 
and  William  Weaver,  The  Private  Cary  Grant,  1983; 
Charles  Higham  and  Roy  Moseley,  Cary  Grant,  the 
Lonely  Heart,  1989.]  Rachael  Low 

GRANVILLE,  Sir  Keith  (1910-1990),  chairman 
and  chief  executive  of  the  British  Overseas  Air- 
ways Corporation,  was  born  Keith  Granville 
Solomon  1  November  19 10  in  Faversham,  Kent, 
the  youngest  of  four  children  (all  sons)  of  Albert 
James  Solomon,  sales  representative,  and  his 
wife,  Ada  Miriam  Chambers.  He  was  educated  at 
Tonbridge  School.  After  he  left  he  dropped  the 
surname  Solomon  and  used  his  second  forename 
as  his  new  surname.  He  joined  Imperial  Airways 
Ltd.  at  Croydon  airport  in  1929  as  one  of  two 


167 


Granville 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


original  commercial  trainees,  and  was  paid  ten 
shillings  a  week.  His  potential  was  immediately 
spotted,  and  he  was  one  of  the  first  trainees 
selected  before  World  War  II  for  service  on 
overseas  routes.  During  the  1930s  he  was  succes- 
sively station  manager  in  Brindisi  (Italy),  Tanga- 
nyika, Southern  and  Northern  Rhodesia,  Egypt, 
and  India,  which  were  mainly  Imperial  Airways 
flying-boat  bases. 

By  the  end  of  the  war  he  had  made  his  mark  in 
the  airline,  by  then  renamed  the  British  Overseas 
Airways  Corporation,  and  in  1947  was  appointed 
manager,  Africa  and  the  Middle  East.  In  1948  he 
returned  to  London  as  general  manager,  mails, 
traffic,  and  catering,  and  he  was  promoted  to 
sales  director  for  all  BOAC's  overseas  services  in 
1 95 1.  Further  recognition  followed  in  1954  when 
he  became  commercial  director.  With  the  open- 
ing of  Atlantic  services,  new  routes  to  South 
America  with  Lockheed  and  Boeing  aircraft,  and 
the  early  jets  of  the  1950s  and  1960s,  he  laid  the 
foundation  in  BO  AC  of  air  travel  marketing  on  a 
broad  and  popular  scale.  This  was  to  be  further 
developed  through  the  arrival  in  service  of  the 
Boeing  747  (the  'jumbo  jet')  which,  with  its  large 
passenger  carrying  capacity,  brought  a  com- 
pletely new  concept  to  long-haul  travel.  In  1958 
Granville  became  managing  director  under  (Sir) 
Basil  Smallpiece  and  was  appointed  CBE. 

He  joined  the  board  of  BO  AC  in  1959  and  in 
i960  was  appointed  chairman  of  the  airline's 
associated  companies,  becoming  deputy  chair- 
man under  Sir  Giles  Guthrie  in  1964.  In  1969  he 
was  named  managing  director  to  the  new  chair- 
man, (Sir)  Charles  Hardie,  retaining  his  post  as 
deputy  chairman.  On  1  January  1971  he  achieved 
the  distinction  of  being  the  first  member  of  the 
airline  staff  to  be  appointed  chairman.  His  was  a 
popular  appointment  because  he  was  respected 
and  admired  by  his  colleagues  as  an  able  admin- 
istrator with  a  keen  sense  of  humour,  who  made 
a  significant  contribution  to  the  fortunes  of 
BOAC.  He  demonstrated  sound  judgement,  was 
assertive,  and  liked  to  speak  plainly.  But  his 
bluff,  avuncular  manner  made  him  approachable 
and  he  was  ever  ready  to  help  with  problems  and 
complaints.  His  wide  experience  and  abundant 
common  sense  was  equally  well  regarded  by 
many  other  senior  executives  throughout  the 
international  airline  community.  He  also  helped 
guide  the  airline  through  difficult  times,  facing 
problems  involving  operating  rights,  industrial 
relations,  government  pressure  in  the  choice  and 
number  of  aircraft  orders,  and  investment 
restrictions.  He  was  pioneering,  creative,  and 
innovative. 

Granville  made  a  unique  contribution  to  Brit- 
ish civil  aviation  history  when,  in  August  1972, 
he  signed  an  order  for  five  Concorde  airliners, 
the  world's  first  supersonic  passenger  aircraft. 
The  order,   later  increased   to  seven   aircraft, 


marked  the  culmination  of  more  than  ten  years  of 
close  collaboration  with  the  British  and  French 
manufacturers.  When  Concorde  went  into  ser- 
vice to  Bahrain  for  the  first  time  in  January  1976 
it  became  the  flagship  of  the  British  Airways  fleet 
and  the  best  known  and  most  readily  recognized 
aircraft  in  the  world. 

On  the  formation  of  the  British  Airways  group 
in  1972  Granville  became  the  first  deputy  chair- 
man, and  in  September  the  same  year  he  took  up 
office  as  the  president  of  the  International  Air 
Transport  Association  at  its  annual  meeting  in 
London.  His  international  aviation  career  had 
thus  come  full  circle,  for  he  had  represented  his 
airline  at  IATA's  first  traffic  conference  in  Rio  de 
Janeiro  just  after  the  war.  He  also  became  presi- 
dent of  the  Institute  of  Transport  in  1963-4  and 
chairman  of  International  Aeradio  Ltd.  from 
1965  to  197 1.  He  was  made  an  honorary  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Aeronautical  Society  in  1977  and  was 
knighted  in  June  1973.  He  spanned  a  period  of 
forty-five  years,  during  which  civil  aviation 
developed  from  biplanes  and  flying  boats  to  jet 
aircraft  and  supersonic  air  travel. 

Granville  was  portly,  about  five  feet  ten  inches 
tall,  with  smiling  eyes  and  a  firm,  decisive  nature. 
In  1933  he  married  Patricia  Capstick;  they  had 
one  daughter.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in 
1945  and  in  1946  he  married  Gertrude  ('Truda'), 
daughter  of  Howard  Belliss,  gentleman  farmer. 
They  had  one  son  and  four  daughters.  On 
retirement  in  March  1974  Granville  went  to 
live  in  Chateau  d'Oex,  Switzerland,  where  he 
named  his  house  Speedbird.  He  died  in  Lau- 
sanne, 7  April  1990. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Colin  Marshall 

GRAY,  Basil  (1904-1989),  keeper  of  oriental 
antiquities  at  the  British  Museum,  was  born  21 
July  1904  at  13  Elvaston  Place,  London  SW7,  the 
younger  son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  Sur- 
geon-Major Charles  Gray  of  the  Army  Medical 
Corps,  a  passionate  traveller,  and  his  wife  Flor- 
ence Elworthy,  daughter  of  the  Revd  Henry  von 
der  Heyde  Cowell.  He  was  educated  at  Bradfield 
and  at  New  College,  Oxford,  where  he  gained  a 
third  class  in  literae  humaniores  (1926)  and  a 
second  in  modern  history  (1927). 

On  coming  down  from  Oxford,  in  1928  he 
worked  for  a  season  on  the  excavations  at  the 
great  palace  of  the  Byzantine  emperors  in  Con- 
stantinople, where,  however,  his  interests  firmly 
turned  to  eastern  rather  than  classical  art,  and 
then,  for  three  months,  in  Vienna  under  Josef 
Strzygowski.  He  entered  the  British  Museum 
late  in  1928.  There  being  no  vacancy  in  the 
antiquities  departments  he  spent  an  interim  year 
in  the  department  of  printed  books.  In  1930  he 
transferred  to  the  sub-department  of  oriental 
prints  and  drawings,  then  still  a  division  of  the 


168 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Greene 


department  of  prints  and  drawings,  under  R. 
Laurence  *Binyon,  the  poet  and  distinguished 
orientalist  whom  he  joined,  with  J.  V.  S.  Wilk- 
inson, to  write  the  standard  work,  Persian  Minia- 
ture Painting  (1933).  When  the  department  of 
oriental  antiquities  was  created  in  1933  he  was 
given  the  task  of  redisplaying  the  collection  of 
Indian  sculpture.  The  Chinese  exhibition  of  1935 
then  directed  his  attention  to  the  Far  East.  By 
the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  his  writings 
covered  the  whole  field  of  eastern  art,  Islam, 
India,  China,  and  Japan.  His  later  work,  how- 
ever, dealt  with  the  close  relations  between  the 
arts  of  China  and  Persia,  following  the  Mongol 
invasion  and  under  the  successors  of  Tamer- 
lane— for  example,  in  his  important  contribu- 
tions, as  editor  and  joint  author,  to  The  Arts  of  the 
Book  in  Central  Asia,  1207-1506  (1079),  which 
definitively  establish  the  prime  role  of  princely 
patronage  in  the  painting  of  eastern  Islamic 
cultures. 

Gray  was  placed  in  charge  of  the  oriental 
collections  in  1938,  though,  on  account  of  his 
youth,  he  was  appointed  deputy  keeper  only  in 
1940  and  keeper  of  oriental  antiquities  in  1946. 
Under  his  long  keepership  (until  1969)  the 
immensely  important  collection  of  orientalia  in 
the  British  Museum  was  complemented  by  a 
department  of  carefully  chosen  distinguished 
younger  specialists.  Gray  was  the  friend  and 
trusted  adviser  of  many  great  collectors,  stimu- 
lating their  interest  and  moulding  their  taste.  His 
confidence  in  their  public-spiritedness  was  more 
than  justified  by  their  generosity  to  the  British 
Museum. 

Gray's  outstanding  career  at  the  British 
Museum  was  recognized  by  the  award  of  the 
CBE  in  1957  and  the  CB  in  1969,  and  by  his 
appointment  as  acting  director  and  principal 
librarian  in  1968.  In  1966  he  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  British  Academy,  and  was  closely  asso- 
ciated with  the  British  Institutes  of  Persian  and 
of  Afghan  (later  South  Asian)  Studies.  His  chair- 
manship of  exhibitions  of  Islamic  art  in  Cairo 
(1969)  and  Beirut  (1974)  culminated  in  the 
exhibition,  The  Arts  of  Islam,  at  the  Hayward 
Gallery  (1976),  the  most  important  of  its  kind 
since  the  Munich  exhibition  of  19 10.  His 
particular  contribution  to  the  study  of  Persian  art 
was  marked  by  his  election  as  president  of  the 
Societas  Iranologica  Europaea  (1983-7). 

After  his  retirement  in  1969  Gray  continued  to 
travel,  lecture,  write,  and  advise  official  commit- 
tees, one  of  his  few  recreations  being  the  Savile 
Club,  of  which  he  was  a  member  for  sixty  years. 
He  was  a  committed  member  of  the  Church  of 
England  and  was  church  warden  both  at  St 
George's,  Bloomsbury,  and  at  Long  Wittenham, 
where  he  lived  for  the  last  twenty  years  of  his  life. 
He  was  elegantly  neat  in  physique,  with  austere 
features   offset   by   humorous   eyes   and   bushy 


eyebrows.  His  suits  and  shirts  were  always  tailor- 
made  even  when  he  was  not  well  off.  His 
colleagues  remember  him  as  forthright  and 
rather  autocratic  in  his  earlier  years.  His  works 
reveal,  however,  his  patience  and  his  eagle  eye  for 
decorative  detail. 

In  1933  he  married  Nicolete  Mary,  daughter 
of  Laurence  Binyon,  herself  a  distinguished 
medievalist,  designer  of  inscriptions,  and  histo- 
rian of  lettering.  They  had  two  sons  and  three 
daughters.  Their  eldest  daughter,  Camilla  (died 
1971),  the  historian  of  the  Russian  avant-garde, 
married  the  son  of  the  composer  Sergei  Proko- 
fiev. Gray  died  in  the  John  Radcliffe  Hospital, 
Oxford,  10  June  1989. 

(J.  M.  Rogers,  'Basil  Gray1,  Iran,  vol.  xvii,  1979,  with  a 
bibliography  of  his  works  to  date;  Den  ys  Sutton,  'Basil 
Gray',  Apollo,  January  1989;  Diana  Scarisbrick,  'Basil 
Gray',  Apollo,  January  1989;  Margaret  Medley,  'Basil 
Gray  CBE',  Transactions  of  the  Oriental  Ceramic  Society 
ig88-8g,  1990;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] J.  M.  Rogers 

GREENE,  Sir  Hugh  Carleton  (1910-1987), 
journalist,  broadcaster,  and  publisher,  was  born 
15  November  1910  in  Berkhamsted,  the  youngest 
of  four  sons  and  fifth  of  six  children  of  Charles 
Henry  Greene,  headmaster  of  Berkhamsted 
School,  and  his  wife  Marion  Raymond  (his 
cousin),  daughter  of  the  Revd  Carleton  Greene, 
vicar  of  Great  Barford.  One  of  his  brothers  was 
the  writer  Graham  Greene.  He  was  educated  at 
Berkhamsted  School  and  at  Merton  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  obtained  a  second  class  in  both 
classical  honour  moderations  (1931)  and  English 

d933)- 

Having  spent  some  time  in  Germany  before  he 
went  to  university,  he  joined  the  Daily  Tele- 
graph's office  in  Berlin  (1934)  and  became  its 
chief  correspondent  in  1938.  In  May  1939,  as  a 
reprisal  for  the  expulsion  from  London  of  a 
German  correspondent,  he  was  expelled  from 
Germany.  In  his  five  years  in  Berlin  he  had 
become  a  forthright  correspondent.  He  wit- 
nessed the  rise  of  the  Nazis  and  saw  some  of  the 
evil  at  first  hand,  an  experience  which  was  a 
major  influence  in  his  life.  As  he  put  it:  'I  learnt 
to  hate  intolerance  and  the  degradation  of  charac- 
ter to  which  the  deprivation  of  freedom  leads.' 
The  Daily  Telegraph  then  stationed  him  in  War- 
saw. The  Germans  began  to  bomb  Katowice  on  1 
September  1939  and  within  a  week  Greene  had 
to  leave  Poland.  He  travelled  to  Romania,  carry- 
ing only  a  bottle  of  beer  and  a  gas  mask.  As  the 
war  spread,  in  the  following  months  he  reported 
from  a  number  of  European  countries  until  in 
June  1940  he  arrived  at  Falmouth,  having  left 
first  Brussels  and  then  Paris  just  ahead  of  the 
German  armies. 

After  a  brief  period  as  a  pilot  officer  in 
intelligence,  while  a  member  of  the  Royal  Air 


169 


Greene 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Force  Volunteer  Reserve,  he  arrived  at  the  Brit- 
ish Broadcasting  Corporation  in  October  1940  to 
become  assistant  news  editor  of  the  German 
Service.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  career  and 
a  relationship  with  the  BBC  that  was  to  last  for 
thirty-one  years.  In  1942  he  flew  in  a  Mosquito 
bomber  over  German-occupied  Norway  to  neu- 
tral Stockholm,  to  hear  for  himself  how  the  BBC 
output  sounded  through  the  German  jamming. 
As  a  result,  he  changed  the  style  in  which  the 
German  news  was  written  and  broadcast.  He 
concentrated  on  news,  being  less  interested  in 
features  programmes,  and  made  many  hard  deci- 
sions to  dismiss  staff.  The  broadcasts  put  out  by 
his  department  eased  the  job  of  the  postwar 
occupation  and  reconstruction  of  Germany, 
because,  as  he  later  learned,  they  had  made  a 
genuine  impact  on  Germany,  providing  the  core 
of  Britain's  anti-Nazi  propaganda. 

After  the  war  Greene  was  seconded  in  1946  to 
the  British  Control  Commission  in  Hamburg  to 
reorganize  German  broadcasting.  Although  he 
returned  to  the  BBC  briefly  (from  December 
1948,  to  the  Eastern  European  Service),  he  was 
seconded  again  in  1950,  this  time  to  the  Colonial 
Office,  to  supervise  psychological  warfare  against 
the  communists  in  Malaya,  in  the  Emergency 
Information  Service.  When  he  returned  to  Lon- 
don in  September  1951,  he  had  no  clear  view  of 
what  he  wanted  to  do.  He  made  enquiries  about 
various  jobs  in  journalism  and  intelligence  but 
nothing  came  of  them.  At  the  invitation  of  Sir 
Ian  Jacob,  director-general  of  the  BBC,  he  went 
back  to  Bush  House  and  took  on  a  number  of 
senior  appointments,  eventually  becoming  con- 
troller, Overseas  Services  (1955-6).  By  1956  it 
was  clear  that  Jacob  was  grooming  Greene  as  his 
successor.  But  first  he  had  to  learn  about  the 
non-journalistic  side  of  the  BBC.  For  two  years 
he  was  director  of  administration  and  then,  in 
1958,  director  of  news  and  current  affairs.  He 
was  the  first  holder  of  that  post  and  he  succeeded 
where  his  predecessor,  Tahu  Hole  (head  of  the 
news  division),  had  failed.  He  restored  the  emi- 
nence of  news  and  current  affairs.  The  1959 
general  election  was  the  first  reported  by  the 
BBC  in  its  news  bulletins  and  the  first  in  which 
there  was  questioning  of  party  leaders  and  some 
discussion  of  the  issues. 

The  arrival  of  Hugh  Greene  as  director- 
general  on  2  January  i960  was  the  most  impor- 
tant thing  to  happen  to  the  BBC  since  World 
War  II.  For  the  first  time  a  BBC  man  had  been 
promoted  to  the  top  job.  He  changed  the  BBC 
for  the  better  by  doing  three  things.  He  made  it 
clear  that  he  was  the  editor-in-chief,  exercising 
general  editorial  control  over  the  BBC's  output 
of  programmes;  he  gave  priority  to  television 
over  radio;  and  he  made  the  BBC  realize  that 
competition  could  be  stimulating.  This  was  an 
exciting  and  exhilarating  time  for  those  who 


worked  in  the  BBC.  For  those  who  watched  and 
listened  to  it  the  changes  were  challenging  and 
occasionally  disturbing,  with  programmes  such 
as  That  Was  The  Week  That  Was  and  Till  Death 
Do  Us  Part,  as  well  as  the  series  of  'Wednesday 
Plays'.  In  Greene's  view,  the  BBC  did  a  great 
service  to  the  country  by  widening  the  limits  of 
discussion  and  challenging  the  old  taboos.  He 
was  dismissive  of  those  who  did  not  share  those 
views — too  dismissive,  some  felt.  He  played  a 
major  part  in  the  establishment  of  the  Open 
University,  allocating  thirty-two  hours  of  broad- 
casting time  each  week. 

He  ensured  the  future  well-being  of  the  BBC 
by  convincing  the  committee  of  inquiry  into  the 
future  of  broadcasting  (1960-2),  chaired  by 
W.  H.  (later  Baron)  *Pilkington,  that  BBC  tele- 
vision should  have  a  second  channel  (BBC  2)  and 
that  colour  television  should  call  for  an  additional 
licence  fee.  Both  these  moves  were  delayed  by 
the  government.  Financial  pressures  increased 
and  so  did  criticisms  of  the  BBC.  Greene's 
relationship  with  the  government  became  more 
testing  and  in  1967  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron 
Wilson  of  Rievaulx)  switched  Baron  *Hill  of 
Luton  from  the  chairmanship  of  the  Independ- 
ent Broadcasting  Authority  to  the  BBC.  Greene 
was  enraged  and  thought  of  resigning  at  once, 
but  he  was  persuaded  to  stay.  The  strain  of 
working  under  a  chairman  he  did  not  respect 
became  too  much  and  on  31  March  1969  Greene 
resigned.  Three  months  later  he  was  translated  to 
the  BBC  board  of  governors.  It  was  a  mistaken 
move  and  after  less  than  two  years  he  resigned  in 
1 97 1  and  left  the  BBC,  not  bitter,  but  disap- 
pointed and  depressed. 

In  retirement  he  made  some  programmes  for 
both  Independent  Television  and  the  BBC, 
advised  the  Greek  and  Israeli  governments  on 
broadcasting,  wrote  several  books  on  the  rivals  of 
Sherlock  Holmes,  and  became  chairman  of  Bod- 
ley  Head  (1969-81),  the  publishing  house  of  his 
brother,  Graham  Greene.  Greene  was  appointed 
OBE  in  1950  and  KCMG  in  1964.  He  was  given 
an  honorary  DCL  by  East  Anglia  (1969)  and  a 
D.Univ.  by  York  and  the  Open  University  (both 
1973).  Germany  honoured  him  with  the  Grand 
Cross  of  the  Order  of  Merit  (1977). 

In  appearance,  Greene  was  immensely  tall  (six 
feet  six  inches),  with  a  striking  skull,  a  chubby, 
cheerful  face,  and  heavy  spectacles.  He  was  a 
kind  man,  though  he  could  be  ruthless.  He  was 
incisive,  but  he  could  also  ponder.  He  was  quick- 
witted, but  enjoyed  listening  to  and  telling  long 
stories.  He  had  few  close  friends,  having  an  aloof 
personality,  which  partly  explained  the  failure  of 
his  first  two  marriages.  His  first  wife  (1934)  was 
Helga,  daughter  of  Samuel  Guinness,  banker,  of 
London.  They  had  two  sons  and  were  divorced 
in  1948.  In  195 1  he  married  Elaine  Shaplen, 
daughter  of  Louis  Gilbert,  accountant,  of  New 


170 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Grice 


York.  They  had  two  sons  and  were  divorced  in 
1969.  In  1970  he  married  Else  Neumann  (the 
German  actress  Tatjana  Sais,  with  whom  he  had 
lived  in  1948-50),  daughter  of  Martin  Hofler,  of 
Frankfurt-am-Main,  Germany.  She  died  in 
1981.  In  1984  he  married  Sarah,  daughter  of 
David  Grahame,  concert  manager,  of  Brisbane, 
Australia.  Greene  died  of  cancer  in  King  Edward 
VII  Hospital,  London,  19  February  1987. 

[Michael  Tracey,  A  Variety  of  Lives,  1983;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]  Paul  Fox 

GREENWOOD,  Joan  Mary  Waller  (1921- 
1987),  actress,  was  born  4  March  1921  at  122 
Fulham  Road,  Chelsea,  the  only  child  of  Sydney 
Earnshaw  Greenwood,  artist,  and  his  wife,  Ida 
Waller.  The  name  'Man''  does  not  appear  on  her 
birth  certificate.  She  was  educated  at  St  Cathe- 
rine's School  in  Bramley,  Surrey,  and  at  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Dramatic  Art.  She  first 
appeared  on  stage  in  1939,  when  she  was  seven- 
teen, in  a  small  part  in  The  Robust  Invalid,  a 
translation  of  Moliere's  Le  Malade  imaginaire  at 
the  Apollo  and  two  years  later  in  an  unimportant 
film,  John  Smith  Wakes  Up. 

Thereafter  she  was  much  in  demand  on  both 
stage  and  screen,  in  every  sort  of  production.  Her 
first  important  film  was  The  Gentle  Sex  in  1943, 
directed  by  Leslie  *Howard,  as  one  of  a  group  of 
conscripts  in  the  ATS  (Auxiliary  Training  Serv- 
ice). Her  first  leading  part  was  in  a  comedy  of 
1946  called  A  Girl  in  a  Million,  playing  opposite 
Hugh  Williams.  It  took  her  longer  to  make  her 
mark  in  the  theatre.  During  the  war  she  took 
over  from  Deborah  Kerr  in  Heartbreak  House, 
toured  with  ENSA  (the  Entertainments  National 
Service  Association),  did  a  season  with  Worthing 
Repertory  Company,  and  toured  with  the  com- 
pany run  by  (Sir)  Donald  *Wolfit,  playing  Ophe- 
lia in  Hamlet  and  Celia  in  Volpone.  For  several 
years  after  the  war  she  concentrated  on  the 
cinema,  becoming  well  known  to  the  general 
public  when  she  had  roles  in  a  number  of  Ealing 
films.  Saraband  for  Dead  Lovers  (1948)  was  a 
historical  romance  with  Stewart  Granger,  then  at 
the  height  of  his  popularity.  Her  light  touch  as  a 
comedian  was  particularly  suitable  for  the  gentle 
Ealing  comedies  of  the  day  and  she  appeared  in 
three  of  the  best:  Whisky  Galore!  (1948),  The 
Man  in  the  White  Suit  (1951),  and,  above  all, 
Kind  Hearts  and  Coronets  ( 1949).  In  1952  she  was 
a  piquant  Gwendoline  in  the  elegant  film  of  The 
Importance  of  Being  Earnest,  directed  by  Anthony 
•Asquith. 

She  appeared  in  New  York  and  made  two 
disappointing  films  in  Hollywood,  where  she 
disliked  the  lifestyle.  After  taking  over  from  Lilli 
Palmer  in  Bell,  Book  and  Candle  at  the  Phoenix  in 
1955  she  scored  two  critical  successes  with  Lysis- 
trata  at  the  Royal  Court  in  1957,  later  transferred 
to  the  West  End,  and  Hedda  Gabler  at  the  Oxford 


Playhouse  in  i960,  which  was  repeated  in  the 
West  End  in  1964.  She  appeared  at  the  Chiches- 
ter festival  of  1962  in  The  Broken  Heart,  and  the 
following  year  in  the  film  Tom  Jones,  Tony 
Richardson's  rip-roaring  adaptation  from  the 
novel  by  Henry  *Fielding.  This,  however,  was 
the  last  big  film  in  which  she  had  a  role  of  any 
importance.  She  appeared  in  a  few  minor  pro- 
ductions, the  last  being  a  partly  animated  Anglo- 
Polish  version  of  The  Water  Babies  which, 
despite  a  wonderful  cast,  was  disappointingly 
flat.  She  later  returned  to  the  screen  in  1987,  the 
year  of  her  death,  for  a  small  cameo  part  in  the 
distinguished  film  Little  Dorrit. 

On  the  stage  she  gave  a  fine  performance  in 
The  Chalk  Garden  in  1971  but,  like  her  film 
career,  her  stage  career  virtually  ended  when  she 
was  in  her  mid-fifties,  although  she  did  appear  in 
several  television  series  later  than  this.  She  also 
returned  to  the  stage  later  to  take  over  the  part  in 
The  Understanding  played  by  Dame  Celia  •John- 
son, when  the  latter  died  in  1982. 

A  versatile  actress  and  a  talented  comedian, 
Joan  Greenwood  appeared  in  everything  from 
sophisticated  comedy,  romance,  and  adventure 
to  classical  drama  and  even  revue.  Only  five  feet 
tall,  slight,  and  with  dazzling  blonde  hair,  she 
was  both  sophisticated  and  elfin,  quizzical  and 
mocking,  with  her  full  pouting  mouth  and  lin- 
gering glance.  Her  distinctive  voice  and  almost 
exaggerated  diction  have  been  described  as  'gar- 
gling with  champagne',  husky,  purring,  deli- 
riously seductive.  Her  work  as  an  intelligent  and 
witty  comedian  endeared  her  to  a  discriminating 
minority,  while  her  films,  especially  the  Ealing 
comedies,  brought  her  a  wider  public.  However, 
both  on  stage  and  screen  her  career  seems  to  have 
been  strangely  uneven.  Perhaps  the  very  distinct- 
iveness of  her  style  limited  the  opportunities 
offered  to  her.  The  strength  and  emotional 
power  of  her  Lysistrata  and  even  more  her 
Hedda  Gabler  suggest  possibilities  not  realized  in 
the  rest  of  her  career. 

Wrhen  appearing  in  Hedda  Gabler  at  Oxford  in 
i960,  at  the  age  of  thirty -nine,  she  surprised 
everyone  by  eloping  to  Jamaica  and  secretly 
marrying  an  older  fellow  member  of  the  cast, 
Andre  Cecil  Morrell  (died  1978),  son  of  Andre 
Mesritz  Morrell.  They  had  one  son.  Joan  Green- 
wood died  of  acute  bronchitis  and  asthma  27 
February  1987,  at  her  home  in  Chelsea. 

[The  Times,  3  March  1987;  Independent,  4  March  1987; 
Who's  Who  in  the  Theatre,  17th  edn.,  1989;  Halliwell's 
Film  Guide,  8th  edn.,  1991.]  Rachael  Low 

GRICE,  (Herbert)  Paul  (1913-1988),  philoso- 
pher, was  born  15  March  19 13  in  Birmingham, 
the  elder  son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of 
Herbert  Grice,  businessman  and  musician,  and 
his  wife,  Mabel  Felton,  schoolmistress.  He  was 
educated  at  Clifton  College,  Bristol,  where  he 


171 


Grice 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


was  head  boy  and  also  distinguished  himself  in 
music  and  sports,  and  at  Corpus  Christi  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  was  awarded  first-class  hon- 
ours in  classical  honour  moderations  (1933)  and 
liter ae  hum  a  mores  (1935),  and  of  which  he  later 
became  an  honorary  fellow  (1988).  After  a  year  as 
assistant  master  at  Rossall  School,  Lancashire, 
and  then  two  years  as  Harmsworth  senior  scholar 
at  Merton  College,  Oxford,  he  was  appointed 
lecturer  and  in  1939  fellow  and  tutor  in  philo- 
sophy at  St  John's  College,  Oxford,  and  uni- 
versity lecturer  in  the  sub-faculty  of  philo- 
sophy. 

During  World  War  II  he  served  in  the  Royal 
Navy  in  the  Atlantic  theatre  and  then  in  Admi- 
ralty intelligence  from  1940  to  1945.  By  the 
middle  1950s  he  was  widely  recognized  as  one  of 
the  most  original  and  independent  philosophers 
in  Oxford.  At  one  time  or  another  he  taught  an 
extraordinarily  high  number  of  those  who  were 
to  become  leading  philosophers  of  the  period, 
including  (Sir)  Peter  Strawson.  He  held  visiting 
appointments  at  Harvard,  Brandeis,  Stanford, 
and  Cornell  universities,  and  was  invited  again  to 
Harvard  to  deliver  the  William  James  lectures  in 
1967.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1966.  He  became  an  honorary  fellow 
of  St  John's  in  1980. 

In  1967  he  left  Oxford  for  a  new  life  in  the 
United  States,  as  professor  of  philosophy  at  the 
University  of  California,  Berkeley.  There  he 
continued  through  teaching  and  informal  discus- 
sion to  influence  and  challenge  a  steadily  growing 
group  of  devoted  students  and  colleagues.  He 
gave  many  distinguished  lectures,  seminars,  and 
symposia  at  universities,  conferences,  and  pro- 
fessional associations  all  across  the  country.  He 
was  elected  president  of  the  Pacific  division  of 
the  American  Philosophical  Association  in  1975, 
and  was  invited  to  give  their  Cams  lectures  in 
1983.  Near  the  end  of  his  life  he  carefully 
prepared  for  publication  Studies  in  the  Way  of 
Words  (1989),  which  contains  most  of  his  major 
essays,  the  William  James  lectures,  some  pre- 
viously unpublished  papers,  and  a  retrospective 
assessment.  His  Cams  lectures  and  related  mate- 
rial on  the  metaphysics  of  value  appeared  as  The 
Conception  of  Value  in  1991. 

His  most  important  and  most  influential  work 
was  in  the  philosophy  of  language,  in  particular 
the  analysis  of  meaning.  He  proposed  to  define 
what  a  speaker  means  in  saying  something  on  a 
particular  occasion  in  terms  of  the  speaker's 
intentions  to  bring  about  certain  effects  in  his 
audience  through  their  recognition  of  those  very 
intentions.  He  devised  tests  to  reveal  that  many 
aspects  of  successful  communication  are  due  to 
the  'conversational  implicatures'  carried  by  a 
speaker's  utterance  rather  than  to  logical  implica- 
tions carried  by  the  meaning  of  the  expression  he 
uses  or  by  what,  strictly  speaking,  he  says.  He 


thereby  showed  how  the  meanings  or  semantics  of 
many  expressions  in  natural  language  are  more 
adequately  represented  by  the  familiar  structures 
of  mathematical  logic  than  had  been  widely 
supposed.  This  drew  clearer  limits  to  what  can  be 
concluded  about  meaning,  necessity,  and  poss- 
ibility from  facts  about  linguistic  usage.  In  these 
respects  his  work  was  a  major  factor  in  the  fruitful 
rapprochement  between  Oxford  philosophy  of  the 
1960s  and  the  more  logically  oriented  philosophy 
then  flourishing  in  the  United  States.  His  defence 
of  the  previously  discredited  causal  theory  of 
perception  came  to  serve  as  prototype  for  an 
analytical  strategy  widely  deployed  elsewhere.  In 
later  years  he  concentrated  on  moral  philosophy 
and,  with  characteristic  imagination  and  meta- 
physical boldness,  on  the  question  of  the  objectiv- 
ity of  value,  which,  he  held,  required  a  realistic 
conception  of  finality  or  teleology  in  nature. 

Though  Grice  thought  continually  about 
philosophy  and  wrote  in  manuscript  a  great  deal, 
he  published  very  little.  This  might  have  been 
thought  attributable  to  practical  inefficiency.  His 
habits  of  life  were  in  a  way  recklessly  disorderly; 
the  floor  of  his  room  in  St  John's  was  a  dreadful 
litter  of  ashtrays,  old  clothes,  scattered  books  and 
papers,  cricket  bats  and  balls,  and  (always 
unanswered,  often  unopened)  correspondence. 
This  apparent  chaos  was,  however,  deceptive.  He 
was  a  man  of  formidable  intellectual  gifts,  enorm- 
ous energy,  brooding  temperament,  and  fiercely 
competitive  spirit.  His  talents  were  well  suited  to 
his  passions  for  chess,  bridge,  which  he  played  for 
Oxfordshire  for  some  years,  and  above  all  cricket, 
to  which  he  largely  devoted  most  of  his  summers 
while  living  in  England.  His  musical  talent  was  a 
more  private,  personal  matter.  His  piano-playing 
was — like  his  considerable  prowess  as  a  bats- 
man— fluent  and  forceful  rather  than  elegant.  It 
was  understood  by  his  friends  that  he  was  also  a 
quite  serious  composer;  but  here,  as  in  philoso- 
phy, he  could  not  bring  himself  to  think  that  any 
piece  was  ever  really  finished,  and  his  works,  it 
appeared,  were  permanently  awaiting  revision. 
That  he  published  so  little  philosophy  was  due  to 
this  fixed  idea  that  publication  implied  a  claim  to 
have  got  matters  completely  right,  but  a  few 
months'  further  thought  would  always  show  this 
claim  to  be  ill-founded. 

In  some  ways  the  practices  of  teaching  in 
Oxford  did  not  suit  him.  In  philosophy  he  throve 
on  the  stimulus  of  dialogue  and  debate,  question 
and  answer,  thrust  and  counter-thmst;  a  silent, 
respectful,  note-taking  lecture  audience  bored 
and  depressed  him.  Also,  in  private  tutorials,  he 
could  be  gloomily  unforthcoming  with  pupils 
whose  offerings  were  too  feeble  to  be  challenging. 
The  seminar  was  his  preferred  habitat.  He  was  a 
shrewd  master  of  strategy,  with  the  capacity  to 
hold  elaborate  schemes  or  lines  of  argument  in 
his  mind  and  to  unfold  them  slowly  and  deliber- 


172 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Grigson 


ately,  revealing  the  next  step  only  when  it  was 
needed.  His  methodical,  increasingly  gleeful 
demolition  of  opposing  philosophical  theories, 
and  occasionally  his  own,  was  a  minor  art  form 
for  the  connoisseur.  He  was  highly  prolific  in 
thought;  he  had  more  ideas,  questions,  and 
projects  than  he  could  ever  have  worked  out  in  a 
dozen  lifetimes.  A  man  of  strong  appetites  and 
impressive  girth,  he  could  be,  when  engaged,  a 
deviously  witty  and  highly  convivial  companion 
of  fearsome  endurance. 

In  1942  he  married  Kathleen,  daughter  of 
George  Watson,  naval  architect.  They  had  a 
daughter  and  a  son.  Grice  died  in  Berkeley  28 
August  1988. 

[University  of  California  records;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge]  Barry  Strold 

G.  J.  Warnock 

GRIGSON,  (Heather  Mabel)  Jane  (1928- 
1990),  writer  on  cookery,  was  born  13  March 
1928  in  Gloucester,  the  elder  daughter  (there 
were  no  sons)  of  George  Shipley  Mclntire, 
deputy  town  clerk  of  Gloucester,  and  his  wife, 
Doris  Mabel  Frampton  Berkley,  artist.  When  she 
was  four  her  father  became  town  clerk  of  Sun- 
derland, and  he  bequeathed  quietly  left-wing 
politics  to  his  daughters.  It  was  the  good  fresh 
fish  and  the  straightforwardness  of  north  country 
food  that  first  delighted  Jane  in  her  lifetime's 
study.  In  1939  Wearside  was  a  target  for  German 
bombing,  and  the  sisters  were  sent  to  Casterton 
School  (originally  for  clergy  daughters)  in  West- 
morland, where  Jane  encountered  the  outstand- 
ing English  teaching  of  a  Miss  Bevis.  In  1946  she 
followed  her  father  to  Cambridge,  and  attended 
Newnham  College.  She  obtained  a  third  class  in 
part  i  of  the  English  tripos  (1048)  and  a  second 
(division  II)  in  part  ii  (1949). 

Her  first  job  was  at  Heffer's  art  gallery  in 
Cambridge.  In  1952  she  went  to  work  for  the 
publisher  Thames  &  Hudson,  who  recom- 
mended her  as  research  assistant  to  Geoffrey 
*Grigson,  man  of  letters,  for  his  series  of  sepa- 
rate books  People,  Places,  Things,  and  Ideas 
(1954).  She  had  bought  his  anthology  Visionary 
Poems  and  Passages,  or  the  Poet's  Eye,  when  she 
was  fifteen.  Geoffrey  Harvey  Grigson  was  the 
son  of  William  Shuckforth  Grigson,  vicar  of 
Pelynt.  He  was  twenty-three  years  older  than 
Jane,  had  been  married  twice  before,  and  had 
three  grown-up  or  adolescent  children.  They 
lived  together  and  in  the  mid-1950s  she  changed 
her  name  by  deed  poll  to  Grigson;  twenty  years 
later  they  were  able  to  marry.  They  had  one 
daughter,  Sophie,  who  also  became  a  cookery 
expert.  They  lived  partly  at  Broad  Town  Farm 
House  near  Wootton  Bassett  in  Wiltshire,  and 
partly  at  Troo,  in  the  Loir  [sic]  valley.  In  both 


places  they  absorbed  landscape  and  history,  and 
gave  news  of  them  in  different  literary  forms. 

Jane  Grigson 's  first  published  writing  was  for 
the  Sunderland  Echo,  on  the  Venerable  *Bede, 
and  she  made  new  translations  of  Carlo  Lor- 
enzini's  Pinocchio  (1959)  and  of  Beccaria's  Of 
Crimes  and  Punishments  (1963,  for  which  she 
jointly  won  the  John  Florio  prize).  She  found  her 
true  vocation  when  a  reader  of  Geoffrey  Grig- 
son's  book  Painted  Caves  (1957)  wroje  to  him 
from  Troo,  asking  if  he  knew  that  semi-troglo- 
dyte village.  They  went  to  see,  and  soon  bought 
their  own  habitable  cave. 

Jane  Grigson  had  started  as  Geoffrey's  amanu- 
ensis, but  in  Troo  she  emerged  as  her  own 
writer.  The  variety  and  excellence  of  the  local 
raw  materials,  the  skills  of  their  neighbours,  and 
her  own  developing  conviction  that  because 
cooking  is  a  central  part  of  life  it  should  be  as 
carefully  written  about  as  any  other  art  form,  led 
to  the  first  of  her  many  books:  Charcuterie  and 
French  Pork  Cookery  (1967).  This  was  a  break- 
through into  a  new  literacy  about  cooking,  and 
she  was  immediately  recognized  as  a  serious 
writer.  Later  landmark  books  were  Fish  Cookery 
(1973,  enlarged  as  Jane  Grigson's  Fish  Book, 
1993),  which  restored  fish  cookery  to  its  rightful 
place,  and  English  Food(i<m).  The  tiny  Cooking 
of  Normandy  (1987),  written  for  sale  at  Sains- 
burys,  raised  that  often  footling  genre  to  a  new 
level. 

From  1968  till  the  week  of  her  death  she  wrote 
for  the  Observer  Magazine,  to  which  Elizabeth 
David  had  recommended  her.  Several  of  her 
books  were  collections  of  articles.  She  cam- 
paigned against  the  bad  as  well  as  for  the  good, 
denouncing  the  degradation  and  sometimes  dan- 
ger inflicted  on  eaters  by  food  adulterators  in 
general. 

Elizabeth  David  awoke  postwar  Britain  from 
its  devotion  to  oversized  and  overcooked  food. 
Jane  Grigson  carried  the  awakening  forward  by- 
opening  the  whole  wide  history  and  context  of 
foods,  dishes,  utensils,  and  methods.  Above  all 
she  sought  to,  and  did,  convey  the  reliable 
pleasures  of  knowledgeable  cooking  and  eating. 
She  herself  put  it:  'Cooking  something  delicious 
is  really  much  more  satisfactory  than  painting 
pictures  or  throwing  pots.  Food  has  the  tact  to 
disappear,  leaving  the  room  and  opportunity  for 
masterpieces  to  come.  The  mistakes  don't  hang 
on  the  walls  or  stand  on  the  shelves  to  reproach 
you  for  ever.' 

Jane  Grigson  was  generous,  scholarly,  and 
deeply  cheerful,  combining  outgoingness  with 
equanimity;  also  smoothly  and  unobtrusively 
beautiful,  with  wavy  fair  hair  and  green  eyes. 
When  already  mortally  ill,  she  spoke  and  raised 
funds  to  fight  off  threats  from  developers  to  the 
great  neolithic  monument  at  nearby  Avebury. 


173 


GrigSOn  D.N.B.  1986-1990 

She  died  of  cancer  at  Broad  Town  12  March  the  Jane  Grigson  library  at  the  Guildhall  Library 

1990  and  was  buried  in  the  churchyard  there  in  the  City  of  London, 

beside  her  husband,  who  had  died  in  1985.  Her  [Private  information;  personal  knowledge.) 
collection  of  cookery  books  became  the  core  of  Wayland  Rennet 


174 


H 


HALEY,  Sir  William  John  (1901-1987),  editor 
of  The  Times  and  director-general  of  the  BBC, 
was  born  24  May  1901  in  St  Helier,  Jersey,  the 
only  child  of  Frank  Haley,  clerk,  originally  from 
Bramley,  Leeds,  and  his  wife,  Marie  Berthe 
Sangan.  He  was  educated  at  Oxenford  School 
and  Victoria  College,  Jersey.  He  left  school  at 
sixteen  and  for  the  next  two  years  was  a  sea-going 
radio  operator.  Then  journalism  beckoned  and, 
after  a  few  months  on  the  Jersey  Morning  News, 
he  moved  to  The  Times  in  London  as  a  short- 
hand-telephonist. 

There  he  soon  convinced  The  Times  manage- 
ment that  the  efficient  way  to  channel  European 
correspondents'  messages  was  to  set  up  a  'filter' 
system  in  Brussels,  with  himself  as  filterer- 
in-chief  and  the  London  end  supervised  by  Edith 
Susie  Gibbons,  as  editorial  secretary.  The  plan 
worked  so  well  that  within  months  Miss  Gibbons 
was  recruited  by  the  Daily  Mail  as  their  corre- 
spondent in  Brussels,  and  it  was  there  that  she 
and  Haley  were  married  in  November  192 1.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  John  Thomas  Gibbons, 
printer.  There  were  two  sons  and  two  daughters 
of  the  marriage. 

Thus,  early  in  his  career,  the  importance  of 
journalism's  double  need  of  good  writing  and 
good  administration  had  taken  root  in  Haley's 
mind.  It  was  a  recurring  theme  for  him  in  all  the 
positions  he  held  and  was  strikingly  set  out  for 
his  colleagues  at  The  Times  in  a  memorandum  he 
wrote  in  November  1955:  'Editorial  direction  of 
a  newspaper  needs  three  things:  judgement, 
imagination  and  drive.  I  am  particularly  con- 
cerned about  the  last.  While  the  management 
properly  has  its  own  sphere  in  our  affairs,  there  is 
plenty  of  editorial  management  which  we  can  do 
for  ourselves.  The  more  efficient  we  make  the 
editorial,  the  more  successful  the  paper  will 
be... Administration  is  important.  But  journalism 
is  above  all  a  writing  profession.  It  is  good  for  all 
of  us  to  write.'  His  pen  was  busy  in  Brussels.  He 
was  contributing  to  the  Manchester  Evening  News 
and  in  1922  he  joined  the  paper  as  a  sub-editor. 
In  1925  he  became  chief  subeditor  and  by  1930 
he  had  put  before  the  manager,  John  Scott,  a 
development  plan  which  led  to  his  appointment 
that  year  as  managing  editor,  and  a  director  of 
Manchester  Guardian  and  Evening  News  Ltd. 

He  was  the  first  to  arrive  in  the  office,  and  the 


last  to  go.  His  office  contained  no  chair,  only  a 
reading  desk  for  page  proofs  and  his  milk-and- 
bun  lunch.  He  fought  shy  of  personal  contacts 
outside  the  office  or  family.  It  was  a  regime  that 
earned  him  a  reputation,  among  those  not  close 
to  him,  as  a  cold,  austere  man  who  could  on 
occasion  be  ruthless.  He  played  a  large  part  in 
securing  the  future  of  the  Manchester  Guardian 
and  Evening  News  and,  when  war  came  in  1939, 
Scott  made  him  joint  managing  director  of  the 
two  papers. 

In  1939  Haley  also  became  a  director  of  the 
two  great  news  agencies  responsible  for  home 
and  foreign  news:  the  Press  Association  and 
Reuters.  At  Reuters  financial  problems  had  led 
the  managing  director,  Sir  (G.)  Roderick  *Jones, 
to  discuss  agreements  with  the  government,  an 
act  some  directors  regarded  as  jeopardizing  the 
agency's  independence.  At  a  dramatic  meeting  of 
the  board,  Haley  accused  Jones  of  withholding 
information  and  Jones  resigned.  Haley  reorgan- 
ized the  Reuters  sen  ice  and  its  foreign  contracts 
and  drafted  the  trust  deed  which  remains  the 
foundation  of  its  independence. 

In  1943  the  BBC  offered  Haley  the  new 
position  of  editor-in-chief;  he  accepted  and 
within  a  year  became  director-general  (1944-52). 
He  thought  of  the  BBC  as  the  world's  greatest 
educational  institution  and  based  his  programme 
policy  on  the  principle  of  a  cultural  pyramid  by 
which  listeners  would  progress  from  good  to 
better:  the  Light  Programme,  the  Home  Service, 
and  the  Third  Programme  (the  creation  of 
which,  with  the  inauguration  of  the  Reith  lec- 
tures, he  regarded  as  one  of  his  greatest  achieve- 
ments). He  took  firmer  control  of  the  BBC's 
finances,  reorganized  the  top  management,  and 
fought  to  preserve  the  Corporation's  monopoly 
of  public-sen  ice  broadcasting.  He  bitterly  resis- 
ted the  idea,  already  entering  public  debate,  of 
commercial  radio  and  television  and  in  1 951,  on 
being  offered  the  editorship  of  The  Times,  felt 
that  he  could  not  leave  the  BBC  until  the  future 
was  clearer.  That  moment  came  in  the  following 
year  and  in  June  1952  he  was  appointed  editor  of 
The  Times,  a  task  he  considered  to  be  the  summit 
of  his  profession. 

He  at  once  defined  the  paper's  threefold 
object  to  be  a  journal  of  record,  a  paper  play- 
ing   a    useful    pan    in    the    running    of   the 


175 


Haley 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


country,  and  a  balanced,  interesting,  and 
entertaining  paper  for  intelligent  readers  of  all 
ages  and  classes.  Robust  news  coverage,  sup- 
ported by  a  devoted  and  vigorous  staff,  was  a 
prime  concern,  but  he  broadened  the  paper's 
interest  in  drama,  music,  and  art,  enlarged  fea- 
tures for  women,  introduced  cartoons,  and  in 
May  1966  put  news  on  the  front  page.  He 
took  an  austere  view  of  editorship:  hobnobbing 
with  politicians  was  discouraged.  A  minister 
with  something  worth  while  to  say  would 
come  to  the  newspaper.  His  written  words 
could  be  full  of  warmth  and  humour,  and 
none  more  so  than  in  his  weekly  column  on 
books  written  under  the  name  of  Oliver 
Edwards  (an  echo  of  his  weekly  columns, 
under  the  name  of  Joseph  Sell,  in  his  Man- 
chester days).  He  conveyed  his  learning  with 
infectious  enthusiasm. 

He  waited  seven  months  before  writing  his 
first  leader — an  appeal  to  the  nation  to  listen  to 
the  voice  of  duty — and  his  most  celebrated  leader 
appeared  on  11  July  1963,  at  the  time  of  the 
Profumo  scandal.  It  was  headed  'It  is  a  moral 
issue,'  and  proclaimed:  'Everyone  has  been  so 
busy  assuring  the  public  that  the  affair  is  not  one 
of  morals,  that  it  is  time  to  assert  that  it  is. 
Morals  have  been  discounted  for  too  long.' 
These  were  no  idle  reflections  of  a  newspaper 
commentator.  They  sprang  from  a  deep  devotion 
to  liberal  principles  and  to  unswerving  upright- 
ness in  private  and  public  life. 

His  editorship  spanned  a  period  of  increasing 
financial  difficulties  for  newspapers.  In  1966  The 
Times  was  sold  to  Roy  *Thomson,  first  Baron 
Thomson  of  Fleet.  Haley  was  succeeded  as  editor 
by  William  (later  Baron)  Rees-Mogg.  For  a  short 
time  he  remained  as  chairman  of  Times  News- 
papers Ltd.  (1967)  and  later  became  editor- 
in-chief  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  in 
Chicago  (1968-9).  This  was  not  a  happy  choice 
and  he  retired  to  Jersey,  where  he  kept  up  his 
omnivorous  reading  and  reviewing  until,  well 
into  his  eighties,  a  prolonged  and  painful  attack 
of  shingles  compelled  him  to  give  up  his  lifelong 
pleasure.  Innately  shy  in  conversation  and  per- 
sonal contacts,  Haley  had  a  steely-eyed  gaze  that 
emanated  from  a  handsome,  lined,  authoritative 
face. 

Haley  was  appointed  KCMG  in  1946,  became 
a  chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  in  1948  and 
a  grand  officer  of  the  Order  of  Orange  Nassau 
in  1950,  and  had  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Cambridge  (1951),  Dartmouth 
(USA)  (1957),  London  (1963),  and  St  Andrews 
(1965).  In  1956  he  became  an  honorary  fellow  of 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge. 

Haley  died  in  St  Helier,  Jersey,  6  September 
1987.  There  is  a  bronze  bust  in  the  council 


chamber    at    the    BBC,    Broadcasting    House, 

London. 

[Iverach  McDonald,  The  History  of  The  Times,  vol.  v, 

1984;  family  records;  personal  knowledge.] 

Edward  Pickering 

HALL,  Henry  Robert  (1898-1989),  dance 
orchestra  conductor,  impresario,  and  BBC  chat 
show  host,  was  born  2  May  1898  at  23  Bonar 
Road,  Peckham,  London,  the  eldest  son  in  the 
family  of  three  sons  and  three  daughters  of 
Henry  Robert  Hall,  blacksmith,  and  his  wife, 
Kate  Ellen  Smith.  Part  of  his  childhood  in  a  poor 
but  happy  Salvation  Army  family  in  Peckham 
was  spent  learning  the  trumpet.  Whilst  still  at  the 
London  county  council  school  in  Waller  Road, 
Peckham,  he  won  a  scholarship  to  Trinity  Col- 
lege of  Music,  London,  for  trumpet,  piano,  and 
musical  theory  lessons  on  Saturday  mornings. 
He  left  school  at  fourteen,  but  his  musical 
education  fortunately  continued  when  he  was 
employed  at  the  age  of  sixteen  as  a  music  copyist 
at  the  Salvation  Army  head  office  in  Judd  Street, 
King's  Cross.  His  employer,  Richard  Slater, 
worked  him  hard  but  helped  to  develop  his 
talents  as  player  and  composer.  His  'Sunshine 
March'  was  later  the  basis  for  his  BBC  signature 
tune,  'Here's  to  the  Next  Time'. 

In  December  19 16  he  enlisted  in  the  Royal 
Field  Artillery.  His  musical  prowess  was  quickly 
recognized  and  he  spent  much  time  playing  at 
troop  concerts.  After  the  war  he  undertook 
desultory  engagements  in  the  seedier  music  halls 
and  played  a  cinema  piano  to  finance  advanced 
piano  lessons  at  the  Guildhall  School  of  Music. 
In  1922  he  accepted  a  Christmas  job  as  relief 
pianist  at  the  Midland  Hotel,  Manchester.  A 
Chopin  study  played  at  a  minute's  notice  in  the 
hotel  cabaret  stopped  the  show  and  Arthur 
Towle,  general  manager  of  Midland  Hotels, 
signed  up  Hall  as  resident  pianist.  Within  a  year 
he  was  musical  director  of  the  hotel  band,  within 
ten  he  was  in  charge  of  the  bands  in  all  thirty-two 
hotels  in  the  LMS  railway  group,  and  when  the 
Gleneagles  Hotel  opened  in  1924,  Hall  per- 
suaded the  BBC  to  broadcast  his  band  on  the 
opening  night.  This  was  the  start  of  a  broad- 
casting career  which  lasted  forty  years.  In  1932 
he  succeeded  Jack  *Payne  as  musical  director 
of  the  BBC  Dance  Orchestra,  a  move  which 
involved  a  large  cut  in  salary,  but  promised 
enhanced  prospects. 

Hall's  purist  style  of  music  left  some  listeners 
lukewarm;  but  the  impeccably  played  musical 
arrangements,  often  made  by  Hall  himself,  and 
his  modest  way  of  announcing  the  items  were 
appealing.  The  repertoire  of  straight  dance  tunes 
interspersed  with  novelty  items  like  'The  Teddy 
Bears'  Picnic'  soon  made  the  band,  broadcasting 
at  teatime  and  in  the  evening,  enormously  pop- 
ular. In  1934  he  had  the  idea  of  inviting  show- 


176 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hall 


business  stars  to  join  him  and  his  band  in  a 
programme  called  'Henry  Hall's  Guest  Night'. 
This  was  an  instant  success  and  ran  for  972 
performances  over  twenty-three  years.  The  first 
chat  show  on  British  radio,  it  featured  stars  like 
(Sir)  Noel  *Coward,  Stan  *Laurel  and  Oliver 
Hardy,  Danny  Kaye,  and  (Dame)  Grade 
•Fields,  with  whom  he  always  established  an 
immediate  rapport.  The  programme  made  him  a 
major  figure  in  the  golden  age  of  radio. 

A  royal  command  performance,  a  film  Music 
Hath  Charms  (1935),  and  an  engagement  to 
conduct  the  ship's  band  on  the  maiden  voyage  of 
the  Queen  Mary  showed  a  widening  recognition 
of  his  star  status.  By  1937,  when  many  other 
dance  bands  were  broadcasting,  he  asked  permis- 
sion to  leave  the  BBC  and  take  his  band  with 
him.  Sir  John  (later  first  Baron)  *Reith  granted  it 
and  agreed  that  they  would  not  be  replaced.  It 
was  said  that  forty  million  people  listened  to  their 
final  broadcast. 

Hall  now  faced  a  freelance  career  touring  the 
major  variety  theatres  with  his  band  topping  the 
bill.  Fears  that  the  public  would  not  support  a 
wireless  star  in  the  theatre  were  groundless. 
'Sold  Out'  boards  were  everywhere  and  Hall  was 
frequently  mobbed  by  the  fans.  The  tours  con- 
tinued during  the  years  of  World  War  II,  during 
which  Hall  also  gave  troop  concerts  and  'Guest 
Nights'.  These  strenuous  and  demanding  years 
culminated  in  a  second  royal  command  perform- 
ance (1948).  After  the  war  Hall  began  presenting 
stage  shows,  notably  Irma  la  Douce  (1958).  Yet  he 
continued  to  appear  regularly  on  radio  and  tele- 
vision until  1964,  finally  announcing  his  retire- 
ment in  1970,  when  he  was  appointed  CBE. 

A  tall  dignified  man,  immaculately  dressed,  his 
dark  hair  brushed  down,  with  a  quizzical  face  and 
horn-rimmed  glasses,  Hall  had  flair  and  an 
engagingly  hesitant  style,  which  did  not  conceal  a 
quiet  authority  inseparable  from  a  lifetime  of 
demanding  high  standards  from  himself  and 
those  around  him.  In  return  he  received  univer- 
sal respect  and  affection.  He  was  a  showman 
completely  in  tune  with  the  age  in  which  he 
flourished.  In  1924  he  married  Margery  (died 
1976),  daughter  of  Robert  Brook  Harker,  com- 
mercial traveller.  It  was  a  perfect  partnership, 
and  they  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Hall  died  in 
Eastbourne  after  a  long  retirement,  28  October 
1989. 

[Henry  Hall,  Here's  to  the  Next  Time,  1955;  BBC  press 
books;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Ian  Wallace 

HALL,  Robert  Lowe,  Baron  Roberthall 
(1901-1988),  economist,  was  born  6  March  1901 
in  Tenterfield,  New  South  Wales,  the  second  of 
three  sons  (the  eldest  of  whom  was  killed  in 
action  in  191 7  in  World  War  I)  and  third  of  five 
children  of  Edgar  Hall,  lecturer  at  the  University 


of  Sydney  and  later  a  mining  engineer,  who  had 
emigrated  to  Australia,  and  his  wife  Rose  Helen, 
daughter  of  Archibald  Kennedy  Cullen,  of 
Undercliffe  Station,  New  South  Wales.  His  par- 
ents moved  to  Silverspur  in  Queensland  when  he 
was  a  baby  and,  after  attending  the  local  school 
there,  he  won  a  state  scholarship  to  Ipswich 
Grammar  School.  He  studied  civil  engineering  at 
the  University  of  Queensland,  graduating  B.Eng. 
in  1922,  and  going  the  following  year  to  Magda- 
len College,  Oxford,  as  a  Rhodes  scholar.  He 
obtained  first-class  honours  in  philosophy,  poli- 
tics, and  economics  (1926)  and  was  appointed  to 
a  college  lectureship  at  Trinity  College,  Oxford. 
He  was  a  fellow  of  Trinity  from  1927  to  1950 
(honorary  fellow  from  1958)  and  of  Nuffield 
College,  Oxford,  from  1938  to  1947  (visiting 
fellow  in  1961-4). 

In  the  1930s  Hall  became  a  prominent  mem- 
ber of  the  Economists'  Research  Group,  joining 
some  younger  Oxford  dons  who  were  sceptical 
of  current  economic  doctrine,  and  undertook 
empirical  research  on  how  business  actually 
behaved — for  example,  in  fixing  prices  or  react- 
ing to  price  signals.  Hall's  contribution  to  this 
research  included  an  article  in  1939  on  'Price 
Theory  and  Business  Behaviour',  written  in 
collaboration  with  the  American  Charles  J. 
Hitch,  which  first  introduced  the  idea  of  the 
kinked  demand  curve.  (The  article  was  reprinted 
in  Thomas  Wilson  and  Philip  Andrews,  eds., 
Oxford  Studies  in  the  Price  Mechanism,  195 1.) 

On  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  in  1939  Hall 
joined  the  Ministry  of  Supply  (raw  materials 
department)  and,  after  America's  entry  into  the 
war,  served  for  two  years  in  1942-4  with  the 
British  raw  materials  mission  in  Washington.  In 
1947  he  succeeded  James  Meade  as  director  of 
the  economic  section  of  the  Cabinet  Office, 
having  meanwhile  divided  his  time  between 
Oxford  and  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  continued  as 
director  for  nearly  fourteen  years  until  April 
1961. 

Hall  was  in  charge  of  the  only  substantial 
group  of  professional  economists  in  Whitehall, 
and  although  he  was  not  given  the  tide  of 
economic  adviser  to  the  government  until  1953, 
when  he  moved  to  the  Treasury,  that  accurately 
describes  his  role.  Retaining  this  post  until  1961, 
he  served  under  eight  chancellors  of  the  Excheq- 
uer and  exercised  more  influence  on  economic 
policy  than  any  other  official.  Among  the  matters 
in  which  he  took  a  prominent  part  were  the 
devaluation  of  1949,  rearmament  in  1950-1,  the 
Robot  proposal  to  float  the  pound  in  1952, 
the  introduction  of  the  investment  allowance  in 
1953,  the  credit  squeeze  that  began  in  1955,  and 
the  Treasury's  evidence  to  the  committee  of 
1957-9  chaired  by  Cyril  (later  Viscount)  *Rad- 
cliffe.  During  his  years  in  the  economic  section 
Hall   kept   a   diary,   contrary   to   the   rules;   it 


177 


Hall 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


provides  both  a  picture  of  the  writer  and  a 
unique  insight  into  the  way  in  which  economic 
policy  took  shape  in  the  postwar  years. 

On  leaving  the  Treasury,  Hall  returned  to 
Oxford  and  in  1964  was  elected  principal  of 
Hertford  College,  spending  much  of  his  three 
years  there  as  a  member  of  the  commission  of 
inquiry  into  Oxford  University  (1964-6),  chaired 
by  Baron  Franks.  He  continued  to  maintain 
contact  with  Whitehall,  for  a  short  time  as  an 
adviser  to  the  Ministry  of  Transport,  and  for  six 
years  as  a  member  of  the  Commonwealth  eco- 
nomic committee  (1961-7).  He  also  accepted  two 
business  appointments,  one  as  an  advisory  direc- 
tor of  Unilever  (1961-71),  and  the  second,  at  the 
invitation  of  Baron  Plowden,  as  adviser  to  Tube 
Investments  (1961-76).  He  took  an  active  inter- 
est in  the  National  Institute  of  Economic  and 
Social  Research,  whose  role  as  economic  com- 
mentators and  forecasters  he  had  earlier  done 
much  to  encourage,  and  served  as  chairman  of 
the  executive  committee  from  1962  to  1970. 

In  1969  he  was  made  a  life  baron  and  changed 
his  name  by  deed  poll  to  become  Lord  Robert- 
hall.  For  the  next  two  decades  he  was  an  active 
member  of  the  House  of  Lords,  latterly  as  a 
member  of  the  Social  Democratic  party.  He 
spoke  in  debates  and  served  on  many  standing 
committees,  taking  the  chair  of  a  select  commit- 
tee on  commodity  prices  in  1976-7. 

He  received  many  honours.  Appointed  CB  in 
1950  and  KCMG  in  1954,  he  was  an  honorary 
fellow  of  both  Trinity  College,  Oxford  (1958), 
and  Hertford  College  (1969),  and  an  honorary 
D.Sc.  of  the  University  of  Queensland.  He  was 
president  of  the  Royal  Economic  Society  in 
1958-60  and  of  the  Society  of  Business  Econo- 
mists in  1968-73.  Earlier,  he  had  been  chairman 
of  an  international  group  of  experts  at  OEEC 
that  was  the  forerunner  of  Working  Party  3  of 
the  OECD.  He  delivered  the  Sidney  Ball  lecture 
in  Oxford  in  1954  and  the  Rede  lecture  in 
Cambridge  in  1962  (Planning,  1962). 

Hall  was  not  at  his  best  as  a  theoretician  and 
published  relatively  little:  several  articles  and  two 
books,  of  which  the  more  substantial  is  The 
Economic  System  in  a  Social  State  (1937),  based 
on  lectures  delivered  in  1934.  As  is  clear  from  his 
diaries,  his  gifts  were  those  of  a  highly  successful 
economic  adviser.  He  had  a  remarkable  feel  for 
the  state  of  the  economy  and  could  outdo  his 
staff  as  a  forecaster.  He  was  outstanding  as  a 
draftsman,  but  a  man  of  few  words  in  committee. 
He  was  a  realist,  endowed  with  great  common 
sense,  appreciating  the  limits  of  what  was  fea- 
sible, and  a  good  judge  of  men.  He  took  great 
pains  over  recruitment  of  staff  and  initiated  a 
scheme  for  borrowing  economists  from  their 
universities  for  a  two-year  spell.  His  unaffected 
modesty,  good  humour,  and  thoughtfulness  won 


him  the  affection,  as  his  abilities  won  the  respect, 
of  his  colleagues. 

Hall  married  twice.  His  first  marriage  in  1932 
was  to  (Laura)  Margaret  (died  1995),  daughter  of 
George  Edward  Linfoot,  musician,  of  Notting- 
ham. She  became  a  well-known  economist  in  her 
own  right  and  a  fellow  of  Somerville  College, 
Oxford.  They  had  two  daughters.  When  the 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1968  Hall  married 
Perilla  Thyme,  daughter  of  Sir  Richard  Vynne 
•Southwell,  aeronautical  engineer,  and  former 
wife  of  Patrick  Horace  Nowell-Smith,  philoso- 
pher and  fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Oxford.  The 
two  spent  much  of  the  next  twenty  years  in  their 
house  in  north  Cornwall.  Hall  was  a  passionate 
gardener,  working  on  his  Oxford  allotment  at 
weekends  even  when  in  the  Treasury  and  win- 
ning prizes  with  his  sweetcorn  from  the  Treasury 
Horticultural  Society.  After  a  stroke  in  1987  he 
never  fully  recovered;  he  died  by  his  Cornwall 
garden  next  to  the  sea  at  Quarry,  17  September 
1988. 

[Alec  Cairncross  (ed.),  The  Robert  Hall  Diaries  1947- 
IQ53,  1989,  and  ibid.,  1954-1961,  1991;  personal 
knowledge.]  Alec  Cairncross 

HALLIWELL,  (Robert  James)  Leslie  (1929- 
1989),  film  buyer  and  encyclopaedist,  was  born 
23  February  1929  in  Bolton,  Lancashire,  the 
youngest  child  by  thirteen  years  and  only  son  in 
the  family  of  three  children  of  James  Halliwell, 
cotton  spinner,  of  Bolton,  and  his  wife,  Lily 
Haslam.  He  won  a  scholarship  to  Bolton  School, 
and  after  national  service  in  the  Royal  Army- 
Education  Corps  he  went  to  St  Catharine's 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  gained  a  second 
class  (division  I)  in  both  parts  of  the  English 
tripos  (195 1  and  1952). 

Leslie  Halliwell  saw  his  first  film  at  the  age  of 
four,  and  he  spent  his  childhood  going  to  the 
cinema,  usually  in  the  company  of  his  mother. 
He  claimed  that  at  one  time  there  were  forty- 
seven  cinemas  within  five  miles  of  the  centre  of 
Bolton,  and  that  he  visited  them  all.  At  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  was  editor  of  Varsity,  he  ran  the 
university  film  society,  and  his  first  job  after 
graduating  was  working  as  a  journalist  on  Pic- 
turegoer. 

At  the  end  of  1952  Halliwell  took  on  the  job  of 
running  two  cinemas  in  Cambridge.  In  1956  he 
became  a  trainee  publicity  executive  for  the  Rank 
Organization  in  London,  moving  in  1958  to 
Southern  Television  as  a  film  buyer,  and  in  1959 
he  joined  Granada  Television  as  a  film 
researcher,  where  he  devised  the  Cinema  series 
before  moving  to  buy  films  for  Granada  from 
other  companies. 

In  1968  he  became  film  buyer  for  the  whole 
independent  television  network  (ITV),  and  in 
1982  Jeremy  Isaacs,  head  of  the  new  television 
channel,  Channel  4,  asked  him  to  buy  American 


178 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hamilton 


films  for  Channel  4  as  well.  Isaacs  described  him 
as  'much  more  than  a  film  buyer.  Leslie  Halliwell 
was  a  film  buff,  a  walking  encyclopaedia.'  He 
visited  Hollywood  twice  a  year  to  search  in  the 
film  libraries.  At  Channel  4  he  was  able  to  help 
schedule  programmes,  and  he  compiled  very 
successful  series  such  as  The  British  at  War, 
which  he  introduced  himself.  While  he  con- 
tinued to  buy  for  the  other  ITY  companies,  he 
earmarked  interesting  discoveries  as  'obvious 
Channel  4  material',  and  his  seasons  of  'golden 
oldies',  neglected  films  from  the  1930s  and 
1940s,  were  very  popular. 

He  was  best  known  for  his  reference  books. 
The  first  edition  of  The  Filmgoer's  Companion, 
the  first  comprehensive  reference  book  of  the 
cinema  ever  published,  appeared  in  1965,  and 
revised  editions  appeared  regularly  thereafter. 
The  first  edition  of  Halliwell's  Film  Guide,  with 
synopses  and  comments  on  8,000  films,  came  out 
in  1977.  Revised  annually,  it  had  grown  to  16,000 
entries  by  the  time  of  the  seventh  edition  in  1988. 
Halliwell 's  Teleguide  (later  with  Philip  Purser, 
Halliwell  s  Television  Companion)  was  first  pub- 
lished in  1979. 

As  well  as  compiling  works  of  reference, 
Halliwell  wrote  about  the  cinema  in  such  books 
as  The  Clapperboard  Book  of  the  Cinema  (with  G. 
Murray,  1975)  and  Mountain  of  Dreams:  the 
Golden  Years  of  Paramount  (1965).  In  Halliwell's 
Hundred  (1982)  and  its  successor  Halliwell's  Har- 
vest (1986)  he  considered  some  of  his  favourite 
films,  claiming  not  that  they  were  the  greatest 
films  ever  made,  or  serious  works  of  art,  but  that 
they  all  demonstrated  an  ability  to  entertain.  In 
The  Dead  That  Walk  (1986)  he  wrote  about 
horror  films,  with  essays  on  films  about  Dracula, 
Frankenstein,  and  mummies,  in  which  he  argued 
that  Bride  of  Frankenstein  (1935)  was  the  best 
horror  film  ever  released.  He  also  wrote  a  history 
of  comedy,  Double  Take  and  Fade  Away  (1987). 
In  the  1980s  he  published  three  books  of  short 
stories,  wrote  his  autobiography,  and  also  a 
novel,  Return  to  Shangri-La  (1987),  a  sequel  to 
one  of  his  favourite  films.  Lost  Horizon  (1937). 
After  his  retirement  from  ITY  in  1986  he  wrote 
a  weekly  television  column  in  the  Daily  Mail. 

Halliwell's  work  was  directed  at  the  general 
public,  the  middlebrow  audience  which  went  to 
the  cinema  for  entertainment,  and  not  at  'the 
egghead  student  of  film  culture  who  shuns  com- 
mercial entertainments  in  favour  of  middle- 
European  or  Oriental  masterpieces  which  never 
got  further  than  the  National  Film  Theatre' 
(introduction  to  the  first  edition  of  The  Filmgoer's 
Companion).  While  he  did  not  ignore  foreign 
films,  they  did  not  appeal  to  him.  Brought  up  in 
the  1930s  and  1940s,  he  always  regarded  these 
years  as  the  golden  age  of  the  cinema,  the  age 
when  films  were  made  in  the  studio  in  black  and 
white.  He  liked  very   little  that  was  produced 


after  1950,  and  lamented  the  demise  of  the  old 
studio  crafts  and  film  techniques.  He  found 
modern  films  crude  and  violent,  and  the  language 
offensive,  and  he  felt  that  the  wit  and  style  of  the 
early  movies  were  lacking.  He  dedicated  Halli- 
well's Harvest  to  the  proposition  that  art  should 
not  be  despised  because  it  is  popular. 

His  most  distinctive  physical  feature  was  his 
very  long  chin,  which  he  later  covered  with  a 
beard.  In  1959  he  married  Ruth  Porter,  who  had 
one  son  and  one  daughter  from  her  previous 
marriage.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Samuel 
Edward  Turner,  clerk  and  Baptist  minister,  of 
Nottingham.  The  Halliwells  had  one  son.  Halli- 
well died  of  cancer  21  January  1989  in  the 
Princess  Alice  Hospice,  Esher,  Surrey.  At  a 
memorial  meeting  at  the  National  Film  Theatre 
excerpts  from  some  of  his  favourite  films  were 
shown,  including  Citizen  Kane  (1941),  which  he 
regarded  as  the  greatest  film  ever  made. 

[The  Ttmes,  23  January  1989;  Leslie  Halliwell,  Seats  in 
All  Parts:  Haifa  Lifetime  at  the  Movies,  1985.] 

Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

HAMILTON,  Sir  (Charles)  Denis  (1918- 
1988),  editor-in-chief,  Times  Newspapers  Ltd., 
was  born  6  December  19 18  in  South  Shields,  the 
elder  son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  Charles 
Hamilton,  engineer,  and  his  wife,  Helena  Traf- 
ford.  He  left  Middlesbrough  High  School  at 
seventeen,  became  a  reporter  on  the  local  Evening 
Gazette,  and  as  a  territorial  in  1938  got  a  com- 
mission in  the  Durham  Light  Infantry.  Two 
weeks  after  World  War  II  began  in  1939,  part  of 
the  Territorial  Army  was  embodied  and  Hamil- 
ton soon  found  himself  in  France.  He  was  one  of 
the  few  officers  in  his  battalion  who  got  back 
from  Dunkirk.  In  1940  he  became  a  captain  and 
in  1942  a  major  during  a  spell  in  Iceland.  In  1944 
he  was  promoted  to  lieutenant-colonel  and  com- 
manded the  nth  battalion,  DLI,  in  the  Nor- 
mandy invasion.  After  the  breakthrough  in 
Normandy,  Hamilton  was  posted  to  the  7th 
battalion  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  and  led 
them  in  an  inspired  defensive  action  near  Nijme- 
gen,  Holland,  which  won  him  a  place  in  military 
history  and  a  DSO  (1944). 

General  B.  L.  'Montgomery  (later  first  Vis- 
count Montgomery  of  Alamein)  wanted  him  to 
remain  in  the  regular  army  after  the  end  of  the 
war.  However,  Hamilton  went  back  to  provincial 
journalism  and  within  a  few  weeks  J.  G.  *Berry , 
first  Viscount  Kemsley,  summoned  him  to  Lon- 
don to  be  his  personal  assistant  (1946-50).  Now 
he  was  at  the  centre  of  the  Kemsley  newspaper 
empire  and  was  soon  exercising  influence.  The 
brigadier,  as  the  staff  called  him  (he  had  ended 
the  war  as  an  acting  brigadier),  still  looked  a 
soldier  with  his  discreet  suits,  polished  shoes, 
slim,  tall  figure,  and  military  moustache.  If  he 
never    failed    to    find    a    military    analogy    to 


179 


Hamilton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


illustrate  a  newspaper  problem,  at  least  he  never 
barked  out  his  commands.  He  spoke  quietly  and 
could  be  disconcertingly  silent  when  it  was  his 
turn  to  say  something.  Kemsley  made  him  edito- 
rial director  (1950-67)  when  he  was  thirty-one, 
whereupon  he  improved  the  organization  and 
created  a  training  scheme  that  became  the  model 
for  a  national  scheme. 

Turning  his  attention  to  the  Sunday  Times, 
edited  by  Henry  Hodson,  Hamilton  believed  that 
new  readers  would  be  attracted  if  they  were  given 
plenty  to  read  every  Sunday — the  'Big  Read'.  He 
persuaded  his  wartime  friend,  Viscount  Mont- 
gomery, to  let  him  serialize  extracts  from  his 
memoirs,  with  the  result  that  the  circulation  was 
increased  by  100,000  copies  over  fourteen  weeks; 
the  new  readers  stayed.  In  1959  Kemsley  sold  his 
newspaper  group  to  Roy  Thomson  (later  first 
Baron  Thomson  of  Fleet),  a  Canadian  who  had 
acquired  the  Scotsman  and  Scottish  commercial 
television.  Two  years  later  Thomson  made  Ham- 
ilton editor  of  the  Sunday  Times  (196 1-7)  and  the 
paper  became  remarkably  successful.  Within  six 
years  it  increased  its  sales  by  half  a  million 
copies.  Hamilton,  who  did  not  himself  write  for 
the  paper,  recruited  ardent  young  people  and 
pioneered  a  bulky  Sunday  paper  in  separate 
sections,  which  included  business  news  and  a 
colour  magazine.  His  'insight'  team  of  inves- 
tigative journalists  had  outstanding  successes. 
Thomson  was  a  model  proprietor,  giving  editors 
the  widest  freedom  and  in  turn  Hamilton  dele- 
gated great  responsibility  to  his  assistants. 

When  Thomson  acquired  The  Times  in  1967, 
he  made  Hamilton  editor-in-chief  of  both  that 
and  the  Sunday  Times  and  chief  executive  of 
Times  Newspapers.  Hamilton  appointed  as  edi- 
tors William  (later  Baron)  Rees-Mogg  for  The 
Times  and  Harold  Evans  for  the  Sunday  Times. 
He  behaved  very  much  as  a  constitutional  mon- 
arch, guiding,  encouraging,  and  occasionally 
warning  both  men.  A  successful  promotion  drive 
for  The  Times  had  to  be  dropped,  for  it  was  too 
costly  to  earn  the  expected  profits. 

Difficulties  multiplied  in  the  late  1970s.  Both 
The  Times  and  the  Sunday  Times  were  suffering 
severe  losses  because  militant  unionists,  who 
resented  wage  restraint  and  feared  the  advent  of 
new  technology,  were  hampering  production. 
Roy  Thomson,  who  had  died,  was  succeeded  by 
his  son,  Kenneth,  who  wanted  to  know  from  his 
Canadian  base  what  the  strengthened  hierarchy 
in  London  was  going  to  do  about  the  dispute.  In 
the  end  it  was  decided,  despite  the  reluctance  of 
Hamilton  and  another  director,  to  stop  the 
presses,  in  the  hope  that  this  would  bring  the 
unions  to  their  senses.  It  did  not  and  the  costly 
stoppage  lasted  almost  a  year  (1979).  Shortly 
after  publication  was  resumed,  the  journalists 
decided  to  strike.  This  was  the  last  straw  for 
Hamilton,  who  advised  Thomson  to  sell  for  what 


he  could  get.  The  only  bidder  who  looked  likely 
to  preserve  the  precious  heritage  and  to  stand  up 
to  the  unions  was  the  Australian  Rupert  Mur- 
doch, who  acquired  Times  Newspapers  Ltd.  in 
1980. 

Hamilton  did  not  stay  long  after  the  take-over, 
resigning  as  chairman  in  1981,  and  concentrated 
on  his  chairmanship  of  the  expanding  Reuters 
(1979-85).  A  trustee  of  the  British  Museum  from 
1969,  he  jointly  sponsored  the  great  Tutankha- 
mun  (1972)  and  Treasures  of  China  (1973) 
exhibitions.  He  was  an  active  trustee  of  the 
Henry  Moore  Foundation  from  1980  and  was 
president  of  the  International  Press  Institute 
(1978-83),  the  worldwide  protector  of  press 
freedom.  He  was  president  or  chairman  of  many 
other  institutions.  Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  he 
struggled  with  the  help  of  his  son  Nigel  to 
produce  a  slim  but  valuable  book  of  memoirs, 
Editor-in-Chief  (1989).  Appointed  TD  in  1975 
and  knighted  in  1976,  he  had  honorary  degrees 
from  Southampton  (1975),  City  University 
(1977),  and  Newcastle  upon  Tyne  (1979). 

In  1939  he  married  Olive,  younger  daughter  of 
Thomas  Hedley  Wanless,  farmer.  They  had  four 
sons,  of  whom  one,  Nigel,  became  a  writer  and 
produced  a  biography  of  the  first  Viscount 
Montgomery.  Hamilton  died,  after  a  long  illness, 
of  cancer,  7  April  1988  at  his  home  in  Ashley 
Gardens,  Victoria,  London. 

[Denis  Hamilton,  Editor-in-Chief,  1989;  Eric  Jacobs, 
Stop  Press,  1980;  Harold  Evans,  Good  Times,  Bad  Times, 
1983;  personal  knowledge.]  John  Beavan 

HAMILTON,  Hamish  (1900-1988),  publisher, 
was  born  James  Hamilton  1 5  November  1 900  in 
Indianapolis,  USA,  the  only  child  of  James 
Neilson  Hamilton,  businessman,  and  his  wife, 
Alice  van  Valkenburg.  He  spent  his  childhood  in 
Scotland.  He  was  educated  at  Rugby  School  and 
Gonville  and  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  reading 
medicine  initially.  He  then  changed  to  modern 
and  medieval  languages,  in  which  he  obtained  a 
second  class  in  part  i  (1921),  and  finally  to  law,  in 
which  he  gained  a  third  (1922).  He  travelled  in 
the  USA  in  1922-3  and  was  called  to  the  bar 
(Inner  Temple)  in  1925.  The  following  year  he 
became  London  manager  for  the  American  pub- 
lishing company  of  Harper  &  Brothers,  and  in 
193 1  founded  his  own  publishing  company, 
Hamish  Hamilton  Ltd. 

His  American  background  and  family  connec- 
tions enabled  him  to  present  to  the  British 
reading  public  a  series  of  distinguished  writers 
from  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  ranging  from 
political  and  economic  commentators  such  as 
Walter  Lippmann,  John  Gunther,  and  John 
Kenneth  Galbraith,  to  novelists  like  J.  D.  Sal- 
inger, Truman  Capote,  and  William  Styron.  His 
tastes  were  eclectic,  and  commercial.  A  list  which 
included  writers  of  the  variety  of  Sir  D.  W. 


180 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hamilton 


•Brogan,  Nancv  *Mitford,  Alan  *.\ioorehead, 
A.  J.  P.  *Taylor,  Angela  *Thirkell,  Eric  •Par- 
tridge, Richard  *Crossman,  Georges  Simenon, 
Raymond  Chandler,  James  Thurber,  Albert 
Camus,  and  Jean-Paul  Sartre,  as  well  as  a  num- 
ber of  New  Yorker  contributors  (John  Hersey, 
Charles  Addams,  Rachel  Carson),  was  far  from 
humdrum.  He  was  not,  perhaps,  a  great  innova- 
tive publisher,  in  the  mould  of  Sir  Victor  *Gol- 
lancz,  and  he  was  not  wholly  interested  in  the 
financial  aspects  of  the  business,  but  he  was 
prepared,  in  an  age  when  such  things  were  still 
possible,  to  back  his  fancy.  Over  the  years,  he 
built  up  an  extraordinary  collection  of  acquain- 
tances in  the  worlds  of  academe,  politics,  music, 
the  theatre,  and  above  all  society.  Though  he  had 
a  surprisingly  small  coterie  of  close  friends,  he 
appeared  to  know  everyone,  however  slightly. 

This  ability  to  draw  so  many  disparate  people 
into  his  circle  stood  him  and  his  country  in  good 
stead  during  World  War  II.  After  a  brief  period 
in  the  army  (he  served  in  Holland  and  France 
during  1940),  he  was  seconded  in  1941  to  the 
American  division  of  the  Ministry  of  Informa- 
tion, where  he  remained  until  the  end  of  the  war. 
During  this  period  he  was  able  to  maintain  his 
publishing  company,  when  other  publishers 
experienced  great  difficulty  in  obtaining  essential 
paper  for  their  books.  After  the  war  Hamish 
Hamilton  Ltd.  continued  to  flourish  independ- 
ently until  it  was  bought  by  the  Thomson 
Organization  in  1965.  Hamilton,  however, 
remained  as  managing  director  until  1972,  and 
chairman  until  1981.  Between  that  date  and  his 
death,  he  was  president  of  the  company. 

Hamish  Hamilton  (he  was  actually  christened 
James,  and  was  almost  universally  known  as 
Jamie,  although  later  he  changed  his  name  by 
deed  poll  to  Hamish)  was  a  considerable  sports- 
man in  his  youth.  He  was  spare  stroke  of  the 
Cambridge  eight  in  192 1,  stroke  in  the  winning 
boat  in  the  Grand  Challenge  Cup  at  Henley  in 
1927  and  1928,  and  rowed  in  the  Olympics  at 
Amsterdam  in  1928,  winning  a  silver  medal.  He 
played  squash,  skied,  executed  famously  daring 
dives  into  the  Mediterranean,  and  flew  flimsy 
planes;  in  middle  age,  he  took  up  golf.  In 
appearance,  he  resembled  a  boxer,  with  a  craggy 
face  dominated  by  a  broken  nose.  He  was  of 
medium  height,  and  was  noted  for  the  cut  of  his 
suits  and  the  high  polish  of  his  handmade  shoes. 
But,  though  he  had  the  friendship  of  a  great 
many  beautiful  women,  he  was  no  extrovert.  In 
the  bar  of  the  Garrick  Club,  or  in  the  company  of 
friends  who  could  coax  him  out  of  his  Scottish 
dourness,  he  flourished;  with  others  he  was 
reserved  and  curiously  lacking  in  social  graces. 
He  entertained  frequently,  but  his  dinner  parties 
were  highly  formal  occasions,  gatherings  of  pub- 
lic figures  en  grande  tenue,  many  of  whom  he 
hoped  would  contribute  books  to  his  publishing 


list.  Inevitably,  he  was  accused  of  snobbery,  a 
criticism  which  contained  more  than  a  germ  of 
truth,  but  which  caused  him  disproportionate 
pain.  Without  his  publishing  partner,  Roger 
Machell,  and  his  second  wife,  Yvonne,  both  his 
public  and  his  private  lives  would  have  been 
considerably  less  successful.  Unlike  Machell,  he 
was  not  a  real  publisher,  certainly  not  a  man  who 
appreciated  new  trends  in  writing;  and,  without 
his  wife,  who  was  born  to  be  a  hostess,  invitations 
to  parties  at  their  house  in  Hamilton  Terrace  in 
London  would  have  been  less  sought  after. 

Hamish  Hamilton  had  an  exceptionally  low 
threshold  of  boredom.  He  hated  meetings  and 
committees,  though  he  was  honorary  secretary  of 
the  Kinsmen  Trust  from  1942  to  1956,  a  gover- 
nor of  the  Old  Vic  for  thirty  years  from  1945,  a 
member  of  the  council  of  the  English-speaking 
Union,  and  a  governor  of  the  British  Institute  in 
Florence.  He  also  founded  the  Kathleen  Ferrier 
memorial  scholarships.  None  of  these  activities, 
however,  was  at  the  core  of  the  publishing 
industry,  and  his  refusal  to  serve  on  bodies  such 
as  the  Publishers'  Association  was  thought  to 
have  been  the  main  reason  why,  unlike  other 
publishers  no  more  distinguished,  he  never 
received  the  knighthood  he  so  much  desired. 
Instead,  he  had  to  be  content  with  being  made  a 
chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honour,  in  1953,  and 
a  grande  ufficiale  of  Italy's  Order  of  Merit,  in 
1976. 

Hamish  Hamilton  married  twice.  In  1929  he 
married  the  actress  Jean  Forbes-Robertson, 
daughter  of  Sir  Johnston  *Forbes-Robertson, 
actor.  This  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1933  and  in 
1940  he  married  Yvonne  (died  1993),  daughter  of 
Giorgio  Pallavicino,  soldier.  They  had  one  son, 
Alastair,  an  academic  and  writer,  who  held  vari- 
ous posts  at  the  universities  of  Amsterdam, 
Leiden,  and  Urbino.  Hamilton  died  of  cancer, 
asthma,  and  emphysema  24  May  1988  in  the  St 
John  and  St  Elizabeth  Hospital  in  St  John's 
Wood,  London. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Christopher  Sinclair-Stevenson 

HAMILTON,  James  (1900-1988),  publisher. 
[See  Hamilton,  Hamish.] 

HAMILTON,  Walter  (1908-1988),  headmaster 
of  Westminster  and  Rugby  and  master  of  Mag- 
dalene College,  Cambridge,  was  born  10  Feb- 
ruary 1908,  the  only  child  of  Walter  George 
Hamilton,  tea-trader  in  the  City,  and  his  wife, 
Caroline  Man-  Stiff,  schoolmistress.  His  paternal 
grandfather  was  treasurer  of  the  National  Union 
of  Teachers,  and  his  great-grandfather  a  Scottish 
rope-maker.  His  mother  taught  him  devotedly  at 
home  until  he  was  nine;  his  father  was  absent  in 
France  throughout  World  War  I.  In  1919  Hamil- 
ton went  on  a  scholarship  to  Catford  Grammar 


181 


Hamilton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


School  and  in  1926  won  a  major  scholarship  to 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  He  was  placed  in 
the  first  class  of  parts  i  and  ii  of  the  classical 
tripos  (1927  and  1929),  winning  a  Craven  schol- 
arship, the  Porson  prize,  and  the  Chancellor's 
classical  medal.  In  193 1  he  was  elected  to  a  prize 
fellowship  of  Trinity.  Two  years  later,  encour- 
aged by  friends  but  in  a  temporary  capacity,  he 
went  to  Eton,  mainly  to  share  the  classics  teach- 
ing of  the  headmaster's  division.  He  fell  on  his 
feet  and  stayed  thirteen  years.  In  1937  he  was 
made  master-in-college  of  the  seventy  King's 
scholars. 

This  was  the  inspired  appointment  of  his 
career.  He  brought  a  keen  intelligence  and  per- 
ception to  his  task  and  six  years  at  Trinity  had 
done  his  wit  no  harm.  Now  his  shy  but  amusing 
and  distinctive  personality  blossomed.  The  boys 
were  drawn  to  his  strikingly  low  voice  and 
lugubrious  manner,  and,  bright  and  competitive 
(and  often  difficult!)  though  they  were,  he  dis- 
armed them  with  a  trust  and  equality  which 
conveyed  a  sense  that  he  and  they  depended  on 
one  another.  Shared  experience  of  wartime  con- 
ditions became  a  further  strength;  they  enjoyed 
his  usually  relaxed  regime,  accepted  his  strong 
moral  convictions,  and  knew  that  beneath  the 
surface  he  had  much  in  reserve.  He  was  also 
cleverer  than  any  of  them.  For  himself,  the  years 
at  Eton  were  amongst  his  busiest;  he  felt  at  home 
there,  and  thrived  on  the  school's  easy  and 
civilized  style.  He  made  many  friends,  and  in 
later  life  no  honour  gave  him  more  pleasure  than 
his  appointment  as  a  fellow  (1972-81). 

In  1946,  in  need  of  change,  Hamilton  returned 
to  Trinity  as  fellow,  university  lecturer,  and  tutor 
(the  latter  two  from  1947).  While  there,  a  num- 
ber of  headmasterships  were  offered  to  him  but 
not  until  1950  did  he  feel  able  to  accept  one,  that 
of  Westminster.  In  the  following  year  he  married 
a  wife  with  whom  he  found  lasting  happiness  and 
companionship.  At  Westminster  School,  home 
again  after  wartime  evacuation,  he  at  first  seemed 
withdrawn,  even  angular.  But  soon  he  was  the 
man  for  the  hour.  Buildings  were  restored  and 
reorganized,  the  number  of  boys  doubled,  and 
his  key  appointments  to  the  staff  prospered.  The 
school  developed  a  disciplined  and  new  momen- 
tum and  its  learning  and  scholarship  were  trans- 
formed. Yet  Dean's  Yard  was  no  place  to  bring 
up  a  family  of  small  children  and  after  seven 
years  he  accepted  the  headmastership  of  Rugby 
in  1957.  By  now  he  was  an  illustrious  figure  and 
it  was  the  first  time  Westminster  had  lost  its 
headmaster  to  another  school. 

An  Old  Rugbeian  wrote,  'This  is  the  first  time 
they  have  appointed  the  right  man  since  Thomas 
Arnold.'  Hamilton  seemed  to  the  staff  larger  than 
life.  With  quick  and  warmly  compelling  rapport 
he  brought  them  on.  As  for  the  boys,  he  was 
again    a    housemaster   (with    the   assistance   of 


tutors)  to  seventy  of  them.  He  was  shrewd  and 
wise,  and  always  ready  to  listen.  He  would  look, 
often  twinkling,  over  his  half-moon  spectacles, 
puffing  gently  at  his  pipe,  and  the  boys  would 
feel  they  were  understood.  Unless  in  difficulty, 
no  one  at  Rugby  was  allowed  to  take  himself  too 
seriously,  and  Hamilton's  own  witticisms  became 
legendary.  The  absurd  delighted  him,  pretension 
he  abhorred,  and  dishonesty  aroused  fierce 
anger.  He  was  physically  a  large  man  and  on 
formal  occasions  he  presented  a  solemn  appear- 
ance, which  his  tone  of  voice  could  dispel  or 
emphasize.  He  was  master  of  the  spoken  as  well 
as  written  word.  Some  had  hoped  he  would  make 
considerable  changes  in  the  school  and  he  did 
make  some.  But  he  was  not  given  to  change  for 
change's  sake,  preferring  to  make  well-tried  pro- 
cedures work  well.  Given  the  increasingly  ques- 
tioning climate  of  the  time,  Hamilton  knew 
where  he  stood — in  the  liberal  but  nevertheless 
firm  tradition.  Humanity  was  king  and  the 
school's  academic  record  of  his  time  was 
acclaimed. 

Meanwhile  his  influence  had  spread  wide, 
especially  in  the  schools  belonging  to  the  Head- 
masters' Conference  and  the  Governing  Bodies 
Association.  He  was  chairman  of  the  first  for  four 
years  (1955,  1956,  1965,  and  1966)  and  of  the 
second  from  1969  to  1974.  These  were  years  of 
ideological  and  political  threat  to  selective  edu- 
cation and  to  independent  schools.  Hamilton 
strongly  opposed  the  hostile  proposals  as  being 
untried,  probably  disastrous  academically,  and 
anyway  financially  unrealistic. 

In  1967  he  was  invited  back  to  Cambridge  as 
master  of  Magdalene.  He  enjoyed  presiding  over 
a  college  of  traditional  tendencies.  But  he  dis- 
liked complacency  and,  when  student  unrest 
impinged,  his  skill  as  chairman  of  the  committee 
of  senior  and  junior  members  helped  to  restore 
undergraduate  goodwill.  He  warmed  more  to 
undergraduates  than  dons,  and  regretted  that 
preoccupation  with  research  had  come  to  replace 
scholarship  as  he  knew  it,  and  that  publication 
was  deemed  more  significant  than  distinguished 
teaching.  His  years  as  master  were  difficult  ones 
for  universities  and  colleges,  but  when  he  retired 
in  1978  he  left  Magdalene  strengthened  academ- 
ically and  financially  on  surer  ground.  He  served 
for  five  years  on  the  council  of  the  Senate 
(1969-74)  and  frequently  acted  as  the  vice- 
chancellor's  deputy,  notably  as  chairman  of  the 
university  examinations  syndicate.  He  was  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Magdalene  from  1978. 

He  published  for  Penguin  Books  A  New 
Translation  of  Plato's  Symposium  (1951),  Plato's 
Gorgias  (i960),  Plato's  Phaedrus  and  Letters  VII 
and  VIII  (1973),  and  (with  A.  F.  Wallace- 
Hadrill)  Ammianus  Marcellinus  (1986).  He  was  a 
fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Literature  (1957) 


182 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hamson 


and  an  honorary  D.Litt.  of  Durham  University 

(1958). 

Hamilton  deeply  loved  the  Scottish  High- 
lands, where  he  spent  most  of  his  holidays. 
There  he  was  never  happier,  nor  more  relaxed 
and  adventurous,  with  his  family  and  friends.  In 
195 1  he  married  Jane  Elizabeth  (she  was  nineteen 
and  he  was  forty-two),  daughter  of  (Sir)  (Robert) 
John  (Formby)  Burrows,  solicitor  and  president 
of  the  Law  Society  (1964-5);  there  were  three 
sons  and  one  daughter.  Hamilton  died  8  Feb- 
ruary 1988  in  Cambridge. 

[Donald  Wright  (ed.),   Walter  Hamilton — a  Portrait, 
1991;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  R.  Donald  Wright 

HAMSON,  Charles  John  Joseph  ('Jack') 
(1905-1987),  comparative  lawyer  and  law 
teacher,  was  born  in  Constantinople  23  Novem- 
ber 1905,  the  fourth  child  and  elder  son  in  the 
family  of  two  sons  and  four  daughters  of  Charles 
Edward  Hamson.  vice-consul  in  the  Levant  ser- 
vice, and  his  wife,  Therese  Boudon,  whose  father 
was  a  French  architect-engineer  engaged  in 
building  lighthouses  in  the  Bosporus.  He  was  at 
school  at  Downside,  and  in  1924  entered  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  as  a  scholar,  and  read  for 
the  classical  tripos,  obtaining  first  classes  in  both 
parts  i  (1925)  and  ii  (1927).  He  then  turned  to 
law,  first  in  Cambridge,  where  he  later  won  the 
Yorke  prize  (1932),  and  obtained  the  LL  B 
(1934)  and  LL  M  (1935),  and  then  at  Harvard,  as 
Davison  scholar  (1928-9).  Despite  a  visibly  bad 
eye,  he  fenced  at  Cambridge,  and  was  captain  of 
the  university  epee  team  in  1928. 

Hamson  began  teaching  at  University  College 
London,  but  in  1932  he  returned  to  Cambridge 
as  assistant  lecturer,  where,  the  war  years  apart, 
he  spent  the  rest  of  his  life  as  a  fellow  of  Trinity, 
as  university  lecturer  (1934)  and  then,  by  way  of 
ad  homtnem  appointment,  first  reader  (1949)  and 
later  professor  (1953-73)  of  comparative  law.  For 
twenty  years  (1955-74)  he  edited  the  Cambridge 
Law  journal  with  notable  success  and  served  on 
many  university  administrative  bodies.  He  was 
chairman  of  the  law  faculty  from  1954  to  1957 
and  was  elected  honorary  fellow  of  St  Edmund's 
House  in  1976. 

Hamson  made  no  secret  of  his  devotion  to 
Cambridge  and  to  Trinity.  He  also  maintained  a 
facade  of  English  insularity,  even  to  the  extent  of 
carrying  an  umbrella  when  visiting  Persepolis, 
but  the  whole  of  his  life  belied  it.  He  became  an 
internationally  recognized  authority  on  compar- 
ative as  well  as  common  law  and  the  admired 
friend  of  comparative  lawyers  throughout  the 
world.  He  was  president  of  the  International 
Academy  of  Comparative  Law  from  1966  to 
1979,  chevalier  of  the  Legion  d'Honneur,  corres- 
pondent of  the  Institut  de  France,  and  visiting 
professor  in  numerous  universities  overseas.  He 


held  seven  honorary  degrees  from  foreign  uni- 
versities and  received  the  extreme  compliment  of 
a  translation  into  French  of  his  book  on  the 
French  consetl  d'etat. 

Hamson  was  called  to  the  bar  by  Gray's  Inn  in 
1937.  Though  not  a  practitioner,  he  became  a 
bencher  in  1956  and,  unusually  for  an  academic, 
treasurer  in  1975,  when  he  was  also  appointed 
QC.  He  had  a  great  affection  for  the  Inn  and 
earned  the  admiration  and  gratitude  of  all  for  his 
work  there.  It  gave  him  particular  pleasure. 
during  his  year  of  office,  to  call  to  the  bar,  and 
admit  to  the  bench,  the  prince  of  Wales. 

At  the  outset  of  World  War  II  Hamson  volun- 
teered for  service,  sending  his  wife  and  young 
daughter  to  the  United  States.  Seconded  to  the 
Special  Operations  Executive,  he  was  sent  clan- 
destinely to  Crete,  where  ultimately  he  was 
captured.  In  captivity  (1941-5)  he  resumed  his 
vocation  by  teaching  law  to  his  fellow  prisoners, 
at  first  without  the  aid  of  any  books.  That,  he 
used  to  say,  meant  that  he  did  not  have  to  waste 
time  coping  with  the  'extravagant  opinions  of 
colleagues'.  While  a  prisoner  he  wrote,  perhaps 
as  a  means  for  coming  to  terms  with  his  condi- 
tion, a  manuscript  which  is  part  personal  history 
of  the  Cretan  misadventure,  part  reminiscence, 
but  in  the  main  an  analysis,  in  philosophical 
mood,  of  his  understanding  of  himself  and  his 
own  state  of  mind.  This  remarkable  document, 
which  remained  virtually  unknown  until  his 
death,  was  published  by  Trinity  College  in  1989 
under  the  title  Liber  in  Vmadis. 

As  a  legal  writer,  Hamson's  gift  was  to  go 
directly  to  the  heart  of  a  question  and  to  deal 
with  it  pithily  and  elegantly.  He  never  indulged 
in  lengthy  exposition  of  a  legal  subject  and  his 
published  work  appears  mainly  in  the  form  of 
articles  or  shorter  notes.  He  wrote  some  memo- 
rable, even  influential,  pieces  on  both  common 
law  and  comparative  law  topics,  but  the  volume 
of  his  publications  is  relatively  small.  It  was 
through  his  ability  to  convince  others  by  the 
spoken  word,  at  national  and  international  gath- 
erings as  well  as  in  the  classroom,  that  he  made 
his  most  important  contributions  to  the  law  and 
its  development. 

Hamson  was  a  great  teacher.  His  knowledge  of 
law  was  profound,  but  it  was  his  style  of  presen- 
tation that  set  him  apart.  His  gift  of  exposition 
and  his  evident  delight  in  his  subject  made  his 
lectures  enthralling;  his  insistence  on  principle 
and  his  willingness  to  say  things  that  more  timid 
men  might  think  inappropriate  for  undergradu- 
ate lectures  made  them  memorable.  Many  of  his 
pupils  attained  high  office.  To  them  he  made  it 
clear  that  the  respect  due  to  the  dignity  of  office 
did  not  extend  to  the  office  holders.  But  they, 
along  with  all  the  others  whom  he  taught — not 
least  those  whom  he  taught  in  prison  camp — or 
who  came  to  know  him  in  other  ways,  held  him 


183 


Hamson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


in  affection.  His  homes  saw  a  stream  of  visitors  to 
the  day  he  died. 

Hamson  was  not  a  tall  man,  but  well  built  and 
physically  strong.  He  could,  at  times,  look  severe, 
but  he  had  a  ready  smile.  With  a  high  forehead 
and  a  slightly  beaked  nose,  no  one  seeing  him 
even  briefly  could  doubt  that  behind  his  visible 
features  there  lay  a  formidable  brain.  In  1933  he 
married  Isabella,  daughter  of  Duncan  Drum- 
mond,  farmer,  of  Auchterarder,  and  his  wife, 
Grace  Gardiner.  They  had  one  daughter.  His 
wife  died  in  1978,  and  Hamson  returned  to  live 
in  Trinity.  A  Roman  Catholic,  and  a  deeply 
religious  man,  whose  religion  was  tempered  by 
his  irrepressible  scepticism,  he  died  in  college  14 
November  1987. 

(J.  Cann  in  Liber  in  Vinculis,  1989;  J.  A.  Jolowicz  in 
Graya,  1987-8;  personal  knowledge.]  J.  A.  Jolowicz 

HANCOCK,  Sir  (William)  Keith  (1898-1988), 
historian,  was  born  in  Melbourne  26  June  1898, 
the  youngest  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  two 
daughters  of  the  Revd  William  Hancock,  incum- 
bent of  St  Mark's,  Fitzroy,  and  later  archdeacon 
of  Gippsland,  Australia,  and  his  wife,  Elizabeth 
Katharine  McCrae.  He  was  educated  at  Mel- 
bourne Grammar  School,  the  University  of  Mel- 
bourne, and,  after  a  short  spell  lecturing  at  the 
University  of  Western  Australia,  as  a  Rhodes 
scholar  at  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  where  in  1923 
he  gained  first-class  honours  in  modern  history 
and  became  the  first  Australian  to  be  elected  to  a 
fellowship  of  All  Souls  College  (1924-30).  From 
that  base  he  wrote  Ricasoli  and  the  Risorgimento  in 
Tuscany  (1926).  Like  much  of  his  later  work,  the 
book  was  about  the  complexities  of  nationalism. 
Already  the  prose  was  fluent,  supple,  and  ele- 
gant. 

From  1924  to  1933  he  held  the  chair  of 
modern  history  at  the  University  of  Adelaide. 
There  he  wrote  Australia  (1930),  which  remained 
the  most  professional  and  profound  single  vol- 
ume about  the  country.  The  young  professor  had 
mixed  feelings  about  his  native  land.  Having 
been  accepted  at  the  heart  of  empire  and  now 
returned  to  a  province,  he  would  never  be 
completely  at  home  in  either  place.  His  speaking 
voice  was  neither  quite  English  nor  quite  Austra- 
lian. An  account  of  his  life  to  1954  was  entitled 
Country  and  Calling,  signalling  the  tension. 

Birmingham  University  called  him  to  the  chair 
of  modern  history  in  1934  and  Oxford  to  the 
Chichele  chair  of  economic  history  in  1944. 
Dearly  though  he  loved  Oxford,  he  was  not 
wholly  comfortable  in  that  chair,  and  left  it  for 
the  University  of  London  in  1949.  Here  he 
directed  (until  1956)  a  new  Institute  of  Com- 
monwealth Studies,  which  was  a  monument  to 
his  own  work.  Hancock's  Survey  of  British  Com- 
monwealth Affairs  (3  vols.,  1937-42),  blending 


general  perspectives  with  brilliant  case  histories 
and  exhibiting  what  he  often  declared  to  be  the 
historian's  three  cardinal  virtues  of  attachment, 
justice,  and  span,  had  transformed  the  study  of 
empire. 

The  British  Commonwealth  was  in  his  vision 
the  most  benign  of  modern  polities,  able,  if 
wisely  led  and  liberally  inspired,  to  deliver 
democracy  and  welfare  not  only  to  Australians 
and  Canadians  but  also  to  Indians  and  Africans. 
Jan  *Smuts,  the  subject  of  his  two-volume  bio- 
graphy (Smuts:  the  Sanguine  Years,  1962,  and 
Smuts:  the  Fields  of  Force,  1968),  appealed  to 
Hancock  as  avatar  of  the  new  commonwealth: 
a  former  enemy  who  freely  chose  imperial 
loyalty. 

In  World  War  I  his  brother  Jim  was  named 
among  the  missing  on  the  Somme.  Keith  was  too 
young  to  join  up  without  permission,  which  his 
bereaved  parents  refused.  Like  many  young  Brit- 
ish men  of  his  generation  who  missed  the  war,  he 
lived  after  191 8  with  a  sense  of  shame  and  a  high 
appreciation  of  bravery.  In  London  during 
World  War  II  he  threw  himself  into  the  most 
active  service  he  could  find,  by  day  directing 
(1941-6)  the  production  of  a  thirty-volume  civil 
series  of  official  war  histories,  by  night  watching 
for  fires  from  German  bombs.  Margaret  Gowing, 
his  co-author  of  the  official  volume  British  War 
Economy  (1949),  thought  that  by  1945,  though 
not  yet  fifty,  he  looked  venerable,  with  'white 
hair  and  end-of-war  exhaustion'. 

His  wife  Theaden,  daughter  of  John  George 
Brocklebank,  farmer,  was  even  more  exhausted. 
Like  Jan  Smuts,  Keith  Hancock  had  fallen  in 
love  with  a  fellow  student  of  great  ability  who 
had  had  to  settle  for  country  school-teaching  and 
then  married  a  man  needing  (Hancock's  words 
on  Sybella  Smuts)  unfaltering  support  and 
heroic  constancy.  Theaden  had  been  the  wife  of 
a  busy,  prolific,  and  preoccupied  professor  ever 
since  their  marriage  in  1925.  In  Country  and 
Calling  he  convicts  himself  of  'barbarous  insensi- 
tiveness'  to  her.  She  found  rewarding  employ- 
ment in  wartime  London  as  a  producer  of  talks 
for  the  Overseas  Service  of  the  BBC,  but  col- 
lapsed into  depression  under  the  burdens  of  life 
and  work.  Her  ill  health  was  among  reasons  why 
Hancock  did  not  accept  until  1957  an  invitation 
first  extended  some  years  earlier  to  go  to  Can- 
berra as  professor  of  history  (until  1965)  and 
director  of  the  Research  School  of  Social  Sci- 
ences (until  1 961)  at  the  new  Australian  National 
University. 

In  Canberra,  country  and  calling  were  now  as 
nearly  reconciled  as  they  would  ever  be.  Col- 
leagues and  postgraduate  students  in  awe  of  a 
legend  discovered  that  Hancock  was  short,  slight, 
charming,  and  playful;  he  was  also  intellectually 
exacting,  and  tough  and  wily  (some  called  him 


184 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Harding 


'Sir  Fox')  in  his  determination  to  win  resources 
for  his  school  and  distribute  them  according  to 
his  own  judgement  of  quality.  He  had  an  undis- 
guised sense  of  his  own  achievement,  no  envy, 
and  a  humble  curiosity.  He  was  good  at  coaxing 
under-producers  to  get  on,  as  he  would  say,  with 
their  scribbling.  He  encouraged  interdisciplinary 
and  intercultural  studies  before  they  were  fash- 
ionable in  his  world.  He  had  blind  spots,  among 
them  an  Anglophile  disdain  for  many  things 
American  and  a  patrician  distaste  for  trade. 

He  became  a  kind  of  archbishop  among  Aus- 
tralian historians,  at  a  time  when  most  of  the 
bishops,  the  professors  of  history  in  state  uni- 
versities, were  Balliol  men.  The  earliest  and  most 
enduring  project  of  archiepiscopal  inspiration 
was  an  Australian  Dictionary  of  Biography  mod- 
elled on  the  DNB,  which  he  had  served  in 
Oxford  as  a  member  of  the  central  committee; 
eleven  gratifying  volumes  appeared  during  his 
lifetime. 

Husband  and  wife  lived  happily  in  Canberra, 
enjoying  both  bush  and  society,  until  Theaden 
was  stricken  by  cancer  and  died  in  i960.  In  the 
following  year,  as  she  had  counselled,  Hancock 
married  Marjorie  Eyre  (daughter  of  William 
Henry  Eyre,  of  Enfield,  Middlesex),  who  had 
worked  for  him  on  every  project  since  the  civil 
war  histories,  who  gave  him  support  and  con- 
stancy for  the  next  quarter  of  a  century,  and  who 
survived  him.  There  were  no  children  from 
either  marriage. 

After  retirement  in  1965,  country  and  calling 
led  Hancock  to  the  region  south  of  Canberra,  on 
which  he  wrote  a  pioneering  study  in  environ- 
mental history,  Discovering  Monaro  (1972).  He 
became  an  activist  in  the  cause  of  conservation,  a 
member  of  an  alliance  which  tried  in  vain  to 
prevent  a  telecommunications  tower  from  being 
installed  on  the  forested  peak  he  loved  just 
behind  the  university,  and  he  served  as  the 
group's  war  historian  in  The  Battle  of  Black 
Mountain  (1974).  In  a  post-imperial  epoch,  and 
in  his  own  eighties,  he  was  attracted  by  the  idea 
of  armed  neutrality  for  Australia,  and  cam- 
paigned against  the  presence  of  American  com- 
munication bases  on  his  country's  soil.  He  went 
on  writing,  and  talking  in  seminars  and  on  the 
radio,  almost  to  the  end.  'Beyond  all  else,'  wrote 
his  close  colleague  and  friend  Anthony  Low,  'he 
was  the  academic  animateur.'1 

He  was  knighted  in  1953  in  recognition  of  a 
successful  mission  to  Uganda  as  a  negotiator,  and 
appointed  KBE  in  1965.  He  was  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  (1950)  and  universities  and 
academies  in  four  continents  conferred  honours 
on  him.  When  asked  to  list  his  achievements,  he 
might  leave  some  out  but  included  a  medal  of  the 
Royal  Humane  Society  won  at  the  age  of  nine  for 
rescuing  another  child  from  drowning.  He  died 


13  August  1988  in  Canberra,  a  few  weeks  after 
his  ninetieth  birthday. 

[W.  K.  Hancock,  Country  and  Calling,  1954,  and 
Professing  History,  1976;  D.  A.  Low  in  Proceedings  of  the 
British  Academy,  vol.  lxxxii,  1992;  personal  knowledge.] 

K.  S.  Inglis 

HARDING,  Allan  Francis  ('John'),  first  Baron 
Harding  of  Petherton  (1 896-1989),  field-mar- 
shal, was  born  10  February  1896  at  Rock  House, 
South  Petherton,  Somerset,  the  second  child 
and  only  son  in  the  family  of  four  children  of 
Francis  Ebenezer  Harding,  solicitor's  clerk  and 
local  rating  officer,  and  his  wife  Elizabeth 
Ellen,  daughter  of  Jethro  Anstice,  draper,  of 
South  Petherton.  At  the  age  often  he  was  sent  as 
a  weekly  boarder  to  Ilminster  Grammar  School. 
His  headmaster,  Robert  Davidson,  was  a  sound 
scholar;  in  later  years,  when  already  a  lieutenant- 
general,  Harding  would  attribute  his  capacity  for 
hard  work  to  Davidson's  example  and  his  gift  of 
logical  thinking  to  hours  spent  construing  Ovid 
to  him. 

The  family  had  not  enough  money  to  finance 
a  career  either  in  farming,  his  own  preference, 
or  the  law,  which  Davidson  recommended;  he 
became  at  the  age  of  fifteen  a  boy  clerk  in  the 
Post  Office  Savings  Bank.  After  attending  night 
classes  at  King's  College,  London,  he  was  pro- 
moted and  in  his  new  posting  he  was  influenced 
by  his  superior  in  the  office  to  apply  for  a 
commission  in  the  Territorial  Army.  Two  regu- 
lar officers  interviewed  him  and,  although  he  was 
only  eighteen  and  from  a  station  in  life  different 
from  that  of  most  regular  officers,  they  showed 
discernment  and  lack  of  prejudice  in  recognizing 
his  quality.  He  was  gazetted  as  second  lieutenant 
in  the  1  / 1 1  th  battalion  of  the  London  Regiment 
(the  'Finsbury  Rifles')  in  May  1914. 

He  first  saw  action  on  10  August  191 5  in  the 
Dardanelles  campaign,  where  he  was  wounded 
after  only  five  days.  When  Gallipoli  was  aban- 
doned his  battalion  went  to  Egypt.  Here  he 
decided  to  apply  for  and  in  March  19 17  was 
granted  a  regular  commission  as  a  lieutenant  in 
his  county  regiment,  the  Somerset  Light  Infan- 
try. By  now  he  was  specializing  in  machine-guns. 
In  the  third  battle  of  Gaza  he  was  divisional 
machine-gun  officer,  as  acting  major  at  the  age  of 
twenty-one,  and  was  awarded  the  MC  (1917).  In 
19 18  he  was  made  corps  machine-gun  officer  at 
XXI  Corps  headquarters.  From  experience  on 
the  staff  he  learned,  among  other  things,  the 
value  of  strategic  deception,  which  was  practised 
with  great  success  in  both  wars  by  British  com- 
manders in  the  Middle  East. 

Between  the  wars  Harding  served  in  India 
from  1 9 19  to  1927,  first  with  the  Machine-Gun 
Corps  and  then  with  his  regiment.  From  1928  to 
1930  he  attended  the  Staff  College.  In  May  1933 


185 


Harding 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


he  was  appointed  brigade-major  of  the  13th 
Infantry  brigade  which  was  chosen  as  the  British 
contingent  in  the  international  force  which 
supervised  the  Saarland  plebiscite.  It  was  a  good 
preparation  for  the  tasks  of  collaborating  with 
forces  of  different  nationalities  which  were  to  fall 
to  him  later  in  the  Mediterranean  theatre;  he  also 
made  a  special  study  of  the  Italian  contingent, 
whose  light  tanks  were  to  prove  so  ineffective  in 
the  desert.  In  July  1939,  at  the  age  of  forty-three, 
he  was  given  command  of  the  1st  battalion  of  his 
regiment,  again  in  India.  He  earned  a  mention  in 
dispatches  for  frontier  operations,  but  his  reputa- 
tion ensured  that  he  would  soon  be  required  for 
more  serious  service;  in  autumn  1940  he  was 
posted  to  Egypt,  where  staff  officers  were 
required. 

His  first  task  was  to  plan  Compass,  the  offen- 
sive against  the  Italian  Tenth  Army  organized  by 
Sir  A.  P.  (later  first  Earl)  *Wavell;  he  went  on  to 
become  brigadier  general  staff  to  (Sir)  Richard 
•O'Connor,  commanding  the  Western  Desert 
Force,  later  XIII  Corps.  Compass  was  brilliantly 
successful,  expelling  all  Italian  formations  from 
Cyrenaica  and  capturing  125,000  prisoners,  at 
little  cost  in  British  casualties.  Harding's  services 
were  rewarded  with  a  CBE  (1940)  and  a  second 
mention  in  dispatches.  When  the  counter-attack 
led  by  Field-marshal  Erwin  Rommel  over- 
whelmed the  British  in  Cyrenaica,  and  both 
O'Connor  and  his  successor,  (Sir)  Philip  Neame, 
were  taken  prisoner  it  was  Harding  who  took 
temporary  charge,  organized  the  defence  of 
Tobruk,  and  persuaded  Wavell  that  it  could  be 
held.  After  the  first  two  misdirected  German 
attacks  on  the  fortress  had  been  repulsed  he  was 
transferred  to  be  brigadier  general  staff  of  a 
revived  Western  Desert  Force  at  Matruh  and 
appointed  to  the  DSO  (1941). 

For  Crusader,  the  operation  which  saw  Rom- 
mel's army  defeated  in  the  field  and  the  siege  of 
Tobruk  relieved,  he  was  BGS  to  (Sir)  A.  R. 
Godwin-Austen,  a  robustly  competent  com- 
mander whose  qualities  were  harmoniously  sup- 
plemented by  Harding's  intellectual  grasp  of  the 
often  perplexing  problems  created  by  Rommel's 
ineffectual  precipitancy.  He  received  a  bar  to  his 
DSO  for  this  victory.  In  January  1942  he  sup- 
ported Godwin-Austen's  correct  appreciation  of 
the  capabilities  of  the  German  counter-offensive 
and  found  himself  organizing  for  the  second  time 
a  hurried  withdrawal  through  western  Cyrenaica. 
The  differences  between  the  army  and  the  corps 
commanders  being  irreconcilable,  Godwin-Aus- 
ten was  replaced.  Harding  considered  he  was  also 
honour  bound  to  ask  for  a  transfer;  he  went  to 
GHQ.  as  director  of  military  training.  He  was 
promoted  to  brigadier  and  then  major-general  in 
1942. 

In  Cairo  Harding  found  himself  frequently  at 
variance,  in   practical  matters  of  organization, 


with  the  chief  of  staff  and  his  deputy.  It  was  a 
relief  to  be  given  command,  in  September,  of  7th 
Armoured  division,  the  original  desert  armoured 
formation.  In  the  second  battle  of  Alamein  his 
division  was  originally  employed  on  the  southern 
flank,  its  purpose  mainly  to  deceive  General 
Stumme  into  maintaining  the  original  faulty 
disposition  of  his  armour;  but,  with  the  return  of 
Rommel  and  the  intensification  of  the  struggle  in 
the  northern  sector,  7th  Armoured  was  trans- 
ferred there.  In  the  pursuit  that  followed  the 
successful  change  of  plan,  Harding  fretted  at  the 
constraints  imposed  on  him,  but  drove  hard, 
always  up  with  the  forward  troops.  In  January 
1943,  when  approaching  Tripoli,  he  was  severely 
wounded  by  a  nearby  shell  burst.  He  received  a 
second  bar  to  his  DSO  but  was  not  graded  fit  to 
return  to  duty  until  ten  months  had  passed. 

In  November  1943  he  took  command  of  VIII 
Corps,  having  been  promoted  to  lieutenant- 
general,  but  six  weeks  later,  by  the  personal 
decision  of  Sir  Alan  *Brooke  (later  first  Viscount 
Alanbrooke),  chief  of  the  imperial  general  staff, 
he  was  transferred  to  be  chief  of  staff  to  Sir 
Harold  *Alexander  (later  first  Earl  Alexander  of 
Tunis),  commander-in-chief,  Allied  Armies  in 
Italy.  This  was  an  inspired  appointment.  Hard- 
ing and  Alexander  not  only  got  on  well  together 
but  admirably  complemented  each  other.  Alex- 
ander was  both  an  intellectual  and  a  fighting 
soldier,  combining  a  tactical  grasp  of  the  battle- 
field with  the  talent  of  an  imaginative  and  fertile 
strategist.  In  Harding  he  had  someone  who  could 
be  relied  on  without  reservation  to  implement  his 
ideas. 

After  the  capture  of  Rome  Harding  was 
appointed  KCB  (1944).  He  chose  to  be  known  as 
Sir  John  Harding,  that  being  the  name  he  had 
used  in  the  regiment  and  the  family  since  1919. 
After  fifteen  months  as  chief  of  staff  he  was  at 
last,  in  March  1945,  given  the  chance  to  com- 
mand a  corps  in  action;  he  took  over  XIII  Corps, 
with  which  he  had  served  in  the  desert  nearly 
five  years  earlier.  The  last  battle  in  Italy  was  as 
hard  fought  as  the  first.  Harding's  corps,  origi- 
nally on  the  British  left,  changed  direction  in  the 
closing  stages  and  pursued  the  retreating  enemy 
up  to  and  across  the  Po  with  a  speed  and 
effectiveness  greater  than  he  had  been  allowed  to 
achieve  after  Alamein.  That  headlong  pursuit 
brought  him  to  Trieste  on  2  May,  just  after  the 
Yugoslavs,  and  to  the  centre  of  a  long-lasting 
dispute  with  Britain's  former  ally.  The  acute 
stage  of  the  confrontation  with  the  Yugoslavs  was 
overcome  when  they  backed  down  in  June,  the 
first  victory,  it  has  been  called,  in  the  cold  war. 
For  two  years  Harding  ruled  with  popular 
acclaim  over  what  became  the  free  city  of  Trieste 
in  reasonable  tranquillity. 

In  the  summer  of  1947  he  was  appointed  to 
Southern  Command  and  two  vears  later  became 


186 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Harding 


commander-in-chief  Far  East.  He  arrived  just  as 
what  was  euphemistically  called  'the  emergency' 
was  beginning  in  Malaya;  it  was  destined  to  last 
for  twelve  years.  The  foundations  of  the  system 
by  which  this  formidable  Chinese  communist 
insurrection  was  eventually  suppressed  were  laid 
by  Harding.  Malcolm  *MacDonald,  the  special 
commissioner  for  the  Far  East,  paid  a  firm 
tribute  to  the  sagacity  and  tenacity  of  purpose 
with  which  Harding  dominated  the  defence 
co-ordinating  committee. 

Promoted  to  general  in  1949  and  appointed 
GCB  at  the  beginning  of  1951  Harding  was 
transferred  in  August  195 1  to  command  the 
British  Army  of  the  Rhine.  After  the  Russian 
take-over  in  Czechoslovakia  and  the  Berlin 
blockade  Britain  had  begun  rearming  and  NATO 
set  up  the  Supreme  Headquarters,  Allied  Powers 
in  Europe  (SHAPE),  commanded  by  Dwight 
Eisenhower.  The  British  army  was  being  trans- 
formed. New  defence  plans  were  studied.  Hard- 
ing had  to  display  prodigies  of  inter- Allied  tact, 
organizational  flair,  and  determination.  By  con- 
trast his  period  as  chief  of  the  imperial  general 
staff,  three  years  from  1952  to  1955,  passed  off 
with  little  more  excitement  than  the  Mau  Mau 
rebellion  in  Kenya  and  the  beginning  of  the 
dissolution  of  the  British  base  in  Egypt.  In 
November  1953  he  was  promoted  field-marshal 
and  presented  with  his  baton  by  the  young 
queen. 

As  the  end  of  the  three-year  term  approached 
and  Harding  was  making  plans  for  his  retire- 
ment, a  proposal  was  made  to  him  by  the  new- 
prime  minister,  Sir  Anthony  *Eden  (later  the 
first  Earl  of  Avon),  that  he  should  become 
governor  of  Cyprus.  Eden  considered  that  his 
experience  in  Malaya  and  Kenya  would  help  him 
to  control  the  demand  for  union  with  Greece, 
which  was  supported  by  the  majority  of  Greek 
Cypriots.  He  accepted  reluctandy,  from  a  sense 
of  duty.  He  realized  at  once  that  the  only 
favourable  prospect  lay  in  negotiating  with  Arch- 
bishop *Makarios  for  some  acceptable  form  of 
self-government.  The  two  men  were  well 
matched  in  quickness  of  intelligence;  Makarios 
later  declared  that  Harding  was  both  the  clev- 
erest and  the  most  straightforward  of  the  gover- 
nors he  had  known.  Though  circumstances 
denied  them  the  pleasure  of  a  successful  agree- 
ment, Harding's  measures  brought  greatly 
improved  security  in  the  island,  with  the  Greek 
Cypriot  insurgent  leader,  George  Grivas, 
reduced  to  impotent  clandestinity.  After  the  two 
years'  term  for  which  he  had  originally  stipu- 
lated, Harding  was  able  to  hand  over  in  October 
1957  to  his  successor,  Sir  Hugh  *Foot  (later 
Baron  Caradon),  a  sound  basis  for  the  eventual 
achievement  of  Cypriot  independence. 

In  January  1958  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  in 
acknowledgement  of  his  service  in  Cyprus.  In 


retirement  he  accepted  several  directorships, 
including  one  on  the  board  of  Plesseys,  a  major 
supplier  of  telecommunication  equipment  of 
which  he  became  chairman  in  1967.  In  1961  he 
was  invited  to  become  the  first  chairman  of  the 
Horse  Race  Betting  Levy  Board.  He  was  colonel 
of  three  regiments,  the  Somerset  Light  Infantry 
(from  i960  the  Somerset  and  Cornwall  Light 
Infantry),  the  6th  Gurkha  Rifles,  and  the  Life- 
guards. He  was  awarded  an  honorary  DCL  of 
Durham  University  (1958). 

He  was  slight  in  build  with  a  frank  and 
courteous  expression,  clear  blue  eyes,  and  a  trim 
moustache.  His  manner  was  open  and  friendly; 
throughout  a  career  that  could  have  excited 
jealousy  no  one  spoke  badly  of  him.  Apart  from 
a  notable  skill  in  personal  relationships,  his 
leading  characteristic  was  a  lucidity  of  intellec- 
tual apprehension  and  strength  of  reasoning  that 
enabled  him  to  grasp  the  essence  of  every  prob- 
lem. Those  who  served  with  him  were  exhila- 
rated by  the  speed  and  certainty  with  which  he 
arrived  at  the  right  solution. 

He  married  in  1927  Mary  Gertrude  Mabel, 
daughter  of  Joseph  Wilson  Rooke,  solicitor  and 
JP,  of  Knutsford,  Cheshire,  and  sister  of  an 
officer  in  his  regiment.  She  died  in  1983.  They 
had  one  son,  John  Charles  (born  1928),  who 
succeeded  to  the  barony.  Harding  died  20  Janu- 
ary 1989  at  his  home  in  Sherborne,  Dorset. 

[Michael  Carver,  Harding  of  Petherton,  1978;  David 
Hunt,  A  Don  at  War,  revised  edn.  1990;  I.  S.  O. 
Playfair  et  a  I.,  Official  History  of  the  Second  World  War. 
The  Mediterranean  and  Middle  East,  vols,  i-vi,  1956-88; 
personal  knowledge.]  David  Hunt 

HARDING,  Sdr  Harold  John  Boyer  (1900- 
1986),  civil  engineer,  was  born  in  Wandsworth  6 
January  1900,  the  younger  son  and  younger  child 
of  Arthur  Boyer  Harding,  who  was  employed 
by  an  insurance  company,  and  his  wife  Helen 
Clinton,  daughter  of  the  Revd  William  Lowe. 
With  the  loss  of  his  father  in  1902,  support 
through  school,  Christ's  Hospital,  and  university 
depended  on  his  mother's  sister's  husband,  Jack 
Robinson.  He  entered  the  City  and  Guilds  Col- 
lege (part  of  Imperial  College)  in  1917,  serving 
through  191 8  as  a  full-time  Officers'  Training 
Corps  cadet.  He  resumed  his  studies  in  1919, 
struggling  in  mathematics  and  excelling  in  geo- 
logy. He  received  a  B.Sc.  (Eng.)  in  1922. 

In  1922  he  joined  the  'old,  respected  and 
feudal  firm'  of  John  Mowlem  &  Company,  engi- 
neering contractors,  where  he  was  to  become  the 
outstanding  engineer  in  soft  ground  tunnelling 
and  shaft  construction  in  Britain.  His  early  work 
concerned  underground  railway  development  in 
and  around  London,  including  the  reconstruc- 
tion of  Piccadilly  Circus  station  (1926-9).  The 
sheer  complexity  of  this  project  spurred  him  to 


187 


Harding 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


build,  with  his  future  wife,  then  a  student  at  the 
Slade  School  of  Art,  a  model  of  the  underground 
works,  subsequently  displayed  at  the  Science 
Museum  and  later  at  the  London  Transport 
Museum.  His  particular  skills  were  soon  exer- 
cised in  overcoming  major  foundation  problems 
encountered  at  Dagenham  for  the  powerhouse 
for  the  Ford  motor  works,  unwittingly  placed 
exactly  where  Sir  Cornelius  *Vermuyden  had 
closed  a  breach  in  the  Thames  300  years  before. 
This  experience  led  to  Harding's  special  interest 
in  expedients  for  ground  treatment,  with  pio- 
neering work  in  Britain  on  the  Joosten  and 
Guttman  processes  of  chemical  consolidation. 
From  1936  to  1939  he  directed  construction  of 
the  Central  line  of  London  underground  from 
Bow  Road  to  Leytonstone. 

During  World  War  II  he  was  responsible  for 
defence  works  and  emergency  repairs  to  under- 
ground damage  in  London.  In  1943-4  he  organ- 
ized the  construction  of  precast  concrete  petrol 
barges  and  eight  of  the  concrete  floating  mono- 
liths of  Mulberry  harbour  for  the  Normandy 
landings.  During  a  night  of  air  raids  in  1941  he 
had  a  discussion  with  a  distinguished  colleague, 
which  was  to  lead  to  a  significant  geotechnical 
advance  in  Britain,  the  foundation  of  Soil 
Mechanics  Ltd.  in  1942.  From  this  date  he  was 
increasingly  involved  in  the  management  of  the 
firm,  being  a  director  from  1949  to  1955;  from 
1950  to  1956  he  was  also  a  director  of  the  parent 
company,  Mowlem.  Subsequently,  until  1978,  he 
worked  as  a  consultant  and  arbitrator.  From  1958 
to  1970  he  was  joint  consultant,  with  Rene 
Malcor,  to  the  Channel  tunnel  study  group.  In 
1966-7  he  was  a  member  of  the  Aberfan  disaster 
tribunal,  chaired  by  Lord  Justice  Edmund 
Davies  (later  Baron  Edmund-Davies),  following 
a  flow  slide  of  mining  waste,  which  engulfed  a 
mining  village  in  south  Wales. 

Harding  was  an  active  and  loyal  fellow  of  the 
Institution  of  Civil  Engineers  through  a  period  of 
radical  reform;  he  served  as  president  in  1963-4. 
He  was  first  chairman  of  the  British  Tunnelling 
Society  (197 1-3)  and  set  the  pattern  for  its 
instructive  informal  discussions,  encouraging 
participation  by  young  engineers,  thus  recreating 
an  original  objective  of  the  parent  institution.  He 
gave  great  encouragement  to  others  to  undertake 
research  to  explain  phenomena  he  had  observed, 
for  research  often  lagged  behind  their  practical 
manifestation. 

He  was  a  governor  of  Westminster  Technical 
College  (1948-53),  Northampton  Engineering 
College  (1950-3),  and  Imperial  College 
(1955-75).  In  1952  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
City  and  Guilds  Institute.  He  was  knighted  in 
1968  and  received  an  honorary  D.Sc.  from  City 
University  in  1970.  In  1976  he  was  elected  a 
founder  fellow  of  the  Fellowship  of  Engineering 


(later  the  Royal  Academy  of  Engineering),  and  he 
became  a  fellow  of  Imperial  College  in  1968. 

He  was  a  man  of  great  energy  and  application, 
an  imposing  figure  with  a  high  forehead,  slightly 
aquiline  nose  and  a  severe  expression  which 
readily  dissolved  into  a  smile,  and  a  penetrating 
eye  which  could  be  seen  by  the  discerning  to 
twinkle.  His  portrait,  painted  by  Lady  Harding, 
hangs  in  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers.  To 
his  school-days  at  Christ's  Hospital,  in  the  'engi- 
neering side'  taught  by  T.  S.  Usherwood,  he 
attributed  much  of  his  command  of  English, 
interest  in  history,  and  facility  for  the  apt  quota- 
tion, learned  under  enthusiastic  circumstances  in 
association  with  science  and  technology.  He  was 
a  witty  and  captivating  speaker,  dismissive  of 
pomp  and  arrogance.  He  recognized  that  suc- 
cessful geotechnical  projects  depended  on  the 
early  identification  of  unexpected  change  and  the 
consequent  need  for  modification  of  the  scheme. 
This,  he  emphasized,  required  moral  courage  in 
those  concerned  to  admit  the  errors  in  their 
original  perceptions. 

In  1927  he  married  Sophie  Helen  Blair, 
daughter  of  Edmund  Blair  Leighton,  RI,  artist. 
They  had  two  sons  and  a  daughter.  Harding  died 
in  Topsham,  Devon,  27  March  1986. 

[Harold  Harding,  Tunnelling  History  and  My  Own 
Involvement,  1981;  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers 
archives;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alan  Muir  Wood 

HARLEY,  John  Laker  ('Jack')  (1911-1990), 
botanist,  was  born  17  November  191 1  in  Old 
Charlton,  London,  the  elder  son  and  second  of 
four  children  of  Charles  Laker  Harley,  civil 
servant  in  the  Post  Office,  and  his  wife  Edith 
Sarah  Smith,  daughter  of  an  armament  artificer. 
His  early  childhood  was  spent  in  various  parts  of 
London.  When  he  was  twelve  the  family  moved 
to  Leeds,  where  his  father  took  a  post  at  the 
labour  exchange.  Harley  entered  Leeds  Gram- 
mar School,  originally  intending  to  become  a 
classicist,  but  switched  to  science  in  the  sixth 
form.  Three  outstanding  teachers  made  him 
interested  and  successful  at  biology,  and  he 
entered  for  the  Oxford  entrance  examination. 
The  hard  work  needed  for  this,  combined  with 
being  prefect  and  house  captain  as  well  as  playing 
first-XV  rugby,  taught  him  the  efficient  use  of 
time  and  how  to  work  early  in  the  morning,  a 
lesson  he  never  forgot,  to  the  later  consternation 
of  research  collaborators,  who  found  he  often 
began  preparing  for  experiments  at  dawn. 

In  1930  he  won  an  open  exhibition  to  Wadham 
College,  Oxford,  but  was  unsure  whether  to  read 
botany  or  zoology.  He  chose  the  former  because 
the  interviewers  for  the  latter  did  not  attract  him. 
His  undergraduate  career  was  crowned  with  the 
awards  both  of  a  first-class  honours  degree 
(1933),   and    the   Christopher   Welch    research 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Harrison 


scholarship,  which  financed  the  first  four  years 
(1933-7)  of  his  postgraduate  research  on  the 
mycorrhizas  of  the  beech  tree  (mycorrhizas  are 
very  common  and  widespread  symbiotic  associa- 
tions between  fungi  and  the  underground  organs 
of  plants,  and  the  principal  route  for  mineral 
nutrients  such  as  phosphate  to  pass  from  soil  to 
roots).  This  topic  was  chosen  because  he  had 
carried  out  notable  researches  as  an  under- 
graduate into  both  fungi  and  plant  ecology-,  but 
he  was  very  dissatisfied  with  the  outcome  and, 
after  his  D.Phil.  (1936),  switched  to  studying  the 
physiology  of  fungi,  having  been  awarded  an 
1 85 1  studentship.  In  1939  he  became  a  depart- 
mental demonstrator  in  the  botany  department. 
War  service  intervened  from  1940  to  1945,  and 
he  was  commissioned  in  the  Royal  Signals.  He 
joined  the  Army  Operational  Research  Group 
no.  1  in  1943,  serving  first  in  the  Burma  theatre, 
and  then  in  Ceylon  as  a  staff  officer  at  Supreme 
Allied  Command  headquarters,  ending  the  war 
with  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel.  His  experi- 
ences left  a  marked  impression,  and  the  military 
way  of  life  had  some  appeal  for  him.  He  returned 
to  Oxford  in  1945  as  a  university  lecturer  in  the 
botany  department,  moving  to  the  agriculture 
department  in  1958.  He  was  reader  in  plant 
nutrition  from  1962  to  1965.  He  became  a 
research  fellow  of  Queen's  College  in  1946  (full 
fellow  in  1952),  a  happy  association  which  ended 
in  1965  when  he  moved  to  Sheffield  University 
as  a  professor  of  botany.  He  returned  to  Oxford 
in  1969  as  professor  of  forest  science  and  fellow 
of  St  John's,  a  post  he  held  until  his  retirement  in 

1979- 

Harley's  major  contribution  to  science  was 
that,  over  a  period  of  nearly  forty  years  after  the 
war,  he  oversaw  a  pioneering  series  of  researches 
into  tree  mycorrhizas  which  put  the  experimental 
study  of  these  ecologically  important  symbioses 
firmly  on  the  map;  before  his  work,  no  one  had 
a  clear  idea  of  their  role.  The  initial  stimulus  to 
his  studies  was  an  invitation  to  write  a  review 
on  mycorrhizas  in  1047,  which  then  inspired 
research  with  a  succession  of  talented  collab- 
orators, many  of  whom  were  his  own  students. 
Two  outstanding  books  were  published,  the 
second  written  with  his  daughter,  herself  an 
international  expert  on  mycorrhizas:  The  Biology 
of  Mycorrhiza  (1959)  and  (with  S.  E.  Smith) 
Mycorrhizal  Symbiosis  (1983). 

Harley  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1964,  and  had  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Sheffield  (1989)  and  Uppsala 
(1981).  He  was  president  of  the  British  Nlyco- 
logical  Society  (1967),  the  British  Ecological 
Society  (1970-2),  and  the  Institute  of  Biology 
(1984-6),  and  had  honorary  fellowships  of  Wad- 
ham  College,  Oxford  (1972),  Wye  College,  Lon- 
don (1983),  and  the  Indian  National  Academy  of 
Sciences  (1981).  He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1979 


and  won  the  gold  medal  of  the  Linnean  Soci- 
ety in  1989.  His  excellent  analytical  judgement 
benefited  many  national  bodies,  including  the 
Agricultural  Research  Council,  the  Lawes  Agri- 
cultural Trust,  and  the  New  Phytologist,  the 
largest  journal  of  general  botany  in  Europe, 
which  he  served  as  both  editor  (1961-83)  and  a 
trustee. 

Harley  inspired  intense  loyalty  and  affection 
from  his  students  and  collaborators.  Beneath  his 
bluff,  rather  military  style  lay  a  remarkably 
perceptive  and  compassionate  person,  who  com- 
bined courage  and  honesty  with  a  zany  sense  of 
humour.  He  was  six  feet  tall,  erect,  and  slim, 
although  he  put  on  weight  later  in  life.  In  1938 
he  married  (Elizabeth)  Lindsay,  daughter  of 
Edward  McCarthy  Fitt,  civil  engineer.  They  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter.  Harley  died  13  December 
1990  at  his  home  in  Old  Marston,  Oxford. 

[D.  C.  Smith  and  D.  H.  Lewis  in  Biographical  Memoirs 
of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  \xxix,  1994; 
personal  knowledge.]  David  Smith 

HARRISON,  Francis  Llewelyn  ('Frank') 
( 1 905-1987),  music  scholar,  was  born  29  Sep- 
tember 1905  in  Dublin,  the  second  son  in  the 
family  of  four  sons  and  three  daughters  of  Alfred 
Francis  Harrison,  an  accountant  with  the  Great 
Southern  Railway  and  a  talented  amateur  singer, 
and  his  wife  Florence  May  Nash,  who  was  of 
Welsh  descent  on  her  mother's  side,  and,  on  her 
father's  (William  Nash,  of  Kilrush,  county  Clare, 
craftsman  in  inlaid  wood),  of  mixed  English  and 
Hiberno-Norman.  Both  sides  of  his  family 
belonged  to  the  Protestant,  urban  tradition  of 
Irish  society.  The  young  Harrison  showed  a 
precocious  talent  for  music,  and  was  educated  at 
the  choir  school  of  St  Patrick's  Cathedral,  from 
which  he  won  one  of  the  two  annual  cathedral 
scholarships  to  Mountjoy  School.  He  continued 
studies  part-time  at  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  of 
Music,  where  he  won  prizes  for  organ,  piano, 
and  composition,  and  later  at  Trinity  College, 
Dublin  (Mus.B.  1926,  Mus.D.  1930).  After  a 
short  spell  as  organist  at  Kilkenny  Cathedral 
(1929)  he  emigrated  to  Canada  in  1930. 

Harrison  was  to  spend  two  decades  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  His  first  posts  were 
within  the  church  music  sphere  in  which  he  had 
established  himself  in  Eire.  Alongside  this  he 
built  up  a  flourishing  career  as  a  private  music 
teacher,  organist,  and  composer.  In  1933  he 
studied  with  Marcel  Dupre  in  France,  and  in 
1943  he  won  the  Canadian  Performing  Rights 
Society's  composers'  award.  But  from  1935, 
when  he  was  appointed  resident  musician  to 
Queen's  University,  Kingston,  Ontario,  his 
career  was  to  be  chiefly  within  academic  institu- 
tions. In  1940  he  opened  the  university's  new- 
music  department.  After  spending  1945-6  as 
Bradley-Keeler  fellow  at  Yale,  studying  with 


189 


Harrison 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Paul  Hindemith  and  Leo  Schrade,  and  posts  at 
Colgate  University,  New  York  (1946-7),  and 
Washington  University,  St  Louis  (1947-50),  he 
went  to  England  in  1950  and  settled  in  Oxford, 
as  lecturer  in  music  in  1952-6,  senior  lecturer  in 
1956-62,  and  reader  in  the  history  of  music  from 
1962  to  1970.  From  1965  to  1970  he  was  a  senior 
research  fellow  of  Jesus  College. 

The  decade  in  Canadian  and  North  American 
universities  was  responsible  for  changing  the 
focus  of  Harrison's  musical  interests.  Composi- 
tion seems  to  have  been  virtually  abandoned  after 
he  went  to  Oxford,  and  his  appearances  as  a 
performer  became  sporadic.  For  a  highly  imagin- 
ative man,  the  challenge  of  devising  humanities 
curricula  from  scratch,  in  a  climate  suffused  with 
left-wing  cultural  politics,  had  left  an  indelible 
mark.  The  need  to  understand  how  processes  of 
artistic  production,  and  those  of  music  in  partic- 
ular, related  to  social  structures  and  assumptions, 
was  to  be  the  mainspring  of  his  work  for  the  rest 
of  his  life.  In  Oxford  he  immersed  himself  in 
a  study  of  pre-Reformation  insular  liturgical 
music — then  an  uncharted  field — and  rapidly 
established  himself  as  an  expert  of  international 
repute.  His  Music  in  Medieval  Britain  (1958)  is  a 
remarkable  combination  of  both  encyclopaedic 
positivism,  using  mainly  manuscript  sources 
alongside  liturgical  evidence  then  rarely  admitted 
into  musicology,  and  a  rigorous  concern  to  estab- 
lish the  music's  comprehensibility  in  terms  of  its 
context.  He  was  also  involved  with  two  major 
editorial  projects:  Polyphonic  Music  of  the  Four- 
teenth Century,  published  by  Oiseau-Lyre,  from 
1962  to  1986,  and  the  Early  English  Church  Music 
project  initiated  by  the  British  Academy  at  his 
instigation  (1961-72).  Among  his  other  publica- 
tions was  The  Eton  Choirbook  in  three  volumes 
(1956-61). 

By  nature  restlessly  inquisitive,  Harrison  was 
not  content  with  ploughing  a  single  furrow. 
During  the  1960s,  while  consolidating  his  repu- 
tation as  a  medievalist  (he  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  British  Academy  in  1965),  his  interest  in 
what  he  dubbed  'anthromusicology'  led  him  to 
explore  musical  culture  more  widely,  and  he 
undertook  important  fieldwork  in  Latin  America. 
This  expansion  of  his  activities  led  in  1970  to  the 
offer  of  the  chair  in  ethnomusicology  at  Amster- 
dam, which  he  held  until  1976.  In  Amsterdam 
Harrison's  formidable  capacity  for  hard  work  was 
stretched  in  numerous  directions.  While  estab- 
lishing his  department  on  a  new  footing  and 
moulding  it  as  a  centre  of  international  academic 
excellence,  he  also  engaged  in  fieldwork  on  the 
music  of  Latin  America  and  the  Celtic  peoples, 
as  well  as  continuing  research  on  medieval 
Europe.  Throughout  the  1970s  he  continued  to 
accept  visiting  posts  abroad,  particularly  in 
North  America,  where  he  was  much  in  demand. 
On  a  return  to  Kingston  in  1974  he  was  awarded 


an  honorary  LL  D,  and  was  present  at  the 
inauguration  of  the  Harrison-Le  Caine  concert 
hall,  named  in  his  honour. 

Harrison  was  a  stocky  energetic  figure,  who 
spoke  in  tones  that  recalled  both  his  homeland 
and  his  years  in  North  America,  and  who  always 
took  great  care  with  his  appearance.  A  gregarious 
character,  with  personal  as  well  as  academic 
interest  in  people  and  their  activities,  he  had  a 
wide  international  circle  of  friends.  As  an  emigre 
he  carried  with  him  a  capacity  to  make  a  home 
almost  anywhere,  and  he  was  an  informed  enthu- 
siast for  international  cuisine.  In  1927  he  married 
Norah  Lillian,  daughter  of  William  Thomas 
Drayton,  antique  dealer;  they  had  two  daughters. 
The  marriage  was  not  a  happy  one  and  there  was 
a  divorce  in  1965.  In  1966  he  married  Joan, 
daughter  of  Edmund  Thomas  Rimmer,  school- 
master. She  had  been  since  i960  his  companion 
in  his  exploration  of  the  world's  music.  There 
were  no  children  of  the  second  marriage.  Harri- 
son died  in  Canterbury,  where  they  retired,  29 
December  1987. 

[D.  F.  L.  Chadd  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  lxxv,  1989;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] David  Chadd 

HARRISON,  Sir  Reginald  Carey  ('Rex') 
(1908- 1 990),  actor,  was  born  5  March  1908  in 
Huyton,  Lancashire,  the  youngest  of  three  chil- 
dren and  only  son  of  William  Reginald  Harrison, 
stockbroker,  and  his  wife,  Edith  Mary  Carey.  At 
the  age  of  ten  he  adopted  the  name  'Rex',  by 
which  he  was  known  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He 
was  a  sickly  child  and  a  bout  of  measles  left  him 
with  poor  sight  in  his  left  eye.  He  was  educated 
at  Birkdale  Preparatory  School  and  Liverpool 
College.  His  appearances  in  school  plays  and 
regular  visits  to  the  Liverpool  Playhouse  con- 
firmed an  early  desire  to  be  an  actor.  At  sixteen 
he  was  taken  on  at  the  Playhouse  and  after  a  year 
backstage  made  his  acting  debut  in  1924  in  Thirty 
Minutes  in  a  Street.  After  two  and  a  half  years 
playing  small  roles,  he  left  Liverpool  for  London, 
where  in  1927  he  landed  a  part  in  a  touring 
production  of  Charley's  Aunt.  Thus  began  six 
years  of  touring  and  repertory,  in  which  he 
learned  his  craft.  It  was  a  five-month  run  as  a 
caddish  explorer  in  Heroes  Don't  Care  in  1936 
that  provided  his  breakthrough.  The  critic  of 
Theatre  World  proclaimed  him  'one  of  the  best 
light  comedians  on  the  English  stage'  and  he 
maintained  this  position  until  his  death. 

On  the  basis  of  Heroes  Don't  Care,  the  pro- 
ducer (Sir)  Alexander  *Korda  signed  a  contract 
with  Harrison  at  London  Films,  and  he  was 
launched  on  a  cinematic  career,  which  he  was  to 
continue  henceforth  in  tandem  with  his  stage 
career.  He  achieved  an  early  success  in  the 
delightful  comedy  Storm  in  a  Teacup  (1936), 
where  as  a  crusading  reporter  he  was  taught  by 


190 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Harrison 


the  director  Victor  Saville  how  to  relax  in  front 
of  the  camera.  He  consolidated  his  theatrical 
reputation  with  long  runs  in  French  Without 
Tears  (1936),  Design  for  Living  (1939),  and  No 
Time  for  Comedy  (1941).  From  1942  to  1944  he 
served  in  the  Royal  Air  Force  Volunteer  Reserve 
as  a  flying  control  liaison  officer.  Emerging  from 
the  forces,  he  established  himself  as  a  major 
British  film  star  in  the  screen  version  of  Blithe 
Spirit  ( 1945)  and  in  The  Rake's  Progress  (1945),  in 
which  he  was  excellent  as  a  charming,  feckless, 
parasitic  playboy,  who  expiates  a  worthless  life 
with  a  heroic  death  on  the  battlefield. 

Hollywood  inevitably  beckoned  and  Twen- 
tieth Century-Fox  signed  a  seven-year  contract 
with  him.  They  saw  him  not  as  a  light  comedian 
but  as  a  character  actor.  The  vehicles  they 
provided  for  him,  if  not  always  to  his  taste,  were 
invariably  superbly  mounted  and  stretched  him 
as  an  actor.  In  Anna  and  the  King  ofSiam  (1946), 
Harrison  was  both  comic  and  touching  as  the 
capricious  but  dedicated  King  Mongkut.  In  The 
Ghost  and  Mrs  Muir  (1047),  playing  the  spirit  of 
an  old  sea  dog,  he  took  to  being  blasphemous  and 
bad  tempered  with  evident  glee.  In  Unfaithfully 
Yours  (1948)  he  played  an  autocratic  and  ego- 
centric orchestral  conductor  with  a  memorable 
line  in  vituperation.  But  his  continuing  unhappi- 
ness  in  Hollywood,  his  unflattering  comments  on 
the  film  capital,  poor  box-office  returns  on  his 
later  Fox  films,  and  an  unsavoury  scandal  sur- 
rounding the  suicide  of  actress  Carole  Landis, 
with  whom  he  was  having  an  affair,  led  Harrison 
and  Fox  to  terminate  the  contract  by  mutual 
consent.  He  returned  to  Broadway  to  play  King 
Henry  VIII  in  Maxwell  Anderson's  Anne  of  the 
Thousand  Days  (1948)  at  the  Shubert  theatre. 
New  York,  and  promptly  won  a  Tony  award  as 
best  actor.  Then  in  London  and  on  Broadway  he 
did  John  Van  Druten's  play  Bell,  Book  and 
Candle  (1950)  and  directed  and  starred  in  (Sir) 
Peter  Ustinov's  play  The  Love  of  Four  Colonels 
(1953).  He  won  the  1961  Evening  Standard  Best 
Actor  award  for  his  performance  in  Anton  Che- 
khov's Platonov  at  the  Royal  Court  theatre  in 
i960. 

Harrison  resolutely  avoided  Shakespeare,  but 
became  the  supreme  interpreter  of  the  plays  of 
Bernard  *Shaw,  bringing  the  necessary  quality  of 
civilized  intelligence  to  his  performances  both  on 
stage  (Heartbreak  House  1983,  The  Devil's  Dis- 
ciple 1977)  and  film  (Major  Barbara  1940-1).  He 
will  forever  be  associated  with  the  role  of  Pro- 
fessor Henry  Higgins  in  My  Fair  Lady,  the 
Lerner  and  Loewe  musical  based  on  Shaw's 
Pygmalion.  Harrison  played  the  part  for  three 
years  on  stage  in  New  York  and  London 
(1956-9),  winning  a  second  Tony  award,  and  an 
Oscar  for  his  performance  in  the  film  version 

1(1964).  So  much  did  he  make  the  part  his  own 
that  he  later  said:  'For  years  I  could  never  bear  to 


see  anyone  else  do  it — Higgins  has  become  so 
much  a  part  of  me  and  I,  of  him.' 

Harrison's  success  in  My  Fair  Lady  made  him 
a  major  international  star  and  led  to  appearances 
in  several  screen  epics  in  the  1960s.  There  was 
more  than  a  touch  of  Shaw's  Julius  Caesar  in  his 
drily  witty  and  very  human  performance  as  the 
Roman  conqueror  in  Cleopatra  (1963).  When 
Caesar  expired  half-way  through,  so  did  the 
film.  The  ponderous  film  about  Michelangelo, 
The  Agony  and  the  Ecstasy  (1965),  was  almost 
redeemed  by  Harrison's  engaging  interpretation 
of  Pope  Julius  II  as  an  urbane  schemer. 

In  the  late  1960s  there  was  a  string  of  expen- 
sive flops — The  Honey  Pot  (1965),  Doctor  Doo- 
little  ( 1966),  A  Flea  in  her  Ear  (1967) — and  in  the 
1970s  and  1980s  Harrison's  film  appearances 
were  mainly  cameos,  though  he  played  Don 
Quixote  in  a  notable  1973  BBC  TV  production. 
He  concentrated  his  energies  on  the  stage,  dis- 
playing his  gifts  in  London  and  New  York  in  a 
series  of  Edwardian  revivals:  Heartbreak  House 
1983,  Aren't  We  All?  1984-5,  The  Admirable 
Crichton  1988,  and  The  Circle  1989.  He  was 
appearing  in  The  Circle  when  his  final  illness  was 
diagnosed. 

Harrison  was  married  six  times,  and  allegedly 
mistreated  all  his  wives.  His  first  wife  (1934)  was 
the  fashion  model  Collette  Thomas  (her  real 
name  was  Marjorie).  They  had  one  son,  the  actor 
and  singer  Noel  Harrison,  born  in  1935,  and 
were  divorced  in  1943.  His  second  wife  was  the 
emigre  German  Jewish  actress  Lilli  Palmer 
(whose  real  name  was  Lilli  Peiser),  whom  he 
married  in  1943.  They  had  one  son,  the  play- 
wright Carey  Harrison,  born  in  1944,  and  were 
divorced  in  1957.  His  third  wife  (1957)  was  the 
English  actress  Kay  Kendall,  who  died  of  leukae- 
mia in  1959  at  the  age  of  thirty-two.  Their 
relationship  was  the  basis  of  the  play  After  Lydia, 
by  Sir  Terence  *Rattigan,  in  which  Harrison 
starred  on  Broadway  in  1974,  playing  the  role 
based  on  himself.  He  married  his  fourth  wife  in 
1962,  the  Welsh  actress  Rachel  Roberts,  daugh- 
ter of  the  Revd  Richard  Rhys  Roberts.  They 
divorced  in  1971  and  she  committed  suicide  in 
1980.  His  fifth  wife  (1971)  was  Mrs  (Joan) 
Elizabeth  Rees  Harris,  daughter  of  David  Rees 
Rees-Williams,  first  Baron  Ogmore,  PC,  and 
ex-wife  of  actor  Richard  Harris.  They  divorced 
in  1976.  He  married  finally  in  1978  an  American, 
Mercia  Tinker.  Harrison  wrote  two  volumes  of 
autobiography  and  three  of  his  wives  left  their 
impressions  of  him  in  their  autobiographies. 

Harrison  was  a  man  of  enormous  charm  and 
this  often  compensated  for  the  personal  and 
professional  self-centredness  and  perfectionism 
that  sometimes  tried  the  patience  of  colleagues 
and  associates.  He  was  perhaps  the  last  Edwar- 
dian, compeer  of  Sir  Gerald  *du  Maurier,  Sir 
Charles  *Hawtrey,  and  Sir  (E.)  Seymour  *Hicks, 


191 


Harrison 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


actors  who  contrived  to  give  the  impression  that 
they  had  just  popped  into  the  theatre  for  a  spot  of 
acting  on  the  way  to  the  club.  Harrison  had 
admired  and  closely  studied  the  style  and  tech- 
nique of  the  great  Edwardians  and  had  come  to 
embody  the  same  combination  of  elegance, 
authority,  wit,  and  grace.  He  was  appointed 
commendatore  of  Italy's  Order  of  Merit  in  1967, 
awarded  an  honorary  degree  by  the  University  of 
Boston  in  1973,  and  knighted  in  1989.  He  died  of 
cancer  of  the  pancreas  in  New  York,  2  June 
1990. 

[Rex  Harrison,  Rex,  1974,  and  A  Damned  Serious 
Business,  1900;  Allen  Eyles,  Rex  Harrison,  1985;  Nicho- 
las Wapshott,  Rex  Harrison,  1991;  Alexander  Walker, 
Fatal  Charm,  1992;  Lilli  Palmer,  Change  Lobsters  and 
Dance,  1976;  Rachel  Roberts  and  Alexander  Walker,  No 
Bells  on  Sunday,  1984;  Elizabeth  Rees  Harrison,  Love, 
Honour  and  Dismay,  1976.]  Jeffrey  Richards 

HARTY,  (Fredric)  Russell  (1934-1988),  broad- 
caster, was  born  5  September  1934  in  Blackburn, 
the  only  son  and  elder  child  of  Fred  Harty, 
greengrocer  (who,  his  son  claimed,  introduced 
Blackburn  to  the  avocado  pear),  and  his  wife, 
Myrtle  Rishton.  He  was  educated  at  Queen 
Elizabeth's  Grammar  School,  Blackburn,  and 
Exeter  College,  Oxford,  where  he  read  English 
and  was  taught  by  Nevill  *Coghill,  who  noted  of 
an  early  essay  on  'Sex  in  the  Canterbury  Tales', 
'Energetic  and  zealous  but  very  naive'.  He  took  a 
third-class  degree  (1957)  and  taught  briefly  at 
Blakey  Moor  Secondary  Modern  School  in 
Blackburn  before  moving  in  1958  to  Giggleswick 
School  in  Yorkshire.  Giggleswick  was  a  school 
and  a  village  with  which  he  was  to  have  close 
connections  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  In  1964  there 
followed  a  spell  at  City  College,  New  York,  and 
at  Bishop  Lonsdale  College  of  Education,  Derby, 
but  with  many  of  his  friends  and  contemporaries 
busy  in  the  theatre  and  broadcasting  he  was 
increasingly  dissatisfied  with  teaching. 

In  1966  he  made  his  first  foray  into  television, 
an  inglorious  appearance  as  a  contestant  on 
Granada  TV's  Criss  Cross  Quiz;  the  only  question 
he  answered  correctly  was  on  Catherine  of  Bra- 
ganza.  It  was  such  a  public  humiliation  that  his 
mother  refused  to  speak  to  him.  Still,  it  was  a 
beginning  and  in  1967  he  was  taken  on  by  BBC 
Radio  as  an  arts  programmes  producer,  his 
hankering  to  perform  whetted  by  the  occasional 
trip  to  the  studio  down  the  corridor  whenever 
Woman's  Hour  wanted  a  letter  read  in  a  northern 
accent. 

As  an  undergraduate  Harty  had  invited  Vivien 
•Leigh  round  for  drinks  and  this  precocious 
appetite  for  celebrity  stood  him  in  good  stead 
when,  in  1969,  he  became  producer  and  occa- 
sional presenter  of  London  Weekend  TV's  arts 
programme,  Aquarius.  He  might  not  have  seemed 
the  best  person  to  film  Salvador  Dali,  but  the 
elderly  surrealist  and   the  boy  off  Blackburn 


market  took  to  one  another  and  the  programme 
won  an  Emmy  award;  in  another  unlikely  con- 
junction he  set  up  an  encounter  on  Capri 
between  the  eminent  Lancashire  exiles  Sir  Wil- 
liam *Walton  and  Gracie  *Fields.  Harty  was 
never  abashed  by  the  famous  (his  critics  said  that 
was  the  trouble),  but  it  was  his  capacity  for 
provocative  half-truths  and  outrageous  overstate- 
ment, which  made  him  such  a  good  school- 
master, that  now  fitted  him  for  a  career  as  the 
host  of  a  weekly  talk  show  {Eleven  Plus  and  later 
Russell  Harty)  and  made  him  one  of  the  most 
popular  performers  on  television.  Plump,  cheer- 
ful, and  unintimidating,  he  was  particularly  good 
at  putting  people  at  their  ease,  deflating  the 
pompous  and  drawing  out  the  shy. 

In  1980  he  returned  to  the  BBC,  but  his 
output  remained  much  as  it  had  been  for  the  last 
ten  years,  the  same  mixture  of  talk  shows  varied 
by  occasional  films  like  The  Black  Madonna,  and 
his  Grand  Tour,  shown  in  1988.  He  wrote  regu- 
larly for  the  Observer  and  the  Sunday  Times, 
publishing  a  book  of  his  television  interviews, 
Russell  Harty  Plus  (1976)  and  also  Mr  Harty 's 
Grand  Tour  (1988).  He  was  a  regular  broadcaster 
on  radio  besides  presenting  the  Radio  4  talk 
show,  Start  the  Week. 

'Private  faces  in  public  places  are  wiser  and 
nicer  than  public  faces  in  private  places'  (W.  H. 
*Auden)  did  not  anticipate  television,  where  the 
distinction  is  not  always  plain.  For  his  friends 
Harty  was  naturally  a  private  face  but  for  the 
public  he  seemed  a  private  face  too  and  one  that 
had  strayed  on  to  the  screen  seemingly  un- 
touched by  expertise.  That  was  why,  though  it 
infuriated  his  critics,  so  many  viewers  liked  him 
and  took  him  to  their  hearts  as  they  never  did 
more  polished  performers.  He  giggled,  he  fum- 
bled and  seldom  went  for  the  right  word  rather 
than  the  next  but  two,  and  though  his  delivery 
could  be  as  tortured  as  his  mother's  on  the 
telephone,  it  did  not  matter.  It  was  all  part  of  his 
ordinariness,  his  deficiencies,  his  style. 

Harty  never  made  much  of  a  secret  of  his 
homosexuality.  He  did  not  look  on  it  as  an 
affliction,  but  he  was  never  one  for  a  crusade 
either.  His  funniest  stories  were  always  of  the 
absurdities  of  sex  and  the  ludicrous  situations  it 
had  led  him  into,  and  if  he  was  never  short  of 
partners,  it  was  because  they  knew  there  would 
always  be  laughs,  sharing  a  joke  being  something 
rarer  than  sharing  a  bed. 

In  the  second  half  of  the  1980s  the  spread  of 
AIDS  enabled  the  tabloid  press,  and  in  particular 
those  newspapers  owned  by  Rupert  Murdoch,  to 
dress  up  their  muckraking  as  a  moral  crusade, 
and  they  systematically  trawled  public  life  for 
sexual  indiscretion.  Harty,  who  had  not  scrupled 
to  question  his  more  celebrated  interviewees 
about  their  sex  lives,  knew  that  he  was  in  a 
vulnerable  situation.  Early  in  1987  a  young  man, 


192 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hasler 


who  had  had  a  previous  fling  with  Hart)',  was 
wired  up  with  a  tape  recorder  by  two  News  of  the 
World  reporters  and  sent  to  call  on  Ham-  at  his 
London  flat.  To  the  reporters'  chagrin  nothing 
newsworthy  occurred,  but  the  paper  fell  back  on 
printing  the  young  man's  account  of  the  previous 
association,  thus  initiating  a  campaign  of  spo- 
radic vilification  in  the  tabloid  press,  which  only 
ended  with  Harry's  death  just  over  a  year  later. 

The  cause  of  his  death  was  liver  failure,  the 
result  of  hepatitis  B,  but  in  the  hope  that  he  was 
suffering  from  AIDS  the  press  laid  siege  firstly  to 
his  home  in  Giggleswick  and  then  to  St  James's 
Hospital  in  Leeds,  where  he  was  in  intensive 
care.  A  telescope  was  trained  permanendy  on  the 
window  of  his  ward  and  a  reporter  tried  to 
smuggle  himself  into  the  ward  disguised  as  a 
junior  doctor,  in  order  to  look  at  his  case  notes. 
When  Harry  was  actually  on  his  deathbed  one  of 
the  journalists  responsible  for  the  original  'scoop' 
could  not  be  restrained  from  retelling  the  tale  of 
her  exploits  on  television. 

He  died  in  Leeds  8  June  1988  and  is  buried  in 
Giggleswick,  the  gravestone  evidence  of  the  vul- 
garity from  which  he  never  entirely  managed  to 
break  free. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alan  Bennett 

HASLER,  Herbert  George  ('Blondie')  (1914- 

1987),  inventor,  and  founder  of  the  Royal 
Marines  Boom  Patrol  Detachment  (the  fore- 
runner of  the  Special  Boat  Service)  and  short- 
handed  ocean  racing,  was  born  in  Dublin  27 
February  19 14,  the  younger  child  and  younger 
son  of  Lieutenant  Arthur  Thomas  Hasler,  quar- 
termaster, of  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps, 
and  his  wife,  Annie  Georgina  Andrews.  His 
father  was  drowned  when  the  troop-ship  Tran- 
sylvania was  torpedoed  on  4  May  191 7,  leaving 
his  mother  to  bring  up  the  young  boys  on  her 
own.  She  sent  Herbert,  with  a  bursary,  to  Wel- 
lington College,  where  he  distinguished  himself 
at  cross-country  running,  rugby  football,  and  as 
captain  of  swimming.  He  also  boxed  but,  accord- 
ing to  him,  with  rather  less  distinction. 

'Blondie'  Hasler  (as  he  now  became  known, 
except  to  his  family,  because  of  his  thinning 
blond  hair  and  fair  moustache)  combined 
remarkable  powers  of  physical  endurance  with 
above  average  strength  and  fitness  (he  was  about 
six  feet  tall).  Yet,  throughout  his  subsequent 
career,  he  was  loath  to  take  advantage  of  these 
attributes,  although  they  stood  him  in  good  stead 
in  war  and  peace,  preferring  a  well-reasoned, 
calm,  and  quietly  conducted  discussion  to  make 
his  case.  He  also  hated  punishing  men  under  his 
command,  believing  that  their  failure  was  the 
result  of  his  lack  of  leadership.  He  had  a  totally 
original  mind. 

Hasler    was    commissioned    into    the    Royal 


Marines  on  1  September  1932,  and  by  1935  had 
already  achieved  yachting  distinction  by  sailing  a 
twelve-foot  dinghy  single-handed  from  Ply- 
mouth to  Portsmouth  and  back  again.  It  was  then 
that  he  began  expounding  advanced  nautical 
theories  through  illustrated  articles  in  the  inter- 
national press — a  hobby  he  pursued  until  his 
death.  After  World  War  II  broke  out,  as  fleet 
landing  officer  in  Scapa  Flow  in  1940,  he  was 
sent  to  Narvik  in  support  of  the  French  Foreign 
Legion.  In  just  a  few  weeks  he  was  appointed 
OBE,  mentioned  in  dispatches,  and  awarded  the 
croix  de  guerre. 

On  his  return  he  wrote  a  paper  suggesting  the 
use  of  canoes  and  underwater  swimmers  to  attack 
enemy  shipping,  but  this  was  rejected  by  Com- 
bined Operations  as  being  too  radical  and 
impracticable.  However,  in  January  1942  Hasler 
was  appointed  to  the  Combined  Operations 
Development  Centre  where,  after  the  Italians 
had  severely  damaged  HMS  Queen  Elizabeth  and 
HMS  Valiant  in  Alexandria  harbour  by  the  use 
of  'human  torpedoes',  his  paper  was  immediately 
resurrected.  He  was  ordered  to  form  the  Royal 
Marines  Boom  Patrol  Detachment  (later  to  be 
dubbed  the  'Cockleshell  Heroes' — an  expression 
of  which  he  disapproved).  When  the  problem  of 
blockade-runners  operating  out  of  Bordeaux  was 
identified  in  September,  Hasler  had  his  solution 
ready  the  next  day.  The  submarine  HMS  Tuna 
launched  a  raid  on  the  night  of  7  December  1942. 
Four  men  out  of  the  original  twelve  reached  the 
target  in  tiny  two-man  canoes,  and  only  two, 
including  Hasler,  returned,  having  made  their 
way  overland  to  Spain.  Hasler  was  recommended 
for  the  VC,  but  was  technically  ineligible,  having 
not  been  fired  on.  He  was  appointed  to  the  DSO. 
The  episode  was  turned  into  a  film,  which  was 
only  loosely  based  on  fact,  Cockleshell  Heroes, 
starring  Jose  Ferrer  and  Trevor  *Howard,  in 

1955 

Subsequently,  Hasler  experimented  with  diff- 
ferent  methods  of  attack,  employing  some  of 
these  ideas  between  1944  and  1945  while  serving 
as  training  and  development  officer  with  No.  385 
Royal  Marines  detachment  in  the  Small  Opera- 
tions Group  (Ceylon),  planning  submarine- 
launched  raids  into  Burma. 

In  1946  he  won  the  Royal  Ocean  Racing 
Club's  class  iii  championships  in  his  unconven- 
tional yacht,  the  thirty-square-metre  Tre  Sang. 
This  was  a  remarkable  achievement  for  a  young 
officer.  Hasler  was  invalided  out  of  the  Royal 
Marines  in  1948  with  the  wartime  rank  of  lieu- 
tenant-colonel. Retirement  now  allowed  him 
time  to  concentrate  on  exploring,  writing  (in 
1957  he  wrote  a  play  with  Rosamund  Pilcher, 
The  Tulip  Major,  which  was  performed  in  Dun- 
dee), inventing,  and  developing  a  wide  range  of 
ideas,  many  of  which  are  still  in  daily  use.  They 


193 


Hasler 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


included  a  floating  breakwater  and  towed  dra- 
cones  (Hasler  developed  an  earlier  idea  into  a 
feasible  design  for  transporting  bulk  oil). 

In  1952  Hasler  published  Harbours  and 
Anchorages  of  the  North  Coast  of  Brittany  (revised 
1965),  which  set  the  standard  for  the  genre,  but 
his  greatest  civilian  triumphs  of  invention — and 
quiet,  gentlemanly  persuasion — were  yet  to 
come.  In  1953  he  conceived  and  built  Jester, 
based  on  a  modified  twenty-six-foot  Folkboat 
design,  as  a  test  bed  for  various  sail  plans  (he 
eventually  settled  on  the  junk  rig),  and  the 
internationally  acclaimed,  and  first  commercially 
successful,  Hasler  self-steering  gear.  Jester  was  a 
radical  advance  in  British  yacht  design  and  she 
was  not  the  last  yacht  to  come  from  his  drawing- 
board. 

In  1957  he  proposed  the  idea  of  a  quadrennial 
single-handed  transatlantic  race  for  yachts  and 
after  many  set-backs  this  was  sailed  in  i960  by 
five  yachts;  Hasler  came  second  in  Jester.  He 
followed  this  in  1962  with  a  search  for  the  Loch 
Ness  monster  and  in  1966  by  the  first  quad- 
rennial two-handed  round  Britain  and  Ireland 
race,  in  which  Hasler  (again,  the  instigator)  was 
crewed  by  his  wife  in  the  equally  radical  Sumner. 
These  two  races  have  spawned  almost  all  mod- 
ern, short-handed  racing  worldwide,  with  Hasler 
acknowledged  as  the  founding  father:  he  received 
a  number  of  international  awards.  In  his  later 
years  he  moved  to  the  west  of  Scotland,  where  he 
farmed  organically  and  wrote  Practical  Junk  Rig 
with  J.  K.  McLeod  (1988).  His  most  important 
invention  had  been  the  self-steering  gear,  which 
became  standard  equipment  and  revolutionized 
sailing. 

Hasler  was  married  in  1965,  when  in  his  early 
fifties,  to  Bridget  Mary  Lindsay  Fisher,  then  in 
her  mid-twenties,  the  daughter  of  Rear- Admiral 
Ralph  Lindsay  Fisher,  and  an  experienced 
yachtswoman  in  her  own  right.  Despite  the  age 
difference  the  marriage  brought  them  immense 
happiness  and  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Hasler  died 
of  a  heart  attack  in  Glasgow,  5  May  1987. 

[Mountbatten  archives,  Southampton  University;  C.  E. 
Lucas  Phillips,  Cockleshell  Heroes,  1956;  Lloyd  Foster, 
OS  TAR,  1989;  Ewen  Southby-Tailyour,  Blondie  Has- 
ler, a  Biography,  1996;  private  archives;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Ewen  Southby-Tailyour 

H  ASS  ALL,  Joan  (1906- 1988),  artist  and  wood- 
engraver,  was  born  3  March  1906  at  88  Kensing- 
ton Park  Road,  Notting  Hill,  London,  the  only 
daughter  and  elder  child  of  John  *Hassall, 
painter  and  illustrator,  and  his  second  wife  Con- 
stance Maud,  daughter  of  the  Revd  Albert 
Brooke-Webb,  rector  of  Dallinghoe,  Wickham 
Market,  Suffolk.  Her  brother  was  the  poet, 
biographer,  and  playwright  Christopher  *Has- 
sall.  She  was  educated  at  Parsons  Mead  School, 
Ashtead,  and  though  wishing  to  study  music, 


trained  instead  as  a  schoolteacher  at  the  Froebel 
Educational  Institute,  Roehampton.  For  two 
years  (1925-7)  she  worked  at  her  father's  Lon- 
don School  of  Art,  but  on  its  closure  went  herself 
to  the  Royal  Academy  Schools  from  1928  to 
1933,  winning  the  Landseer  scholarship  in  1931. 
She  learned  to  engrave  on  wood  in  1931,  being 
taught  by  R.  J.  Beedham  at  the  London  county 
council  School  of  Photo-engraving  and  Litho- 
graphy. At  the  time  she  felt  she  was  remembering 
rather  than  learning  how  to  handle  the  tools. 

Her  first  substantial  book  illustration  was  for 
Francis  Brett  *Young's  Portrait  of  a  Village 
(*937)>  which  established  her  as  an  illustrator  of 
consequence.  She  studied  nineteenth-century 
women's  costume  for  the  engravings  for  the  1940 
edition  of  Elizabeth  *Gaskell's  Cranford,  which 
were  a  pattern  for  much  later  work.  During  the 
war  she  taught  printing  and  engraving  at  Edin- 
burgh College  of  Art  (1940-5),  and  between  1943 
and  1 95 1  designed  and  illustrated  eleven  chap- 
books  for  the  Saltire  Society.  The  light-hearted 
designs  for  A  Child's  Garden  of  Verses  by  Robert 
Louis  *Stevenson  (1947  edition)  had  much  of 
Thomas  *Bewick  about  them,  as  did  the  thirty 
vignettes  for  the  National  Book  League's  Read- 
er's Guides  (1947-51).  Mary  Russell  *Mitford's 
Our  Village  (1947)  followed  Cranford  in  its  style, 
but  with  The  Strange  World  of  Nature  (1950),  by 
Bernard  Gooch,  she  started  a  long  series  of 
engravings  of  wild  life,  conveying  with  con- 
summate skill  the  textures  of  hair  and  feathers. 
For  Fifty-one  Poems  by  Mary  *Webb  (1946)  and 
Collected  Poems  by  Andrew  *Young  (1950)  she 
cut  a  great  many  small  vignettes  that  give  visual 
life  to  the  poems  they  decorate. 

Troubled  with  arthritis  in  the  early  1950s,  she 
turned  to  scraperboard,  drawing  about  150  small 
designs  for  The  Oxford  Nursery  Rhyme  Book, 
edited  by  Peter  *Opie  and  his  wife,  Iona  (1955). 
She  engraved  some  120  blocks  for  the  Folio 
Society,  illustrating  two  collections  of  Anthony 
*Trollope's  stories  in  1949  and  1951,  and,  during 
periods  of  remission  from  the  arthritis,  a  com- 
plete Jane  *  Austen  in  seven  volumes  (1957-63). 
The  usual  sobriety  of  her  figures  disappeared  in 
the  last  of  these,  with  a  new  excitement  in  their 
character,  and  this  same  vivacity  was  continued 
in  the  seventy-seven  vignettes  (two  of  them  in 
colour)  for  The  Poems  of  Robert  Burns  (1965).  She 
added  twenty-eight  scraperboard  drawings  to  a 
new  edition  of  the  Jane  Austen,  issued  in  1975. 
In  all  she  illustrated  over  eighty  books. 

She  did  a  great  deal  of  more  ephemeral  work, 
providing  drawings  and  engravings  for  British 
Transport,  the  BBC,  and  various  publishers  and 
booksellers,  as  well  as  for  a  number  of  magazines 
including  Housewife,  London  Mystery  Magazine, 
and  The  Masque.  She  designed  thirty-five  book- 
plates, including  twenty-four  on  wood,  and  was 
responsible  for  the  £1  royal  silver  wedding  stamp 


104 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hastings 


(1948)  and  the  queen's  invitation  card  to  her 
guests  for  the  coronation  (1953). 

A  fine  artist,  skilled  as  a  water-colourist  as  well 
as  at  drawing,  it  was  as  an  engraver  that  she 
excelled,  cutting  perhaps  1,000  blocks,  which  she 
proofed  with  great  skill  on  an  Albion  hand-press. 
Inspired  by  Bewick,  she  preferred  small  vignettes 
to  full-page  illustrations,  and  enjoyed  engraving 
for  ordinary  people,  ordinary-  readers,  rather  than 
moneyed  collectors.  She  preferred  descriptive 
work  to  mere  decoration.  No  more  than  the 
outlines  of  her  designs  would  be  drawn  on  the 
surface  to  be  engraved,  the  detail  coming  from 
the  burin,  whose  movement  had  sometimes  the 
careless  ease  of  a  pencil.  She  was  a  slow  worker, 
a  perfectionist  who  would  recut  a  design  that  had 
failed  in  some  way,  without  regard  for  any 
urgencies  of  publication.  Financial  help  from  her 
brother  and  Sir  Edward  *Marsh  enabled  her  to 
escape  from  home  in  1937,  but  she  always  had  to 
live  very  modestly.  She  lived  in  her  father's 
house  in  Notting  Hill  after  his  death  in  1948, 
moving  in  1976  to  a  cottage  in  Malham,  York- 
shire, that  had  been  bequeathed  to  her  by  a 
friend.  She  was  a  friend  of  Sydney  *Cockerell 
and  her  letters  to  him  from  Italy  and  France  in 
April-May  1950  were  published  in  1991  as 
Dearest  Sydney  (edited  by  Brian  North  Lee). 

She  was  a  short  plumpish  woman,  shy  in  her 
early  years,  but  with  a  friendly  disposition  that 
made  her  many  friends  and  admirers.  She  played 
the  organ  at  Kirkby  Malham  church,  and,  at 
other  times,  the  harpsichord,  harp,  viola  da 
gamba,  and  flute. 

In  1938  she  was  elected  an  associate,  and  in 
1948  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Painter- 
Etchers  and  Engravers,  and  in  1947  a  member  of 
the  Society  of  Wood  Engravers.  She  was  made  a 
fellow  of  the  Society-  of  Industrial  Artists  and 
Designers  (1948),  and  was  one  of  the  first  three 
women  members  of  the  Art  Workers'  Guild 
(1964)  and  its  first  woman  master  in  1972.  She 
was  awarded  the  bronze  medal  of  the  Paris  Salon 
(1973)  and  was  appointed  OBE  in  1987. 

For  many  years  suffering  from  arthritis,  and 
latterly  from  failing  sight,  she  died  of  broncho- 
pneumonia and  diabetes  6  March  1988  in  Aire- 
dale General  Hospital,  Keighley,  Yorkshire.  She 
never  married. 

[Ruari  McLean,  Wood  Engravings  of  Joan  H 'assail,  i960; 
Brigid  Peppin  and  Lucy  Micklethwait,  Dictionary  of 
British  Book  Illustrators:  the  Twentieth  Century,  1983; 
David  Chambers,  Joan  Hassall,  Engravings  and  Draw- 
ings, 1985;  personal  knowledge]      David  Chambers 

HASTINGS,  Francis  John  Clarence  West- 
enra  Plantagenet,  fifteenth  Earl  of  Hunting- 
don (1901-1990),  artist  and  politician,  was  born 
30  January  1901  in  Manchester  Square,  London, 
the  only  son  and  youngest  of  three  children  of 
Warner  Francis  John  Plantagenet  Hastings,  four- 


teenth Earl  of  Huntingdon  (whom  he  succeeded 
in  1939),  and  his  wife,  (Maud)  Margaret,  daugh- 
ter of  Sir  Samuel  Wilson,  MP  for  Portsmouth. 
He  was  educated  at  Eton  and  Christ  Church, 
Oxford,  where  he  played  in  the  university  polo 
team  and  obtained  a  third  class  in  modern  history 
in  1923.  Descended  from  *George,  Duke  of 
Clarence,  brother  of  Edward  IV,  he  was  the 
senior  legitimate  male  Plantagenet.  But  the 
undoubted  hereditary  claim  of  his  ancestor, 
Henry  *Hastings,  third  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  to 
succeed  'Elizabeth  I  did  not  pass  to  him,  being 
diverted  through  a  female  line.  Huntingdon  was 
more  interested  in  an  alleged  but  impossible 
descent  from  Robin  *Hood,  described  in  folklore 
as  the  Earl  of  Huntingdon. 

In  1925  'Jack'  Huntingdon,  who  painted 
under  the  name  John  Hastings,  married  (Maria) 
Cristina,  daughter  of  the  wealthy  Marchese 
Casati,  head  of  one  of  the  families  which  had 
ruled  Milan  for  centuries.  They  travelled  exten- 
sively in  Australia  and  the  Pacific,  living  for  a 
while  on  the  island  of  Moorea,  after  which  they 
named  their  only  child,  a  daughter.  In  San 
Francisco  the  couple  met  Diego  Rivera,  the 
celebrated  Mexican  communist  mural  painter. 
Huntingdon,  who  had  studied  at  the  Slade 
School  of  Art  after  leaving  Oxford,  became  a 
pupil  of  Rivera's  and  learned  the  technique  of 
fresco.  He  became  Rivera's  assistant,  branching 
out  into  mural  painting  on  his  own  account.  In 
1933  he  painted  a  mural  depicting  dentistry  in 
the  Hall  of  Science  at  the  Chicago  World  Fair,  to 
accompany  a  display  of  George  Washington's 
teeth.  Already  inclined  to  be  left  wing  at  Oxford, 
he  was  further  influenced  by  Rivera's  ideology, 
and  involved  himself  in  the  Spanish  civil  war, 
taking  medical  assistance  to  Republicans.  His 
parents'  anger  at  his  marriage  to  a  Roman  Catho- 
lic foreigner,  who  shared  their  son's  political 
outlook  and  eventually  became  a  communist,  was 
not  assuaged  by  her  high  aristocratic  lineage  and 
there  was  a  long  breach  during  which  the  couple 
had  little  money  other  than  a  legacy  from  his 
grandmother. 

On  return  to  England,  Huntingdon  in  1935 
painted  a  remarkable  ten  feet  by  twenty  feet 
fresco  on  a  wall  in  the  Marx  memorial  library, 
Clerkenwell  Green,  London.  It  showed  a 
'Worker  of  the  future  upsetting  the  economic 
chaos  of  the  present'  and  though  slightly  wooden 
in  the  Soviet  realist  manner,  had  distinctive 
original  and  pleasing  touches.  For  his  friend,  the 
eccentric  and  rich  socialist  second  Baron  *Far- 
ingdon,  he  painted  murals  at  Buscot  Park  depict- 
ing local  Labour  party  activities.  As  his  faith 
in  socialism  declined,  his  paintings  abandoned 
ideology  for  almost  surrealist  shapes  and  wri- 
things  of  serpents  in  bright  colours,  expressing 
cheerful  distaste  for  conventional  restraints, 
whatever  their  provenance.  He  was  chairman  of 


195 


Hastings 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  Society  of  Mural  Painters  in  195 1  -8  and  his 
works  were  widely  exhibited. 

Despite  his  far-left  phase,  he  was  a  second 
lieutenant  (Territorial  Army)  in  the  Royal 
Horseguards.  He  was  deputy  controller  of  civil 
defence  for  Andover  from  1941  to  July  1945, 
when  he  joined  the  government  of  Clement  (later 
first  Earl)  *Attlee  as  parliamentary  secretary  at 
the  Ministry  of  Agriculture  and  Fisheries.  He 
stayed  there  until  November  1950,  when  he  left 
politics  for  the  painting  he  preferred.  Among  his 
murals  are  those  at  Birmingham  University 
(1965),  the  Women's  Press  Club  in  London 
(1950),  and  the  Casa  dello  Strozzato,  Tuscany 
(early  1970s).  He  taught  fresco  at  the  Camber- 
well  and  Central  schools  of  art  in  London. 

His  marriage  to  the  strong-willed  Cristina, 
whose  southern  temperament  did  not  easily  fit 
with  Huntingdon's  gentler,  more  placid  English 
ways,  ended  with  divorce  in  1943  and  she  mar- 
ried Wogan  Phillips  (previously  married  to  Rosa- 
mund *Lehmann)  who,  as  the  second  Baron 
Milford,  was  the  first  communist  to  take  his  seat 
in  the  House  of  Lords. 

Tall,  athletic,  and  an  expert  yachtsman,  Hun- 
tingdon strongly  resembled  the  portrait  he 
owned  of  the  Elizabethan  third  Earl  in  the 
reddish  colour  of  his  hair  and  finely  delineated 
features.  He  played  a  number  of  musical  instru- 
ments well  and  was  a  wine  connoisseur  with 
impeccable  taste.  He  was  the  quintessence  of  a 
cultured,  civilized  man  and  in  addition  to  his 
talents  as  a  painter  he  was  the  author  of  two 
intelligently  written  books,  Comtnonsense  about 
India  (1942)  and  The  Golden  Octopus  (1928),  a 
book  of  legends  of  the  South  Seas.  A  delightful, 
convivial  companion  with  a  lively,  intelligent  wit, 
full  of  kindness  and  amusing  stories  and  quick  to 
laugh  at  himself,  he  was  vague,  gentle,  courteous, 
and  charming,  with  exquisite  manners  some- 
times taken  for  weakness,  but  he  was  politely 
resolute  in  avoiding  inconvenience  to  himself. 
When  his  second  wife,  the  author  Margaret 
Lane,  whom  he  married  in  1944,  proposed  that 
her  father  should  live  with  them  he  said  nothing 
but  quietly  packed  his  bags  ready  to  move  out. 
She  was  formerly  the  wife  of  Bryan  Wallace  and 
daughter  of  Harry  George  Lane,  newspaper 
editor,  of  Vernham  Dean,  Andover.  This  second 
marriage  ran  less  excitingly  and  more  smoothly 
than  the  first.  From  it  there  were  two  daughters, 
of  whom  one,  Lady  Selina  Hastings,  wrote  a 
number  of  successful  biographies. 

Huntingdon  died  24  August  1990  in  a  nursing 
home  in  Beaulieu,  Hampshire.  He  was  succeeded 
in  the  earldom  by  a  first  cousin  once  removed, 
William  Edward  Robin  Hood  Hastings  Bass 
(born  1948). 

[Personal  knowledge;  information  from  family,  friends, 
and  acquaintances.]  Woodrow  Wyatt 


HAYTER,  Stanley  William  (1901-1988), 
painter  and  printmaker,  was  born  in  Hackney  27 
December  1901,  the  third  of  four  children  (two 
sons  and  two  daughters)  of  William  Harry 
Hayter,  painter,  and  his  wife,  Fallen  Mercy  Pal- 
mer. Among  his  many  artist  ancestors  was  Sir 
George  *Hayter,  portrait  and  history  painter  to 
Queen  *Victoria.  He  was  educated  at  Whitgift 
Middle  School,  Croydon,  and  King's  College, 
London  (1918-21),  where  he  obtained  an  hon- 
ours degree  in  chemistry. 

His  scientific  training,  mathematical  ability, 
and  lifelong  interest  in  science  inform  his  art. 
Topological  transformations,  superimpositions 
of  one  space  upon  another,  non-Euclidean 
spaces,  wave  motion,  and  moire  interferences  of 
fields  in  continuous  deformation  characterize  his 
imagery.  The  hallmarks  of  his  work — energy, 
movement,  and  scintillating  non-natural  col- 
our— reflect  both  his  personality  and  his  inves- 
tigations into  the  psychology  of  vision.  His 
technical  innovations  in  colour  printing  were  the 
work  of  a  man  equally  at  home  in  laboratory  and 
atelier,  in  whom  artistic  sensibility  and  scientific 
curiosity  were  fused.  He  was  as  well  read  in 
poetry  and  literature  as  in  science. 

After  university  Hayter  worked  as  a  chemist 
for  the  Anglo-Iranian  Oil  Company  in  Abadan, 
Iran  (1922-5).  While  there  he  drew  and  painted 
extensively.  On  his  return  he  exhibited  success- 
fully in  London.  In  1926  he  went  to  Paris,  briefly 
attended  the  Academie  Julian,  and  gravitated 
towards  avant-garde  artistic  circles,  making 
friends  with  Balthus,  Alexander  Calder,  Anthony 
*Gross,  Andre  Masson,  Joan  Miro,  and  Alberto 
Giacometti.  Joseph  Hecht  introduced  him  to 
engraving.  Convinced  that  the  potentialities  of 
gravure  had  never  been  realized,  he  established 
in  1927  a  printmaking  workshop,  which  became 
the  well-known  Atelier  17  (so  denominated  in 
1933)— a  powerhouse  of  innovatory  intaglio 
printmaking  for  the  next  sixty  years.  It  was  not 
based  on  master-pupil  relations  but  on  artists 
sharing  ideas,  exploring  together  the  expressive 
possibilities  of  gravure.  The  list  of  those  who 
worked  in  Atelier  17  between  1928  and  1939 
reads  like  a  roll  of  honour  of  artists  of  the 
interwar  years. 

Hayter  divided  his  time  equally  between 
painting  and  printmaking  and  his  output  of 
paintings  exceeds  that  of  his  prints.  Until  1938 
he  associated  with  the  Surrealists,  exhibiting 
with  them  in  Paris,  London,  and  New  York,  and 
assisting  in  organizing  the  1936  Surrealist  exhibi- 
tion in  London.  His  imagery  focused  on  mytho- 
logical themes,  war,  and  violence.  His  engraved 
line,  the  distinctive  'Hayter  whiplash',  bristled 
with  aggressive  energy. 

In  1939  he  returned  to  England  and  worked  on 
camouflage  techniques.  Debarred  by  injury  from 
military  service,  he  went  to  New  York  (1940), 


196 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Helpmann 


establishing  Atelier  17  at  the  New  School  for 
Social  Research.  The  Atelier's  exhibition  at  the 
Museum  of  Modern  An  (1944)  brought  renown. 
Its  impact  on  American  printmaking  was  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  Armory  Show  on  Amer- 
ican painting.  In  1045  he  moved  the  Atelier  to 
Greenwich  Village.  During  his  decade  in  New 
York,  it  provided  a  fertile  meeting  place  for 
European  expatriates,  including  Marc  Chagall, 
Le  Corbusier,  Max  Ernst,  Andre  Masson,  Joan 
Miro,  and  Yves  Tanguy,  and  American  and 
emigre  artists  such  as  Garo  Antreasian,  William 
Baziotes,  Willem  de  Kooning,  Matta,  Robert 
Motherwell,  Jackson  Pollock,  and  Mark  Rothko. 
As  a  painter.  Hay  ter  was  recognized  as  one  of  the 
founders  of  abstract  expressionism.  In  1946  he 
perfected  a  technique  of  simultaneous  multi- 
colour printing  off  a  single  plate  in  one  passage 
through  the  press  (sometimes  misnamed  'vis- 
cosity printing'),  which,  evolving  under  constant 
experiment  over  the  years,  revolutionized  colour 
printmaking. 

He  returned  to  Paris  in  1950  and  reopened 
Atelier  17,  attracting  artists  from  all  over  the 
world  and  through  them  exercising  worldwide 
influence.  Prominent  themes  in  his  paintings  and 
prints  over  the  next  four  decades  were  gener- 
alized depiction  of  light  on  water,  wave  motion, 
water  currents,  the  movement  of  objects  in  space 
or  in  a  fluid  medium,  and  reflections.  From  1957 
his  Surrealist  imagery  gave  way  to  a  quasi- 
tachiste  style,  to  be  followed  in  the  mid-1960s  by 
a  decade  of  preoccupation  with  undulating  line 
and  rhythm.  With  age  his  palette  became  increas- 
ingly brilliant,  employing  fluorescent  paints  and 
inks  in  vibrant,  energetic  paintings  and  prints. 
During  his  last  decade  figurative  elements  reap- 
peared in  his  semi-abstract  imagery. 

Hayter  was  awarded  the  Legion  of  Honour 
(195 1 ),  and  made  a  chevalier  de  l'Ordre  des  Arts 
et  Lettres  (1968)  and  commandeur  des  Arts  et 
Lettres  (1986).  British  recognition  came  in  the 
form  of  an  OBE  (1959),  CBE  (1967),  and  hon- 
orary RA  (1982).  In  1988  the  British  Museum 
purchased  400  prints  from  him,  the  largest  pur- 
chase from  a  living  artist  it  has  ever  made. 

His  books  Sew  Ways  of  Gravure  (1949)  and 
About  Prints  (1962)  reveal  his  gifts  as  a  writer. 
Though  he  hated  to  be  thought  of  as  a  teacher,  it 
was  his  dynamic  personality  and  enthusiasm 
which  made  Atelier  17,  and  his  Socratic  methods 
of  awakening  ideas  which  inspired  so  many  of  the 
young  artists  who  came  to  work  with  him.  A  true 
bohemian  to  the  last,  Hayter  cared  little  for 
material  comforts  or  rewards,  but  cared  passion- 
ately for  honesty  in  both  art  and  life,  and  for 
friendship.  His  generosity  to  younger  artists  was 
well  known.  Hayter  was  a  short,  slim,  and  wiry 
man  of  volcanic  energy.  A  shock  of  blond  hair  fell 
over  his  forehead.  He  had  bushy  eyebrows, 
piercing  blue  eyes,  and  an  aquiline  nose.  In  old 


age,  his  face  was  heavily  lined — a  striking  face  of 
great  forcefulness,  mobile  and  expressive.  His 
voice  was  deep  and  gravelly. 

In  1928  he  married  Edith  Fletcher.  They  had 
one  son,  who  died  of  tuberculosis  in  New  York  in 
1946.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1929  and  in 
1940  he  married  the  sculptor  Helen  Phillips, 
daughter  of  Lewis  Henry  Phillips,  director  of  a 
business  college.  There  were  two  sons  of  the 
marriage,  which  was  dissolved  in  1973.  In  1974 
he  married  Desiree,  daughter  of  Aloysius  Moor- 
head,  dentist.  Hayter  died  suddenly  at  his  Paris 
home,  4  May  1988. 

[Stanlev  William  Havter,  New  Ways  of  Gravure,  revised 
edn.,  1981,  and  About  Prints,  1962;  P.  M.  S.  HacL<£ 
(ed.),  The  Renaissance  of  Gravure:  the  Art  of  S.  W. 
Hayter,  1988;  Carta  Esposito,  Hayter  e  FAtelier  17, 
1990;  personal  knowledge.]  P.  M.  S.  Hacker 

HELPMANN,  Sir  Robert  Murray  (1909- 1986), 
ballet  dancer  and  choreographer,  was  born  9 
April  1909  in  Mount  Gambier,  South  Australia, 
the  elder  son  and  eldest  of  three  children  of 
James  Murray  Helpman  (the  original  spelling),  a 
rich  sheep  farmer,  and  his  wife  Mary,  daughter 
of  Robert  Gardiner,  a  sea  captain  in  the  whaling 
business.  Helpmann  attended  Prince  Alfred's 
College,  Adelaide,  but  his  education  was  marred 
by  his  habitual  truancy  and  his  parents  finally 
withdrew  him  from  the  college,  engaging  a  pri- 
vate tutor.  This  gave  Helpmann  the  opportunity 
to  concentrate  on  his  two  passions,  dancing  and 
acting;  even  at  this  early  age  he  described  himself 
as  'the  complete  show-off'. 

His  appearance  was  certainly  unusual.  His 
head  was  large,  with  a  bulging  forehead  and 
wide,  protruding  eyes:  beneath  a  normally 
shaped  nose  an  exceptionally  long  upper  lip 
culminated  in  a  small,  thin  mouth  which  revealed 
many  long,  rather  alarming  teeth.  Narrow  shoul- 
ders, a  large  diaphragm,  and  thin,  unmuscular 
legs  completed  an  image  which  he  later  used  to 
great  effect  in  character  roles,  both  balletic  and 
dramatic.  Romantic  performances  were  less  suc- 
cessful and,  in  modern  dress,  he  seemed  too 
fantastic  to  be  believable.  He  added  the  final  'n' 
to  Helpman  to  avoid  having  a  name  of  thirteen 
letters  for  his  theatrical  career. 

His  first  engagement  was  as  a  student-dancer 
on  the  1 92 1  Australian  tour  by  the  company  run 
by  Anna  *Pavlova.  He  then  appeared  in  J.  C. 
Williamson's  productions  of  musicals  and  revues 
until  1927.  In  pantomime  in  193 1  he  was  seen 
and  admired  by  the  English  actress,  Margaret 
Rawlings,  then  touring  Australia.  He  joined  her 
company  in  New  Zealand  and  sailed  with  her  for 
England  in  1932. 

Margaret  Rawlings  introduced  Helpmann  to 
(Dame)  Ninette  de  Valois,  director  of  the 
recently  formed  Vic- Wells  (later  Sadler's  Wells) 


197 


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D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ballet.  Intrigued  by  his  appearance  rather  than 
his  ability  as  a  dancer,  she  employed  him  and,  in 
1933,  he  replaced  (Sir)  Anton  *Dolin  as  Satan  in 
de  Valois'  barefoot  masque-ballet,  Job.  He  cre- 
ated his  first  role  in  The  Haunted  Ballroom  in 
1934  and,  in  the  following  year,  gave  the  first  of 
many  outstanding  performances  as  the  Rake  in 
The  Rake's  Progress.  In  1937,  while  forming  his 
long  partnership  with  the  young  ballerina, 
(Dame)  Margot  Fonteyn,  he  created  another 
superb  characterization  as  the  old  Red  King  in 
Checkmate. 

These  four  de  Valois  ballets — and  a  fifth,  The 
Prospect  Before  Us  (1940),  in  which  he  played 
a  wonderfully  drunken  stage  manager— gave 
Helpmann  the  best  roles  of  his  career.  His 
classical  technique  was  barely  adequate  and  none 
was  required;  all  dancing  and  movement  was  in 
character,  tragic  or  comic,  and  his  superlative 
talent  for  mime  was  given  full  rein.  No  other 
actor-dancer  matched  him  in  this  field. 

His  restlessness  and  determination  for  wider 
horizons  took  him  to  the  Old  Vic  in  1937  to  play 
Oberon  in  A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream,  his  first 
essay  into  the  English  dramatic  theatre.  His  light 
tenor  voice  had  neither  range  nor  power  but  his 
exotic  appearance  in  this  supernatural  role  was  a 
success.  He  returned  to  the  ballet  and,  while 
touring,  met  an  Oxford  undergraduate,  Michael 
Pickersgill  Benthall  (died  1974).  Helpmann,  a 
flamboyant  homosexual,  made  a  lifelong  com- 
panion of  Benthall,  who  became  a  leading  stage 
director  and  a  major  contributor  to  their  partner- 
ship. He  was  the  son  of  Sir  Edward  Charles 
Benthall,  director  of  the  Reserve  Bank  of  India. 

Leading  the  Sadler's  Wells  Company,  Help- 
mann branched  out  into  choreography.  It  was 
unsurprising  that  his  few  classically  based  ballets 
were  pallid  and  derivative  while  his  dramatic, 
character  works  were  of  genuine  substance.  Most 
notable  were  Hamlet  in  1942  and  Miracle  in  the 
Gorhals  in  1944.  In  these,  and  in  his  future  stage 
direction,  he  was  guided  by  the  taste  and  expert 
advice  of  Benthall.  In  1950  Ninette  de  Valois, 
who  had  been  fortunate  to  have  Helpmann  in  her 
company  in  World  War  II  because,  as  an  Austra- 
lian, he  was  unavailable  for  call-up  into  the 
armed  services,  gave  Helpmann  another  perfect 
role  for  his  talents  in  her  ballet,  Don  Quixote.  On 
an  American  tour  later  that  year  he  resigned, 
abruptly  and  inexplicably,  from  the  company. 

Turning  to  the  dramatic  theatre,  Helpmann 
played  Hamlet,  King  John,  Shylock,  and  Richard 
III  at  Stratford  and  the  Old  Vic;  he  appeared 
with  Sir  Laurence  (later  Baron)  *01ivier  and  his 
wife  Vivien  *Leigh  in  the  George  Bernard 
*Shaw  and  *Shakespeare  Cleopatras  in  1951  and 
with  Katharine  Hepburn  in  The  Millionairess  in 
1952.  He  played  supporting  roles  in  films, 
including  Olivier's  Henry  V  (1944),  The  Red 
Shoes  (in  which  he  also  choreographed  the  ballet 


sequence,  1948),  and  The  Tales  of  Hoffmann 
(1951).  He  directed  The  Tempest  and  Murder  in 
the  Cathedral  (1953)  at  the  Old  Vic;  Madame 
Butterfly  (1950)  and  Le  Coq  d'Or  (1956)  at 
Covent  Garden,  and  a  number  of  plays,  musicals, 
and  pantomimes. 

He  returned  to  Australia  to  tour  with  the 
Oliviers  and,  later,  with  Katharine  Hepburn. 
This  experience  was  so  successful  and  enjoyable 
that  he  decided,  in  1962,  to  live  many  months  of 
each  year  in  his  own  country,  visiting  London 
less  and  less  frequently.  In  1965  he  joined 
(Dame)  Peggy  van  Praagh  as  an  artistic  direc- 
tor of  the  Australian  Ballet  and  choreographed 
four  productions  for  the  company.  His  energy 
remaining  undiminished,  he  acted  in  several 
Australian  films  and  directed  plays  and  musicals 
in  New  York  and  London.  His  last  success  was  a 
production  of  Franz  Lehar's  The  Merry  Widow  as 
a  ballet  at  the  Sydney  Opera  House  in  1975. 

Helpmann  was  the  most  theatrical  of  perform- 
ers both  on  and  off  stage.  He  held  court,  always 
the  centre  of  attention,  and  was  considered  a  wit 
by  close  colleagues.  Many  found  him  amusing 
but  not  witty;  his  humour  was  always  sharply 
malicious,  at  the  expense  of  others,  and,  perhaps 
because  of  this,  he  evoked  more  wariness  than 
affection.  He  was  neither  a  great  actor  nor  a  great 
dancer,  but  he  brought  a  singular  and  effective 
presence  to  the  theatre,  particularly  the  ballet 
stage.  He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1964  and 
knighted  in  1968.  He  died  in  the  Royal  North 
Shore  Hospital,  Sydney,  28  September  1986. 

[D.  C.  Abrahams,  Robert  Helpmann,  Choreographer, 
1943;  Anthony  Gordon,  Robert  Helpmann,  1946; 
Kathrine  S.  Walker,  Robert  Helpmann,  1957;  Elizabeth 
Salter,  Helpmann,  1978;  personal  knowledge.] 

Moira  Shearer 

HEWITT,  John  Harold  (1907-1987),  poet,  was 
born  in  Belfast  28  October  1907,  the  younger 
child  and  only  son  of  Robert  Telford  Hewitt, 
principal  of  Agnes  Street  National  School,  and 
his  wife,  Elinor  Robinson.  He  was  educated  at 
his  father's  school  (c.  191 2-19),  the  Royal  Bel- 
fast Academical  Institution  (1919-20),  and  the 
Methodist  College,  Belfast  (1920-4).  In  1924  he 
entered  the  Queen's  University,  Belfast,  to  read 
English  and  graduated  in  1930  with  a  BA  degree, 
having  also  (in  1927-9)  taken  a  teacher  training 
course  at  Stranmillis  College,  Belfast. 

Hewitt's  lifelong  engagement  with  literature, 
art,  and  politics  was  fostered  from  the  start  by  his 
parents,  particularly  by  his  father,  a  dedicated 
socialist.  It  was  on  his  father's  bookshelves  that 
he  discovered  the  English  dissenting  tradition 
which  decisively  influenced  his  political  and 
literary  development,  as  well  as  the  magazines 
which  stimulated  his  love  of  art.  He  wrote  his 
first  poems  in  1924  and  his  earliest  to  appear  in 


198 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hey 


print  were  contributed  (in  1928-9)  to  a  wide 
variety  of  left-wing  newspapers. 

In  November  1930  Hewitt  was  appointed  art 
assistant  at  the  Belfast  Museum  and  Art  Gallery. 
During  an  exhibition  there  (probably  in  autumn 
1932)  he  met  Roberta  Black  (born  in  Larne, 
county  Antrim,  30  October  1904,  the  daughter  of 
Robert  Black,  watchmaker);  they  were  married  in 
Belfast  on  7  May  1934.  Hewitt's  energies  found 
expression  throughout  the  1930s  in  a  range  of 
cultural  activities.  In  1934,  for  example,  he 
helped  to  form  the  Ulster  Unit,  a  progressive  art 
group,  and  in  1937  he  was  involved  in  the 
founding  of  the  Irish  Democrat  newspaper,  acting 
as  literary  editor  and  occasional  contributor.  In 
1936  he  finished  'The  Bloody  Brae:  a  Dramatic 
Poem',  his  first  extended  treatment  of  the  trou- 
bled relationship  between  English  and  Scottish 
planters  and  native  Irish  in  the  north  of  Ireland, 
thereafter  a  major  theme  in  his  writings. 

During  World  War  II  Hewitt's  work  in  the 
Belfast  Museum  and  Art  Gallery  significantly 
broadened  what  he  later  described  as  his  'local 
imaginative  mythology',  in  particular  inspiring  a 
lasting  enthusiasm  for  the  radical  strain  in  Ulster 
Presbyterianism  of  the  later  eighteenth  century. 
Hewitt's  discovery  of  his  own  region,  especially 
the  glens  of  Antrim,  made  him  acutely  receptive 
to  the  'regionalist'  idea  he  encountered  at  this 
rime  in  the  works  of  Lewis  Mumford  and 
others. 

Throughout  the  1930s  and  1940s  Hewitt 
wrote  numerous  poems,  publishing  many  in 
periodicals,  and  transcribing  many  more  in  his 
notebooks.  He  issued  his  first  pamphlet  of 
poems,  Conacre,  in  1943  and  his  second,  Com- 
pass: Two  Poems,  in  1944,  both  privately  pub- 
lished, and  his  first  book-length  collection,  No 
Rebel  Word,  was  published  in  1948.  Another  key 
work  of  the  period  was  the  long  autobiographical, 
'regionalist'  poem  'Freehold',  which  appeared  in 
the  literary  magazine  Lagan  in  1946.  In  this  and 
other  poems  he  emerges  as  the  liberal  Ulsterman 
of  planter  stock  searching  for  equilibrium  and  an 
abiding  place  in  a  province  where  his  forebears 
were  originally  interlopers,  and  as  the  city- 
dweller  whose  spiritual  home  is  the  country, 
however  marginalized  he  may  sometimes  feel 
there. 

Having  been  promoted,  in  1950,  to  deputy 
director  and  keeper  of  art  at  the  Belfast  Museum 
and  An  Gallery ,  Hewitt  had  high  hopes  of  being 
appointed  director  when  the  incumbent  retired, 
but  in  1953  he  failed  to  gain  this  appointment, 
almost  certainly  because  his  radical  and  socialist 
ideals  were  unacceptable  to  the  Belfast  Unionist 
establishment.  He  remained  as  deputy  director 
for  four  more  years,  then  applied  successfully  for 
the  directorship  of  the  Herbert  Art  Gallery  and 
Museum  in  Coventry,  a  post  he  held  from  1957 
to  1972.  Coventry,  recovering  from  the  devastat- 


ing air  raids  of  1940  and  1941,  offered  an  exciting 
challenge  to  a  man  of  his  energies  and  ideals, 
though  he  maintained  close  contact  with  the 
north  of  Ireland.  He  travelled  extensively  during 
this  period  and  shortly  before  his  retirement  his 
Collected  Poems  /9J.2-/967  (1968)  and  The  Day  of 
the  Corncrake:  Poems  of  the  Nine  Glens  (1969) 
were  published. 

He  and  Roberta  returned  to  Belfast  in  1972  at 
a  time  of  violent  unrest  but  also  unprecedented 
creativity  in  Ulster,  especially  in  the  field  of 
poetry.  He  produced  new  work  as  poet  and  art 
historian,  salvaged  and  revised  several  decades  of 
verse  from  his  notebooks,  published  books  more 
frequently  than  at  any  other  time  in  his  life,  and 
enjoyed  a  degree  of  recognition  and  homage 
previously  denied  him.  The  bearded,  silver- 
haired  poet,  who  wore  glasses,  smoked  a  pipe, 
and  carried  a  walking-stick,  became  a  familiar 
figure  at  cultural  gatherings  in  Belfast.  Roberta 
Hewitt  died  19  October  1975.  The  following  year 
Hewitt  became  the  first  writer-in-residence  at 
the  Queen's  University,  Belfast,  serving  until 
1979,  and  in  1983  he  was  made  a  freeman  of 
Belfast. 

He  died  27  June  1987  in  hospital  in  Belfast  and 
in  1988  the  John  Hewitt  international  summer 
school  was  established  in  his  memory. 

[Tom  Clyde  (ed.),  Ancestral  Voices:  the  Selected  Prose  of 
John  Hewitt,  1987;  Frank  Ormsby  (ed.),  The  Collected 
Poems  of  John  Hewitt,  1991;  Gerald  Da  we  and  John 
Wilson  Foster  (eds.),  The  Poet's  Place:  Essays  in  Honour 
of  John  Hewitt,  1991.]  Frank  Ormsby 

HEY,  Donald  Holroyde  (1904-1987),  organic 
chemist,  was  born  in  Swansea  2  September  1904, 
the  second  of  three  sons  (there  were  no  daugh- 
ters) of  Arthur  Hey,  FRCO,  LRAM,  profes- 
sional musician,  who  had  gone  to  Swansea  from 
Yorkshire  in  1888  to  become  organist  at  St 
James's  church,  and  his  wife,  Frances  Jane  Bayn- 
ham,  from  an  established  Swansea  family. 
Donald  Hey  was  brought  up  in  a  cultured  home, 
where  he  gained  his  lifelong  love  of  music.  He 
played  the  piano  and  organ  and  was  a  chorister, 
winning  a  choral  scholarship  to  Magdalen  Col- 
lege School,  Oxford.  Since  the  school  was  a 
traditional  classical  establishment,  with  little 
opportunity  to  study  science  beyond  school  cer- 
tificate, he  thereafter  taught  himself.  Such  was 
his  determination  that  he  enrolled  for  the  inter- 
mediate London  science  course  while  still  at 
school.  Because  family  finances  did  not  allow  him 
to  go  to  Oxford  University,  he  opted  for  the  new- 
college  at  Swansea.  In  1924  he  obtained  a  B.Sc. 
pass  as  an  external  student  of  London  Uni- 
versity. A  first-class  degree  in  chemistry  followed 
in  1926  when,  remarkably,  he  published  his  first 
scientific  paper  and  sold  his  inv  ention  of  a  new- 
type  of  chemical  indicator  to  Imperial  Chemical 
Industries.  This  was  before  he  had  even  begun 


199 


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D.N.B.  1986-1990 


research  for  his  Ph.D.,  which  he  gained  in 
1928. 

Hey  began  his  academic  career  in  1928  in  the 
University  of  Manchester,  as  a  temporary  assistant 
lecturer.  He  was  promoted  to  lecturer  in  1930, 
with  a  three-year  contract.  In  1930  W.  S.  M. 
Grieve  became  his  first  research  student.  Out  of 
their  collaboration  came  one  of  two  papers  on  the 
reactions  of  what  Hey  called  phenyl  radicals  with 
benzene  derivatives  to  give  biphenyls.  Up  until 
then  all  chemical  reactions  in  solution  were 
assumed  to  involve  positively  charged  (2-electron 
deficient)  or  negatively  charged  (2-electron  rich) 
species.  Grieve  and  Hey  put  forward  the  bold 
suggestion  that  in  their  reactions  a  third  species, 
hitherto  unsuspected,  was  involved — an  elec- 
trically neutral  phenyl  radical  carrying  one 
unpaired  electron.  This  was  received  with  dis- 
belief and  ridicule,  which  persisted  until  1948  in 
some  quarters.  The  foremost  British  organic 
chemist,  (Sir)  Robert  *Robinson,  examined 
Grieve  for  his  Ph.D.  and  remained  unconvinced. 
Hey  as  sole  author  published  his  famous  paper  on 
the  reactions  of  dibenzoyl  peroxide  in  the  Journal 
of  the  Chemical  Society,  part  ii,  1934. 

It  was  typical  of  Hey  that  he  was  prepared  to 
take  the  offensive  rather  than  retreat.  In  this  he 
had  an  ally  in  W.  A.  *Waters  at  Durham  and, 
later,  Oxford.  Waters  was  attracted  by  Hey's 
paper  and  looked  at  his  own  work  in  its  light.  In 
1937  they  co-authored  one  of  the  great  reviews  in 
chemistry — 'Some  Organic  Reactions  Involving 
the  Occurrence  of  Free  Radicals  in  Solution' — in 
which  they  postulated  for  the  first  time  that  a 
very  large  number  of  known  chemical  reactions 
proceeded  via  free  radicals.  They  ended  their 
review  with  an  extraordinarily  perceptive  under- 
statement: 'there  may  exist  also  several  other 
reactions  in  organic  chemistry  in  which  transient 
free  neutral  radicals  intervene'  (Chemical  Review, 
vol.  xxi,  1937). 

The  study  of  free  radicals  henceforth  domi- 
nated Hey's  research  career.  He  was  a  lecturer  in 
chemistry  at  Manchester  University  from  1930 
to  1938,  and  at  Imperial  College,  London,  from 
1939  to  1 94 1.  In  1 94 1  he  became  director  of  the 
British  Research  Institute,  where  he  directed 
drug  research.  He  was  University  professor  of 
chemistry  at  King's  College,  London,  from  1945 
to  1950,  when  he  became  Daniell  professor  of 
chemistry,  University  of  London,  until  his 
retirement  in  1971. 

By  1955  the  importance  of  free  radicals  was 
universally  accepted,  critics  disappeared  or  were 
silenced,  and  Hey  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society.  Then  followed  a  period  of 
remarkable  administrative  success,  characterized 
by  his  inspired  choice  of  supporting  colleagues. 
His  department  at  King's  was  small,  with  some 
fourteen  staff,  but  in  the  1960s  six  of  his  younger 
colleagues  gained  chairs  in  other  departments 


and  more  were  to  follow  in  the  period  to  his 
retirement.  He  did  not  shirk  his  responsibilities 
in  the  day-to-day  operation  of  the  college  and  the 
University  of  London.  He  served  in  every  aca- 
demic position,  including  that  of  assistant  princi- 
pal of  the  college  and,  as  a  devout  Anglican,  was 
particularly  concerned  with  theological  activ- 
ities. 

He  became  a  fellow  of  Imperial  College  in 
1968  and  an  honorary  fellow  of  the  Intra-Science 
Research  Foundation  (1971),  Chelsea  College 
(1973),  and  University  College,  Swansea  (1986). 
The  University  of  Wales  gave  him  an  honorary 
D.Sc.  in  1970.  As  the  first  to  publish  experi- 
mental evidence  for  the  existence  of  reactive  free 
radicals  (molecular  species  carrying  an  unpaired 
electron — the  source  of  high  unselective  reac- 
tivity), Hey  made  a  truly  seminal  contribution  to 
science.  His  demonstration,  and  recognition,  in 
1934  that  dibenzoyl  peroxide  decomposes  in 
solution  via  phenyl  radicals  was  the  very  genesis 
of  the  vast  compass  and  knowledge  of  free  radical 
chemistry,  biochemistry,  and  biological  pro- 
cesses. 

Hey  used  to  muse  ruefully  in  his  later  years 
that  if  only  he  had  realized  the  commercial 
implications  of  his  discovery  he  could  have 
become  a  rich  man,  but  the  success  of  his  pupils 
and  colleagues  was  the  only  reward  he  sought. 
His  face  had  an  unassuming  expression;  he  was 
an  accomplished  pianist  and  organist.  He  kept 
his  academic  and  home  lives  quite  separate,  and 
liked  a  simple  way  of  life.  He  was  a  keen 
gardener,  who  loved  Wales,  family  life,  and 
family  holidays.  He  was  an  unselfish,  gentle,  and 
modest  scholar,  with  a  great  desire  to  help 
others.  In  1931  he  married  a  botanist,  Jessie  (died 
1982),  daughter  of  Thomas  Jones,  chemist.  They 
had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Hey  died  21  January 
1987  in  Reigate,  Surrey. 

[J.  I.  G.  Cadogan  and  D.  I.  Davies  in  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiv, 
1988;  personal  knowledge.]  John  Cadogan 

HICKS,  Sir  John  Richard  (1904-1989),  econo- 
mist and  Nobel  prize-winner,  was  born  in  War- 
wick 8  April  1904,  the  eldest  of  three  children 
and  only  son  of  Edward  Hicks,  editor  and  part- 
proprietor  of  the  Warwick  and  Leamington  Spa 
Courier,  of  Leamington  Spa,  and  his  wife,  Doro- 
thy Catherine  Stephens,  who  was  one  of  five 
children  of  a  Nonconformist  minister.  There  was 
an  intellectual  tradition  on  both  sides  of  his 
family,  particularly  that  of  his  mother,  where 
there  was  a  connection  with  the  political  scientist 
Graham  *Wallas.  Hicks  received  much  intellec- 
tual stimulus  from  the  head  of  his  preparatory- 
school,  Grey  Friars,  near  Leamington — more 
stimulus,  probably,  than  he  received  from  his 
public  school,  Clifton  College.  None  the  less  he 
acquitted  himself  perfectly  adequately  at  Clifton, 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hicks 


and  in  1922  won  a  scholarship  to  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  to  study  mathematics,  in  which  he 
gained  a  first  in  moderations  in  1923.  His  under- 
graduate contemporaries  realized  that  his  abili- 
ties were  something  out  of  the  ordinary,  as  did 
his  tutors.  But  he  was  not  well  taught,  at  least  on 
the  economics  side  of  the  new  philosophy,  poli- 
tics, and  economics  school  (to  which  he  moved  at 
the  end  of  his  first  year).  Something  went  seri- 
ously wrong  with  his  performance  in  his  final 
examinations,  in  which  he  obtained  a  second 
class  (1925).  His  failure  to  get  a  first  came  as  a 
serious  set-back,  and  he  was  unsuccessful  too  in 
the  All  Souls  fellowship  examination. 

He  tried  for  some  months  to  follow  his  father's 
profession  as  a  journalist,  on  the  Manchester 
Guardian;  but  that  was  not  congenial.  In  1927  he 
obtained  a  B.Litt.  (under  the  supervision,  sur- 
prisingly, of  G.  D.  H.  *Cole).  He  then  made  the 
decisive  step  in  his  life:  in  1926  he  moved  to  a 
teaching  position  at  the  London  School  of  Eco- 
nomics, as  a  lecturer.  His  years  there  were  the 
most  important  ones  in  his  intellectual  develop- 
ment. Hicks  was  the  most  eminent  economic 
theorist  of  his  generation  in  Britain.  He  was  an 
economist's  economist,  much  less  well  known  to 
politicians  and  civil  servants  and  to  the  general 
public  than  many  other  economists  esteemed  far 
less  highly  by  their  peers.  Primarily,  he  was  a 
conceptualizer.  Concepts  that  he  introduced 
were  later  used  every  day  by  economists  who  had 
almost  forgotten  their  origin:  income-effect/sub- 
stitution-effect, 'Hicks-neutral'  technical  pro- 
gress, the  portfolio  approach  to  the  demand  for 
money,  'fix-price/flex-price',  and  a  host  of  oth- 
ers. He  was  not  an  ivory-tower  economist:  he 
believed  the  purpose  of  economic  theory  was  to 
be  useful.  But  he  himself  was  more  a  toolmaker 
than  a  tool-user.  His  contribution  did  not  lie  in 
establishing  specific  empirical  conclusions  or 
policy  recommendations.  The  book  of  his  that 
came  nearest  to  seeking  to  establish  a  definite 
conclusion  was  something  of  a  jeu  d'esftrit,  A 
Theory  of  Economic  History  (1969). 

There  is  no  school  of  Hicksian  economics, 
although  Hicks  did  have  in  his  own  mind  a 
consistent  system  of  thought,  which  evolved  over 
the  years,  but  which  already  by  the  time  of  the 
publication  of  Value  and  Capital  (1939) — his 
most  important  book — was  reasonably  compre- 
hensive in  its  scope.  Hicks  might,  perhaps,  have 
found  congenial  the  genre  of  an  earlier  epoch:  the 
comprehensive  treatise,  revised  through  several 
editions.  As  it  was,  he  was  unusual  among 
modern  economic  theorists  in  putting  forward 
many  of  his  chief  ideas  in  books,  nearly  twenty  of 
them,  ranging  over  almost  the  whole  of  economic 
theory,  rather  than  in  articles,  though  his  col- 
lected articles  also  amounted  to  three  substantial 
volumes.  Among  his  articles  were  'Mr  Keynes 
and   the   Classic'   (Econometrica,    1937),   which 


shaped  economists'  understanding  of  the  Key- 
nesian  system  for  decades  to  come,  and  'A 
Suggestion  for  Simplifying  the  Theory  of 
Money'  (Economica,  1935),  which  anticipated 
part  of  that  system. 

It  may  be  conjectured  that  Hicks's  approach 
was  affected  by  the  nearly  complete  tabula  rasa 
that  he  brought  to  the  LSE  as  a  result  of  the 
weakness  of  his  economic  education  in  Oxford. 
He  felt  that  he  had  to  work  things  out  for 
himself,  almost  from  first  principles,  into  his  own 
consistent  system  of  thought.  That  is  not  to  say 
that  his  system  of  thought  did  not  owe  much  to 
the  great  economists  of  the  past — continental 
rather  than  British.  The  ideas  of  his  contempo- 
raries were  also  grist  to  his  mill;  but  their  status 
was  no  higher  than  that.  'I  could  not  understand 
what  others  were  doing,'  he  said,  'unless  I  could 
re-state  it  in  my  own  terms.'  His  writings  give  an 
occasional  impression  of  vanity.  But  the  vanity 
was  not  for  himself  but  on  behalf  of  his  work. 

Hicks's  later  work  continued  to  attract  very 
serious  attention.  But  with  the  vast  proliferation 
in  the  literature  of  the  subject,  it  inevitably 
seemed  less  innovative  than  what  he  had  done 
in  the  golden  years  at  the  LSE.  In  addition, 
although  the  contemporary  development  of  eco- 
nomic theory  took  its  impetus  in  no  small  part 
from  Value  and  Capital,  he  was  out  of  sympathy 
with  much  of  it.  'I  have  disappointed  them,'  he 
wrote,  about  his  successors,  largely  American.  'I 
have  felt  little  sympathy  with  the  theory  for 
theory's  sake,  which  has  been  characteristic  of 
one  strand  of  American  economics;  nor  with  the 
idealisation  of  the  free  market,  which  has  been 
characteristic  of  another;  and  I  have  little  faith  in 
the  econometrics  on  which  they  have  largely 
relied  to  make  their  contact  with  reality.' 

At  the  LSE,  but  not  later.  Hicks  worked  in 
close  association  with  others  of  his  own  age  and 
standing — (Sir)  R.  G.  D.  Allen,  Nicholas  (later 
Baron)  *Kaldor,  A.  P.  Lerner,  and  several  oth- 
ers, as  well  as  the  more  senior  Friedrich  von 
Hayek.  In  later  years  he  gave  encouragement  and 
discerning  help  to  his  graduate  students,  rela- 
tively few  in  number.  They  came  mainly  from 
overseas,  particularly  Italy. 

Hicks  left  the  LSE  in  1935  to  go  to  Cambridge 
as  a  university  lecturer  and  fellow  of  Gonville 
and  Caius  College.  In  Cambridge  (Sir)  Dennis 
•Robertson  became  a  good  friend,  and  so 
remained  till  Robertson's  death.  But  unfortu- 
nately the  already  powerful  Keynesian  school  in 
the  faculty  made  clear  that  it  had  room  for  only 
one  god  in  the  pantheon  of  economic  theory: 
they  were  not  interested  in  what  Hicks  was 
doing.  So  Hicks  was  glad  to  take  the  chair  of 
political  economy  in  Manchester  in  1938,  where 
he  stayed  till  1946.  A  fellowship  (1946-58)  in  the 
newly  established  Nuffield  College  in  Oxford 
then    offered    an    attractive   opportunity,    with 


201 


Hicks 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


fewer  administrative  responsibilities.  The  LSE 
may  have  been  the  place  that  left  its  strongest 
intellectual  imprint,  but  Oxford  was  where  by  far 
the  largest  part  of  his  long  life  was  spent.  He 
moved  to  All  Souls  as  Drummond  professor  of 
political  economy  in  1952,  a  post  he  held  until 
1965.  In  all  he  was  a  fellow  of  All  Souls  for 
thirty-five  years.  He  was  greatly  devoted  to  the 
college.  He  was  a  very  active  delegate  of  the 
Oxford  University  Press. 

Hicks  received  innumerable  academic  hon- 
ours, in  addition  to  his  fellowship  of  the  British 
Academy  (1942)  and  his  knighthood  (1964).  He 
was  the  first  British  scholar  to  win  the  Nobel 
prize  in  economics  (1972);  he  gave  the  proceeds 
to  the  appeal  then  in  progress  for  the  new  LSE 
library.  He  was  an  honorary  fellow  of  the  LSE 
(1969)  and  of  Gonville  and  Cuius  (1971). 

In  1935  he  married  an  assistant  lecturer  at  the 
LSE,  Ursula  Kathleen,  the  daughter  of  William 
Fisher  Webb,  solicitor,  of  Dublin.  For  the  rest  of 
his  life,  until  her  death  in  1985,  they  were  seldom 
separated,  even  for  a  few  days.  Their  marriage 
was  unusual  by  conventional  standards  and  there 
were  no  children.  Their  characters  were  entirely 
unalike:  he  was  shy,  she  was  outgoing;  she  was 
direct,  he  was  subtle.  But  she  protected  him  and 
organized  their  lives;  and  their  loyalty  to  each 
other  was  unswerving.  They  were  both  obsessive 
travellers.  Hicks  died  suddenly,  of  a  heart  attack, 
20  May  1989  in  the  house  at  Blockley,  Worces- 
tershire, which  had  been  his  principal  home  for 
many  years. 

[Dieter  Helm  (ed.),  The  Economics  of  John  Hicks,  1984; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  C.  O.  Matthews 

HILL,  Charles,  Baron  Hill  of  Luton 
(1904-1989),  doctor,  politician,  and  broadcaster, 
was  born  in  Islington  15  January  1904,  the 
youngest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  a  daugh- 
ter of  Charles  Hill,  maker  of  pianoforte  parts, 
who  died  in  1906,  and  his  wife,  Florence  Made- 
leine Cook,  bookkeeper,  the  seventh  of  eight 
children  of  a  seller  of  mineral  water.  His  mother 
remarried  in  1916,  her  husband  being  W.  E. 
Hulme,  linotype  operator  in  the  Morning  Post. 
Educated  at  St  Olave's  School,  Tower  Bridge, 
Hill  was  awarded  a  Drapers'  Company  scholar- 
ship and  a  sizarship  at  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, in  1 92 1,  and  went  on  to  read  in  parallel 
both  medicine  and  part  i  of  the  natural  sciences 
tripos,  in  which  he  received  first-class  honours  in 
1925.  He  completed  his  medical  education  at  the 
London  Hospital,  obtaining  his  MRCS,  LRCP 
in  1927  and  MB,  B.Chir.  in  1929.  He  then  took 
up  a  hospital  post  in  Nottingham  and  became 
deputy  medical  officer  of  health  in  Oxford  in 
1930.  He  obtained  his  DPH  in  1931.  Determined 
and  ambitious  and  more  interested  in  administra- 
tion than  in  medical  practice,  Hill  was  appointed 


an  assistant  secretary  of  the  British  Medical 
Association  in  1932.  He  stayed  at  the  BMA 
headquarters  in  Tavistock  Square  for  the  next 
eighteen  years  (gaining  his  MD  in  1936),  climb- 
ing a  ladder  which  took  him  to  the  top  rung, 
when  in  1944  he  achieved  the  position  of  secre- 
tary, the  senior  full-time  officer  post,  which  he 
held  until  1950. 

Convinced  of  the  importance  of  winning  pub- 
lic support  to  buttress  the  BMA's  cause,  Hill  had 
by  1944  become  one  of  the  best  known  figures  in 
the  country  in  his  own  right,  though  not  under 
his  own  name,  after  being  invited  in  1941  to  take 
part  in  the  BBC's  Kitchen  Front  programmes.  In 
a  remarkable  series  of  wartime  broadcasts,  mainly 
given  live,  which  came  to  cover  a  wide  range  of 
health  problems,  Hill,  giving  helpful  advice  as 
the  'radio  doctor',  soon  won  a  huge  audience.  His 
rich,  warm,  and  homely — if  often  booming — 
voice,  so  different  from  most  BBC  voices  even  in 
wartime,  contributed  to  his  success  as  a  broad- 
caster, but  did  not  guarantee  it.  His  secret  was 
careful  preparation,  meticulous  selection  of 
points  to  emphasize,  and  intuitive  choice  of 
exactly  the  right  words.  One  of  his  broadcasts, 
which  deserves  the  adjective  classic,  was  deliv- 
ered after  the  war  on  Boxing  day  in  1949.  It 
began  'This  is  stomach  speaking.  Yes  I  mean  it, 
your  stomach'. 

This  broadcast  was  addressed  to  children. 
Hill,  who  in  1931  had  married  Marion  Spencer 
Wallace,  daughter  of  Moses  Wallace,  a  Halifax 
mill  owner,  whom  he  had  met  at  Cambridge, 
knew  a  lot  about  children.  He  had  two  sons  and 
three  daughters,  and  for  all  his  ebullience  he 
always  gave  the  reassuring  air  of  being  a  real 
family  doctor.  As  secretary  of  the  BMA,  he 
fought  hard  between  1945  and  1948  to  ensure 
that  the  new  National  Health  Service  would 
incorporate  family  choice  of  doctor  and  that  the 
profession  would  not  become  a  state  salaried 
service  for  general  practitioners.  Hill  revelled  in 
the  rough  and  tumble  of  contest  with  Aneurin 
*Bevan,  the  minister  of  health,  whose  political 
skills  he  came  greatly  to  admire,  but  he  could  also 
show  patience  and  forbearance  in  dealing  both 
with  politicians  and  professional  colleagues. 

It  was  through  struggles  about  health  policy 
that  Hill  was  drawn  into  party  politics,  which 
had  never  interested  him  at  Cambridge,  and 
eventually  in  1957  into  the  cabinet,  although  his 
attitude  to  party  was  as  unorthodox  as  that  of  the 
first  Baron  *Beaverbrook,  the  intermediary  who 
arranged  for  him  to  be  summoned  to  an  inter- 
view at  the  Conservative  party  Central  Office  in 
1944.  Indeed,  when  Hill  first  stood  (unsuccess- 
fully) for  Parliament,  for  Cambridge  University, 
at  the  general  election  of  1945,  it  was  not  as  a 
Conservative  but  as  an  Independent.  When  he 
won  Luton  at  the  next  general  election  in  1950,  it 
was  as  a  Conservative  and  Liberal.  Hill  used  his 


202 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Himmelweit 


formidable  oratorical  talents  at  that  election  to 
deliver  one  of  the  outstanding  controversial 
political  broadcasts  before  the  age  of  television. 

He  did  not  have  to  wait  long  for  governmental 
office,  and  having  served  from  195 1  to  1955  as 
parliamentary  secretary'  to  the  Ministry  of 
Food — an  unenviable  post,  for  most  back-bench- 
ers in  his  party  wished  to  see  his  ministry 
abolished — he  was  made  postmaster-general  by 
Sir  Anthony  *Eden  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Avon) 
in  April  1955,  being  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
at  the  same  time.  This  post  greatly  appealed  to 
him  and,  surviving  Suez,  he  went  on  under 
Harold  *Macmillan  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Stock- 
ton) to  become  chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of 
Lancaster  in  January  1957.  His  responsibilities 
for  supervising  government  information  services 
straddled  these  last  two  posts.  Finally,  Macmil- 
lan  made  him  minister  of  housing  and  local 
government  in  October  1961,  before  removing 
him  in  his  sudden,  and  to  Hill  premature, 
government  reshuffle  in  July  1962.  In  any  event 
Hill  would  have  retired  at  the  next  election. 

A  new  career  now  began,  first  in  business  and 
then  in  broadcasting.  He  was  so  successful  a 
chairman  of  the  Independent  Television  Author- 
ity, a  post  to  which  he  was  appointed  in  1963, 
refurbishing  its  image  and  presiding  over  the 
recasting  of  the  TV  company  structure,  that  a 
Labour  prime  minister,  Harold  Wilson  (later 
Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx),  moved  him  from 
Brompton  Road  to  become  chairman  of  the  BBC 
in  1967.  This  was  a  highly  controversial  move 
much  resented  in  the  BBC,  particularly  by  Sir 
Hugh  *Greene,  the  director-general,  and  Hill's 
first  years  there  were  difficult.  But  he  outlasted 
Greene,  and  had  his  tenure  extended  in  1972  in 
order  to  preside  over  the  BBC's  golden  jubilee. 
Hill  was  a  strong  and  effective  supporter  of  BBC 
autonomy. 

Hill  was  made  a  life  peer  in  1963  and  awarded 
an  LL  D  by  Saskatchewan  University  in  1950. 
He  kept  a  diary  during  his  years  as  chairman  of 
the  BBC  and  wrote  two  volumes  of  compact  and 
readable  memoirs,  Both  Sides  of  the  Hill  (1964) 
and  Behind  the  Screen  (1974).  His  only  other 
published  work,  a  joint  one,  was  What  Is  Osteo- 
pathy? (1937).  His  appearance  was  as  memorable 
as  his  voice.  Short,  plump,  and  brimful  of 
energy,  he  was  a  favourite  of  cartoonists.  He  died 
in  Harpenden  22  August  1989. 

[Charles  Hill,  Both  Sides  of  the  Hill,  1964,  and  Behind 
the  Screen,  1974;  personal  knowledge.]       Asa  Briggs 

HIMMELWEIT,  Hildegard  Therese  (1918- 
1989),  professor  of  social  psychology,  was  born 
20  February  19 18  in  Berlin,  Germany,  the 
younger  child  and  only  daughter  of  Dr  Siegfried 
Litthauer,  chemist  and  industrialist,  and  his 
wife,  Feodore  Remak.  Culturally  and  materially 
this  Jewish  family  was  of  high  standing.  'Hilde' 


was  proud  of  her  great-grandfather,  the  first  Jew 
to  become  a  professor  at  a  German  university, 
though  he  had  refused  to  be  baptized.  Her 
lifelong  identification  with  Jewishness  was  based 
on  the  family's  origin,  not  on  Judaism  as  a 
religion;  it  was  only  strengthened  by  the  advent 
of  Adolf  Hitler.  A  few  days  before  her  death  she 
reminded  a  non-Jewish  friend  to  bring  a  hat  to 
her  Jewish  funeral. 

It  was  the  custom  in  well-to-do  German 
families  to  send  children  abroad  to  finish  their 
secondary  education.  Hers  began  in  Berlin  and 
continued  from  1934  at  the  Hayes  Court  School, 
Kent;  she  returned  to  Germany  during  the 
holidays.  Her  father  died  in  1935;  her  mother 
emigrated  to  England  in  1938.  At  Newnham 
College,  Cambridge,  she  obtained  a  second  class 
(division  II)  in  part  i  of  the  economics  tripos 
(1938)  and  a  first  in  part  ii  of  the  medieval  and 
modern  languages  tripos  (1940).  Two  years  later 
she  earned  another  first-class  degree  in  psycho- 
logy at  Cambridge.  She  qualified  as  an  educa- 
tional and  clinical  psychologist  in  1943  and  in 
1945  she  obtained  a  Ph.D.  in  psychology  from 
the  University  of  London. 

Her  first  job  was  at  the  Maudsley  Hospital 
(1945-8).  During  these  years  her  professional 
identity  as  a  social  psychologist  began  to  emerge. 
The  transition  from  one  culture  to  another,  the 
experience  of  the  war  years  and  their  aftermath, 
the  fate  of  the  Jews,  and  the  fate  of  Germany- 
predisposed  her  to  emphasize  in  her  professional 
work  the  impact  of  social  conditions  and  political 
events  on  psychological  phenomena.  In  1949  she 
was  appointed  a  lecturer  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics,  becoming  a  reader  in  1954  and  a 
professor  in  1964. 

Her  first  major  contribution  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  contemporary  world  came  when 
she  was  director  of  the  Nuffield  television 
enquiry  (1954-8).  Her  resulting  book  (with  A.  N. 
Oppenheim  and  P.  Vince),  Television  and  the 
Child  (1958),  established  her  reputation  in 
Europe  and  the  United  States;  it  also  led  to  some 
heated  discussions  between  her  and  some  tele- 
vision personalities,  who  regarded  empirical  evi- 
dence as  superfluous.  That  she  exposed  herself  to 
such  encounters  was  typical  of  her  style  of  work: 
her  studies  were  invariably  meant  for  two  audi- 
ences, the  research  community  and  policy-mak- 
ers, even  recalcitrant  ones.  Accordingly  she  spent 
much  time  and  energy  in  giving  research-based 
advice  in  formal  and  informal  settings.  From 
1969  to  1974  she  chaired  the  academic  advisory 
committee  of  the  Open  University  and  from 
1974  to  1977  she  was  a  member  of  the  committee 
on  the  future  of  broadcasting  chaired  by  Baron 
Annan. 

The  second  major  aspect  of  her  work  was 
political  psy  chology.  With  a  team  of  gifted  col- 
laborators she  followed  a  sample  of  young  people 


203 


Himmelweit 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


for  fifteen  years,  during  which  there  were  six 
general  elections,  to  illuminate  the  process  of 
decision-making  by  voters.  Here  again  the  result- 
ing publications  were  intended  for  both  research- 
ers and  politicians.  Hitting  two  targets  with  one 
stone  was,  she  realized,  a  difficult  task.  She 
agonized  about  how  to  combine  her  meticulous 
attention  to  the  technical  aspects  of  her  work 
with  readability.  Her  greatest  satisfaction  came 
not  from  writing  the  reports  but  from  presenting 
the  results  personally  and  directly  to  potential 
users,  and  here  she  excelled. 

As  her  international  reputation  grew  she  was 
invited  to  be  a  visiting  professor  and  fellow  at 
universities  and  institutes  abroad.  In  1981  she 
was  given  the  Nevitt  Sanford  award  for  achieve- 
ments in  social  psychology.  She  was  also  elected 
vice-president  of  the  International  Society  for 
Political  Psychology  (1978-81).  The  distinction 
that  pleased  her  most  was  an  honorary  doctorate 
from  the  Open  University  (1976).  She  was  active 
in  the  British  Psychological  Society  and  on  a 
committee  of  the  Social  Science  Research 
Council. 

Her  friends  enjoyed  in  equal  measure  her 
engaging  personality,  her  mind,  and  her  beauty, 
which  she  retained  to  the  end  of  her  life.  Early  in 
her  career  she  may  have  had  to  prove  to  herself 
and  others  that  there  was  more  to  her  than  met 
the  eye.  In  her  maturity  she  carried  her  beauty 
unselfconsciously,  with  grace  and  dignity,  and 
had  an  unobtrusive  elegance  in  dress.  In  1940  she 
married  Dr  Freddy  Himmelweit  (died  1977), 
virologist.  He  came  from  a  South  African  family, 
his  father,  Felix  Himmelweit,  being  a  business- 
man. They  had  one  daughter.  Hilde  Himmelweit 
died  of  cancer  15  March  1989  at  her  home  in 
Hampstead,  London. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Marie  Jahoda 

HOLTTUM,  (Richard)  Eric  (1 895-1 990),  bota- 
nist, was  born  20  July  1895  in  Linton,  Cam- 
bridgeshire, the  eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons 
and  one  daughter  of  Richard  Holttum,  grocer 
and  owner  of  a  village  general  store,  and  his  wife, 
Florence  Bradley.  His  parents  being  Quakers,  he 
was  educated  at  the  Friends'  School,  Saffron 
Walden,  and  then  at  Bootham  School,  York.  He 
wrote  in  1980  that  his  Quaker  schooling  'con- 
veyed a  sense  of  responsibility  and  of  respect  for 
other  people  based  on  some  appreciation  of  the 
spiritual  basis  of  all  living'.  His  long  life  of  public 
service  and  research  had  that  foundation.  In  1914 
he  entered  St  John's  College,  Cambridge,  with  a 
scholarship  to  study  botany,  physics,  and  chem- 
istry. He  obtained  a  first  class  in  part  i  of  the 
natural  sciences  tripos  in  191 6.  The  horror  of  the 
1 914-18  world  war  led  him  to  join  in  19 16  the 


Friends  Ambulance  Unit,  in  which  he  served 
with  the  French  army  on  the  western  front.  In 
1919  he  received  the  croix  de  guerre.  He 
returned  to  Cambridge,  gaining  first-class  hon- 
ours in  part  ii  of  the  tripos  (botany)  (1920)  and 
was  awarded  the  university's  Frank  Smart 
prize. 

In  1920  Professor  Albert  C.  *Seward 
appointed  Holttum  as  his  assistant  and  as  a 
junior  demonstrator  in  botany  at  Cambridge,  and 
together  they  went  to  Greenland  in  1921  to 
investigate  in  fossil  deposits  its  former  tropical 
flora.  Holttum  was  appointed  assistant  director 
of  the  botanic  gardens,  Singapore,  in  1922.  The 
Singapore  herbarium  was  in  a  chaotic  state  and 
the  general  state  of  fern  taxonomy  was  likewise 
unsatisfactory,  with  current  classifications  incon- 
sistent, genera  ill-defined,  and  specific  descrip- 
tions inadequate.  Holttum's  research  to  remedy 
this  led  to  his  extensive  fundamental  pterido- 
logical  publications.  In  1925  he  became  director 
of  the  Singapore  botanic  gardens.  An  indefatig- 
able field  botanist,  he  was  also  a  far-sighted, 
energetic  administrator,  intent  both  on  botanical 
investigation  and  the  encouragement  of  garden- 
ing in  Malaya.  Holttum  used  the  method  of 
raising  orchid  seedlings  on  nutrient  media  in 
glass  test-tubes  and  flasks  to  raise  new  orchid 
hybrids.  Out  of  his  enterprise  grew  the  important 
orchid-growing  industry  of  Malaya. 

After  the  Japanese  conquest  of  Singapore  in 
July  1942,  Holttum's  fate  and  that  of  the  Singa- 
pore botanic  garden  was  determined  by  Emperor 
Hirohito's  instruction  that  such  scientific  institu- 
tions be  maintained.  Professor  Hidezo  Tanaka- 
date  ordered  Holttum  and  the  assistant  director 
to  continue  their  work.  Later  in  1942  Professor 
Kwan  Koriba  took  over  the  administration.  He 
treated  Holttum  'with  much  kindness',  as  Holt- 
tum gratefully  acknowledged,  and  for  the  next 
three  years  encouraged  his  scientific  research  on 
orchids,  gingers,  ferns,  and  bamboos,  for  which 
he  previously  had  had  too  little  time.  Conscious, 
however,  of  the  hardships  of  internees  while  he 
himself  was  exceptionally  privileged,  Holttum 
requested  to  be  interned  also,  but  Koriba  ordered 
him  to  continue  with  research.  Nevertheless  his 
isolation  caused  him  acute  mental  distress,  near 
to  utter  despair. 

After  the  Japanese  surrender  in  September 
1945  Holttum  returned  to  England  to  recuperate. 
He  then  resumed  direction  of  the  neglected 
Singapore  botanic  garden,  resigning  in  1949  to 
become  the  first  professor  of  botany  in  the  newly 
founded  University  of  Singapore,  where  he 
proved  to  be  an  enthusiastic  and  inspiring 
teacher.  Never  wasting  time,  he  published  Plant 
Life  in  Malaya  (1954),  Gardening  in  the  Lowlands 
of  Malaya  (1953),  and  Orchids  of  Malaya  (1953). 
With  his  department  established  and  thriving, 


204 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hopkins 


Holttum  retired  in  1954,  returned  to  England, 
settled  at  Kew,  and  worked  in  the  herbarium  of 
the  Royal  Botanic  Gardens,  Kew,  principally  on 
tropical  ferns,  until  his  death.  His  Ferns  of 
Malaya  (1955)  was  the  prelude  to  major  work  on 
the  ferns  of  Malaya,  Indonesia,  New  Guinea,  and 
the  Philippines  for  the  Flora  MaUsiana  (section 
Pteridophyta).  About  110  of  his  500  or  more 
publications  on  botany  and  horticulture  relate  to 
ferns,  and  all  manifest  his  meticulous  attention  to 
detail,  originality,  and  breadth  of  outlook. 

Holttum  was  awarded  a  Cambridge  Sc.D. 
(1951),  and  an  honorary  D.Sc.  by  Singapore 
(1954),  the  Victoria  medal  of  honour  of  the  Royal 
Horticultural  Society  (1972),  the  gold  medal  of 
the  American  Orchid  Society  (1963),  and  the 
gold  medal  of  the  Linnean  Society  of  London 
(1964).  The  University  of  Malaya,  which  gave 
him  an  honorary  D.Sc.  in  1949,  awards  an  Eric 
Holttum  medal  to  an  outstanding  student  of 
botany.  At  least  twenty-three  botanical  specific 
names  with  the  epithet  holttumi  or  holttumianus 
commemorate  him. 

A  lifelong  member  of  the  Society  of  Friends 
(Quakers),  Holttum  joined  the  Society's  Brent- 
ford and  Isle  worth  meeting  in  1955.  His  spoken 
ministry  there  had  its  background  in  an  extensive 
acquaintance  with  religious  and  philosophical 
literature,  deep  spiritual  insight,  and  much 
thought.  He  published  in  1975  A  Personal  Chris- 
tology  (reprinted  1995).  His  religious  views  also 
found  expression  in  Quaker  magazines  and  jour- 
nals. From  1962  onwards  he  became  increasingly 
deaf,  and  was  ultimately  completely  deaf, 
although  his  eyesight,  patience,  and  intellect 
remained  unimpaired  to  the  end.  He  had  a 
modest,  unassuming  manner,  and  was  helpful  to 
all.  Physically  he  was  short  and  sparse  in  build, 
with  sharp  and  alert  features,  a  high  forehead, 
and  one-time  ginger  hair.  In  1927  he  married  an 
artist,  Ursula  (died  1987),  daughter  of  John 
William  Massey,  gentleman  farmer  at  Finching- 
field,  Essex.  They  had  two  daughters.  Holttum 
died  from  pneumonia  18  September  1990  in 
Queen  Man's  Hospital,  Roehampton. 

[Flora  MaUsiana  Bulletin,  vol.  xxx,  1975,  pp.  2477—500 
(autobiography  and  list  of  publications);  Kew  Bulletin, 
vol.  xli,  1986,  pp.  484-9;  The  Friend,  25  January  1091; 
W.  T.  Stearn  in  Linnean,  vol.  vii,  no.  3,  1991;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.] 

William  T.  Stearn 

HOPKINS,      Sm      Frank      Henry      Edward 

(1910-1990),  admiral,  was  born  23  June  1910  at 
The  Poplars,  Maldon  Road,  Wallington,  Surrey, 
the  fourth  child  and  only  son  of  Edward  Frank 
Lumley  Hopkins,  solicitor,  and  his  wife,  Sybil 
Man  Walrond.  He  was  educated  at  the  Nautical 
College  at  Pangbourne  and  joined  the  Royal 
Navy  as  a  cadet  on   16  September   1927.   He 


sened  as  a  midshipman  in  the  cruiser  London, 
and  then  in  destroyers  before  qualifying  as  an 
obsener  in  1934,  flying  from  the  aircraft-carriers 
Furious  and  Courageous.  When  war  broke  out  in 
1939,  he  was  on  the  staff  of  HMS  Peregrine,  the 
naval  obsener  school  at  Ford  in  Sussex.  In  1940 
he  joined  No.  826  naval  air  squadron,  flying 
Fairey  Albacores,  covering  the  Dunkirk  evacua- 
tion, bombing  rail  and  road  communications  in 
Holland,  and  attacking  enemy  shipping  off  Zee- 
brugge,  before  operating  for  five  months  with 
RAF  Coastal  Command,  making  night  attacks 
against  targets  in  France,  Belgium,  and  Holland. 
Hopkins  was  awarded  the  DSC  in  1941. 

In  November  1940  his  squadron  embarked  in 
the  aircraft-carrier  Formidable  and  sailed  for  the 
Mediterranean.  On  28  March  1941  No.  826's 
aircraft  made  two  torpedo  attacks  on  ships  of  the 
Italian  fleet  off  Cape  Matapan.  In  a  dusk  attack, 
No.  826's  aircraft  torpedoed  and  crippled  the 
heavy  cruiser  Pola.  This  led  to  a  night  action  in 
which  Pola  and  two  more  heavy  cruisers,  Fiume 
and  Zara,  were  sunk  with  considerable  loss  of 
life.  Hopkins  was  mentioned  in  dispatches 
(1941).  On  6  December  1941  Hopkins  took 
command  of  No.  830  naval  air  squadron,  which 
flew  Fairey  Swordfish  from  Malta.  Night  after 
night  he  led  his  squadron  on  torpedo  and  bomb- 
ing strikes  which  sank  thousands  of  tons  of  Axis 
shipping,  seriously  affecting  supplies  to  Rom- 
mel's army  in  North  Africa. 

Late  in  January  1942  Hopkins  led  a  striking 
force  through  a  gale  to  search  for  a  large  enemy 
convoy  on  its  way  to  Tripoli.  By  the  time  the 
planes  found  the  convoy  they  were  too  short  of 
fuel  to  attack  so  they  returned  to  Malta,  refuel- 
led, took  off  again,  found  the  convoy  a  second 
time,  and  sank  a  13,000-ton  troop-ship.  When 
Hopkins  landed  at  Hal  Far,  the  naval  air  station 
in  Malta,  just  after  dawn,  he  had  been  in  the  air 
for  more  than  twelve  hours  in  flying  conditions 
normally  considered  impossible.  He  received  an 
immediate  DSO  (1942),  an  award  which  his 
squadron  thought  by  no  means  over-generous. 

Hopkins  then  joined  the  staff  of  the  British  Air 
Commission  in  Washington  DC,  and  he  quali- 
fied as  a  pilot  in  1944.  As  British  naval  air 
obsener  with  the  US  Pacific  Fleet,  sening  in  the 
American  carriers  USS  Hancock  and  Intrepid,  he 
was  present  at  the  decisive  defeat  of  the  Japanese 
navy  in  the  battle  of  Leyte  Gulf  in  October  1944. 
In  1945  he  went  to  the  RN  Staff  College  for  two 
years  on  the  directing  staff.  He  went  to  Wash- 
ington again  in  1947,  for  two  years  as  assistant 
naval  air  attache.  He  was  awarded  the  US  Legion 
of  Merit  in  1948. 

In  1949  he  joined  the  light  fleet  aircraft-carrier 
Theseus  as  commander  (air)  and  sened  in  her  in 
the  Korean  war  from  October  1950  until  April 
195 1.  Under  Hopkins,  Theseus'*  air  group  was 


205 


Hopkins 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


particularly  energetic  and  successful  in  opera- 
tions over  Korea  and  in  1950  it  won  the  Boyd 
trophy,  awarded  annually  for  the  most  out- 
standing feat  of  airmanship.  Hopkins  was  again 
mentioned  in  dispatches  (1950). 

From  195 1  to  1958  he  was  at  the  Admiralty  as 
deputy  director,  naval  air  organization  and  train- 
ing; was  captain  (D)  of  the  No.  2  training 
squadron,  commanding  the  destroyer  Myngs; 
and  was  at  the  Admiralty  again  as  director,  naval 
air  warfare.  He  also  recommissioned  the  carrier 
Ark  Royal,  after  a  long  and  extensive  refit, 
successfully  commanding  her  through  a  difficult 
period  with  new  aircraft,  radar,  and  flight  deck 
equipment.  He  then  went  to  the  Britannia  Royal 
Naval  College  as  the  first  naval  aviator  and  the 
first  public-school  entry  officer  to  command  the 
college  (1958-60).  In  i960  (the  year  he  was 
promoted  rear-admiral)  he  became  flag  officer 
flying  training  and  in  1962  flag  officer,  aircraft- 
carriers. 

Having  become  vice-admiral  in  1962,  in  1963 
he  was  appointed  deputy  chief  of  naval  staff  and 
fifth  sea  lord.  He  now  had  to  fight  for  the  navy's 
future  air  power.  The  RAF  set  out  to  destroy 
plans  for  the  projected  new  carrier,  known  as 
CVA  01,  claiming  that  shore-based  aircraft  could 
do  all  that  carrier  aircraft  could  do,  and  more. 
When  CVA  01  was  cancelled  in  February  1966, 
the  first  sea  lord  and  the  first  lord  both  resigned. 
Hopkins  wanted  to  follow  suit  but  was  prevailed 
upon  to  stay  and  became  commander-in-chief, 
Portsmouth,  which  he  said  was  the  most  miser- 
able appointment  of  his  life.  He  was  promoted  to 
admiral  in  1966  and  retired  from  the  navy  in 
1967.  He  was  made  commander  of  the  Swedish 
Order  of  the  Sword  in  1954,  appointed  CB  in 
1 96 1,  and  promoted  to  KCB  in  1964. 

Hopkins  worked  his  squadron  hard,  but  with 
his  reputation  for  gallantry  and  endurance,  he 
could  ask  anything  of  his  aircrew.  He  was  always 
introspective,  and  his  experience  with  No.  830, 
when  he  risked  his  life  almost  every  night,  left  its 
mark  on  him,  but  he  had  great  personal  charm 
and  was  an  excellent  dinner-table  companion.  He 
was  a  keen  and  expert  helmsman  and  a  member 
of  the  Royal  Yacht  Squadron. 

Hopkins  was  a  handsome  man,  even  into  old 
age,  with  sharp  features,  high  cheek-bones,  and  a 
keen  gaze,  quick  to  sum  up  a  newcomer  to  ship 
or  squadron.  Although  the  marriage  was  not 
registered,  in  about  1933  he  married  Joan  Mary, 
nee  Ash  win  (died  1982),  widow  of  Lieutenant- 
Commander  John  Standring,  RN.  They  had  one 
daughter.  They  were  divorced  in  1937  and  in 
1939  he  married  Lois  Barbara,  daughter  of  James 
Robert  Cook,  of  Cheam,  Surrey,  director  of 
Cook,  Hammond  &  Kell,  cartographers  and 
printers.  They  had  no  children.  Lois  died  in 
1987  and  he  married  in  1988  Georgianna  Priest, 
the  widow  of  an  American  naval  officer  he  had 


met  during  the  war.  Hopkins  died  in  Hawaii, 
after  a  road  accident  there,  14  April  1990. 

[Daily  Telegraph,  18  April  1990;  squadron  records  at 
the  Fleet  Air  Arm  Museum,  Yeovilton,  Somerset; 
memorial  service  address  by  Captain  Desmond  Vin- 
cent-Jones, 26  June  1990;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  John  Winton 

HOPKINSON,  Sir  (Henry)  Thomas  (1905- 
1990),  journalist  and  editor,  was  born  19  April 
1905  in  Victoria  Park,  Manchester,  the  second 
child  and  second  son  in  the  family  of  four  sons 
and  one  daughter  of  John  Henry  Hopkinson  (son 
of  Sir  Alfred  *Hopkinson),  lecturer  in  classical 
archaeology  at  the  University  of  Manchester, 
who  soon  took  holy  orders  and  eventually 
became  archdeacon  of  Westmorland,  and  his  wife 
Evelyn  Mary,  schoolteacher,  daughter  of  the 
Revel  Henry  Thomas  Fountaine,  vicar  of  Sutton 
Bridge,  Lincolnshire.  Hopkinson  went  to  St 
Edward's  School,  Oxford,  with  the  financial 
assistance  of  a  wealthy  uncle,  Austin  Hopkinson, 
MP,  and  then  won  a  classical  scholarship  to 
Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  where  he  obtained  a 
second  class  in  classical  honour  moderations 
(1925)  and  a  third  in  literae  humaniores  (1927). 

For  seven  years  Hopkinson  lived  in  London 
by  freelance  journalism  and  copywriting  in 
Crawford's  advertising  agency.  After  the  pub- 
lication of  his  first  book,  A  Strong  Hand  at  the 
Helm  (1933),  an  acerbic  commentary  on  the 
failings  of  J.  Ramsay  *MacDonald's  government, 
Hopkinson  transferred  in  1934  to  Odhams  Press, 
where  he  became  assistant  editor  of  the  Clarion, 
a  weekly  that  combined  cycling  news  with 
Labour  youth  propaganda.  In  the  same  year  this 
was  incorporated  into  Weekly  Illustrated,  which 
Stefan  Lorant,  a  gifted  Hungarian  refugee,  had 
persuaded  Odhams  to  launch.  When  in  the 
summer  of  1938  Lorant  achieved  the  backing  of 
(Sir)  Edward  *Hulton  in  launching  Picture  Post, 
Hopkinson  joined  as  assistant  editor,  taking  over 
as  editor  when  Lorant,  fearing  a  German  inva- 
sion, emigrated  to  the  USA  in  July  1940.  The 
magazine  had  been  expected  to  sell  250,000 
copies  at  most;  soon  it  was  selling  more  than 
1,500,000  a  week. 

Lorant  was  an  outstanding  photo-journalist 
and  trained  Hopkinson  to  use  pictures  with  equal 
flair.  Hopkinson  added  a  campaigning  streak  of 
his  own,  often  contrasting  the  lives  of  the  rich 
with  the  reality  of  poverty  and  deprivation, 
picturing,  he  hoped,  the  lives  of  ordinary  people 
with  the  eye  of  a  Rembrandt.  Hopkinson  was  an 
excellent  caption  writer  and  always  stressed  the 
need  for  words  to  reinforce  the  message  of  his 
pictures.  He  gained  the  affection  and  devotion  of 
his  staff,  displaying  an  almost  donnish  approach 
to  their  work  and  a  total  lack  of  pretension.  His 
cool  professional  judgement  contrasted  with 
some  turbulence  in  his  emotional  life,  just  as  a 


206 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Howard 


remarkably  tidy  office  contrasted  with  the  tur- 
moil and  tension  needed  to  bring  out  a  weekly 
magazine.  His  slightly  enigmatic  personality  and 
ability  to  adapt  to  people  masked  his  true  polit- 
ical convictions.  He  certainly  attempted  to 
encapsulate  the  socialist  dream  of  a  more  just 
society.  As  World  War  II  progressed,  he  paid 
particular  attention  to  the  problems  that  would 
arise  when  peace  finally  arrived.  With  a  talented 
team  of  photographers  and  reporters,  hand- 
picked  by  Hopkinson,  Picture  Post  became 
immensely  influential  in  setting  the  mood  of  the 
country  and  may  well  have  made  a  contribution 
to  the  Labour  victory  in  the  1045  election. 

Growing  tension  between  Hulton,  who  was  a 
Conservative,  and  Hopkinson  finally  came  to  a 
head  in  October  1950  over  a  powerful  picture 
story,  from  photographer  Bert  Hardy  and  jour- 
nalist (M.)  James  *Cameron,  highlighting  the 
appalling  plight  of  so-called  political  prisoners  in 
Korea,  some  of  them  children,  under  the  west- 
ern-backed regime  of  Syngman  Rhee.  Hulton 
refused  to  allow  the  magazine  to  print  it  and, 
with  the  support  of  a  pliant  board  including  his 
second  wife  Nika,  sacked  Hopkinson.  Without 
his  inspired  editorship  Picture  Post  soon  lost  its 
way  and  was  closed  in  1957. 

After  freelancing  for  a  few  years  Hopkinson 
joined  the  News  Chronicle  in  1954.  He  resigned 
two  years  later  because  he  believed  the  paper  was 
destroying  itself.  In  1957  he  was  asked  to  edit 
Drum,  the  African  picture  magazine  based  in 
Johannesburg,  and  he  took  up  the  post  early  in 
1958.  However,  the  magazine  did  not  offer  quite 
the  same  opportunities  and  eventually  he  fell  out 
with  the  proprietor,  resigning  in  1961,  after  three 
and  a  half  years.  In  March  1963  he  launched  the 
International  Press  Institute's  training  centre  for 
black  journalists  in  Nairobi,  Kenya,  staying  there 
as  director  until  1966.  He  then  moved  on  to  the 
academic  training  of  journalists,  becoming  senior 
fellow  in  press  studies  at  the  University  of 
Sussex  (1967-9).  Finally,  in  1970  he  became  the 
first  director  of  the  centre  for  journalism  studies 
at  University  College,  Cardiff,  a  post  he  held 
until  1975.  Eventually  he  became  the  virtual 
godfather  of  photo-journalism  and  did  much  to 
increase  the  standing  of  photographers  in  their 
profession.  Hopkinson  was  also  fairly  successful 
as  a  writer  of  short  stories  and  novels.  As  a  writer 
he  was  a  perfectionist,  sometimes  staying  up  all 
night  to  find  the  right  word.  He  was  appointed 
CBE  in  1967  and  knighted  in  1978.  He  was  an 
honorary  fellow  of  the  Royal  Photographic  Soci- 
ety (1976)  and  won  its  silver  progress  medal 
(1984),  and  had  an  honorary  Litt.D.  from  Wales 
(1990). 

Hopkinson  was  always  beautifully  dressed,  a 
neat  composed  figure  with  a  rather  florid  face, 
which  gave  him  the  air  of  a  countryman.  In  1930 


he  married  Antonia  White  (died  1980),  the  nov- 
elist, daughter  of  Cecil  George  Boning,  senior 
classics  master  at  St  Paul's  School.  She  became 
increasingly  unbalanced  and  they  were  divorced 
in  1938.  In  October  1938  he  married  Gerti 
Deutsch,  an  Austrian  photographer,  whose 
father  Victor  Deutsch  was  a  rope  manufacturer. 
The  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1953  and  in  the 
same  year  he  married  Dorothy,  daughter  of 
Thomas  Vernon,  musician,  and  widow  of  Hugh 
*Kingsmill.  Hopkinson  had  one  daughter  by  his 
first  marriage  and  two  by  his  second.  Towards 
the  end  of  his  life  he  came  to  believe  in  reincar- 
nation. He  died  of  cancer  in  Oxford,  20  June 
1990. 

[Thomas  Hopkinson,  In  the  Firry  Continent,  1962, 
Picture  Post,  1970,  and  Of  This  Our  Time,  1982;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  Wintour 

HOWARD,  Trevor  Wallace  (1913-1988),  actor, 
was  born  Trevor  Wallace  Howard-Smith  in  Clif- 
ton ville,  Kent,  29  September  191 3,  the  only  son 
and  elder  child  of  Arthur  John  Howard-Smith, 
who  worked  as  Ceylon  representative  for  Lloyd's 
of  London,  and  his  Canadian  wife,  Mabel  Grey 
Wallace,  nurse.  Until  he  was  five  he  lived  in 
Colombo,  but  then  travelled  with  his  mother 
until  the  age  of  eight,  when  he  was  sent  to  school 
at  Clifton  College,  Bristol.  He  was  an  isolated 
child  and  when  neither  of  his  parents  returned  to 
England  holidays  were  spent  either  in  seaside 
bed-and-breakfast  accommodation  or  in  the 
home  of  one  of  the  housemasters.  At  school 
Howard  was  not  strongly  academic  and  it  was 
sport  that  caught  his  interest,  particularly  boxing 
and  cricket.  The  latter  became  one  of  the  great 
loves  of  his  life,  together  with  jazz.  Towards  the 
end  of  his  school  career  he  started  visiting  the 
local  theatre,  and  he  left  Clifton  to  become  an 
actor,  getting  into  the  Royal  Academy  of  Dra- 
matic Art  without  any  previous  stage  experi- 
ence. 

His  first  paid  work  was  in  the  play  Revolt  in  a 
Reformatory  (1934),  before  he  left  RAD  A  in  1935 
to  take  small  roles.  That  year  he  was  spotted  by 
a  Paramount  talent  scout  but  turned  down  the 
offer  of  film  work  in  favour  of  a  career  in  theatre. 
This  decision  seemed  justified  when,  in  1936,  he 
was  invited  to  join  the  Stratford  Memorial  Thea- 
tre and,  in  London,  given  the  role  of  one  of  the 
students  in  French  Without  Tears  by  (Sir)  Ter- 
ence *Rattigan,  which  ran  for  two  years.  He 
returned  to  Stratford  in  1939.  At  the  outbreak  of 
war  he  decided  to  enlist,  but  both  the  army  and 
the  Royal  Air  Force  rejected  him.  However,  in 
1940,  after  working  at  the  Colchester  repertory 
theatre,  he  was  called  up  into  the  Royal  Corps  of 
Signals,  Airborne  division,  becoming  a  second 
lieutenant  before  he  was  invalided  out  in  1943. 


207 


Howard 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


The  stories  of  Howard's  war  heroism  were  fabri- 
cated, without  his  consent,  for  publicity  pur- 
poses. 

Howard  moved  back  to  the  theatre  in  The 
Recruiting  Officer  (1943).  A  short  part  in  one  of 
the  best  British  war  films,  The  Way  Ahead 
(1944),  provided  a  springboard  into  cinema.  This 
was  followed  by  The  Way  to  the  Stars  (1945), 
which  led  to  the  role  for  which  Howard  became 
best  known,  the  doctor  in  Brief  Encounter  (1945), 
in  which  his  co-star  was  Celia  *Johnson. 
Directed  by  (Sir)  David  Lean,  the  film  won  an 
award  at  the  Cannes  festival  and  considerable 
critical  acclaim  for  Howard.  Next  came  two 
successful  Frank  Launder  and  Sidney  Gilliat 
thrillers,  I  See  a  Dark  Stranger  (1945)  and  Green 
for  Danger  (1946),  followed  by  They  Made  Me  a 
Fugitive  (1947),  in  which  the  roots  of  British 
realism  in  cinema  can  be  traced.  In  1947  he  was 
invited  by  Sir  Laurence  (later  Baron)  *OHvier  to 
play  Petruchio  in  an  Old  Vic  production  of  The 
Taming  of  the  Shrew.  Despite  The  Times  declar- 
ing 'We  can  remember  no  better  Petruchio',  the 
opportunity  of  working  again  with  David  Lean, 
in  The  Passionate  Friends  (1948),  drew  Howard 
back  to  film  and,  although  he  had  a  solid  reputa- 
tion as  a  theatre  actor,  his  dislike  of  long  runs, 
and  the  attractions  of  travel  afforded  by  film, 
made  him  concentrate  on  cinema  from  this 
point. 

Howard's  film  reputation  was  secured  in  The 
Third  Man  (1949).  He  played  the  character  type 
with  which  he  became  most  associated,  the 
British  military  officer,  but  his  capabilities  were 
stretched  by  his  role  in  this  story  of  postwar 
Vienna  by  Graham  Greene.  Howard  had  a  cer- 
tain notoriety  as  a  hell-raiser,  based  on  his 
drinking  capacity.  Under  the  influence  of  alcohol 
he  could  embark  on  celebrated  exploits,  one  of 
which  led  to  his  arrest  in  Vienna,  for  impersonat- 
ing an  officer.  Despite  his  drinking,  however,  he 
always  remained  reliable  and  professional,  never 
allowing  alcohol  to  affect  his  work. 

During  the  1950s,  while  often  eliciting  good 
notices  for  his  work,  he  frequently  appeared  in 
flawed  films  like  Odette  (1950)  and  An  Outcast  of 
the  Islands  (1951).  An  exception  was  The  Heart  of 
the  Matter  (1953),  another  Graham  Greene  story, 
in  which  he  produced  his  best  screen  perform- 
ance. Such  opportunities  were  rare  even  though 
he  shifted  into  the  American  market.  In  1958  he 
received  the  Best  Actor  award  from  the  British 
Film  Academy  for  his  performance  in  The  Key, 
but  this  film,  too,  failed  to  meet  his  high  stan- 
dards. 

Although  Sons  and  Lovers  (i960),  for  which  he 
received  an  Oscar  nomination  for  his  perform- 
ance as  the  father,  and  Mutiny  on  the  Bounty 
(1962),  in  which  he  worked  with  Marlon  Brando, 
enabled  him  to  move  away  from  playing  military 
stereotypes,  Von  Ryan's  Express  (1965)  and  The 


Long  Duel  (1967),  with  Yul  Brynner,  saw  a  return 
to  playing  officer  figures.  Even  the  role  of  the 
pugnacious  Cardigan  in  The  Charge  of  the  Light 
Brigade  (1968)  revisited  military  territory,  and  in 
this  uneven  yet  innovative  film  Howard  gave  a 
fine  performance.  Working  with  Brando  and 
Brynner  proved  frustrating  experiences,  leaving 
him  with  a  mistrust  of  Hollywood.  After  the 
1960s  cinema  gave  him  fewer  opportunities  to 
display  his  ability.  His  performance  as  the  cynical 
priest  in  Ryan's  Daughter  (1971)  is  one  of  the 
most  memorable  in  this  over-long  film,  but  for 
much  of  the  1970s  he  was  increasingly  relegated 
to  cameo  appearances  in  films  such  as  Ludwtg 
(1973)  or  disappointing  movies  such  as  Persecu- 
tion (1974)  and  Conduct  Unbecoming  (1975). 
However,  in  1978  he  played  a  choric-narrator 
figure  in  Stevie  with  Glenda  Jackson,  an  experi- 
ence he  found  satisfying. 

In  television  he  began  to  find  more  substantial 
roles.  In  1962  he  played  Lovborg  in  Hedda 
Gahler  with  Ingrid  Bergman,  and  in  1963  won  an 
Emmy  award  as  Disraeli  in  The  Invincible  Mr 
Disraeli.  In  the  1970s  he  was  acclaimed  for  his 
playing  of  an  abbot  in  Catholics  (1973)  and  in 
1975  he  received  an  Emmy  nomination  for  his 
role  as  Abbe  Faria  in  a  television  version  of  The 
Count  of  Monte  Cristo.  The  decade  ended  with 
him  reunited  with  Celia  Johnson,  giving  a  mov- 
ing performance  in  the  nostalgic  Staying  On 
(1980),  written  by  Paul  *Scott. 

The  1980s  saw  a  resurgence  of  Howard  as  a 
film  actor.  The  exhilarating  role  of  a  Cheyenne 
Indian  in  Windwalker  (1980)  revitalized  his  act- 
ing. However,  as  was  the  case  with  Sir  Henry  at 
Rawlinson  End  (1980),  a  low  budget,  black  and 
white  film,  this  impressive  movie  never  reached  a 
wide  audience.  He  continued  with  cameo  roles, 
including  Judge  Broomfield  in  Gandhi  (1982). 
His  final  films  were  White  Mischief  and  The  Old 
Jest,  both  released  in  1988.  Howard  did  not 
abandon  the  theatre  altogether  in  1947,  returning 
to  the  stage  on  occasions,  most  notably  as  Lopa- 
khin  in  The  Cherry  Orchard  (1954)  and  the 
captain  in  The  Father  (1964).  His  last  appearance 
on  the  British  stage  was  in  Waltz  of  the  Toreadors 
in  1974. 

Howard  made  seventy-four  films.  He  embod- 
ied the  traditional  Englishman.  His  tight-lipped 
features  and  quiet,  well-bred  speaking  voice 
caught  the  mood  of  postwar  Britain  while,  in 
later  years,  his  craggy  face  and  gravelly  voice 
animated  the  crusty  character  roles  he  played.  He 
lacked  the  looks  and  physique  to  be  an  archetypal 
male  hero,  and  his  tall  frame  suited  military 
roles.  He  failed  to  fulfil  his  potential,  for  he 
rarely  played  the  lead  roles  he  deserved.  Sup- 
porting some  of  the  most  notable  names  in  the 
world  of  cinema,  he  often  received  the  highest 
critical  acclaim. 

In  1944  he  married  an  actress,  Helen,  daughter 


208 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Howarth 


of  William  Cherry,  who  retired  from  the  army  at 
the  end  of  World  War  I.  They  had  no  children. 
Howard  died  7  January  1988,  at  Bushey  Hospital 
in  Hertfordshire,  of  bronchitis  complicated  by 
jaundice. 

[Michael  Munn,  Trevor  Howard,  the  Man  and  his  Films, 
1989;  Yivienne  Knight,  Trevor  Howard:  a  Gentleman 
and  a  Player,  1986;  The  Times  and  Guardian,  8  January 
1988;  Observer,  10  January  1988;  private  information.] 

Lib  Taylor 

HOWARD-SMITH,  Trevor  Wallace  (1913- 
1988),  actor.  [See  Howard,  Trevor  Wallace.] 

HOWARTH,  Thomas  Edward  Brodie  (1914- 
1988),  schoolmaster  and  historian,  was  born  21 
October  1914  in  Rutherglen,  the  elder  son  (there 
were  no  daughters)  of  Frank  Fielding  Howarth, 
director  of  an  insurance  company,  and  his  wife, 
Edith  Brodie.  From  Rugby  he  won  a  scholarship 
to  Qare  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  achieved 
firsts  in  both  parts  of  the  history  tripos  (1935  and 

I936)- 

His  forte  was  teaching.  He  taught  briefly  at 
Canford,  then  at  Winchester  (1938-9),  but  then 
came  World  War  II.  He  enlisted  immediately, 
was  commissioned  in  the  King's  (Liverpool) 
Regiment,  reaching  the  rank  of  brigade-major, 
and  in  February  1945  joined  the  personal  staff  of 
Field-Marshal  Bernard  *Montgomery  (later  first 
Viscount  Montgomery  of  Alamein).  A  significant 
friendship  began.  He  wrote,  'After  the  first  soul- 
stripping  scrutiny  which  he  [Montgomery] 
imposed  on  anybody  crossing  his  path,  he  was  to 
treat  me  with  consistent  kindness  and  considera- 
tion for  the  next  twenty-five  years.'  He  emerged 
from  the  war  with  an  MC  (1945)  and  returned  to 
Winchester.  In  1948  he  was  appointed  head- 
master of  King  Edward's  School,  Birmingham. 
He  was  instrumental  in  raising  the  school's 
academic  standards,  but  he  lacked  the  patience  to 
deal  with  an  oppressive  governing  body,  and  in 
1952  was  back  at  Winchester  as  second  master. 
The  accusation  that  he  had  run  away  from  an 
important  job  stung  him. 

The  second  master  of  Winchester  was  house- 
master of  the  scholars,  who  needed  a  sympathetic 
and  inspiring  pastor.  Howarth,  delighting  in  the 
company  of  intelligent  young  people,  proved  just 
that.  One  pupil  described  'the  taut  wiry  figure, 
keen  eye,  broad  forehead,  listening  curled  up  in 
his  chair,  coiled  for  action  with  a  mind  never 
still,  stabbing  at  words'.  Often  wit  was  at  a 
premium,  liberally  spiced  with  gossip,  and  outra- 
geous statements  were  uttered  with  a  nasal  into- 
nation imitated  by  generations  of  his  pupils, 
accompanied  by  great  gusts  of  laughter.  It  was 
very  exciting  to  be  taught  by  him,  and  his  courses 
on  the  French  revolution  and  nineteenth-century 
France  were  particularly  memorable. 

In  1962  he  was  appointed  high  master  of  St 
Paul's  School.  His  achievement  there  was  the 


transplanting  of  the  school  from  its  gaunt  Ham- 
mersmith setting  to  a  superb  site  in  Barnes.  He 
never  pandered  to  the  confused  but  impassioned 
values  of  the  'revolting  students'  of  the  late 
1960s.  He  left  the  detailed  management  of  the 
school  to  people  with  less  imagination  than 
himself.  He  was  uninterested  in  the  minutiae  of 
headmastering,  preferring  a  more  public  life,  as  a 
member  of  the  Public  Schools  Commission 
(1966)  and  then,  in  1969,  chairman  of  the  Head- 
masters' Conference. 

These  roles  enabled  him  to  assert  his  views. 
He  wrote  that  his  experiences  on  the  commission 
'convinced  me  that  the  reformers  are  determined 
to  sacrifice  scholarship  and  a  great  many  values 
which  I  regard  as  essential  to  a  civilised  commu- 
nity on  the  altar  of  a  totally  unattainable  egalit- 
arian ism'.  These  values  included  a  passionate 
commitment  to  meritocracy,  together  with  active 
opposition  to  social  elitism,  and  he  expounded 
them,  unfashionable  as  they  were  at  the  time,  in 
a  Public  Schools  Commission  minority  report. 

Howarth  left  St  Paul's  in  1973  to  become 
senior  tutor  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge. 
Here  he  used  his  numerous  contacts  to  good 
effect,  lifting  the  quality  while  broadening  the 
range  of  the  college's  entry.  In  1980  he  was 
invited  to  become  headmaster  of  Campion  Inter- 
national School  in  Athens,  and  briefed  to  sort  out 
massive  administrative  problems.  He  left  it  in 
much  better  order  in  1982,  and  spent  his  remain- 
ing years  in  London,  enjoying  a  sociable  life  and 
writing  copiously. 

His  published  works  included  Citizen-King 
(1961),  a  biography  of  Louis  Philippe,  his  most 
successful  contribution  to  scholarship;  a  sharp 
polemic,  Culture,  Anarchy  and  the  Public  Schools 
(1969);  Cambridge  Between  Two  Wars  (1978),  in 
which  he  almost  unmasked  Anthony  *Blunt;  and 
Prospect  and  Reality,  Great  Britain  1945-1955 
(1985).  He  also  edited  a  collection  of  reminis- 
cences, Monty  at  Close  Quarters  (1985):  his  own 
account  of  his  great  friend  and  mentor  is  bril- 
liantly observed.  He  was  a  governor  of  several 
schools,  including  his  own  old  school  Rugby,  and 
was  an  active  trustee  of  the  Imperial  War 
Museum  (1964-79). 

In  1043  he  married  Margaret,  daughter  of 
Norman  Teakle,  businessman.  Sadly  his  wife 
became  afflicted  with  mental  illness,  to  a  degree 
that  made  separation  in  the  early  1960s  unavoid- 
able. There  were  three  sons  and  a  daughter  of  the 
marriage.  The  eldest  son,  Alan,  became  MP  for 
Stratford-upon-Avon  in  1983,  serving  as  a  junior 
minister  in  Margaret  (later  Baroness)  Thatcher's 
government. 

In  an  abundant  and  energetic  life,  Howarth 
made  his  mark  as  teacher,  scholar,  soldier,  writer, 
housemaster,  headmaster,  and  bon  viveur.  Yet  he 
often  seemed  a  solitary  figure,  rarely  relaxed, 


209 


Howarth 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


grieved  by  the  problems  of  his  marriage,  and  in 
1977  by  the  death  from  cancer  in  his  twenties  of 
his  second  son,  Peter.  He  sometimes  concealed 
his  consequent  unease  behind  a  barrier  of  intel- 
lectual arrogance  and  less  than  charitable  judge- 
ments. Much  more  often,  however,  he  was  a 
most  warm-hearted  man,  delightful  company, 
exulting  in  the  success  of  his  children,  a  patient 
and  faithful  friend,  and  a  champion  of  excellence 
who  achieved  it  himself,  most  especially  as  a 
teacher.  He  died  in  London  6  May  1988. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Patrick  Hutton 

HULL,  Sir  Richard  Amyatt  (1907- 1989),  field- 
marshal  and  chief  of  the  defence  staff,  was  born 
7  May  1907  in  Cosham,  Hampshire,  the  only  son 
and  youngest  of  three  children  of  Major-General 
Sir  Charles  Patrick  Amyatt  Hull,  KCB,  late  of 
the  Royal  Scots  Fusiliers,  of  Beacon  Downe, 
Pinhoe,  near  Exeter,  Devon,  and  his  wife  Muriel 
Helen,  daughter  of  Richard  Reid  Dobell,  busi- 
nessman, of  Beauvoir,  Quebec,  and  Vancouver, 
Canada.  He  was  educated  at  Charterhouse  and 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  took  a 
pass  degree.  At  Cambridge  he  was  a  close  friend 
of  (Sir)  Peter  *Scott,  the  naturalist,  and  it  was 
there  that  he  began  to  develop  his  great  interest 
in  wildlife  and  country  sports. 

He  was  commissioned  as  a  university  entrant 
into  the  17th/ 21st  Lancers  in  1928  and  went 
with  the  regiment  to  Egypt  in  1930.  It  was  then 
still  horsed.  Hull,  who  in  any  case  lacked  the 
money  for  expensive  mounts,  was  a  competent 
rather  than  enthusiastic  horseman,  but  acquired 
a  reputation  as  a  polo  umpire.  His  knowledge  of 
the  rules  and  firmness  in  applying  them  were 
paralleled  by  the  attention  to  detail,  energy,  and 
integrity  he  showed  in  his  professional  life, 
qualities  which  underlay  his  successful  career 
and  brought  him  early  promotion  to  captain  and 
appointment  as  adjutant  when  the  regiment 
moved  to  India  in  1933. 

He  was  a  student  at  the  Staff  College,  Quetta, 
in  1938-9,  while  the  regiment  was  undergoing 
mechanization,  a  change  which  the  forward- 
looking  Hull  strongly  supported,  and  then  super- 
vised the  return  home  of  the  regimental  families 
in  1939.  His  efficiency  in  so  doing  brought  him 
an  appointment  in  the  staff  duties  branch  of  the 
War  Office,  and  promotion  to  lieutenant-colonel, 
but  he  soon  chose  to  drop  a  rank  and  return  to 
the  i7th/2ist  as  a  squadron  leader.  He  became 
commanding  officer  in  1941. 

In  1942  he  was  promoted  to  colonel  and  given 
command  of  Blade  Force,  an  all-arms  group 
based  on  the  i7th/2ist,  which  had  the  mission 
during  the  North  African  landings  of  November 
1942  of  advancing  from  Algiers  to  capture  Tunis. 
The  force  covered  the  350  miles  in  two  days  but 


was  thwarted  fifteen  miles  from  the  city  when 
German  reinforcements  secured  it  first.  For  the 
dash  he  had  shown  and  his  bravery  under  fire 
Hull  was  appointed  to  the  DSO  (1943)  and 
promoted  to  brigadier  to  command  12th  Infantry 
and  then  26th  Armoured  brigade  during  the 
Tunisian  campaign. 

After  another  spell  at  the  War  Office,  he  was 
promoted  to  major-general  and  given  command 
of  1  st  Armoured  division  in  Italy  in  1944.  Its  role 
was  to  outflank  the  Gothic  Line  on  the  Adriatic 
shore  and  lead  a  break-out  into  the  plain  of  the 
Po.  At  Coriano  on  5  September,  however,  its 
armoured  brigade  met  heavy  German  resistance 
and  was  checked.  Controversy  surrounds  this 
episode;  terrain  and  weather  were  on  the  side  of 
the  enemy  but  Hull  has  also  been  criticized  for 
his  tactical  dispositions. 

This  did  not  halt  his  progress.  His  formidable 
abilities  as  a  staff  officer  had  been  recognized  and, 
after  commanding  5th  Infantry  division,  he 
embarked  on  a  long  ascent  of  all  the  key  staff 
appointments,  interspersed  with  several  import- 
ant commands.  He  was  commandant  of  the  Staff 
College,  Camberley  (1946-8),  director  of  staff 
duties,  War  Office  (1948-50),  chief  army  instruc- 
tor, Imperial  Defence  College  (1950-2),  and 
chief  of  staff,  Middle  East  Land  Forces  (1953-4). 
As  lieutenant-general  he  then  succeeded  to  the 
command  of  the  British  troops  in  Egypt  and 
supervised  the  difficult  evacuation  from  the  canal 
zone  in  1955-6. 

On  his  return  he  became  deputy  chief  of  the 
imperial  general  staff  (1956-8)  and  was  at  once 
embroiled  in  the  series  of  defence  reductions, 
imposed  by  Britain's  shrinking  world  role  and 
financial  difficulties,  that  were  to  dominate  the 
rest  of  his  service  career.  He  first  chaired  a 
committee  whose  task  was  to  determine  the 
future  size  of  the  army  and,  though  he  unsuc- 
cessfully opposed  the  army's  reduction  to  a 
strength  of  165,000,  his  doubts  about  its  ability  to 
meet  its  commitments  with  those  numbers  were 
proved  right  and  the  figure  was  later  fixed  at 
185,000.  He  oversaw  the  abolition  of  national 
service  in  1957,  and  the  regimental  amalgama- 
tions that  resulted,  but  succeeded  in  sparing 
several  threatened  regiments.  The  shape  of  the 
army  for  the  next  thirty  years  was  largely  deter- 
mined by  his  guidance. 

Promoted  to  general  in  1958,  he  was  com- 
mander-in-chief, Far  East  Land  Forces  (1958- 
61),  but  then  returned  to  the  Ministry  of 
Defence  as  chief  of  the  imperial  general  staff 
(1961-5)  ('imperial'  was  dropped  in  1964  and  so 
he  was  the  last  CIGS),  and  then  chief  of  the 
defence  staff  (1965-7),  in  succession  to  the  sec- 
ond holder  of  that  office,  the  first  Earl  •Mount- 
batten  of  Burma.  As  CIGS  and  CGS  he  was 
responsible  for  the  army's  part  in  such  operations 


210 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hulton 


as  the  deterrence  of  the  Iraqi  attack  on  Kuwait  in 
1961,  'confrontation'  with  Indonesia  in  Malaysia, 
the  suppression  of  the  East  African  mutinies,  and 
the  defeat  of  the  Nasserist  rebellion  in  the  Rati  tan 
province  of  the  Aden  Protectorate. 

His  bitterest  battles,  however,  were  fought  in 
Whitehall  after  he  became  CDS  in  July  1965. 
During  his  term  of  office  Britain  withdrew  from 
Singapore  and  Aden  and  was  challenged  by 
rebellion  in  Rhodesia.  At  home,  he  found  the 
navy  and  air  force  locked  in  conflict  over  the 
funding  of  air  power,  while  Denis  (later  Baron) 
Healey,  an  imperious  defence  secretary,  demand- 
ed budgetary  sacrifices  by  all  services.  Hull, 
whose  professional  feelings  for  Mountbatten  had 
amounted  to  loathing,  was  too  upright  to  allow- 
that  to  influence  his  arbitration  of  the  dispute 
between  the  air  marshals  and  the  admirals.  He 
perceived  that  the  large  carriers  the  navy  wanted 
would  cost  too  much  and  threw  his  weight 
behind  the  decision  to  spend  available  funds  for 
the  purchase  of  American  aircraft  for  the  Royal 
Air  Force  as  a  means  of  providing  Britain  with 
long-range  strike  capability.  The  small  carriers 
that  provided  the  Royal  Navy  with  its  later  air 
support  were  the  product  of  that  chiefs  of  staff 
committee's  decision. 

Hull  was  promoted  to  field-marshal  on 
appointment  as  CDS.  On  retirement  in  1967  he 
became  a  director  of  Whitbreads  (1967-76)  and 
rationalized  business  in  its  western  division.  He 
held  many  state,  army,  and  charitable  appoint- 
ments, including  those  of  constable  of  the  Tower 
of  London  (1970-5),  deputy  lieutenant  of  Devon 
(1973-8),  high  sheriff  (1975),  and  lord-lieutenant 
(1978-82).  He  was  president  of  the  Army 
Benevolent  Fund  (1968-71),  and  was  made  an 
honorary  LL  D  by  Exeter  University  in  1965. 
Appointed  CB  in  1945,  he  was  advanced  to  KCB 
in  1956  and  GCB  in  1961.  He  became  a  knight  of 
the  Garter  in  1980. 

Hull  typified  a  certain  sort  of  regular  cavalry 
officer  of  his  generation.  A  devout  but  undemon- 
strative Christian,  a  devoted  husband  and  father, 
whose  temperament  often  prevented  him  from 
disclosing  his  affections,  a  loyal  friend  to  brother 
officers  who  won  his  favour,  a  devotee  of  regi- 
mental tradition,  he  was  happiest  shooting  or  fly 
fishing,  two  sports  at  which  he  excelled,  and  in 
his  garden,  where  he  knew  the  Latin,  English, 
and  Devon  name  of  every  plant.  He  was  tall  and 
of  impressive  bearing,  with  grave  features. 

In  1934  Hull  married  Antoinette  Mary,  only- 
child  of  Francis  Labouchere  de  Rougemont,  of 
the  Bank  of  Egypt.  They  had  two  daughters  and 
a  son  and  were  a  couple  noted  for  their  devotion. 
Hull  died  17  September  1989,  of  cancer,  at  his 
home  at  Beacon  Downe,  Pinhoe,  Exeter,  which 
he  had  rebuilt  after  wartime  bombing,  was  given 
a  state  funeral  at  Windsor,  and  was  buried  in  the 


graveyard  of  the  local  church  where  he  had 
regularly  worshipped. 

[Sir  William  Jackson  and  Edwin  Bramall  (as  Bill 
Jackson  and  Dwin  Bramall),  The  Chiefs,  1092;  private 
information.]  John  Keegan 

HULTON,  Sir  Edward  George  Warris  (1906- 
1988),  magazine  publisher  and  writer,  was  born 
29  November  1906  in  London,  the  only  son  and 
elder  child  (the  daughter  died  when  she  was 
twenty-two,  in  1932)  of  (Sir)  Edward  *Hulton, 
baronet,  of  Downside,  Surrey,  a  Manchester 
newspaper  publisher,  whose  business  expanded 
to  include  the  London  Evening  Standard  and  the 
Daily  Sketch.  His  mother,  Millicent  Warris,  a 
beautiful  actress,  daughter  of  John  Warris,  was 
Edward  Hulton's  second  wife,  but  the  couple 
were  unable  to  marry  until  ten  years  after  their 
son's  birth,  and  so  the  baronetcy  conferred  on 
Edward  Hulton  in  1921  became  extinct  on  his 
death  in  1925. 

Hulton  was  a  lonely,  sensitive  child.  His 
parents  descended  at  the  weekend,  when  his 
mother  would  dote  on  him,  while  his  father, 
ambitious  for  the  boy's  success,  was  awkward 
and  irascible.  From  Harrow  he  won  a  history 
scholarship  to  Brasenose  College,  Oxford,  which 
he  entered  in  1925  and  where  he  edited  the 
undergraduate  magazine  Cherwell  and  spoke  fre- 
quently in  Union  debates.  He  left  in  December 
1926  without  a  degree.  Meanwhile  his  father  sold 
the  newspaper  business,  on  medical  advice,  to 
the  first  Baron  *Beaverbrook  in  1923. 

Hulton  was  called  to  the  bar  at  the  Inner 
Temple  in  1936.  He  had  stood  unsuccessfully  as 
a  Conservative  Unionist  in  the  general  elections 
of  1929  (the  Leek  division  of  Staffordshire)  and 
193 1  (Harwich).  Not  until  he  was  thirty  did  he 
realize  control  over  his  father's  fortune  and  set 
about  becoming  a  publisher  in  his  own  right.  He 
founded  the  Hulton  Press  in  1937,  with  the 
prosaic  purchase  of  Farmers  Weekly.  The  busi- 
ness grew  to  include  a  variety  of  magazines,  such 
as  World  Review  and  Leader  Magazine.  His 
children's  magazines,  notably  Eagle  and  Girl, 
were  highly  successful  in  their  day  and  set  new- 
standards  of  content  and  design.  But  the  weekly- 
publication  which  made  Hulton  widely  known 
was  Picture  Post,  launched  on  1  October  1938.  Its 
genius  was  the  Hungarian  refugee  Stefan  Lorant, 
who  had  founded  (and  now  sold  to  Hulton)  the 
popular  monthly  pocket  magazine  LilUput. 
Under  the  steadying  influence  of  Hulton's  man- 
ager, Maxwell  Raison,  and  Lorant's  successor, 
(Sir  H.)  Thomas  *Hopkinson,  Picture  Post  devel- 
oped a  style  of  photo-journalism  in  which  strik- 
ing pictures  and  design  were  supported  by  good 
writing  and  a  progressive  editorial  line.  For  more 
than  a  decade  this  formula  was  popular  and 
profitable,  with  sales  of  nearly  1.5  million  in  the 
1940s.  Hulton  used  the  magazine  to  boost  the 


Hulton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


war  effort,  pioneering  (and  initially  funding)  the 
Home  Guard  training  school  at  Osterley  Park  in 
1940,  and  briefly  even  organizing  the  private 
supply  of  weapons  from  the  USA.  In  August 
1945  he  gave  'a  resounding  welcome'  to  the 
government  formed  by  C.  R.  (later  first  Earl) 
Attlee.  i  am  not  personally  a  socialist... Yet  I 
rejoice  that  latter-day  conservatism  has  been 
overthrown.'  This  attitude  was  foreshadowed  by 
Picture  Post's  publication  of  a  postwar  'Plan  for 
Britain'  in  1941  and  by  Hulton's  involvement  in 
lobbying  activities  such  as  the  progressive  1941 
Committee,  of  which  he  was  one  of  the  founders 
and  which  met  regularly  in  his  house,  and  in 
support  of  the  report  by  Sir  William  (later 
Baron)  *Beveridge.  His  book  The  New  Age 
(1943)  summed  up  his  support  for  a  mixed 
economy  and  welfare  state. 

Hulton  blamed  shifts  in  reading  habits  more 
than  the  growth  of  television  for  Picture  Post's 
decline  in  the  1950s.  His  renewed  support  for  the 
Conservative  party  provoked  a  break  with  Hop- 
kinson,  who  resigned  in  1950  when  Hulton 
refused  to  publish  a  story  about  the  ill-treatment 
of  North  Korean  prisoners  of  war.  A  vacillating 
market  strategy,  frequent  changes  of  editor,  and 
mounting  losses  led  Hulton  to  close  the  magazine 
in  1957.  Two  years  later  the  Hulton  Press  was 
taken  over  by  Odhams. 

Increasingly  Hulton  spent  time  on  European 
affairs.  He  was  editor-in-chief  of  European 
Review  and  held  office  in  the  European  Atlantic 
Group  (president  1969-70),  the  European 
League  for  Economic  Cooperation,  and  the  Brit- 
ish council  of  the  European  Movement.  In  1957 
he  was  knighted  and  in  1969  he  received  the 
NATO  peace  medal.  The  Hulton  Picture 
Library,  later  to  become  the  Hulton  Deutsch 
Collection,  which  contained  photographs  taken 
for  Picture  Post,  was  founded  in  1947. 

Hulton  had  a  lively,  enquiring  mind,  as  ready 
to  experiment  with  a  model  farm  at  Salperton, 
his  estate  village  in  Gloucestershire,  as  with  the 
possibilities  of  a  new  Sunday  newspaper  in  the 
1950s.  He  belonged  to  half  a  dozen  London  clubs 
and  was  fond  of  social  life.  He  could  be  brusque 
and  changeable  in  his  opinions.  Hopkinson 
found  him  donnish  and  kind-hearted  but  diffi- 
cult to  work  with. 

Hulton  was  stout,  shortish,  and  florid.  His 
manner  was  vague  and  authoritative,  as  if  he 
were  accustomed  to  both  giving  orders  and 
having  them  disobeyed.  His  dress  was  always 
formal,  as  were  his  manners.  He  married  first,  in 
1927,  Kira  Pavlovna,  daughter  of  General  Paul 
Goudime-Levkovitsch,  of  the  Imperial  Russian 
Army.  There  were  no  children.  The  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1932  and  in  1941  he  again 
married  a  Russian,  Princess  Nika  Yourievitch, 
whose  father,  Prince  Serge  Yourievitch,  was  a 
sculptor  and  had  been  a  chamberlain  at  the  court 


of  the  tsar.  Of  this  marriage  there  were  two  sons 
and  a  daughter.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in 
1966,  but  the  couple  lived  together  for  the  last 
nine  years  of  Hulton's  life.  Hulton  died  8  Octo- 
ber 1988  in  his  sleep  at  his  home  in  Carlton 
Gardens,  London,  after  a  long  illness. 

[Edward  Hulton,  The  New  Age,  1943;  When  I  Was  a 
Child,  1952;  Tom  Hopkinson  (ed.),  Picture  Post,  1970; 
The  Times,  10  October  1988.]   Colin  Seymour-Ure 

HUMPHREY,  John  Herbert  (191 5-1987), 
immunologist  and  medical  scientist,  was  born  16 
December  191 5  in  West  Byfleet,  Surrey,  the 
eldest  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  two 
daughters  of  Herbert  Alfred  "Humphrey,  inven- 
tor and  co-founder  of  Imperial  Chemical  Indus- 
tries (ICI)  at  Billingham,  and  his  wife,  Mary 
Elizabeth  Horniblow.  He  was  educated  at  the 
International  School,  Lausanne,  Switzerland, 
before  attending  the  preparatory  school  Bram- 
cote  (Yorkshire).  Then  followed  a  very  formative 
period  at  Winchester  College.  From  school  he 
won  a  scholarship  to  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  read  natural  sciences  in  pre- 
paration for  medicine.  He  obtained  a  first  class  in 
both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1936 
and  1937).  It  was  during  this  time  that  he  became 
conscious  of  the  evils  and  social  injustices  of  his 
time.  Such  matters  occupied  him  alongside  his 
scientific  career  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

In  1937  he  enrolled  at  University  College 
Hospital  Medical  School  and  qualified  in  medi- 
cine (MB,  B.Chir.)  in  1940  after  the  start  of 
World  War  II.  His  first  clinical  appointment  at 
the  Royal  Postgraduate  Medical  School  (RPMS), 
Hammersmith,  was  soon  interrupted  when  an 
attack  of  bronchitis  was  diagnosed  as  tuberculo- 
sis. After  convalescence  he  spent  a  year  (1941-2) 
as  Jenner  research  fellow  at  the  Lister  Institute 
for  Preventive  Medicine,  Stanmore,  Middlesex, 
carrying  out  microbiological  studies.  As  he  was 
no  longer  eligible  for  service  in  the  armed  forces, 
he  accepted  in  1942  the  post  of  assistant  patholo- 
gist at  the  Central  Middlesex  Hospital  (the  chief 
pathologist  being  imprisoned  by  the  Japanese). 
Under  these  difficult  conditions  he  still  managed 
to  publish  ten  papers  on  his  hospital  work. 

After  the  war  he  was  able  to  carry  out  his 
passionate  wish  to  do  full-time  research  related 
to  clinical  problems.  In  1946  he  obtained  an 
external  Medical  Research  Council  appointment 
in  microbiology  at  UCHMS  to  work  on  bacterial 
enzymes.  He  became  MD  in  1947.  In  1949  he 
joined  the  National  Institute  for  Medical 
Research  (NIMR)  at  Hampstead  (later  at  Mill 
Hill),  as  a  member  of  the  scientific  staff  in  the 
division  of  biological  standards,  which  provided 
great  opportunities  for  interdisciplinary  research. 
By  this  time  there  was  an  urgent  need  to  stan- 
dardize biological  substances,  such  as  antibiotics, 
and  he  developed  novel  techniques  for  the  quan- 


212 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hunt 


titative  analysis  of  their  biological  activities.  He 
also  found  time  to  initiate  collaborations  with 
other  institute  members  on  basic  immunological 
problems,  which  remained  a  major  focus  of  his 
life's  work. 

In  1957  he  was  invited  to  become  head  of  a 
newly  founded  immunology  department  at 
NIMR,  where  he  served  as  deputy  director  from 
1 96 1  until  1976,  when  he  accepted  the  chair  of 
immunology  at  the  RPMS,  Hammersmith.  His 
official  retirement  from  the  chair  was  in  1981; 
however,  he  continued  his  advisory  and  immu- 
nological activities  as  emeritus  professor  at 
RPMS  until  his  death.  Cher  many  years  he 
became  increasingly  deaf  due  to  bilateral  acoustic 
neuroma,  diagnosed  only  late  with  advances  in 
technology.  Regardless  of  a  serious  cardiac  con- 
dition, he  continued  undeterred  with  all  his 
work,  travelling  widely,  writing,  lecturing, 
encouraging  students  and  colleagues,  and  pro- 
viding liberal  advice. 

Humphrey  was  a  tireless  worker;  he  was 
interested  in  all  aspects  of  basic  and  clinical 
immunology;  his  encyclopaedic  memory  enabled 
his  research  to  touch  on  diverse  problems,  with 
particular  focus  on  cell-mediated  immunity  as 
well  as  immunopathology.  At  the  time  almost 
nothing  was  known  about  the  complex  cellular 
interactions  responsible  for  the  different  immune 
reactivities.  He  is  best  known  for  his  studies  with 
radio-labelled  antibodies,  the  cascade  of  events  in 
allergic  or  anaphylactic  reactions,  the  role  of 
complement  components  in  lysing  cells,  events 
underlying  local  antibody/antigen  reactions  in 
vivo  (e.g.,  the  release  of  histamine  and  other 
substances  by  different  cell  types),  and  the  fate  of 
administered  foreign  molecules  or  pathogens  in 
relation  to  the  generation  of  immunity.  He  pub- 
lished over  200  papers  and  several  book  chapters 
covering  these  studies.  In  1963  he  published  a 
textbook  (Immunology  for  Students  of  Medicine), 
with  R.  G.  White;  it  made  a  great  impact, 
presenting  in  a  dynamic  and  exciting  way  the 
'new'  type  of  immunology  in  relation  to  clinical 
medicine.  He  was  an  important  member  of  many 
national  and  international  committees  connected 
with  the  Royal  Society,  Medical  Research  Coun- 
cil, World  Health  Organization,  and  Interna- 
tional Council  of  Scientific  Unions. 

Most  importandy,  Humphrey  exerted  a  pro- 
found influence  on  his  many  young  associates 
attracted  from  all  over  the  world  and  on  the 
direction  of  immunological  thinking.  His  enthu- 
siasm for  immunology  was  infectious  and  he  was 
generous  with  novel  ideas.  He  always  made  time 
for  any  colleagues  or  students  who  sought  him 
out. 

In  addition  to  his  busy  scientific  career  and 
influence,  he  found  time  to  pursue  his  passionate 
concern  for  many  socio-political  issues.  He  was  a 
founder  member  of  the  Medical  Association  for 


the  Prevention  of  War  (1951)  and  the  Medical 
Campaign  against  Nuclear  Weapons  (chairman, 
1 981,  and  president  from  1985),  president  of  the 
Society  for  the  Protection  of  Science  and  Learn- 
ing (from  1978),  and  a  supporter  of  Pugwash  (a 
group  of  international  scientists  dedicated  to 
preventing  nuclear  war).  He  wrote  a  number  of 
articles  concerning  the  physicians'  peace  move- 
ment and  co-authored,  with  J.  Ziman  and  P. 
•Sieghart,  The  World  of  Science  and  the  rule  of 
Law  (1986). 

Elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1963, 
Humphrey  became  an  honorary  member  of  the 
American  Association  of  Immunologists  in  the 
same  year.  He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1970.  He 
was  a  fellow  of  Winchester  College  (1965-78),  of 
the  Institute  of  Biology  (1968),  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Physicians  (1070),  and  a  foreign  hon- 
orary member  of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts 
and  Sciences  (1981).  He  had  honorary  member- 
ships of  scientific  societies  in  The  Netherlands, 
Hungary,  South  Africa,  Germany,  and  Czecho- 
slovakia. He  was  elected  a  foreign  associate 
member  of  the  US  National  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences (1986)  and  an  honorary  fellow  of  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge  (1986),  and  he  was  awarded 
an   honorary   doctorate   by   Brunei   University 

(1979)- 

Humphrey  was  tall  and  thin,  with  uncombed 
and  wispy  light  brown  hair,  lively  eyes,  and  an 
alert  and  active  stance.  His  friendly  look  con- 
veyed genuine  interest  and  concern  for  the  other 
person.  In  1939  he  married  Janet  Rumney, 
daughter  of  Professor  Archibald  Vivian  *Hill, 
CH,  FRS,  Nobel  laureate  in  physiology.  They 
had  two  sons  and  three  daughters.  Humphrey 
died  25  December  1987  at  his  country  home  in 
Ashwell,  Hertfordshire. 

[B.  A.  Askonas  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvi,  1990;  personal  knowledge.] 

B.  A.  Askonas 

HUNT,  John  Henderson,  Baron  Hunt  of 
Fawley  (1905-1987),  general  practitioner  and 
medical  politician,  was  born  3  July  1905  in 
Secunderabad,  India,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of 
three  sons  and  two  daughters  of  Edmund  Hen- 
derson Hunt,  surgeon  to  the  Hyderabad  state 
railways,  and  his  wife,  Laura  Man.-  Buckingham, 
the  daughter  of  a  tea  planter.  Mother  and  chil- 
dren returned  to  England  before  World  War  I 
and  John  was  educated  at  Charterhouse,  Balliol 
College,  Oxford  (where  he  obtained  a  second 
class  in  physiology  in  1927)  and  St  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital,  London.  He  qualified  BM, 
B.Ch.  and  MRCS,  LRCP  in  193 1. 

After  qualification  Hunt  seemed  destined  for  a 
career  in  neurology  and  worked  at  the  National 
Hospital  for  Nervous  Diseases  and  then  at  St 
Bartholomew's,  as  chief  assistant  to  the  neuro- 
logical clinic.  During  this  period  he  obtained  his 


213 


Hunt 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


MRCP  (London,  1934)  and  a  DM  (Oxford, 
1935).  He  then  decided  to  be  a  general  practi- 
tioner. In  1937  he  joined  Dr  George  Cregan 
in  practice  at  83  Sloane  Street  as  a  partner,  but 
he  never  went  into  financial  partnership  during 
his  career. 

During  World  War  II  he  served  in  the  Royal 
Air  Force  as  a  neurologist,  with  the  rank  of  wing 
commander.  He  returned  to  general  practice 
independently  in  1945,  at  54  Sloane  Square. 
Always  in  private  practice,  he  never  really  under- 
stood the  National  Health  Service.  His  patients 
were  in  the  main  well  off  and  had  high  expecta- 
tions of  health  care,  which  he  endeavoured  to 
meet.  He  had  his  own  laboratory  and  X-ray 
facilities  and  ran  a  practice  where  success  was 
measured  more  by  medical  than  financial  stan- 
dards. He  had,  as  he  confided  to  his  brother,  the 
ambition  to  be  the  best  GP  in  England,  even 
though  his  type  of  practice  was  vastly  different 
from  most.  He  had  a  high  referral  rate  of  patients 
for  specialist  opinions,  but  this  was  not  because 
of  personal  lack  of  knowledge;  his  patients 
expected  a  second  opinion.  He  consequently  had 
close  relationships  with  specialists.  Although  he 
preferred  the  organic  aspects  of  medicine  to  the 
psycho-social,  he  always  considered  the  person- 
ality and  character  of  the  patient  when  deciding 
the  best  course  of  management.  Despite  being  a 
quick  worker  he  seldom  gave  the  impression  he 
was  hurrying  or  did  not  have  time  to  listen.  He 
would  sit  at  breakfast  with  two  telephones  to 
hand,  one  for  incoming  calls  and  one  for  out- 
going, and  he  rarely  drove  to  visits,  having  a 
succession  of  lady  drivers  whilst  he  sat  in  the 
back  of  the  car  dictating  his  notes.  The  notes 
were  typed  in  the  car  while  he  was  in  a  house 
seeing  his  next  patient. 

In  195 1  and  1952  Hunt  played  a  crucial  role  in 
the  establishment  of  a  College  of  General  Practi- 
tioners. The  three  royal  colleges,  which  were 
implacably  opposed  to  a  separate  college,  set  up 
their  own  committee,  with  Hunt  as  a  member,  to 
promote  a  joint  faculty.  However,  Hunt  knew 
that  a  full  and  independent  college  was  required 
and  gained  support  for  it  through  meetings  and 
letters  to  influential  journals  and  people.  Opposi- 
tion was  expressed  by  the  press  and  in  official 
circles,  but,  with  Hunt  as  the  honorary  secretary 
of  a  steering  committee,  articles  of  association 
were  signed  on  19  November  1952.  Within  six 
months  2,000  practitioners  joined,  a  foundation 
council  was  formed,  and  the  college  was 
launched.  For  the  next  thirteen  years  Hunt  was 
honorary  secretary  of  council,  and  never  missed  a 
meeting.  He  was  a  'workaholic',  with  obsessional 
determination  and  attention  to  detail,  who 
demanded  as  much  from  those  who  worked  with 
him  as  he  gave.  He  had  an  authoritarian  demean- 
our, but  his  enthusiasm  and  energy  were  such 
that  people  responded  with  their  best,  although 


several  of  them  became  exhausted  by  the  attempt 
to  keep  pace. 

Hunt  received  an  avalanche  of  honours.  He 
became  FRCP  (1964)  and  FRCS  (1966)  and  was 
recognized  by  colleges  in  Canada,  the  USA,  and 
Australia.  He  gave  numerous  important  lectures 
and  was  the  president  of  many  of  the  prestigious 
medical  societies  in  London.  He  was  appointed 
CBE  in  1970,  was  made  a  life  peer  in  1973,  which 
enabled  him  to  steer  the  Medical  Act  of  1978 
through  the  House  of  Lords,  and  received  the 
gold  medal  of  the  British  Medical  Association  in 
1980. 

Hunt  was  a  big  man  who,  in  spite  of  a  hip 
problem,  walked  prodigiously,  on  one  occasion 
from  Land's  End  to  John  o'  Groats.  He  played 
furious  tennis  and  croquet  at  his  country  house 
in  Henley.  His  eyes  were  always  a  problem  to 
him.  He  was  short-sighted  in  youth  and  lost  the 
sight  of  one  eye  in  1967.  Ten  years  later  he  began 
to  lose  the  sight  of  the  other  and  this  greatly- 
taxed  his  patience  and  that  of  his  family.  Later  he 
developed  Parkinson's  disease. 

In  1 94 1  he  married  Elisabeth  Ernestine, 
daughter  of  Norman  Evill,  FRIBA,  architect. 
They  had  three  sons  and  two  daughters,  two  of 
whom  became  medical  doctors.  The  eldest  son 
died  of  leukaemia  at  the  age  of  five;  this  deeply 
distressed  Hunt,  who  could  never  bear  to  discuss 
it  afterwards.  His  wife's  help  was  essential  in 
providing  the  stability  on  which  his  achieve- 
ments were  based.  In  spite  of  his  rate  of  working, 
he  always  had  time  for  his  children  and  took 
great  interest  in  their  achievements,  particularly 
those  of  a  sporting  nature.  He  died  28  December 
1987  at  his  home,  Seven  Steep,  in  Fawley,  near 
Henley-on-Thames. 

[John  Horder,  The  Writings  of  John  Hunt,  1992;  J.  Fry, 
J.  Hunt,  and  R.  J.  F.  Pinsent  (eds.),  A  History  of  the 
Royal  College  of  General  Practitioners,  1993;  private 
information.]  Michael  Drury 

HUNT,  Norman  Crowther,  Baron  Crowther- 
Hunt  (1920-1987),  academic,  constitutional 
expert,  and  broadcaster,  was  born  13  March  1920 
at  Bradford,  Yorkshire,  the  elder  son  (there  were 
no  daughters)  of  Ernest  Angus  Hunt,  master 
butcher,  of  Eccleshill,  Bradford,  and  his  wife, 
Florence  Crowther.  He  was  educated  at  Belle 
Vue  High  School,  Bradford,  and  at  Sidney  Sus- 
sex College,  Cambridge,  where  he  was  an  exhibi- 
tioner (1939-40)  and,  after  war  service  in  the 
Royal  Artillery  and  the  War  Office,  a  scholar 
(1945-7).  He  took  a  first  in  both  parts  of  the 
history  tripos  (1946  and  1947),  was  a  research 
fellow  of  Sidney  Sussex  (1949-51),  and  then 
spent  a  year  as  Commonwealth  Fund  fellow  at 
Princeton,  studying  American  politics.  In  1952 
he  was  elected  to  a  tutorial  fellowship  in  politics 
at  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  where  he  spent  the 
rest  of  his  academic  career. 


214 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hurst 


He  was  the  very  antithesis  of  the  cloistered 
don,  however.  A  square,  stocky,  round-faced 
man  of  enormous  energy  and  indefatigable  good 
humour,  he  took  delight  in  challenging  closed 
establishments,  devising  schemes  and  drafting 
papers  for  reform  of  matters  great  and  small,  and 
proving  his  stamina  in  new  fields.  He  had  won  a 
Cambridge  football  blue  as  goalkeeper  (1040), 
and  continued  to  be  an  agile  opponent  in  most 
ball  games  and  in  politics  at  every  level.  His  years 
as  domestic  bursar  of  Exeter  (1954-70)  were 
christened  the  Norman  Conquest  by  those  who 
felt  their  impact.  He  was  not  a  man  for  the  long 
considered  haul  of  quiet  research.  He  published 
part  of  his  historical  Cambridge  Ph.D.  thesis 
(1951)  as  Two  Early  Political  Associations  (1961), 
edited  Whitehall  and  Beyond  (1964)  and  (with 
Graham  Tayar)  Personality  and  Power  (1971), 
and  wrote  (with  Peter  Kellner)  The  Civil  Ser- 
vants (1980).  But  his  academic  gifts  lay  in  teach- 
ing, not  scholarship. 

He  was  an  invigorating,  forceful  tutor  for 
generations  of  Oxford  undergraduates,  and, 
thanks  to  the  BBC,  a  challenging  political  guide 
and  familiar  voice  to  a  much  wider  audience. 
From  1 96 1  he  appeared  regularly  on  both  tele- 
vision and  radio,  and  his  'People  and  Politics' 
was  a  weekly  feature  of  the  World  Service  for 
many  years.  His  long  service  to  the  BBC  culmi- 
nated in  his  appointment  as  chairman  of  its 
general  advisory  council  in  1986.  It  had  also 
initiated  a  lasting  friendship  with  Harold  Wilson 
(later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx),  a  fellow  York- 
shireman,  whom  Hunt  interviewed  (and  gready 
impressed)  shortly  after  Wilson's  election  as 
leader  of  the  Labour  party  in  1963.  While  Wilson 
was  prime  minister  (1964-70,  1974-6),  Hunt  was 
able  to  promote  the  two  constitutional  issues 
about  which  he  felt  most  deeply,  and  which  he 
helped  to  place  firmly  on  the  political  agenda: 
reform  of  the  Civil  Service,  and  devolution. 

His  was  the  chief  radical  voice  in  the  commit- 
tee on  the  Civil  Service  (1966-8),  chaired  by 
Baron  *Fulton.  He  led  its  management  con- 
sultancy group  and  drafted  much  of  the  final 
report  which  condemned  the  'generalist'  (and 
Oxbridge)  bias  of  Civil  Service  recruitment  and 
sought  to  open  senior  posts  to  specialists.  In  1969 
he  was  appointed  to  the  royal  commission  on  the 
constitution,  chaired  first  by  Baron  *Crowther 
and  then  by  C.  J.  D.  *Shaw  (later  Baron  Kil- 
brandon).  Hunt  was  once  again  on  the  radical 
wing,  though  this  time  in  a  minority.  He  was 
principal  author  of  a  long  memorandum  of  dis- 
sent to  the  final  report  (1973),  in  which  he  argued 
that  devolution  to  the  English  regions  must  go 
hand  in  hand  with  the  devolution  to  elected 
assemblies  in  Scotland  and  Wales  which  Kil- 
brandon  recommended. 

In  1973  he  was  made  a  life  peer,  and  on 
Wilson's    return    to    power    in    1974    he    was 


appointed  constitutional  adviser  to  the  govern- 
ment (March-October),  with  a  brief  to  develop 
its  devolution  proposals.  He  dealt  with  the  same 
issue  as  minister  in  the  Privy  Council  office  in 
1976.  In  the  interim,  from  1974  to  1976,  he  was 
minister  of  state  at  the  Department  of  Education 
and  Science;  but  he  was  less  successful  at  hand- 
ling the  public  controversies  aroused  by  his 
proposals  for  manpower  planning  in  higher  edu- 
cation than  he  had  been  as  a  backroom  advocate 
and  elaborator  of  policy.  He  was  disillusioned 
also  by  the  extent  to  which  narrowly  party 
political  considerations  determined  the  govern- 
ment's attitude  to  devolution,  and  although  Civil 
Service  reform  had  proceeded  further,  he  chafed 
at  what  he  saw  as  continuing  Whitehall  obstruc- 
tion. He  returned  to  full-time  teaching  at  Exeter 
College  in  1976,  not  disappointed  (he  was  the  last 
man  ever  to  have  regrets),  but  with  some  relief. 
His  election  as  rector  of  the  college  in  1982 
began  the  final,  and  personally  most  satisfying, 
part  of  his  career.  He  enjoyed  the  distinction,  as 
he  enjoyed  his  honorary  fellowship  of  Sidney 
Sussex  (1982)  and  his  honorary  degrees  from 
Bradford  University  (1974)  and  Williams  Col- 
lege, Massachusetts  (1985).  But  he  was  as  deter- 
mined as  ever  to  use  his  position  to  reshape 
institutions  and  open  their  doors  to  fresh  talent. 
He  helped  to  reform  the  university's  admissions 
procedures,  and  initiated  an  ambitious  and  suc- 
cessful college  appeal.  He  made  the  rector's 
lodgings  a  welcoming  centre  of  college  activity, 
where  undergraduates  met  public  figures,  where 
he  could  share  his  interests  in  music,  and  where 
his  closeness  to  his  family,  and  dependence  upon 
them,  were  visible.  He  had  married  Joyce, 
daughter  of  the  Revd  Joseph  Stackhouse,  of 
Walsall  Wood,  Staffordshire,  in  1944;  they  had 
three  daughters.  Still  full  of  plans  for  the  college, 
and  with  seven  months  to  go  before  retiring  from 
office,  he  died  suddenly  of  a  heart  attack  in  the 
John  Radcliffe  Hospital,  Oxford,  16  Februarv 
1987. 
[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Paul  Slack 

HUNTINGDON,  fifteenth  Earl  of  (1901- 
1990),  artist  and  politician.  [See  Hastings, 
Francis  John  Clarence  Westenra  Planta- 
genet.] 

HURST,  Margery  (1913-1989),  recruitment 
agency  founder,  was  born  23  May  19 13,  probably 
in  Portsmouth,  the  second  of  four  daughters 
(there  were  no  sons)  of  Samuel  Berney,  cinema 
owner  and  builder,  of  Portsmouth,  and  his  wife 
Deborah,  nee  Rose.  Her  grandparents  on  both 
sides  were  Russian  Jewish  immigrants.  She  was 
educated  at  Brondesbury  and  Kilburn  High 
School,  London,  and  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Dramatic  Art.  While  at  RADA  she  acted  two 


215 


Hurst 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


nights  a  week  with  the  repertory  company  at 
Collins  music  hall,  which  her  father  had  just 
bought,  but  she  decided  she  was  too  self-con- 
scious to  become  an  actress,  and  got  a  job  as  a 
typist.  From  there  she  moved  on  to  work  for  her 
father,  running  the  clerical  side  of  his  building 
business,  and  then  became  his  office  manager. 

At  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  she  became  a 
secretary  in  an  ambulance  unit,  and  in  1943  she 
was  commissioned  into  the  Auxiliary  Territorial 
Service  (ATS).  She  later  claimed  that  running  a 
business  was  not  very  different  from  being  in 
charge  of  a  platoon.  In  1944  she  was  invalided 
out  of  the  army  after  having  a  nervous  break- 
down, worn  out  by  the  constant  battle  against 
army  red  tape. 

In  1946,  three  weeks  after  the  birth  of  her  first 
child,  her  husband  deserted  her  for  another 
woman,  and,  driven  by  the  need  to  support 
herself  and  her  baby,  she  borrowed  £50  and  an 
old  typewriter  from  her  father,  rented  a  small 
room  at  62  Brook  Street,  opposite  Claridge's  in 
May  fair,  and  started  a  typing  agency.  But  over- 
work and  the  stress  involved  in  leaving  her  baby 
with  a  nanny  in  Portsmouth  while  she  spent  the 
week  in  London  led  to  another  breakdown,  and 
the  typing  agency  collapsed.  She  started  again, 
founding  the  Brook  Street  Bureau  of  Mayfair, 
this  time  supplying  other  businesses  with  tempo- 
rary secretaries.  From  the  beginning  she  would 
only  take  on  secretaries  with  several  years' 
experience,  who  had  passed  her  skills  test  in 
shorthand  and  typing.  In  the  early  1950s  the 
Brook  Street  Bureau  began  to  open  branches  in 
the  London  suburbs  and  then  in  other  parts  of 
the  country.  By  1961  there  were  thirty-three 
branches,  providing  about  one  third  of  Britain's 
agency-supplied  staff,  both  temporary  and  per- 
manent. In  the  early  1960s  she  opened  branches 
in  New  York  and  Australia.  In  1965  the  com- 
pany, now  the  largest  office  employment  agency 
in  the  world,  was  floated  on  the  London  Stock 
Exchange.  Because  she  was  persuaded  that  it 
would  be  impossible  to  have  a  woman  as  chair- 
man of  a  public  company,  Margery  Hurst  reluc- 
tantly agreed  to  remain  as  managing  director, 
with  her  husband  as  chairman.  The  flotation  was 
a  success,  and  share  prices  doubled  in  fifteen 
months. 

There  were  financial  problems  in  the  early 
1970s,  but  profits  rose  again  with  the  highly 
successful  'Brook  Street  Got  Big  by  Bothering' 
advertising  campaign  on  London  underground 
trains,  which  lasted  for  a  decade.  The  Brook 
Street  Bureau  suffered  during  the  recession  of 
the  early  1980s  and  was  forced  to  close  100 
branches  in  Britain,  as  well  as  most  of  the 
branches  in  Australia  and  the  United  States.  In 
1985  it  was  sold  for  over  £19  million  to  the  Blue 
Arrow  recruitment  group.  The  Hursts,  who 
owned  61   per  cent  of  the  shares,  made  £10 


million  out  of  the  sale.  Brook  Street  kept  its 
identity,  and  Margery  Hurst  stayed  on  as  non- 
executive chairman  and  consultant  until  1988. 

A  member  of  the  London  county  council 
children's  committee  for  several  years  from  1956, 
she  was  involved  in  charities  concerned  with 
child  welfare,  and  in  1973  she  bought  and 
founded  a  house  in  Gravesend  to  train  autistic 
school-leavers  for  jobs.  She  was  on  the  executive 
committee  of  the  Mental  Health  Research  Fund 
from  1967  to  1972.  She  also  campaigned  against 
discrimination  in  recruitment  against  ex- 
psychiatric  patients,  and  in  the  1970s  Brook 
Street  started  a  special  project  for  the  placement 
of  those  who  had  been  mentally  ill.  She  was 
appointed  OBE  in  1976  and  was  one  of  the  first 
women  to  become  a  member  of  Lloyd's,  in  1970. 
She  was  elected  the  first  female  member  of  the 
Worshipful  Company  of  Marketors  [sic]  in  1981, 
became  a  freeman  of  the  City  of  London  the 
same  year,  and  was  also  the  first  woman  to  be 
elected  to  the  New  York  chamber  of  com- 
merce. 

She  was  very  small,  five  feet  tall,  but  had  a 
dominating,  if  not  domineering,  personality.  She 
was  assertive  and  competitive,  and  even  as  a  child 
she  wanted  to  be  in  charge,  not  just  part  of  a 
team.  She  was  hot-tempered  and  liable  to  have 
violent  arguments  with  members  of  her  staff. 
Restless  and  energetic,  she  found  it  hard  to  relax 
and  had  a  series  of  mental  breakdowns.  In  1940 
she  married  Major  William  Baines,  army  officer. 
They  had  twin  daughters,  one  of  whom  was 
stillborn.  They  were  divorced  and  in  1948  she 
married  Eric  Kenneth  Isaac  Hurst,  barrister  and 
later  her  business  partner,  the  son  of  Wilfred 
Hurst,  cotton  merchant.  There  was  one  daughter 
from  this  second  marriage,  which  ended  in 
divorce.  Margery  Hurst  died  11  February  1989 
at  her  London  home  in  Eaton  Square. 

[Independent,  16  February  1989;  Margery  Hurst,  No 
Glass  Slipper,  1967;  Margery  Hurst  with  Sally  Bromp- 
ton,  Walking  up  Brook  Street,  1988.] 

Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

HUTCHINSON,  Sir  Joseph  Bum  (1002- 
1988),  geneticist,  tropical  plant  breeder,  and 
agriculturalist,  was  born  21  March  1902  in  Bur- 
ton Latimer,  Northamptonshire,  the  eldest  of 
three  sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  Quaker 
parents  Edmund  Hutchinson,  who  farmed  at 
Cransley  Grange,  and  his  wife,  Lydia  Mary 
Davy.  'Jack',  as  he  was  known  within  the  family, 
was  encouraged  to  participate  in  the  activities  of 
the  farm,  learning  skills  that  were  to  serve  him 
well  in  later  years.  He  was  educated  at  Ackworth 
and  then  Bootham  School,  where  he  showed  an 
aptitude  for  science,  winning  an  exhibition  to  St 
John's  College,  Cambridge.  Though  keen  to 
farm,  he  was  encouraged  by  his  uncle,  Joseph 
Burn  Davy,  a  distinguished  African  plant  tax- 


216 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hutton 


onomist,  to  read  botany.  After  gaining  second- 
class  honours  in  both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences 
tripos  (1922  and  1923),  he  went  to  study  at  the 
Imperial  College  of  Tropical  Agriculture  in 
Trinidad. 

From  his  earliest  years  Hutchinson  brought 
together  the  charity  and  discipline  of  his  Quaker 
upbringing,  a  common-sense  approach,  learned 
through  practical  farming,  and  his  excellence  in 
science.  With  his  direct  and  attentive  gaze  and 
upright  bearing,  his  capacity  to  listen,  speak 
clearly  and  with  authority,  and  to  blend  the 
thoughts  of  those  around  him  with  his  own 
radical  and  incisive  thinking,  were  treasured  by 
those  he  knew  and  with  whom  he  worked. 

From  1924,  in  Trinidad,  he  worked  on  the 
breeding  of  cotton,  using  the  new  genetical 
science.  He  was  assigned  research  on  the  African 
and  Asian  species.  Seizing  a  chance  to  work  in 
India  in  1933,  Hutchinson  went  as  geneticist  and 
botanist  to  the  Institute  of  Plant  Industry  at 
Indore,  where  he  found  the  prevailing  Indian 
Civil  Service  attitude  to  research  utilitarian  and 
myopically  short-term.  Here  he  excelled  by  har- 
nessing the  power  of  numerous  young  Indian 
scientists,  whom  he  trained  to  work  on  the 
biodiversity  of  native  cottons.  He  became  a 
legend  in  India  and  left  behind  him  an  embry- 
onic programme  for  improved  crop  breeding.  He 
returned  to  Trinidad  in  1937,  to  head  the  Empire 
Cotton  Growing  Corporation's  cotton  genetics 
programme.  He  was  appointed  CMG  in  1944 
before  becoming  chief  geneticist  at  the  Corpora- 
tion's station  near  Khartoum,  Sudan  (1944-9). 

Apart  from  his  major  taxonomic  work  on 
cotton,  for  which  he  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  195 1,  Hutchinson's  principal  plant- 
breeding  achievement  was  in  developing  cotton 
varieties  resistant  to  disease,  the  descendants  of 
which  formed  the  principal  cottons  grown  in 
sub-Saharan  Africa  in  the  late  twentieth  century. 
He  became  director  of  the  Cotton  Corporation's 
Namulonge  research  station  in  Uganda  in  1949. 
It  was  in  Uganda  that  he  ensured  a  continuing 
and  high  profile  for  agricultural  research  in 
English-speaking  Africa.  He  never  lost  sight  of 
the  needs  of  the  African  smallholder.  In  Uganda, 
a  country  which  depended  on  cotton  and  coffee, 
Hutchinson  played  a  major  role  in  developing 
agricultural  education  at  school,  technical,  and 
university  levels.  He  chaired  the  Makerere  Col- 
lege council  (1953-7)  m  tnc  ^*  days  of  a 
relatively  enlightened  Protectorate  government. 
Knighted  in  1956  for  his  services  in  East  Africa, 
he  'retired'  in  1957  when  offered  the  Drapers' 
chair  of  agriculture  at  Cambridge  and  a  fellow- 
ship at  St  John's  College. 

His  Cambridge  years  were  celebrated  by  the 
wide  vision  of  his  undergraduate  teaching  and 
writing,  but  they  were  uneasy,  for  in  1969  the 
school  of  agriculture  was  eventually  forced  to 


close,  under  government  pressure,  despite  the 
reinvigoration  that  Hutchinson  latterly  brought 
to  it.  He  was  a  figure  of  national  standing  in 
British  agriculture  and,  with  his  global  view, 
continually  challenged  the  conventional  wisdoms 
of  his  times.  He  was  particularly  proud  of  his 
governing  body  associations  with  the  John  Innes 
and  Plant  Breeding  Institutes  and  the  Norfolk 
Agricultural  Station.  He  was  president  of  the 
British  Association  in  1955-6,  received  the  Royal 
Society  medal  in  1967,  and  had  honorary  D.Sc.s 
from  Nottingham  (1966)  and  East  Anglia  (1972). 
Among  his  books  were  The  Genetics  ofGossyptum 
(1047)  and  Application  of  Genetics  to  Cotton 
Improvement  (1959). 

Hutchinson  was  a  humble  man  who  con- 
sistently and  unobtrusively  adhered  to  the  pre- 
cepts of  the  Society  of  Friends.  He  was  chairman 
of  the  board  of  governors  of  a  local  Friends' 
school,  a  preacher  in  Cambridge  churches  and 
college  chapels,  and  'a  weighty  Friend'  in  his 
own  Quaker  meeting.  He  was  an  immensely 
positive  person  with  a  deep  faith  in  the  essential 
goodness  of  human  beings. 

In  1930  he  married  Martha  Leonora  ('Lena'), 
daughter  of  George  Frederick  Johnson,  who 
trained  as  an  engineer  and  worked  in  his  own 
brass  and  ironmongery  business  in  Malton, 
Yorkshire.  It  was  a  lifelong  partnership  marked 
by  a  real  devotion;  in  their  home  simplicity  and 
gravitas  were  combined  with  quiet  humour  and 
occasional  frivolity.  They  had  a  son  and  a  daugh- 
ter. Hutchinson  died  16  January  1988  at  home  in 
Girton,  Cambridge. 

[Sir  Denis  Rooke  in  Biographical  Memoirs  0/ Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvii,  1991;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Stephen  P.  Tom  kins 

HUTTON,  Sir  Leonard  (19 16-1990),  cricketer, 
was  born  23  June  1916  m  Fulneck,  near  Pudsey, 
Leeds,  the  youngest  in  the  family  of  four  sons 
and  one  daughter  of  Henry  Hutton,  builder,  and 
his  wife  Lily  Swithenbank,  whose  uncle,  Seth 
Milner,  had  been  a  prominent  cricketer  in  the 
1880s.  Fulneck,  a  Moravian  religious  commu- 
nity, had  been  founded  in  the  1730s  by  Count 
Zinzendorf,  an  exile  from  Bohemia.  Generations 
of  Huttons,  some  of  whom  became  Moravian 
ministers,  went  to  the  community's  school  and 
chapel  and  were  brought  up  in  a  terrace  house 
dating  from  the  eighteenth  century.  This  moral, 
Nonconformist  upbringing,  which  Len  Hutton 
later  described  as  'strict  but  caring',  gave  him  a 
reserved  and  thoughtful  demeanour  unusual 
among  professional  cricketers.  He  was  educated 
at  Littlemoor  Council  School,  Pudsey. 

His  talent  marked  him  out  early  for  a  career  in 
the  game,  to  which  he  took,  he  said,  Mike  a 
Sherpa  to  the  mountains'.  His  three  brothers  all 
played  Yorkshire  league  cricket  for  the  Pudsey  St 
Lawrence  Club,  where  he  joined  them  in  the  first 


217 


Hutton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


XI  at  the  age  of  fourteen.  An  important  event  in 
his  life  was  the  return  to  Pudsey  of  Herbert 
•Sutcliffe,  the  opening  batsman  for  Yorkshire 
and  England,  who  had  played  in  his  youth  with 
Hutton's  father.  Sutcliffe  quickly  saw  the  poten- 
tial of  the  talented  teenager  who  played  on  the 
concrete  strip  in  Sutcliffe's  garden  and  described 
him  as  'a  marvel — the  discovery  of  a  generation'. 
Hutton  said  he  looked  up  to  Sutcliffe  at  this  time 
'with  the  reverence  that  a  pious  Roman  Catholic 
has  for  the  Pope'. 

It  was  Sutcliffe  who  introduced  him  to  the 
Yorkshire  County  Cricket  Club,  where  he  was 
coached  at  the  austere  Headingley  'Winter  Shed' 
in  nearby  Leeds  by  George  *Hirst,  the  former 
England  all-rounder,  who  soon  pronounced  that 
he  could  'teach  him  nowt'.  In  1930,  when  he  was 
fourteen,  Hutton  sat  enthralled  in  the  Head- 
ingley crowd  as  the  great  Australian,  (Sir) 
Donald  Bradman,  scored  309  runs  in  a  day  on  his 
way  to  the  record  total  of  334  which,  eight  years 
later,  Hutton  was  to  break  at  the  Oval  in  the  most 
famous  innings  of  his  life. 

Yorkshire  was  the  most  powerful  cricket 
county  in  England  in  the  1930s,  winning  the 
championship  five  times  in  the  seven  years  before 
World  War  II,  and  to  break  into  that  team  at  all 
was  an  achievement.  Hutton  did  this  in  1934,  at 
the  age  of  seventeen,  albeit  with  a  duck  (a  feat 
he  repeated  three  years  later  on  his  debut  for 
England).  But  he  confirmed  his  class  with  an 
early  innings  of  196.  Yorkshire,  with  talent  to 
spare,  nursed  the  young  Hutton  through  his 
early  seasons  to  avoid  putting  too  much  strain  on 
his  fragile  physique.  He  later  claimed  to  have 
learned  all  he  knew  about  cricket  from  listening 
to  the  dressing-room  talk  of  great  players  like 
Sutcliffe,  Hedley  *Verity,  Maurice  Leyland,  and 
W.  E.  Bowes.  It  was  an  austere  and  rigorous 
apprenticeship  designed  to  keep  a  young  man, 
however  talented,  in  his  place.  Even  so,  he  was  to 
say  later  of  the  Yorkshire  dressing-room  of  his 
youth:  'Had- 1  been  ordered  to  walk  on  broken 
glass,  I  would  have  instantly  obeyed.' 

In  1937,  just  after  his  twenty-first  birthday,  he 
opened  the  batting  for  England  against  New 
Zealand  and  scored  a  century  in  his  second  test 
match.  It  was  a  year  later,  in  the  'timeless'  test  at 
the  Oval  against  Australia,  that  Hutton  made 
history,  scoring  his  record  364  in  England's 
highest  ever  total  of  903.  It  was  a  marathon  feat 
of  concentration  over  thirteen  hours  and  seven- 
teen minutes,  the  longest  innings  ever  played, 
and  the  highest  score  by  an  England  batsman.  It 
made  him  an  instant  celebrity  wherever  cricket 
was  played — a  fame  not  entirely  welcome  to  his 
reclusive  personality. 

In  1939,  first  in  South  Africa  and  then  at  home 
against  the  West  Indies,  he  gave  some  of  his 
finest  batting  performances  and,  in  the  view  of 
many  sound  judges,  was  just  reaching  a  peak 


when  his  career  was  interrupted  by  six  years  of 
war,  when  he  served  in  the  Royal  Artillery  and 
the  Army  Physical  Training  Corps.  In  Hutton's 
case  the  war  was  a  double  tragedy,  for  he 
dislocated  a  wrist  badly  in  a  gymnasium  accident 
in  March  1941  and  was  left,  after  skin  and  bone 
graft  operations,  with  one  arm  more  than  two 
inches  shorter  than  the  other.  He  was  discharged 
from  the  army  and  for  some  time  it  seemed 
unlikely  that  he  could  ever  play  cricket  again. 

He  returned  to  the  international  arena  in  1946, 
and  over  the  next  decade  established  himself  as 
England's  greatest  opening  batsman  since  Sir 
Jack  *Hobbs,  scoring  over  40,000  runs  in  his 
career,  including  129  centuries,  at  an  average  of 
55.  But,  as  R.  C.  Robertson-Glasgow  wrote,  'to 
admire  Len  Hutton  merely  for  the  quantity  of  his 
runs  is  like  praising  Milton  for  the  length  of 
Paradise  Lost  or  Schubert  for  the  number  of  his 
songs.'  Despite  the  handicap  to  his  left  arm, 
which  forced  him  to  use  a  schoolboy's  bat  and 
restricted  the  range  of  his  strokes,  he  was 
admired  as  a  graceful,  balanced,  and  classical 
batsman,  perhaps  the  finest  ever  on  a  turning 
wicket.  Only  Bradman  was  unarguably  his  super- 
ior, and,  for  three  or  four  years  after  Bradman's 
retirement  in  1948,  Hutton  was  undisputed  as 
the  greatest  batsman  in  the  world. 

In  195 1  he  became  England's  first  professional 
captain  and  never  lost  a  series,  recovering  the 
Ashes  against  Australia  in  coronation  year  (1953) 
after  a  gap  of  fifteen  years  (and  then  retaining 
them  in  Australia).  He  was  a  cautious,  uncom- 
municative captain,  believing  strongly  in  the  use 
of  fast  bowlers,  and  was  the  first  to  slow  down 
the  over  rate  deliberately  as  a  tactical  ploy.  In  five 
series  against  the  powerful  Australian  attack  after 
the  war  he  bore  the  brunt  of  the  English  batting, 
prompting  the  popular  catch-phrase  'Hutton 
out,  side  out'.  The  physical  and  nervous  strain 
took  its  toll,  forcing  his  early  retirement  in  1956. 
He  was  the  first  professional  cricketer  to  be 
elected  an  honorary  member  of  the  MCC  and  the 
second  (after  Hobbs)  to  be  knighted  (1956). 

Curiously,  though,  Hutton  was  never 
appointed  captain  of  Yorkshire,  an  omission 
which  may  in  part  explain  his  exile  in  Surrey  for 
the  rest  of  his  life.  After  his  retirement  he 
became  a  director  of  Fenners,  the  mining  equip- 
ment manufacturers,  who  made  good  use  of  his 
worldwide  cricketing  contacts.  Always  a  shrewd 
judge  of  the  game,  he  also  became  an  England 
selector  and  wrote  on  cricket  for  the  Observer  for 
thirty  years.  He  published  three  books  on  cricket. 
Len  Hutton  mellowed  in  later  life  and  amused 
his  friends  greatly  with  a  cryptic  sense  of 
humour,  delivered  with  a  crinkled  smile  from 
wide-apart  blue  eyes.  His  strong  moral  outlook 
shaped  and  directed  one  of  the  best  natural 
talents  in  the  history  of  the  game. 


218 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hutton 


He  married,  in  September  1939,  Dorothy 
Mary,  daughter  of  George  Dennis,  foreman 
joiner  on  Lord  Downe's  estate  at  Wykeham, 
Yorkshire.  Her  brother  played  cricket  for  York- 
shire. Their  happy  marriage  was  a  powerful 
source  of  strength.  Their  two  sons,  Richard  and 
John,  were  both  cricketers;  Richard  played  one 
season  for  England  in  1971  and  became  editorial 
director  of  the  Cricketer.  In  January  1990,  in  a  bid 
to  heal  the  county's  divisions,  Hutton  was  invited 


to  be  president  of  Yorkshire  CCC,  an  honour  he 
deeply  appreciated,  but,  before  he  could  have 
much  effect,  he  died  6  September  1990  in  King- 
ston upon  Thames  Hospital,  of  a  ruptured 
aorta. 

[Donald  Trelford,  Lett  Hutton  Remembered,  1992;  Len 
Hutton,  Cricket  is  My  life,  1950,  and  Just  My  Story, 
1956;  Len  Hutton  with  Alex  Bannister,  Fifty  Years  in 
Cricket,  1984;  Gerald  Howat,  Len  Hutton,  1988;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Donald  Trelford 


219 


I 


ILLINGWORTH,  Ronald  Stanley  (1900- 
1990),  professor  of  child  health,  was  born  7 
October  1909  in  Harrogate,  the  younger  son  and 
youngest  of  the  three  children  of  Herbert 
Edward  Illingworth,  architect,  and  his  wife, 
Ellen  Brayshaw.  He  was  educated  at  Clifton 
House  School  in  Harrogate  and  Bradford  Gram- 
mar School,  and  went  with  a  West  Riding 
scholarship  in  classics  to  read  medicine  at  Leeds 
University.  He  graduated  MB,  Ch.B.  in  1934.  In 
the  following  five  years  he  held  various  posts  and 
obtained  the  MD  and  MRCP  in  1937,  and  the 
DPH  with  distinction  and  DCH  in  1938.  He 
worked  at  the  Hospital  for  Sick  Children  at 
Great  Ormond  Street,  London,  before  taking  up 
a  Nuffield  research  studentship  at  Oxford  in 
1939.  Illingworth  joined  the  Royal  Army  Medi- 
cal Corps  in  1941  and  by  the  end  of  World  War 
II  was  a  lieutenant-colonel  and  in  charge  of  a 
medical  division  in  the  Middle  East. 

After  the  war  he  worked  at  the  Hammersmith 
and  Great  Ormond  Street  Hospitals  in  1946, 
before  going  to  the  USA  on  a  postponed  Rocke- 
feller research  fellowship.  In  1947,  the  year  he 
became  FRCP,  he  was  appointed  to  the  founda- 
tion chair  of  child  health  in  the  University  of 
Sheffield.  Over  the  next  twenty-eight  years  he 
made  the  Sheffield  Children's  Hospital  and  his 
department  of  child  health  a  port  of  call  for 
aspirant  academics  and  future  consultants.  When 
he  arrived  at  Sheffield,  the  department  was  in  a 
near-derelict  house,  and  from  there  he  led  a  team 
of  clinical  academics,  which  at  any  one  time  was 
composed  of  a  stimulating  mixture  of  doctors 
from  home  and  abroad.  Illingworth  possessed  a 
fine  instinct  for  picking  future  leaders  in  paediat- 
rics and  child  health.  In  the  postwar  years  he  was 
one  of  the  medical  magnets  that  drew  bright 
young  men  from  all  over  the  Empire  and  Com- 
monwealth to  the  Children's  Hospital  in  Shef- 
field. When  he  retired  in  1975  no  fewer  than 
fifteen  of  his  former  staff  had  become  full  pro- 
fessors and  two  had  become  ministers  of  health 
in  their  own  countries. 

Illingworth  was  an  astute  clinician  and 
meticulous  clinical  researcher.  By  the  time  the 
endemic  diseases  of  rheumatic  fever,  tuberculo- 
sis, and  rickets  had  disappeared,  he  had  become 
the  foremost  clinical  expert  on  developmental 
paediatrics.  It  was  in  this  area  of  clinical  practice 


that  he  left  his  greatest  legacy,  through  his 
prodigious  output  of  papers  and  books.  He  had 
over  650  publications,  including  forty-six  trans- 
lations of  new  editions  of  his  books.  He  was 
undoubtedly  the  most  widely  read  paediatrician 
of  his  time.  His  best  known  books  are  The 
Normal  Child  (1953,  ten  editions),  The  Develop- 
ment of  the  Infant  and  Young  Child  (i960,  nine 
editions),  and  Common  Symptoms  of  Disease  in 
Children  (1967,  nine  editions).  All  three  were 
translated  into  many  languages.  Illingworth  had 
an  eminently  readable  style  of  writing,  being 
economical  with  words  and  precise  in  their  use. 
His  writings  were  a  model  of  clarity  and  very 
popular  with  students  and  postgraduate  schol- 
ars. 

His  hobby  of  photography,  for  which  he 
received  over  seventy  awards,  was  practised  to  a 
high  professional  standard.  He  was  awarded  the 
fellowship  of  the  Royal  Photographic  Society  in 
1936,  having  exhibited  at  its  annual  international 
exhibition  while  still  a  medical  student.  His 
superb  use  of  illustrated  material,  combined  with 
his  effortless  and  lucid  style  of  delivery,  made 
him  a  much  sought-after  lecturer.  He  gave  over 
500  invited  lectures,  including  more  than  180 
abroad,  in  places  as  far  apart  as  the  Soviet  Union 
and  South  Africa.  On  his  eightieth  birthday  he 
gave  masterly  lectures  on  medical  education  and 
walking  in  the  Alps  without  recourse  to  notes 
and,  as  always,  illuminated  by  admirable  photo- 
graphic material. 

He  served  on  major  committees  of  the  Medical 
Research  Council  and  Department  of  Health, 
and  was  the  paediatric  adviser  to  the  parliamen- 
tary commissioner  (ombudsman).  For  twenty-six 
years  he  was  a  member  of  the  council  of  the 
Medical  Defence  Union.  He  was  uncompromis- 
ingly honest  in  his  expression  of  opinion  whether 
in  court,  committee,  or  personal  discussion. 
Illingworth  was  not  a  'clubbable'  person,  for  he 
was  very  modest  and  avoided  self-publicity.  He 
was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  five  foreign 
academies  of  paediatrics  and  received  the  Aldrich 
award  and  medal  of  the  American  Academy  of 
Pediatrics  (1978).  He  also  received  the  Spence 
medal  of  the  British  Paediatric  Association 
(1979)  and  the  Dawson  Williams  prize  of  the 
British  Medical  Association  (1981).  He  was 
awarded  the  freedom  of  the  city  of  Sheffield  and 


220 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Irving 


honorary  doctorates  from  Baghdad  (1975),  Shef- 
field (1976),  and  Leeds  (1982).  He  was  never 
awarded  any  civil  honour  although  he  had  fought 
long  and  hard  to  develop  and  protect  hospital 
services  for  children.  He  may  well  have  antago- 
nized those  in  authority,  who  were  determined  to 
see  an  end  to  children's  hospitals  in  the  1950s 
and  1960s.  After  he  retired  in  1975  he  started 
anew  as  a  clinical  medical  officer  running  a  well 
baby  clinic  in  Derbyshire,  and  published  a  fur- 
ther seventy  worthwhile  papers  and  new  revised 
editions  of  his  books. 

He  was  of  medium  height  and  relatively  slen- 
der build,  and  could  be  of  forbidding  mien.  With 
the  exception  of  his  taste  in  ties,  his  style  of  dress 
was  subdued.  In  1947  he  married  Cynthia,  a 
paediatrician,  daughter  of  Arthur  Blenkinsop 
Redhead,  engineer.  They  had  one  son  and  two 
daughters,  and  all  the  family  were  fellows  or 
members  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  of 
London.  Illingworth  died  in  Bergen  4  June  1990 
whilst  on  holiday,  amongst  the  mountains  and 
lakes,  where  he  had  been  so  fond  of  walking  and 
taking  photographs. 

[British  Medical  Journal,  vol.  ccc,  23  June  1990;  Lancet, 
21  July  1000;  personal  knowledge.]       Frank  Harris 

INCHYRA,  first  Baron  (1900- 1989),  diplomat 
and  Foreign  Office  official.  [See  Millar,  Fre- 
derick Robert  Hoyer.] 

IRVING,  Sir  Edmund  George  (1910-1990), 
hydrographer,  was  born  5  April  1910  in  Sanda- 
kan,  British  North  Borneo,  the  elder  child  and 
only  son  of  George  Clerk  Irving,  resident  magis- 
trate, British  North  Borneo,  and  his  wife  Ethel 
Mary  Frances  Poole,  of  Kimberley,  South 
Africa.  Arriving  in  England  at  the  age  of  nine, 
Irving  was  sent  to  St  Anthony's  Preparatory 
School,  Eastbourne,  before  being  accepted  for 
the  Royal  Naval  College,  Dartmouth,  in  1923. 
Because  of  his  notably  prominent  nose  he  was 
known  to  his  classmates  as  'Beaky'. 

He  went  to  sea  as  a  cadet  in  HMS  Royal  Oak 
in  1927.  On  completion  of  sub-lieutenants' 
courses,  in  1931  he  joined  the  Royal  Naval 
Surveying  Service,  in  which  he  served  for  thirty- 
five  years.  In  1941  he  was  mentioned  in  dis- 
patches for  his  skill  as  navigating  officer  in  HMS 
Scott,  when  she  was  employed  laying  moored 
marker  beacons  in  the  Denmark  strait  to  guide  a 
squadron  of  British  minelayers.  On  the  staff  of 
the  commander-in-chief,  Mediterranean,  Irving 
was  again  mentioned  in  dispatches  (1943)  for 
putting  in  place  on  the  western  side  of  the  straits 
of  Messina  three  pairs  of  searchlights  which, 
when  illuminated  vertically  on  the  night  of  2-3 
September  1943,  formed  three  sets  of  transit 
marks  to  guide  the  landing-craft  of  XIII  Corps, 
Eighth  Army,  directly  to  their  landing  beaches  in 
Reggio  di  Calabria. 


In  1944,  as  a  commander  captaining  HMS 
Franklin,  he  undertook  rehabilitation  surveys  of  a 
number  of  heavily  damaged  ports  and  harbours 
in  north-west  Europe  as  they  fell  into  Allied 
hands.  Finally,  berthing  his  ship  in  Terneuzen, 
he  was  able  to  carry  out  surveys  in  the  river 
Scheldt,  enabling  Allied  shipping  to  bring  vital 
military  supplies  to  Antwerp.  For  this  he 
received  not  only  appointment  as  OBE  (1044) 
but  also  the  thanks  of  Field  Marshal  'Mont- 
gomery (later  first  Viscount  Montgomery  of 
Alamein),  who  visited  the  ship  and,  at  Irvine's 
suggestion,  'spliced  the  mainbrace'  (ordered  the 
issue  of  an  extra  tot  of  rum),  an  action  which  was 
subsequently  frowned  upon  by  the  Admiralty. 

In  1948  'Egg'  Irving,  as  he  was  now  widely 
known,  carried  out  in  HMS  Sharpshooter  a  num- 
ber of  sea  trials  of  the  newly  developed  Two 
Range  Decca  System  for  fixing  surveying  ships 
out  of  sight  of  land  and  in  low  visibility.  This 
electronic  invention  brought  about  a  radical 
change  in  sea  surveying.  As  rear-admiral  Irving 
was  appointed  hydrographer  of  the  Royal  Navy 
in  i960,  a  post  he  held  with  distinction.  During 
this  period  he  convinced  the  Admiralty  that  it 
was  not  satisfactory  to  convert  warship  hulls  into 
surveying  ships  and  that  it  would  be  more 
efficient  to  custom-build  ships  for  this  purpose. 
In  December  1964  his  wife  launched  Hecla,  the 
first  of  four  successful  ocean-going  survey 
ships. 

Irving  was  a  man  of  great  energy  and  enthu- 
siasm, with  a  love  of  people  which  made  his 
retirement  after  1966  a  very  full  one.  He  con- 
tinued for  a  number  of  years  to  work  for  the 
Decca  Company,  promoting  the  use  of  their 
electronic  surveying  equipment  worldwide.  He 
served  on  the  council  of  the  Royal  Geographical 
Society,  being  chairman  of  the  expeditions  com- 
mittee from  1965  to  1975,  and  president  in 
1969-71.  In  1976  he  was  awarded  the  society's 
Patron's  medal  for  'services  to  the  advancement 
of  hydrographic  science  and  encouragement  for 
exploration'.  As  a  member  of  the  committee  of 
management  of  the  Royal  National  Lifeboat 
Institution  from  i960,  he  was  chairman  of  the 
boat  committee  from  1969  to  1978,  during  which 
period  the  institution  developed  the  faster  Wave- 
ney  and  Arun  class  lifeboats.  He  was  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Institute  of  Navigation  and  its  presi- 
dent from  1967  to  1969.  He  also  served  on  the 
Natural  Environment  Research  Council  from 
1967  to  1974,  and  was  acting  conservator  of  the 
river  Mersey  from  1975  to  1985.  He  was  a  trustee 
of  the  National  Maritime  Museum  (1972-81) 
and  an  active  member  of  the  Society  for  Nautical 
Research.  He  was  appointed  CB  in  1962  and 
KBE  in  1966. 

Irving  was  of  middle  height  and  fairly  stout. 
He  had  a  light  complexion  and  sandy  hair 
(although  his  beard  was  red  when  he  grew  it  in 


221 


Irving 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


wartime),  with  vivid  blue  eyes  and  bushy  eye- 
brows. On  14  March  1936  he  married  Margaret 
Scudamore,  daughter  of  Richard  Edwards,  of 
Ipswich  and  Birmingham.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  His  first  wife  died  in  1974  and  in  1979 
he  married  Esther  Rebecca,  daughter  of  Joseph 
Ellison,  company  director.  Irving  died  of  a  heart 
attack  at  his  home  in  Meopham,  Kent,  1  October 
1990. 

[Private  information;  persona)  knowledge.] 

G.  S.  Ritchie 

ISHERWOOD,  Christopher  William  Brad- 
shaw  (1904- 1 986),  writer,  was  born  26  August 
1904  at  Wyberslegh  Hall,  Cheshire,  the  elder  son 
(there  were  no  daughters)  of  Francis  Edward 
Bradshaw-Isherwood,  professional  soldier  in  the 
York  and  Lancaster  Regiment,  of  Marple,  and 
his  wife  Kathleen,  the  only  child  of  Frederick 
Machell  Smith,  wine  merchant,  of  Bury  St 
Edmunds.  He  was  educated  at  Repton,  where  he 
met  his  lifelong  friend  and  the  ultimate  arbiter  of 
his  work,  Edward  Upward,  with  whom  he  wrote 
numerous  surrealist-gothic  stories  about  'Mort- 
rnere',  a  "fantastic  village'  they  had  invented.  He 
followed  Upward  to  Cambridge,  where,  at  Cor- 
pus Christi  College,  he  studied  history.  He  left 
after  deliberately  failing  his  tripos,  and  began 
earning  his  living  as  secretary  to  the  International 
String  Quartet. 

He  was  deeply  affected  by  World  War  I,  in 
which  his  father  had  been  killed  and  the  certain- 
ties of  the  Edwardian  world  destroyed.  Much  of 
his  life  may  be  seen  as  a  search  for  some  creed  to 
replace  the  traditional,  public-school,  Christian 
values  of  his  childhood,  against  which  he  began 
rebelling  as  a  young  man.  In  1925  he  was 
reintroduced  to  W.  H.  *Auden,  whom  he  had 
known  at  preparatory  school,  and  through  him 
met  (Sir)  Stephen  Spender:  the  three  men  were 
to  form  a  conspicuous  literary,  left-wing 
triumvirate  of  the  1930s.  Isherwood's  first  novel, 
All  the  Conspirators  (1928),  is  an  oblique  account 
of  family  discord,  and  is  influenced  by  the  work 
of  Virginia  *Woolf  and  E.  M.  *Forster.  The 
conflict  between  mother  and  son  was  to  be  a 
frequent  theme  in  his  work  (and,  indeed,  his  life) 
and  resurfaces  in  The  Memorial  (1932),  a  remark- 
ably acute  novel  about  the  war  between  the 
generations,  seen  from  both  sides  of  the  divide, 
and  a  key  text  of  the  period. 

After  a  half-hearted  attempt  to  train  as  a 
doctor  at  King's  College,  London  (October 
1928-March  1929),  Isherwood  followed  Auden 
to  Berlin,  partly  in  order  to  pursue  a  homosexual 
life  in  the  unfettered  atmosphere  of  the  Weimar 
Republic.  He  witnessed  the  rise  of  Nazism,  and 
wrote  two  classic  novels  of  the  era,  Mr.  Norris 
Changes  Trains  (1935)  and  Goodbye  to  Berlin 
(1939).  Both  are  sardonic  tragi-comedies,  and  the 
latter  contains   the   famous  sentence  'I  am   a 


camera  with  its  shutter  open,  quite  passive, 
recording,  not  thinking',  which  (to  Isherwood's 
increasing  irritation)  was  often  quoted  as  a  sum- 
mation of  his  fictional  method.  To  this  period 
also  belong  collaborations  with  Auden:  the  three 
plays  written  for  London's  experimental  Group 
Theatre — The  Dog  Beneath  the  Skin  (1935),  The 
Ascent  of  F6  (1936),  and  On  the  Frontier 
(1938) — and  Journey  to  a  W, ar  (1939),  an  account 
of  their  travels  in  China  during  the  Sino- 
Japanese  War.  Lions  and  Shadows  (1938)  is  an 
autobiography  of  the  1920s,  in  which  many  of 
Isherwood's  preoccupations  are  outlined. 

In  January  1939  Isherwood  and  Auden  emi- 
grated to  the  United  States,  a  controversial  move 
seen  in  some  quarters  as  little  short  of  'deser- 
tion'. Isherwood  settled  in  Los  Angeles,  but, 
insecure,  and  wracked  by  feelings  of  guilt  and 
literary  impotence,  he  needed  something  to  give 
form  and  order  to  his  life.  He  found  this  in 
Vedantism  and  became  a  follower  of  Swami 
Prabhavananda,  who  had  set  up  a  temple  in 
Hollywood.  Isherwood  had  already  worked  in  the 
British  film  industry  (an  experience  he  described 
in  the  novella  Prater  Violet,  1945),  and  now  he 
found  employment  as  a  scriptwriter  for  Metro- 
Goldwyn-Mayer.  His  Hollywood  career  was 
largely  undistinguished,  and  included  scripts  for 
Diane  (1956),  a  lavish  and  miscast  costume 
drama,  and  The  Loved  One  (1965),  a  lamentably 
coarse  adaptation  of  the  novel  by  Evelyn 
*Waugh. 

In  1941  he  went  to  work  in  a  Quaker-run  camp 
for  refugees  fleeing  Europe.  When  America 
entered  the  war,  he  registered  as  a  conscientious 
objector  and  enrolled  at  a  Vedanta  monastery, 
where  he  worked  with  Prabhavananda  on  a  new 
translation  of  the  Bhagavad-Gita  (1944)  and 
became  co-editor  of  the  movement's  magazine, 
Vedanta  and  the  West.  He  left  the  monastery  in 
1945,  the  year  he  became  an  American  citizen, 
and  set  up  house  with  Bill  Caskey,  an  ebullient, 
argumentative,  and  hard-drinking  Irish-Amer- 
ican. The  Condor  and  the  Cows  (1949)  is  an 
account  of  their  travels  in  South  America. 

In  1953  Isherwood  met  Don  Bachardy,  a 
student  almost  thirty  years  his  junior,  who  later 
became  a  renowned  portraitist:  they  were  to  live 
together  until  Isherwood's  death.  His  first 
attempt  at  an  'American'  novel,  The  World  in  the 
Evening  (1954),  took  a  great  deal  of  time  and 
effort  to  write  and  pleased  its  author  as  little  as  it 
pleased  the  critics.  He  returned  to  form  with 
Down  There  on  a  Visit  (1962),  an  autobiographical 
novel  of  four  interlinking  sections. 

Isherwood  had  begun  teaching  English  lit- 
erature at  the  University  of  California  in  i960, 
and  an  Isherwood-like  professor  is  the  protago- 
nist of  A  Single  Man  (1964),  a  witty,  sly,  and 
touching  book  about  the  outsider  in  society.  It  is 
perhaps  Isherwood's  masterpiece.   During  the 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Issigonis 


1960s  he  published  further  books  on  Vedanta 
and  a  novel  on  related  themes,  A  Meeting  by  the 
River  (1967). 

His  three  last  books  were  Kathleen  and  Frank 
(197 1 ),  a  portrait  of  his  parents  in  which  his 
interest  in  heredity  is  fully  explored;  Christopher 
and  His  Kind  (1976),  which  retells  in  more 
explicit  fashion  the  story  of  his  Berlin  years;  and 
My  Guru  and  his  Disciple  (1980),  an  account  of 
his  relationship  with  Prabhavananda. 

Isherwood's  principal  characteristic,  both  in 
his  life  and  his  work,  was  an  apparent  candour. 
He  was  also  a  professional  charmer,  and  these 
two  qualities  offset  his  considerable  vanity.  He 
was  of  short  stature,  with  a  disproportionately 
large  head,  a  prominent  nose,  and  deep-set, 
penetrating  eyes.  Although  he  maintained  a 
strikingly  boyish  appearance  well  into  old  age,  he 
was  a  lifelong  hypochondriac.  He  eventually  died 
of  cancer  at  the  age  of  eighty-one  4  January  1986, 
at  his  home  at  145  Adelaide  Drive,  Santa  Mon- 
ica, California. 

[Peter  Parker,  Christopher  Isherwood,  1996;  Isherwood's 
autobiographical  books  (see  above)  and  unpublished 
diaries  and  papers,  in  the  possession  of  Don  Bachardy; 
Brian  H.  Finney,  Christopher  Isherwood:  a  Critical 
Biography,  1979;  private  information.]  Peter  Parker 

ISSIGONIS,  Sir  Alexander  Arnold  Constan- 
tine  (1906-1988),  motor  engineer  and  designer, 
was  born  18  November  1906  in  Smyrna  (later 
Izmir),  Turkey,  the  only  child  of  Constantine 
Issigonis,  a  marine  engineer  resident  in  Smyrna 
who  was  of  Greek  origin  but  had  British  citizen- 
ship, and  his  wife,  Hulda  Josephine  Prokopp, 
whose  family  came  from  Bavaria  and  ran  Smyr- 
na's brewery.  A  comfortable  childhood,  during 
which  'Alec'  was  taught  by  private  tutors,  was 
abruptly  ended  by  World  War  I,  during  which 
Greece  and  Turkey  supported  opposite  sides  and 
the  Greeks  in  Smyrna  were  interned.  Following 
the  war,  the  city  came  under  Greek  control  until 
1922,  when  Turkey  invaded  and  the  Issigonis 
family  was  evacuated  along  with  other  British 
citizens.  Constantine  Issigonis  died  in  Malta  in 
1922,  and  his  wife  and  son  travelled  to  London 
alone.  Hulda  Issigonis  wanted  her  son  to  con- 
tinue his  broken  education,  but  despite  sugges- 
tions that  his  drawing  talent  pointed  to  art 
school,  Alec  enrolled  at  Battersea  Polytechnic  as 
an  engineering  student  in  1923. 

Though  he  failed  his  final  exams  because  of  his 
weakness  in  mathematics,  Issigonis  was  deter- 
mined to  pursue  an  engineering  career  and  joined 
Edward  Gillett  (London)  in  1928,  assisting  in  the 
design  of  a  semi-automatic  clutch.  This  earned 
him  a  job  at  Humber  (Coventry)  in  1934,  as  a 
technical  draughtsman,  and  he  began  experi- 
mental designs  for  independent  front  suspension, 
which  he  continued  after  joining  Morris  Motors 
(Oxford)  in  1936.  During  World  War  II  Issigonis 


worked  on  various  military  projects,  but  simulta- 
neously he  began  his  first  complete  car  design, 
which  went  into  production  in  October  1948  as 
the  Morris  Minor.  This  small  car  was  praised  for 
its  use  of  space,  and  its  steering  and  road-holding 
capacities.  It  continued  in  production  for  twenty- 
four  years,  during  which  over  1.6  million  were 
produced.  Following  this  success,  Issigonis  was 
promoted  to  chief  engineer  in  1950.  When  Mor- 
ris Motors  merged  with  Austin  Motors  to  form 
the  British  Motor  Corporation  (BMC)  in  1952, 
he  briefly  moved  to  Alvis  (Coventry),  but  in  1955 
returned  to  BMC  as  deputy  engineering  co- 
ordinator, based  in  Birmingham. 

Petrol-rationing,  arising  out  of  the  1956  Suez 
crisis,  prompted  motor  manufacturers  to  think 
about  small,  fuel-efficient  cars,  and  Issigonis  was 
asked  to  head  a  team  to  design  such  a  car  for 
BMC.  Just  two  years  later,  in  1959,  the  Mini 
was  launched  and  was  quickly  recognized  to  be  a 
revolutionary  vehicle.  A  transverse-mounted 
engine  with  front-wheel  drive  gave  maximum 
space  utilization,  with  room  for  four  adults,  while 
the  strikingly  functional  bodyshell,  shaped  like  a 
box,  and  only  ten  feet  long,  resulted  from  Issigo- 
nis's  insistence  that  a  'styled'  car  quickly  dated. 
His  instinct  was  vindicated  by  over  three  decades 
of  continuous  production,  during  which  figures 
had  reached  5  million  by  1986.  Though  priced 
for  the  mass  market,  the  Mini  actually  achieved 
its  success  as  a  'cult'  car,  popular  with  the  middle 
classes,  particularly  women,  used  by  the  rich  and 
famous,  and  spectacularly  successful  in  motor 
sport.  It  was  probably  the  last  great  product  of 
one  man's  vision  the  car  industry  is  likely  to 
see. 

Issigonis's  career  was  at  its  high  point.  In  1961 
he  became  technical  director  of  BMC,  in  1963  he 
was  given  a  seat  on  the  board,  and  in  1964  he 
became  engineering  director.  He  continued  to 
design  successful  cars,  including  the  1 100/1300 
range,  launched  in  1962  and  the  best-selling  car 
of  its  day;  but  when  BMC  became  part  of  the  car 
giant  British  Leyland  in  1968  innovation  was 
sacrificed  for  'market  research',  something  Issi- 
gonis abhorred.  In  1971  he  officially  retired,  and 
though  he  was  retained  by  the  company  as 
consultant,  continuing  to  produce  original 
designs  for  a  steam-engined  car  and  a  gearless 
Mini,  neither  of  these  was  ever  manufactured. 

Issigonis  never  married,  but  was  a  man  of 
great  personal  charm,  occasionally  irascible,  who 
formed  enduring  friendships.  His  working  rela- 
tionships seem  to  have  been  less  relaxed,  perhaps 
because  of  his  need  to  be  in  complete  control,  his 
eye  for  detail,  and  his  demanding  work  sched- 
ules. Colleagues  were  often  irritated  by  his  arro- 
gant and  impatient  manner,  but  they  also  felt 
proud  to  be  associated  with  one  of  his  projects. 
His  appearance  was  Mediterranean  with  his 
aquiline  nose  and  large  hands,  yet  his  manner 


223 


Issigonis 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


was  very  English  and  friends  remembered  his 
eloquent  eyes  and  wry  expression.  He  considered 
himself  to  be  a  creative  artist  rather  than  a 
number-cruncher,  and  his  cars  are  very  much  the 
creation  of  an  individual  with  a  strong  person- 
ality, not  pieces  of  styled  metal  constructed  by  a 
committee. 

His  life  was  one  of  contrasts.  His  youth  in 
Smyrna  was  relatively  affluent  but  was  followed 
by  the  privations  caused  by  war.  His  middle 
years  were  spent  in  Oxford,  where  he  built  a 
career  of  personal  achievement,  while  providing 
financial  security  for  himself  and  his  mother, 
who  continued  to  live  with  him  until  her  death. 
The  years  of  his  greatest  success,  which  came 
when  he  was  already  over  fifty,  were  spent  in 
Birmingham,  where  he  remained  a  man  of  simple 
tastes,  which  were  reflected  both  in  the  practical- 


ity of  his  designs  and  the  austerity  which  charac- 
terized his  private  life.  His  recreations  were  also 
modest,  and  included  a  model  railway  and  love  of 
Meccano  sets. 

His  contribution  to  society  brought  him  a 
number  of  distinctions.  In  1964  he  was  elected  a 
Royal  Designer  for  Industry  and  appointed  CBE. 
In  1967  he  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society. 
In  1969  he  was  knighted  for  'services  to  automo- 
tive engineering'.  He  died  at  his  home  in 
Birmingham  2  October  1988,  after  suffering  for 
several  years  from  a  progressive  illness. 

[Andrew  Nahum,  Alec  Issigonis,  1988;  I-aurence 
Pomeroy,  The  Mini  Story,  1964;  The  Times,  4  October 
1988;  Sir  Diarmuid  Downs  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxix,  1994;  private 
information.]  Gillian  Bardsley 


224 


J 


JACOBSON,  Sydney,  Baron  Jacobson  (1908- 
1988),  editor  and  political  commentator,  was 
born  26  October  1908  in  Zeerost,  South  Africa, 
the  only  son  and  elder  child  of  Samuel  and  Anna 
Jacobson,  a  Jewish  couple  who  had  emigrated 
from  Germany  and  were  running  an  unsuccess- 
ful ostrich  farm.  In  the  summer  of  1914  the 
family  returned  to  Frankfurt  to  visit  friends  and 
were  unfortunate  enough  to  stay  on  until  August, 
when  they  were  all  interned.  Jacobson  thus 
obtained  his  primary  education  in  a  German 
camp,  a  more  humane  version  of  the  camps 
which  were  to  fire  his  hatred  of  Germans  in  the 
1930s  and  1940s.  His  father  was  drowned  when 
the  ship  in  which  he  was  attempting  to  return  to 
South  Africa  sank  off  the  south-west  coast  of 
England.  The  mother  then  took  her  children  to 
live  in  Britain  with  relations,  the  family  of  Lewis 
(later  first  Baron)  *Silkin,  who  was  later  a  gov- 
ernment minister. 

Jacobson  attended  Strand  School  and  King's 
College,  London,  where  he  obtained  a  diploma  in 
journalism.  He  began  his  journalistic  career  on 
Sussex  weekly  papers.  He  soon  left  for  India, 
however,  where  he  became  assistant  editor  of  the 
Statesman  (1934-6),  a  reservist  with  the  Delhi 
Light  Horse,  and  a  daring  steeplechase  jockey. 
On  his  return  to  England  he  worked  for  the 
pocket-sized  magazine,  Lilltput  (1936-9).  He 
enlisted  as  a  private  immediately  war  was 
declared,  was  commissioned  in  the  Middlesex 
Regiment,  was  awarded  the  MC  (1944)  for  his 
resolute  defence  of  a  bridge  during  the  1944 
fighting  in  the  Low  Countries,  and  was  promoted 
lieutenant-colonel  and  given  command  of  his 
battalion.  On  demobilization  he  wrote  for  Picture 
Post  (1945-8)  and  obtained  his  first  editorship  at 
the  Leader  Magazine  (1948-50),  a  paper  which 
was  a  journalistic  success  but  a  financial  failure. 
Soon  after  it  ceased  publication  he  began  his 
association  with  the  Mirror  Group,  writing  first 
for  the  Sunday  Pictorial  (1 951)  under  Hugh  (later 
Baron)  Cudlipp  and  then  for  the  Daily  Mirror  as 
its  political  editor  (1952-62). 

The  Mirror  was  a  noisy,  disputatious  paper 
and  Jacobson,  a  quiet  man,  who  was  erudite, 
sceptical,  and  mordant,  nevertheless  fitted  in 
perfectly.  With  Cudlipp  he  produced  coruscating 
attacks  on  the  governments  of  *Churchill, 
*Eden,  and  Macmillan.  Although  he  was  on  the 


far  left  when  young  he  moved  sufficiendy  to  give 
notable  support  to  Hugh  *Gaitskell,  whose 
speeches  he  occasionally  helped  to  write.  During 
the  Suez  crisis  of  1956  Jacobson  was  instru- 
mental in  shifting  the  Mirror  from  early  acquies- 
cence to  outright  opposition,  a  policy  which 
reduced  its  circulation  by  70,000.  In  fact  it  was 
prepared  to  lose  many  more. 

When  the  Mirror  Group  bought  Odhams 
Press  in  1961  Jacobson  was  made  editor  of  the 
loss-making  Daily  Herald  (1962-4),  the  organ  of 
the  Trades  Union  Congress  and  the  Labour 
party.  He  remained  editor  (1964-5)  after  it  was 
transmuted  into  the  Sun,  a  middlebrow  paper 
created  to  fill  what  was  thought  to  be  a  gap  in  the 
market  but  which  was  proved  not  to  exist.  As  its 
losses  mounted  the  paper  was  almost  given  away 
to  Rupert  Murdoch  in  1965  and  Jacobson  re- 
turned to  the  Mirror,  where  he  became  editorial 
director  (1968-74)  and  later  deputy  chairman 
(1973-4)  °f  the  Group. 

In  the  two  general  elections  of  1974,  in  Feb- 
ruary and  October,  Jacobson  was  at  his  peak. 
Determined  that  the  Labour  party  should  win, 
he  produced  a  series  of  famous  poster-type  front 
pages,  inspired  even  leading  article,  and  oversaw 
all  the  political  stories.  With  election  results  as 
close  as  they  were  in  both  elections,  Jacobson's 
contributions  must  have  been  significant.  He 
had  refused  a  knighthood  when  he  was  editing 
the  Daily  Herald,  but  after  his  retirement  he 
accepted  the  offer  of  a  life  peerage  in  1975. 

He  had  hoped  to  play  an  active  part  in  the 
House  of  Lords,  but  his  later  years  were  affected 
by  ill  health.  They  were  also  marred  by  the 
misfortunes  of  the  Labour  party  and  by  what  was 
happening  at  the  Daily  Mirror.  After  Robert 
Maxwell  became  its  publisher  in  1983  Jacobson 
stopped  buying  the  paper  he  had  served  for  so 
long. 

Jacobson  was  a  tall,  distinguished-looking  man 
with  a  large  nose  and  sardonic  smile.  He  married 
in  1938  Phyllis  June,  daughter  of  Frank  Steele 
Buck,  stockbroker;  they  had  two  sons  and  a 
daughter.  He  died  13  August  1988  in  St 
Albans. 

[Maurice  Edelman,  The  Mirror:  a  Political  History, 
1966;  Hugh  Cudlipp,  Walking  on  the  Water,  1976; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Terence  Lancaster 


225 


James 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


JAMES,  (John)  Morrice  (Cairns),  Baron  Saint 
Brides  (1916-1989),  diplomat,  was  born  30  April 
19 1 6  in  Finchley,  the  only  son  and  younger  child 
of  Lewis  Cairns  James,  professor  of  drama  and 
elocution  at  the  Royal  College  of  Music,  and  his 
second  wife,  Catherine  Mary,  daughter  of  John 
Maitland  Marshall,  of  Dulwich.  He  was  educated 
at  Bradfield  College  and  Balliol  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  obtained  second  classes  in  classical 
honour  moderations  (1936)  and  literae  humaniores 
(1938).  He  entered  the  Dominions  Office  as  an 
assistant  principal  in  1939.  After  war  broke  out 
he  joined  the  Royal  Navy  as  an  ordinary  seaman 
in  1940,  before  being  commissioned  into  the 
Royal  Marines  in  1941.  He  subsequently  saw 
action  in  the  Middle  East  and  Sicily,  for  which 
he  was  appointed  MBE  (military)  in  1944,  and  he 
was  demobilized  in  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel 
in  the  following  year  to  return  to  the  Dominions 
(soon  to  become  the  Commonwealth  Relations) 
Office. 

James  was  a  born  diplomat  and  an  outstanding 
negotiator,  whose  qualities  were  made  full  use  of 
by  ministers  of  both  parties,  though  his  easy 
manner  and  ready  smile  concealed  a  toughness 
and  ambition  which  did  not  always  endear  him  to 
his  subordinates.  Entries  in  successive  editions  of 
Who's  Who  after  his  retirement  described  his 
main  recreation  first  as  'exploring  the  fallibility 
of  contemporary  statesmen'  and  later  as  'meeting 
new  and  intelligent  people'.  He  appears  to  have 
made  few  lifelong  friends  among  his  immediate 
colleagues,  but  his  new  friends  invariably  found 
him  congenial  and  sympathetic. 

Having  joined  the  Civil  Service  before  the 
war,  his  promotion  when  he  rejoined  it  was 
rapid.  After  a  brief  period  as  first  secretary  in  the 
high  commission  in  South  Africa  (1946-7),  he 
became  in  quick  succession  head  of  the  CRO 
defence  department  (1949-51)  and  then  of  the 
establishment  department  (195 1-2).  In  1952  he 
was  posted  as  deputy  high  commissioner  to 
Lahore,  so  beginning  a  unique  series  of  postings 
to  the  Indian  subcontinent  where,  with  a  few 
breaks,  he  served  successively  as  deputy  and  high 
commissioner  in  both  Karachi  and  New  Delhi. 
During  one  of  these  breaks  he  accompanied 
Harold  *Macmillan  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Stock- 
ton) on  his  tour  of  Asia  and  the  Far  East  in  1958, 
and  in  another  made  a  series  of  visits  to  Rhodesia 
to  set  up  what  proved  to  be  the  abortive  talks 
between  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of 
Rievaulx)  and  Ian  Smith  in  HMS  Tiger  in  1966 
and  HMS  Fearless  in  1968.  Smith's  duplicity  (or 
weakness  of  character)  was  underlined  by  the  fact 
that  he  assured  James  before  the  Tiger  talks  that 
he  had  'full  and  unequivocal  powers  to  settle', 
but  allowed  his  agreement  to  be  overruled  by  his 
cabinet  colleagues  on  his  return  to  Salisbury. 

In  the  Indian  subcontinent  James  initially 
tended  to  be  identified  with  Pakistan  (deputy 


high  commissioner  1955-6,  high  commissioner 
1961-6).  With  his  opposite  number  in  India, 
John  Freeman,  he  was  closely  involved  in  the 
negotiations  to  settle  the  Rann  of  Kutch  affair 
which  preceded  the  outbreak  of  war  between 
India  and  Pakistan  in  1965,  in  which  the  Wilson 
government  gave  some  evidence  of  favouring 
Pakistan.  As  a  result,  when  James  was  posted  to 
Delhi  as  high  commissioner  in  1968,  he  faced 
some  initial  hostility,  though  with  characteristic 
aplomb  he  quickly  gained  the  confidence  of 
Indian  ministers. 

His  appointment  to  Delhi  came  as  the  culmi- 
nation of  a  curious  sequence  of  events.  Having 
been  deputy  under-secretary  of  state  for  two 
years,  he  had  been  appointed  permanent  under- 
secretary of  state  at  the  Commonwealth  Office 
(formed  two  years  earlier  from  the  amalgamation 
of  the  Colonial  Office  with  the  CRO)  in  early 
1968,  but  within  ten  days  of  his  appointment  the 
cup  was  dashed  from  his  lips  by  Harold  Wilson's 
announcement  that  the  CO  itself  was  to  be 
amalgamated  with  the  Foreign  Office.  He  thus 
served  as  PUS  for  only  six  months,  but  in 
compensation  was  awarded  the  rare  honour  for  a 
civil  servant  of  being  appointed  a  privy  council- 
lor (1968).  He  ended  his  Diplomatic  Service 
career  as  high  commissioner  to  Australia  in 
197 1-6.  He  had  to  deal  with  Australian  appre- 
hension over  Britain's  entry  to  the  Common 
Market  and  with  the  affair  of  the  runaway  MP, 
John  *Stonehouse. 

He  was  appointed  CMG  (1957),  CVO  (1961), 
KCMG  (1962),  and  GCMG  (1975).  In  1977  he 
received  a  life  peerage,  taking  the  title  of  Baron 
Saint  Brides  and  accepting  the  ceremonial  post  of 
king  of  arms  of  the  Order  of  St  Michael  and  St 
George.  After  his  retirement  he  took  up  a  succes- 
sion of  academic  appointments  at  American  uni- 
versities, including  Harvard,  the  Foreign  Policy 
Research  Institute  at  Philadelphia,  and  finally  the 
Center  for  International  Security  and  Arms  Con- 
trol at  Stanford,  where  he  was  remembered  with 
affection  and  admiration  for  his  work  on  the 
Asian-Pacific  region  and  for  his  encouragement 
of  the  younger  students. 

James  was  a  big  man  in  every  way,  who  in  his 
earlier  years  waged  a  cheerful,  but  not  wholly 
successful,  battle  with  corpulence  by  swimming 
whenever  he  could  during  his  lunch  break.  He 
was  married  twice.  His  first  marriage  in  1948,  to 
the  delightful  Elizabeth  Margaret  Roper  Piesse, 
came  as  something  of  a  surprise,  many  of  his 
colleagues  having  been  under  the  impression  that 
he  had  been  courting  her  mother.  Elizabeth's 
father  was  Francis  Charles  Roper  Piesse,  solicitor 
and,  later,  hotelier.  Of  this  marriage  there  were 
two  daughters  and  a  son.  Following  Elizabeth's 
untimely  death  in  1966,  he  married  in  1968  Mrs 
Genevieve  ('Jenny')  Christiane  Sarasin,  daughter 
of  Robert  Henri  Houdin,  company  director.  On 


226 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Jameson 


their  return  from  Australia  he  moved  with  her  to 
live  in  France  at  St  Tropez,  where  he  died  26 
November  1989. 

[The  Times,  30  November  1989;  Foreign  Office  records; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.) 

David  Scott 


JAMESON,  Margaret  Ethel  ('Storm')  (1891- 
1086),  novelist,  was  born  8  January  1891  in 
Whitby  in  the  North  Riding  of  Yorkshire,  the 
eldest  in  the  family  of  three  daughters  and  a  son 
of  William  Storm  Jameson,  sea  captain,  and  his 
wife  (who  was  also  his  stepsister),  Hannah  Mar- 
garet, daughter  of  George  Gallilee,  shipbuilder. 
As  a  child  she  accompanied  her  parents  on 
several  voyages,  which  marked  the  beginning  of  a 
lifelong  passion  for  travel.  Yet  despite  her  self- 
imposed  exile  from  Whitby,  the  harbour  town 
remained  central  to  her  imagination  and  to  many 
of  her  novels. 

Her  parents'  marriage  was  unhappy  and 
Storm  Jameson's  early  life  was  dominated  by  her 
high-tempered,  bitter  mother  whom  she  both 
feared  and  loved,  and  who  encouraged  her  to 
receive  an  academic  education.  After  being 
taught  privately  and  at  Scarborough  Municipal 
School  for  a  year,  she  won  one  of  three  county 
scholarships  which  enabled  her  to  take  a  place  at 
Leeds  University,  where  she  read  English  for 
three  years,  graduating  in  191 2  with  a  first-class 
degree.  A  research  scholarship  allowed  her  to  go 
to  London,  first  to  University  College,  then  to 
King's.  She  was  awarded  her  M\  in  1914  for  a 
thesis  on  modern  European  drama,  which  was 
published  in  1920  (Modern  Drama  in  Europe). 

On  15  January  19 13  Jameson  married  Charles 
Dougan  Clarke,  schoolmaster,  whom  she  had 
met  in  her  second  year  at  Leeds.  He  was  the  son 
of  Charles  Granville  Clarke,  doctor  of  medicine, 
an  American  Quaker.  Their  son,  Charles  William 
Storm,  was  born  on  20  June  191 5.  The  pair  were 
temperamentally  ill-matched  and  the  marriage 
soon  foundered,  although  there  was  no  divorce 
until  1925.  Meanwhile  Storm  Jameson  had 
begun  the  extraordinarily  prolific  career  of  'une 
machine  a  faire  des  livres',  as  she  once  described 
herself.  The  author  of  forty-five  novels,  numer- 
ous pamphlets,  essays,  and  reviews,  she  freely 
admitted  that  she  wrote  too  much,  fuelled  by  her 
enormous  energy  and  driven  by  the  need  to  make 
money.  Generous  and  spendthrift,  constantly 
moving  house  and  travelling  in  Europe  whenever 
she  could  afford  it,  her  career  was  shaped  from 
the  outset  by  her  financial  circumstances,  which 
remained  precarious  throughout  her  life. 

After  refusing  a  job  on  the  Egoist,  which  went 
to  (Dame)  Rebecca  *West,  she  worked  succes- 
sively for  an  advertising  agency,  the  New  Com- 
monwealth,  and   Alfred   Knopf,   the   American 


publisher,  but  after  1928  most  of  her  income  was 
derived  from  writing.  Her  first  novel,  The  Pot 
Boils  (1919),  was  widely  reviewed  and  her 
popularity  increased  with  the  publication  of 
the  Mary  Hervey  trilogy,  The  Triumph  of  Time 
(1927-31),  which  charted  the  fortunes  of  the 
Whitby  shipbuilding  community  between  1841 
and  1923.  Jameson  was  by  now  happy  in  her 
personal  life,  having  in  1926  married  the  histo- 
rian and  novelist,  Guy  Patterson  Chapman  (died 
1972),  son  of  George  Walter  Chapman,  official 
receiver  in  bankruptcy.  Chapman  shared  her  love 
of  France  and  tolerated  her  'mania  against 
domestic  life'  to  the  extent  of  living  with  her  in 
a  hotel  for  six  years  when  he  became  professor  of 
modern  history  at  Leeds  in  1945. 

In  1930  Jameson  began  consciously  to  change 
her  writing  style  in  emulation  of  Stendhal.  The 
result  was  three  novellas  about  women,  including 
the  remarkably  imagined  meditations  of  an  eld- 
erly prostitute  in  A  Day  Off  (1933).  Shortly 
afterwards  she  began  a  Balzacian  quintet,  The 
Mirror  in  Darkness  (1934),  that  was  based  on  the 
autobiographical  figure  of  Mary  Hervey  Russell. 
Her  own  dissatisfaction  as  well  as  poor  reviews 
caused  her  to  abandon  the  series  in  1936, 
although  the  related  The  Journal  of  Mary  Hervey 
Russell  (1945)  and  The  Black  Laurel  (1947)  are 
among  her  best  novels,  together  with  those 
inspired  by  her  knowledge  of  Europe  and  love  of 
France:  Cousin  Honore  (1940),  Europe  to  Let 
(1940),  and  Cloudless  May  (1943). 

During  the  1930s  Jameson  became  passion- 
ately involved  in  issues  of  social  justice  and  anti- 
fascism.  Between  1938  and  1944  she  was 
president  of  the  English  section  of  PEN,  for 
which  she  worked  tirelessly  on  behalf  of  exiled 
European  writers,  earning  herself  a  place  on  the 
'Berlin  death  fist'.  After  the  war,  although  she 
continued  to  write  indefatigably,  her  reputation 
as  a  novelist  declined  and  the  reprinting  of  some 
of  her  books  by  Virago  Press  in  the  1980s  did 
little  to  revive  interest  in  her  work.  She  noted  her 
eclipse  without  resentment  in  her  autobiography 
Journey  from  the  North  (2  vols.,  1969,  1970), 
which  contains  a  memorably  honest  self-portrait 
of  the  author  as  well  as  harrowing  accounts  of 
bereavement  and  war. 

Jameson  liked  to  remember  that  her  Nordic 
ancestors  had  been  peasants  of  the  sea  whom  she 
resembled  in  her  restlessness  and  endurance,  as 
she  did  in  her  looks.  Her  large,  long-sighted  eyes 
were  grey-blue,  set  in  a  round  high-cheek-boned 
face.  Sensual  and  physically  strong,  she  experi- 
enced a  series  of  romantic  and  sexual  obsessions 
until  the  rime  of  her  second  marriage.  She 
received  few  public  honours,  although  her  hon- 
orary D.Litt.  from  Leeds  (1943)  gave  her  pleas- 
ure, as  did  her  honorary  membership  of  the 
American  Academv  and  Institute  of  Arts  and 


227 


Jameson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Letters.  She  died  in  Cambridge  30  September 
1986. 

[The  Times,  7  October  1986;  Storm  Jameson,  Journey 
from  the  North,  2  vols.,  1969,  1970.] 

Judith  Priestman 

JASPER,  Ronald  Claud  Dudley  (1917-1990), 
liturgist  and  historian,  was  born  17  August  19 17 
in  Plymouth,  Devon,  the  only  child  of  Claud 
Albert  Jasper,  dockyard  craftsman,  and  his  wife, 
Florence  Lily  Curtis.  Educated  at  Plymouth 
College,  he  read  history  at  Leeds  University, 
obtaining  a  second-class  degree  in  1938. 
Responding  to  a  call  to  ordination,  he  went  to  the 
College  of  the  Resurrection  at  Mirfield  to  pre- 
pare for  the  priesthood,  while  completing  an  MA 
on  constitutional  history,  gained  with  distinction. 
However,  the  academic  world  was  not  beckoning 
and  on  ordination  he  became  curate  of  Ryhope, 
in  the  diocese  of  Durham  (1940-2). 

From  the  beginning  of  his  time  there,  the 
bishop,  A.  T.  P.  *Williams,  himself  a  distin- 
guished historian,  kept  a  benevolent  eye  on  this 
young  man  with  historical  interests.  At  the  first 
opportunity,  he  sent  him  to  Durham  as  a  curate 
of  St  Oswald's  (1942-3).  Later,  two  years  as 
chaplain  of  University  and  Hatfield  colleges  in 
Durham  (1946-8)  gave  him  the  opportunity  for 
serious  study,  and  the  result  was  a  BD  (1950)  and 
Prayer  Book  Revision  in  England  1800-igoo 
(1954),  the  first  of  his  many  books.  During  this 
time  he  was  also  encouraged  by  (D.)  Colin 
Dunlop,  bishop  of  Jarrow,  who  used  him  as  a 
lecturer  at  his  clergy  schools.  In  1954  Bishop 
Dunlop,  who  had  become  dean  of  Lincoln,  was 
asked  by  the  archbishops  of  Canterbury  and 
York  to  chair  a  commission  'to  consider  all 
matters  of  liturgical  concern  referred  to  it  by  the 
archbishops',  and  was  given  a  free  hand  in 
choosing  his  team.  He  included  Jasper,  who  was 
vicar  of  Stillington  (1948-55)  and  who  became 
succentor  of  Exeter  Cathedral  (1955-60). 

The  archbishop  of  York,  Donald  (later  Baron) 
Coggan,  who  succeeded  Dunlop  on  the  liturgical 
commission  in  i960,  decided  he  must  give  up  its 
chairmanship  and  persuaded  Jasper  to  take  it  on 
(1964-81).  By  this  time  Jasper  had  left  Exeter, 
had  obtained  his  DD  (1961)  from  Leeds,  and  was 
lecturing  in  liturgy  at  King's  College,  London 
(1960-7,  reader  1967-8),  and  acquiring  a  reputa- 
tion as  an  ecclesiastical  biographer,  with  a  life  of 
A.  C.  *Headlam  (i960)  and  the  biography  of 
George  *Bell  (1967)  in  progress.  'I  was  doing  the 
very  things  in  life  I  had  always  wanted  to  do  and 
to  take  on  the  Commission  would  involve  a 
serious  disruption,'  he  said  at  the  time.  But  he 
realized  that  his  long  study  of  the  papers  of 
Walter  *Frere  {Walter  Howard  Frere:  his  Corre- 
spondence on  Liturgical  Revision  and  Construction, 
1 954)5  wh°  had  been  much  involved  in  the 
abortive  1927-8  prayer  book  revision,  had  given 


him  a  unique  insight  into  the  pitfalls  awaiting 
those  brave  enough  to  attempt  this  kind  of  work 
in  the  Church  of  England.  He  also  glimpsed  the 
possibilities  of  ecumenical  liturgical  co-opera- 
tion. 

Jasper  was  responsible  for  convincing  Arch- 
bishop Michael  *Ramsey  (later  Baron  Ramsey  of 
Canterbury)  to  invite  the  mainstream  British 
churches  to  form  the  Joint  Liturgical  Group, 
which  was  set  up  in  1963.  Jasper  served  as  its 
secretary  until  his  retirement  in  1984.  During 
that  time  he  edited  a  series  of  books  which 
greatly  influenced  the  revision  of  most  denomi- 
national service  books.  His  ecumenical  vision  was 
further  widened  when,  in  1966,  he  was  appointed 
an  official  observer  to  the  Concilium  Liturgicum, 
set  up  to  work  out  the  implications  of  the  second 
Vatican  Council's  Constitution  on  the  Sacred  Lit- 
urgy (1963).  From  this  work  emerged  the  need 
for  a  forum  at  which  the  dilemmas  of  those 
engaged  in  liturgical  revision  in  English-speaking 
countries  could  be  shared.  Roman  Catholics  were 
particularly  anxious  to  be  involved,  being 
engaged  in  the  problem  of  producing  liturgical 
texts  in  the  vernacular.  In  1969  Jasper  was 
elected  president  of  Societas  Liturgica,  the  inter- 
national ecumenical  society  for  liturgical  study 
and  research.  At  the  same  time  he  was  engaged  in 
all  the  major  work  of  liturgical  revision  in  his 
own  Church  of  England,  of  which  the  Alternative 
Service  Book  ig8o  was  to  be  the  fruition. 

Jasper  was  appointed  a  canon  of  Westminster 
(1968-75)  and  dean  of  York  (1975-84).  At  York 
he  saw  through  a  liturgical  reordering  of  the  nave 
and  significant  work  in  the  Lady  chapel  and  the 
Zouche  chapel.  He  also  implemented  the  rescue, 
conservation,  and  restoration  of  the  fifteenth- 
century  St  William's  College.  Jasper's  time  at 
York  came  to  a  dramatic  conclusion.  The  fire 
which  destroyed  the  roof  and  vault  of  the  south 
transept  occurred  on  9  July  1984,  four  days 
before  his  retirement. 

Under  Jasper's  leadership,  major  changes  were 
made  in  the  worship  of  the  Church  of  England. 
Not  all  have  been  popular,  but  he  courageously 
orchestrated  change  from  a  historian's  know- 
ledge of  its  inevitability  and  from  a  liturgist's 
appreciation  of  modern  scholarship,  never  for- 
getting his  ministry  in  the  pit  villages  of  Durham 
and  never  allowing  the  church's  worship  to 
become  recherche  or  arcane.  He  retired  to  Ripon 
and  produced  an  overview  of  300  years  of  liturgi- 
cal development  in  England  in  The  Development 
of  the  Anglican  Liturgy  i662-ig8o  (1989).  He  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1981  and  had  an  honorary 
D.Litt.  from  Susquehanna  University,  Pennsyl- 
vania (1976). 

He  was  of  average  height,  slim  build,  and 
always  neatly  and  smartly  dressed.  He  was  one  of 
those  rare  clergymen  who  took  care  in  his  choice 


228 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Jeffreys 


of  clothes  when  not  in  clerical  dress.  In  1943  he 
married  Ethel  ('Bern'),  daughter  of  David  Wig- 
gins, solicitor's  managing  clerk.  They  had  a 
daughter  and  a  son,  who  became  principal  of  St 
Chad's  College,  Durham.  Jasper  died  1 1  April 
1900  in  the  District  Hospital,  Harrogate. 

[Donald  Gray,  'Dr  Ronald  Jasper  and  the  Liturgical 
Commission',  Friends  of  York  Minster  62nd  Annual 
Report,  1991;  personal  knowledge.]      Donald  Gray 

JEFFREYS,  Sir  Harold  (1 891-1989),  geophysi- 
cist,  was  born  22  April  1 891  in  Fatfield,  county- 
Durham,  the  only  child  of  Robert  Hall  Jeffreys, 
headmaster  of  the  village  school  at  Fatfield,  and 
his  wife  Elizabeth  Mary,  schoolteacher,  daughter 
of  William  Sharpe.  His  parents  both  came  from 
families  living  near  Morpeth,  Northumberland. 
Jeffreys  was  educated  at  Rutherford  College  and 
Armstrong  College  (both  in  Newcastle  upon 
Tyne)  and  at  St  John's  College,  Cambridge,  of 
which  he  was  a  scholar.  He  obtained  a  first  class 
in  part  i  (191 1)  and  was  a  wrangler  in  part  ii 
(1913)  of  the  mathematical  tripos.  He  was 
awarded  the  Smith's  prize  in  191 5.  Inspired  by 
the  work  of  Sir  George  *Darwin  on  tides,  he 
began  research  in  celestial  mechanics.  He  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  St  John's  in  1914,  retaining  his 
fellowship  until  his  death.  He  obtained  a  Dur- 
ham D.Sc.  in  1917. 

During  World  War  I  Jeffreys  worked  in  the 
Cavendish  Laboratory,  Cambridge,  on  wartime 
problems,  from  1915  to  1917.  He  then  went  to 
the  Meteorological  Office  from  1917  to  1922, 
returning  to  Cambridge  as  lecturer  in  mathe- 
matics in  1922.  He  won  the  Adams  prize  in  1927. 
He  became  reader  in  geophysics  in  193 1  and  was 
elected  Plumian  professor  of  astronomy  and 
experimental  philosophv  in  1946,  retiring  in 
1958. 

Jeffreys  worked  in  five  branches  of  mathe- 
matics: hydrodynamics,  celestial  mechanics,  seis- 
mology and  the  physics  of  the  interior  of  the 
earth,  probability,  and  pure  mathematics.  His 
wartime  work  led  him  to  study  fluid  dynamics. 
He  demonstrated  the  importance  of  eddy  vis- 
cosity, identified  by  (Sir)  G.  I.  *Taylor,  in 
geophysical  fluid  motions,  classified  winds  by 
their  dynamical  origins,  and  established  the 
essential  role  of  cyclones  in  the  general  circula- 
tion of  the  atmosphere.  He  was  the  first  to 
identify  the  importance  of  viscosity  in  boundary 
conditions.  He  studied  the  mechanism  for  the 
generation  of  surface  waves  on  water  and  devel- 
oped the  work  of  J.  W.  *Strutt  (third  Baron 
Rayleigh)  on  the  initiation  of  convection. 

Jeffreys  had  earl)  realized  the  importance  of 
seismology,  which  occupied  him  from  1921  to 
the  end  of  his  life,  for  investigating  the  interior  of 
the  earth,  for  which  he  established  three  major 
structural    features.    In    192 1,    with    Dorothy 


Wrinch,  he  showed  from  records  of  an  explosion 
in  the  Rhineland  that  the  crust  of  the  earth  had  at 
least  two  layers  above  the  mantle;  the  study  also 
demonstrated  the  value  of  explosions  as  seismic 
sources.  In  1927  Jeffreys  showed  that  the  earth 
must  have  a  dense  core  which  must  be  effectively 
liquid,  and  this  was  amply  confirmed  subse- 
quently. His  third  major  discovery  was  the  divi- 
sion between  the  upper  and  lower  mantle  of  the 
earth,  which  he  attributed  to  a  change  of  crystal 
structure  of  olivine  to  a  denser  form  at  high 
pressure.  He  spent  many  years  on  calculations  of 
travel  rimes  of  seismic  waves  over  the  earth,  and 
produced  the  Jeffreys-Bullen  tables,  first  pub- 
lished in  1940,  and  still  used  in  routine  identi- 
fication of  earthquake  epicentres  and  as  reference 
times  for  both  comparison  with  observations  and 
calculations  of  models  of  the  interior  of  the  earth. 
Jeffreys  also  made  many  contributions  to  the 
theory  of  elastic  waves. 

Working  mostly  by  himself  and  with  few 
research  students,  Jeffreys  wrote  extensively  on 
the  dynamics  of  the  earth  and  the  solar  system. 
In  the  years  before  artificial  satellites  were 
launched  he  analysed  observations  of  gravity  on 
the  surface  of  the  earth,  another  very  laborious 
numerical  project,  and  derived  a  consistent  set  of 
dynamical  parameters  of  the  earth  and  the  moon. 
He  studied  the  variations  in  the  rotation  of  the 
earth  and  showed  that  the  slowing  down  of  the 
earth's  rotation,  found  astronomically,  was  most 
probably  due  to  eddy  viscosity  in  shallow  seas, 
another  result  that  later  seemed  fully  confirmed. 
Those  studies,  together  with  his  theoretical  work 
on  the  effect  of  the  liquid  core  on  the  earth's 
rotation,  dominated  the  subject. 

Jeffreys's  book,  The  Earth  (1924),  was  the  first 
systematic  account  of  the  physical  state  of  the 
earth  as  a  whole  and  had  a  profound  influence  on 
generations  of  geophysicists  through  its  many 
successive  editions.  Jeffreys  was  not  uncontro- 
versial,  and  indeed  he  was  involved  in  a  number 
of  major  debates  which  seem  to  have  called  forth 
his  tersest  writing.  In  particular,  he  always 
opposed  the  ideas  of  continental  drift  and  plate 
tectonics,  although  it  was  he  who  first  pointed 
out  that  the  earth's  crust  was  just  the  upper  layer 
of  a  rigid  lithosphere  about  100  km.  thick,  and  he 
was  a  keen  advocate  (1936)  of  systematic  studies 
of  the  floor  of  the  oceans.  Although  his  most 
significant  work  in  geophysics  was  completed 
before  the  technical  revolutions  of  artificial  satel- 
lites, marine  geophysics,  and  new  methods  of 
seismology  changed  the  face  of  geophysics  in  the 
middle  of  the  twentieth  century,  his  major 
results  were  the  foundation  of  subsequent  devel- 
opments. He  showed,  above  all,  how  rigorous 
methods  of  classical  mechanics  should  be  applied 
to  the  study  of  the  structure  of  the  earth  and  the 
planets. 


229 


Jeffreys 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


He  had  an  early  interest  in  scientific  inference 
and,  later,  prompted  by  statistical  problems  aris- 
ing from  his  work  on  seismic  travel  times,  he 
constructed  a  comprehensive  corpus  of  methods 
for  estimation  and  tests  of  significance  according 
to  Bayesian  principles.  His  Theory  of  Probability 
(i939)>  which  presented  a  formal  algebra  of 
probability  on  an  axiomatic  basis,  with  many 
applications  in  various  branches  of  physics, 
became  very  influential.  Much  of  his  original 
work  in  pure  mathematics  was  incorporated  in 
Methods  of  Mathematical  Physics  (1946,  with  his 
wife).  His  most  important  contributions  were  to 
the  study  of  operational  methods  for  the  solution 
of  differential  equations  and  to  asymptotic 
methods. 

Jeffreys  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1925  and  was  president  of  the  Royal 
Astronomical  Society  in  1955-7.  He  was  a  for- 
eign member  of  a  number  of  academies,  among 
them  the  US  Academy  of  Science,  the  Accade- 
mia  Nazionale  dei  Lincei  (Rome),  and  the  royal 
academies  of  Sweden  and  Belgium.  He  was 
awarded,  besides  other  prizes,  the  gold  medal  of 
the  Royal  Astronomical  Society  (1937),  a  Royal 
medal  (1948)  and  the  Copley  medal  (i960)  of  the 
Royal  Society,  the  Vetlesen  prize  of  Columbia 
University  (1962),  the  Guy  medal  of  the  Royal 
Statistical  Society  (1963),  and  the  Wollaston 
medal  of  the  Geological  Society  (1964).  He 
received  five  honorary  degrees  and  was  knighted 

in  1953- 

Jeffreys  had  wide  interests  within  and  beyond 
science.  Besides  some  prophetic  papers  on  phys- 
ics and  stellar  structure,  he  wrote  on  the  ecology 
of  county  Durham  and  the  Breckland  and  on 
psychology.  He  was  a  skilled  photographer;  a 
large  collection  of  his  negatives  was  given  to  St 
John's  College.  He  was  for  many  years  active  in 
national  and  international  astronomical  and  geo- 
physical societies.  Undoubtedly  one  of  the  dis- 
tinctive personalities  of  Cambridge  in  his  time, 
he  was  difficult  to  talk  to  and  was  known  for  his 
intensive  smoking  and  for  his  bicycling  every- 
where. Yet  he  was  very  sociable,  dined  regularly 
in  his  college,  sang  tenor  for  many  years  in  the 
Cambridge  Philharmonic  Choir,  and  greatly 
enjoyed  the  dinners  of  the  Royal  Astronomical 
Society  Club. 

Jeffreys  was  somewhat  over  medium  height 
and  spare  of  frame.  He  wore  glasses,  had  a  small 
moustache,  and  was  usually  dressed  informally, 
often  wearing  shorts  in  hot  weather.  In  1940  he 
married  Bertha,  daughter  of  William  Alexander 
Swirles,  commercial  traveller  in  leather,  and  his 
wife,  Harriet  Blaxley,  primary-school  teacher. 
She  was  a  cousin  of  Michael  *Stewart  (Baron 
Stewart  of  Fulham).  There  were  no  children  of 
the  marriage.  Lady  Jeffreys,  a  mathematician, 
was  vice-mistress  of  Girton  College,  Cambridge, 
from  1966  to  1969.  There  is  a  portrait  of  Jeffreys 


in  St  John's  College.  He  died  18  March  1989  in 
Cambridge. 

[Sir  Alan  Cook  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvi,  1900;  Harold  and  Bertha 
Jeffreys  (eds.),  Collected  Papers,  vols,  i— vi,  197 1-7; 
personal  knowledge.]  Alan  Cook 

JENNINGS,  Paul  Francis  (191 8-1989),  humor- 
ous writer,  was  born  in  Leamington  Spa  20  June 
1918,  the  only  son  and  second  of  three  children 
of  William  Benedict  Jennings,  musician,  and  his 
wife,  Mary  Gertrude  Hewitt,  the  daughter  of  a 
watchmaker.  They  soon  moved  to  a  Coventry 
Roman  Catholic  parish,  where  Paul's  father  was 
organist  and  choirmaster,  and  Paul  became  the 
city's  boy  soprano,  performing  solo  at  the  Hippo- 
drome. Music  was  an  absorbing  interest  from 
Paul's  youth,  as  was  his  religion.  He  won  a 
scholarship  to  the  King  Henry  VIII  School  at 
Coventry,  but  went  on  to  Douai,  his  parents 
thinking  he  might  have  a  vocation  for  the  priest- 
hood. He  loved  Douai  and  its  admirable  head- 
master, Father  Ignatius  Rice,  but  decided  he  was 
not  cut  out  for  the  priesthood.  His  grounding  in 
the  classics  fed  his  literary  imagination  and  his 
loving,  lifelong,  obsessive  play  with  words. 

His  humour  was  innate,  or  at  least  formed 
very  early.  He  joined  the  Royal  Corps  of  Signals 
in  World  War  II  and,  when  he  was  a  subaltern  in 
India  in  1943,  Lilliput  published  a  characteristic- 
piece  beginning:  'Have  you  ever  watched  a  sol- 
dier marching,  and  wondered  what  he  was  think- 
ing about?  If  he's  a  Young  Soldier,  I  can  tell  you! 
He  is  thinking  about  a  little  booklet  excitingly 
titled  "Army  Form  B51".'  Punch  took  an  army 
piece  in  1945.  Jennings  worked  at  the  Central 
Office  of  Information  (1946-7)  and  in  advertising 
(1947-9).  His  celebrated  parody  of  Jean-Paul 
Sartre  appeared  in  the  Spectator  in  1948:  'Resis- 
tentialism  is  a  philosophy  of  tragic  grandeur 
...deriving  its  name  from  the  thesis  that  Things 
resist  Men...L«  choses  sont  contre  nous.''  Resis- 
tentialism's  leading  luminary  was  Pierre-Marie 
Ventre,  who  built  on  the  work  of  his  nineteenth- 
century  predecessors,  Friedegg  and  Heidan- 
siecker.  Jennings  imagined  the  seminal  play 
'Puits  Clos'  about  three  old  men  endlessly  stum- 
bling over  bricks  in  the  bottom  of  a  well.  (It  was 
used  by  Time  magazine  as  a  news  story.)  In  1949 
he  joined  the  staff  of  the  Observer,  with  a  regular 
column,  'Oddly  Enough',  which  continued  for 
seventeen  years.  His  method  was  to  start  with 
something  very  familiar  and  then  spin  illogical 
and  fantastic  speculations  around  it,  creating  a 
brilliant  and  often  subversive  parody. 

Those  Observer  years,  which  lasted  until  1966, 
were  years  of  fulfilment,  establishing  him,  as  The 
Times  obituarist  adjudged,  as  'the  most  con- 
sistently original  English  comic  writer  of  our 
century'.  In  the  year  Jennings  joined  the  Observer 
so  did  Eric  *Blom,  as  its  music  critic.  Paul  met 


230 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Jewkes 


his  daughter,  Celia.  Their  marriage,  in  1952,  was 
very  happy  and  ended  only  with  his  death.  There 
were  three  sons  and  three  daughters.  Jennings 
knew  a  great  deal  about  music;  he  sang  madrigals 
with  the  Oriana  Society  and  enjoyed  singing — as 
far  afield  as  Istanbul— with  the  Philharmonia 
Chorus  and  the  London  Philharmonic  Choir. 
'For  members  of  choirs,  there's  harmony  beyond 
the  heard  harmony  of  music/ 

The  family  moved  from  Hampstead  to  East 
Bergholt,  in  Suffolk,  and  Jennings's  pieces  in  the 
Observer  began  to  reflect  his  deep  love  of  that 
county.  His  wife  became  involved  in  the  work  of 
the  Suffolk  Preservation  Society.  To  celebrate  its 
sixtieth  anniversary  in  1989,  she  edited  a  book  to 
which  her  husband  contributed  inimitably — not 
only  the  tide,  Suffolk  For  Ever,  but  the  last  word. 
This  was  a  clever  discussion,  disguised  as  a 
Platonic  dialogue,  of  the  complexities  and  the 
pitfalls  confronting  every  one  moved  to  action  by 
the  erosions  of  our  environs.  In  the  wide-ranging 
book  Jennings  edited,  and  mostly  wrote — The 
English  Difference  (1974) — he  illustrated  his  spec- 
ulative inclination:  'You  can  see  on  the  face  of  a 
child,  deep  in  a  game,  the  kind  of  total  absorption 
observable  in  the  figure  of  Pythagoras,  Thinking, 
carved  on  a  portal  at  Chartres... Though  children 
the  world  over  play  games,  it  is  the  English  who, 
perhaps  sensing  the  Death  of  God,  once  did 
unconsciously  try  to  preserve  religion  in  their 
untranslatable  phrase  playing  the  game?  After 
1966  Jennings  wrote  freelance,  and  from  this 
period  emerged  his  compilation,  The  Book  of 
Nonsense  (1977).  He  mourned  the  loss  of  any- 
thing old-fashioned:  steam  trains,  red  telephone 
kiosks,  the  Fahrenheit  classification  of  tempera- 
ture. His  prejudices  were  conservative  and 
patriotic. 

Jennings's  Observer  (and  other)  essays  were 
collected  and  published  with  such  tides  as  Even 
Oddlier  (1952),  and  Next  to  Oddliness  (1955), 
Golden  Oddites  (1983),  and  The  Paul  Jennings 
Reader  (1990).  The  Living  Village  (1968)  was  a 
picture  of  the  Women's  Institutes  of  Britain.  He 
also  wrote  two  children's  books. 

Jennings  suffered  serious  illnesses — including 
tuberculosis  and  a  heart  attack — all  belied  by  the 
laughter  of  that  high,  quick,  musical  voice  and  by 
lively,  wide-open,  grey  eyes.  He  and  his  wife 
moved  to  Orford,  on  the  Suffolk  coast.  He  died 
there  26  December  1989,  of  liver  cancer. 

[The  Times,  29  December  1989;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Norman  Scarfe 

JEWKES,  John  (1902-1988),  economist,  was 
born  in  Barrow-in-Furness  29  June  1902,  the 
eldest  of  three  children  and  only  son  of  John 
Jewkes,  sheet-metal  worker  and  foreman  in  Vick- 
ers  Armstrong's  shipbuilding  yard,  and  his  wife, 
Fanny  Cope.  After  attending  Barrow  Grammar 
School,  he  took  a  B.Comm.  degree  at  the  Uni- 


versity of  Manchester  in  1923,  with  distinction  in 
economics,  and  an  M.Comm.  by  thesis  in  1924. 
He  then  spent  two  years  as  assistant  secretary  of 
the  Manchester  Chamber  of  Commerce  before 
being  appointed  to  a  lectureship  at  Manchester 
University  in  1926.  His  early  work  was  on  the 
cotton  industry  and  in  1935  he  published  with 
E.  M.  Gray  a  study  of  Wages  and  Labour  in  the 
Lancashire  Cotton  Spinning  Industry.  In  1930  he 
was  appointed  director  of  a  new  economic 
research  section  at  Manchester  University  and 
concentrated  on  problems  of  industry  and 
labour.  With  Alan  Winterbottom  he  produced 
for  the  government  in  1933  An  Industrial  Survey 
of  Cumberland  and  Furness  (one  of  a  series  for  the 
'development  areas'),  and  in  the  same  year  with 
the  same  collaborator  he  published  a  study  of 
juvenile  employment — a  subject  to  which  he 
returned  in  1938  with  his  wife  in  The  Juvenile 
Labour  Market.  In  1936  his  university  appointed 
him  to  a  chair  in  social  economics,  which  he  held 
until  1946. 

In  December  1939,  after  the  outbreak  of 
World  War  II,  Jewkes  was  recruited,  along  with 
others,  to  provide  economic  advice  to  the  war 
cabinet  secretariat.  In  1941  he  became  director  of 
its  newly  formed  economic  section,  which  was  a 
prime  source  of  economic  advice  to  the  govern- 
ment. Jewkes  had  a  boyish  enthusiasm,  a  salty 
humour,  and  above  all  a  grasp  of  the  practical 
and  the  significant  that  fitted  him  for  the  job  of 
feeding  economic  ideas  into  the  administrative 
machine.  Within  a  few  months  he  was  invited  to 
review  the  need  for  some  form  of  planning  in  the 
Ministry  of  Aircraft  Production.  He  recom- 
mended in  favour  of  this  and  was  promptly 
invited  to  undertake  the  job.  Lent  initially  for 
three  months  to  that  Ministry,  he  stayed  for 
nearly  three  years,  exercising  as  powerful  an 
influence  there  as  he  had  done  in  the  Cabinet 
Office  and  recruiting  a  staff  made  up  exclusively 
of  economists.  He  proved  himself  a  skilled  plan- 
ner in  face  of  confusion  and  discouragement,  his 
appointment  as  director-general  of  statistics  and 
programmes  coming  only  in  1943  after  a  strug- 
gle. Early  in  1944  he  moved  on  again,  this  time  to 
the  Ministry  of  Reconstruction.  One  of  his  main 
contributions  there  was  to  the  drafting  of  the 
white  paper  on  employment  policy,  a  document 
which  he  defended  in  later  years,  emphasizing 
the  limits  of  the  commitments  assumed.  In 
wartime  Whitehall  he  was  an  effective  and  cap- 
able head  of  a  team,  bold  in  his  proposals  and 
adroit  in  obtaining  support  for  them. 

After  the  war  Jewkes  never  found  the  scope  for 
his  talents  that  the  war  had  provided.  For  two 
years  he  returned  to  Manchester  as  Stanley 
Jevons  professor  of  political  economy,  but  in 
1948  he  moved  to  Oxford  to  a  new  chair  in 
economic  organization  and  a  fellowship  at  Mer- 
ton  College.  He  was  devoted  to  his  college  and  as 


231 


Jewkes 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


garden  master  did  much  to  enhance  the  beauty  of 
the  garden.  As  an  economist,  however,  he  was 
swimming  against  the  tide.  He  was  not  interested 
in  pure  theory,  his  views  on  policy  were  unfash- 
ionable with  younger  economists,  and  he  missed 
the  company  of  kindred  spirits.  But  he  remained 
in  Oxford  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  having,  after  his 
retirement  in  1969,  little  contact  with  other 
members  of  the  university. 

In  the  early  postwar  years  Jewkes  played  a 
leading  part  on  the  first  of  Sir  (R.)  Stafford 
*Cripps's  working  parties,  on  the  cotton  indus- 
try, and  on  the  royal  commission  on  betting, 
lotteries,  and  gaming  (1949).  He  came  to  public 
attention  with  the  publication  in  1948  of  his 
Ordeal  by  Planning.  This  established  him  as  a 
leading  critic  of  government  intervention  and 
control.  He  spent  much  of  his  time  in  the  1950s 
collecting  material,  with  the  help  of  two  assis- 
tants, for  his  magnum  opus,  The  Sources  of  Inven- 
tion, which  appeared  in  1958.  This  studied  the 
origin  of  over  one  hundred  of  the  more  import- 
ant industrial  inventions  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury. The  results  were  in  keeping  with  Jewkes's 
philosophy,  derived  from  the  American  philoso- 
pher William  James,  of  'small  is  preferable'.  He 
argued  consistently  against  large  organizations, 
pointing  to  the  limits  of  economies  of  scale,  the 
advantages  of  competition,  the  greater  flexibility 
and  inventiveness  of  small  units,  and  the  dangers 
of  bureaucracy  and  monopoly.  In  1957-60 
Jewkes  also  served  on  the  royal  commission  on 
doctors'  and  dentists'  remuneration  and  devel- 
oped a  new  interest  in  the  economics  of  health 
care. 

In  1978  Jewkes  published  his  last  work,  A 
Return  to  Free  Market  Economics?,  a  symposium 
drawn  from  earlier  writings.  He  was  too  extrava- 
gant in  his  attack  on  postwar  controls,  too  sure 
that  control  of  industry  was  not  passing  into 
fewer  hands,  and  played  down  too  much  the 
advantages  of  large-scale  research  and  develop- 
ment. He  was  more  at  home  on  issues  of  organi- 
zation and  micro-economics  than  on  the  major 
dilemmas  of  policy  in  postwar  Britain,  especially 
those  associated  with  international  balance.  But 
he  was  a  much  underrated  critic  of  government 
economic  policy.  The  book  contains  a  resume  of 
his  work  as  director  (1969-74)  of  the  Industrial 
Policy  Group,  consisting  of  a  score  of  top  busi- 
nessmen. This  appointment  arose  out  of  his  long 
association  with  Guinness  as  an  economic 
adviser.  He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1943  and 
awarded  a  D.Sc.  by  Hull  University  in  1973. 

In  appearance  Jewkes  was  short  and  stocky 
with  a  broad,  cheerful,  bespectacled  face  and  a 
soft,  attractive  voice.  He  was  a  man  of  many 
enthusiasms,  a  keen  gardener  and  a  house  agent 
manque.  Although  combative  in  his  views,  he  was 
mild  in  manner,  entertaining  in  conversation,  full 
of  humour,  and  a  lover  of  paradox.  In  1929  he 


married  (Frances)  Sylvia,  daughter  of  Harry 
Clementi  Butterworth,  a  Manchester  cotton 
merchant.  She  collaborated  in  much  of  his  work 
and  shared  his  views.  They  had  one  daughter. 
Jewkes  died  in  Oxford  18  August  1988  and  his 
wife  died  soon  afterwards. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Ai.ec  Cairncross 

JOHNSON,  Sir  Henry  Cecil  (1906- 1988), 
chairman  of  the  British  Railways  Board,  was 
born  11  September  1906  in  Lavendon,  Buck- 
inghamshire, the  third  of  three  sons  and  the  fifth 
of  six  children  of  William  Longland  Johnson, 
farmer  and  butcher,  of  Lavendon,  and  his  wife, 
Alice  Mary  Osborne.  He  was  educated  at  Bed- 
ford Modern  School. 

Johnson  joined  LNER  (London  and  North 
Eastern  Railway)  as  a  traffic  apprentice  in  1923, 
the  usual  first  step  towards  a  career  in  railway 
management,  and  in  1926  became  an  assistant 
yard  manager  near  Ely,  entitled  to  wear  a  bowler 
hat,  the  symbol  of  a  railway  manager.  After 
various  posts  in  the  operating  department  he  was 
appointed  assistant  superintendent  of  Southern 
Area,  LNER,  in  1942.  In  1955  he  became  chief 
operating  superintendent  of  the  Eastern  Region, 
one  of  the  six  regions  formed  when  the  railways 
were  nationalized  in  1948.  He  was  promoted  to 
the  position  of  assistant  general  manager  of  the 
Eastern  Region  at  the  end  of  1955,  becoming 
general  manager  in  1958.  While  at  the  Eastern 
Region  he  introduced  the  successful  line  man- 
agement concept — an  assistant  general  manager 
(traffic)  co-ordinating  the  work  of  the  line  man- 
agers. 

In  1962  Johnson  became  general  manager  of 
the  London  Midland  Region,  the  most  important 
of  the  British  Railways  regions,  and  he  was  also 
chairman  in  1963-7.  He  took  charge  of  the 
electrification  of  the  Euston  to  Manchester  and 
Liverpool  line,  the  first  main-line  electrification, 
completed  in  1966,  which  had  been  part  of  the 
modernization  plan  of  1955,  and  the  new  Euston 
station  was  opened  in  1968.  Johnson  became 
vice-chairman  of  the  British  Railways  board  in 
1967.  Following  the  forced  resignation  of  the 
chairman,  Sir  Stanley  Raymond,  at  the  end  of 
1967,  after  disagreements  with  the  minister  of 
transport,  Barbara  Castle  (later  Baroness  Castle 
of  Blackburn),  Johnson  was  appointed  chairman, 
a  post  he  held  from  1968  until  1971. 

The  finances  of  British  Railways  improved 
under  Johnson,  largely  as  a  result  of  the  1968 
Transport  Act,  in  which  the  government  prom- 
ised specific  grants  to  make  unprofitable  pas- 
senger services  financially  viable  where  they  were 
providing  a  public  service,  in  contrast  to  the 
recommendations  of  Richard  (later  Baron) 
*Beeching  (chairman  in  1963-5),  who  wanted  to 
make  the  railways  profitable  by  closing  uneco- 


232 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Johnston 


nomic  lines.  Although  Richard  (later  Baron) 
Marsh,  Johnson's  successor,  estimated  in  1972 
that  the  government  invested  five  times  as  much 
each  year  in  new  motorways  and  trunk  roads  as 
in  the  railways,  modernization  continued:  Inter- 
City,  started  in  1966  as  a  new  operation  of  high- 
speed trains  linking  major  cities,  expanded,  and 
in  1968  the  last  steam  engines  were  taken  out  of 
service.  In  1969  work  began  at  the  research 
centre  in  Derby  on  the  Advanced  Passenger 
Train,  a  high-speed  train  running  on  existing 
tracks,  but  it  was  withdrawn  two  weeks  after  it 
entered  regular  passenger  service  in  1981.  John- 
son took  a  particular  interest  in  the  commercial 
development  of  surplus  railway  land,  and  estab- 
lished and  became  chairman  of  the  British  Rail 
property  board  in  1970.  In  the  1970s  British 
Railways  earned  £20  million  a  year  from  land 
sales. 

Although  there  were  large  reductions  in  rail- 
way staff  following  modernization  and  the  clo- 
sure of  uneconomic  lines,  there  was  some 
progress  during  the  Johnson  years  towards 
improving  industrial  relations.  The  rail  unions 
objected  to  pay  being  linked  to  productivity  at  a 
time  when  this  was  not  the  case  in  other  indus- 
tries, and  Johnson  had  to  steer  British  Railways 
through  periods  of  'work-to-rule',  with  the 
unions  demanding  large  pay  increases  while  Brit- 
ish Railways  proposals  for  price  increases  were 
being  held  back  by  the  National  Board  for  Prices 
and  Incomes. 

Johnson  was  not  an  innovator,  and  most  of  the 
changes  which  took  place  under  his  chairman- 
ship had  been  put  in  motion  by  his  predecessors. 
While  he  did  not  capture  the  public  imagination 
in  the  way  of  Beeching,  he  was  extremely  pop- 
ular with  the  railway  employees,  who  admired 
him  as  the  only  railwayman  to  have  started  at  the 
bottom  and  worked  his  way  up  through  the  ranks 
to  become  chairman  of  British  Railways.  He  was 
fortunate  to  become  chairman  when  the  1968 
Transport  Act  had  paved  the  way  towards 
improving  the  financial  situation,  and  he  left 
British  Railways  with  a  surplus  of  £9.7  million. 
Johnson  was  appointed  CBE  in  1962,  knighted  in 
1968,  and  became  KBE  in  1972.  In  1981  a 
locomotive  was  named  after  him. 

After  his  retirement  he  started  a  new  career  in 
the  city,  as  chairman  of  Metropolitan  Estate  and 
Property  Corporation  (197 1-6).  He  later  held 
positions  on  the  boards  of  Lloyds  Bank,  the 
Trident  Life  Assurance  Company,  and  Imperial 
Life  of  Canada. 

Always  known  as  'Bill'  Johnson,  he  had  a 
friendly  and  relaxed  manner,  but  he  was  shrewd, 
a  good  listener,  and  expert  at  delegating.  Sir 
Peter  Parker,  a  later  chairman,  admired  his 
honesty  and  courage,  describing  him  as  'straight 
as  a  gun  barrel'.  He  had  an  open,  distinguished 
face,  with  silver-grey  hair  and  large  bushy  eye- 


brows. In  his  younger  days  he  was  a  keen  rugby 
player  and  a  cricketer,  and  he  also  enjoyed  golf. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  Marylebone  Cricket 
Qub  and  the  Royal  and  Ancient  Golf  Qub.  In 
1932  he  married  Evelyn  Mary  ('Maisie'),  daugh- 
ter of  Thomas  Morton,  corn  merchant.  They  had 
two  daughters.  He  died  13  March  1988  in  Great 
Missenden,  Buckinghamshire. 

[The  Times,  15  March  1988;  T.  R.  Gourvish,  British 
Railways  1948-73,  a  Business  History,  1986;  Michael 
Bona  via,  British  Rail:  the  First  25  Years,  198 1;  Sir  Peter 
Parker,  Far  Starters:  the  Business  of  Life,  1989;  private 
information.]  Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

JOHNSTON,  Sot  Charles  Hepburn  (1912- 
1986),  diplomat,  writer,  poet,  and  translator,  was 
born  1 1  March  1912m  Hampstead,  the  eldest  in 
the  family  of  four  sons  and  two  daughters  of 
Ernest  Johnston,  an  underwriter  at  Lloyd's,  and 
his  wife,  Emma  Florence  Hepburn.  (The  family 
later  moved  to  a  larger  house  in  Reigate,  Surrey.) 
Studious  and  competitive,  he  won  scholarships 
to  Winchester  and  then  to  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  where  at  first  he  was  lonely  and 
unhappy.  He  took  first  classes  in  both  classical 
honour  moderations  (1932)  and  literae  huma mores 
(1934)  and  taught  for  a  term  at  his  old  school 
before  choosing  the  Diplomatic  Service,  which 
he  entered  at  the  second  attempt  (1936). 

For  twenty  years  his  career  followed  a  conven- 
tional course,  except  that  in  Tokyo  he  and  the 
rest  of  the  embassy  staff  were  interned  for  several 
months  when  Japan  entered  the  war.  Later,  as 
first  secretary  in  Cairo,  he  tried  but  was  not 
allowed  to  transfer  to  the  armed  forces;  he  felt 
this  keenly,  especially  after  his  brother  Duncan 
was  killed  in  action.  He  became  first  secretary  in 
Madrid  (1048),  and  counsellor  at  the  Foreign 
Office  (1951)  and  the  embassy  in  Bonn  (1955). 

In  1956,  aged  only  forty-four,  he  was  picked 
to  be  ambassador  to  Jordan.  His  first  task  was 
to  wind  up  the  outdated  Anglo-Jordan  treaty, 
which  he  accomplished  with  skill  and  tact  (1957). 
A  year  later,  when  King  Hussein's  position  was 
threatened,  it  was  his  advocacy,  backed  by  the 
prime  minister  Harold  *Macmillan  (later  the 
first  Earl  of  Stockton),  which  overcame  the 
doubts  felt  elsewhere  in  London  and  led  to  the 
brief  but  successful  deployment  of  British  troops 
to  Jordan.  He  was  appointed  KCMG  in  1959. 
These  events  are  described  in  his  book  The  Brink 
of  Jordan  (1972),  for  which  Macmillan  wrote  a 
preface  awarding  him  'a  secure  place  in  the  list 
of  great  envoys  who  have  represented  Britain 
overseas'. 

His  next  appointment,  unusual  for  a  non- 
member  of  the  Colonial  Service,  was  as  (the  last) 
governor  of  Aden.  He  worked  to  merge  the 
colony  of  Aden  with  the  Federation  of  South 
Arabia,  promoting  constitutional  advance  but 
keeping  the  British  military  base.  So  long  as  he 


233 


Johnston 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


was  there  (1960-3)  this  line  was  maintained,  with 
some  difficulty  but  on  the  whole  with  success,  as 
he  related  in  The  View  From  Steamer  Point 
(1964). 

After  Aden  he  might  have  risen  higher  if  the 
Labour  party  had  not  won  the  general  election  of 
1964.  As  it  was,  the  top  posts  to  which  he  aspired 
went  to  others,  while  those  offered  to  him  did  not 
match  his  own  estimate  of  his  abilities.  Finally,  in 
1965  he  agreed  to  go  as  high  commissioner  to 
Australia,  where  he  was  more  effective  and  more 
popular  than  many  had  expected.  He  continued 
to  reject  offers  of  other  posts  and  retired  with  a 
GCMG  in  1971,  a  year  earlier  than  normal,  with 
the  idea  of  entering  politics. 

His  last  years  brought  some  disappointments. 
He  was  judged  too  old  for  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. A  peerage  was  mentioned  but  not  offered. 
A  company  chairmanship  lapsed  when  the  plan 
to  build  an  airport  in  the  Thames  estuary  was 
dropped.  Despite  his  hopes  he  became  neither 
chairman  of  the  BBC  nor  poet  laureate.  A  book 
of  reminiscences  built  round  the  character  of  his 
long-serving  Egyptian  butler,  Mo  And  Other 
Originals  (1971),  had  a  brief  success,  but  his 
other  prose  and  poetry  found  little  market  out- 
side magazines. 

Two  things  consoled  him:  his  social  work  at 
Toynbee  Hall,  for  which  he  showed  an  unex- 
pected talent;  and  the  world  opened  to  him  by 
his  marriage.  In  Cairo  he  had  met  Princess 
Natasha  Bagration,  daughter  of  Prince  Con- 
stantine  Bagration-Mukhransky  and  of  Princess 
Tatiana  Konstantinovna,  descended  respectively 
from  the  royal  house  of  Georgia  and  from  Tsar 
Nicholas  I  of  Russia.  They  were  married  in 
London  in  1944.  Though  childless,  it  was  a 
strange  but  successful  union  until  her  death  in 
1984  after  several  years  of  intermittent  illness. 
Arrestingly  tall,  possessed  of  magnetic  charm, 
and  connected  with  royal  families  all  over 
Europe,  she  vastly  enlarged  his  mental  and 
especially  social  horizons.  From  their  flat  in 
Knightsbridge  they  continued,  almost  to  the  last, 
to  sustain  their  parts  in  the  social  round  which  he 
called  'the  Belgraveyard'. 

In  collaboration  with  his  wife  he  had  produced 
in  1948  what  is  perhaps  still  the  best  English 
translation  of  Turgenev's  Sportsman's  Notebook. 
But  his  masterpiece  is  his  rendering  of  Eugene 
Onegin  into  English  verse  preserving  Pushkin's 
metre  and  rhyme  scheme  (1977).  This  received 
unqualified  critical  acclaim.  His  success  as  a 
translator  did  not  help,  and  perhaps  even  hin- 
dered, the  fortunes  of  his  other  work,  though  he 
continued  to  write,  print,  publish  and  circulate  it 
to  his  friends,  convinced  that  posterity  would  be 
kinder.  Poems  and  Journeys  (1979)  contains  much 
of  his  best  work. 

He  developed  a  boisterous  manner  for  social 
purposes,  but  remained   shy  and  reserved  at 


heart.  The  strong  emotions  reflected  in  his 
poetry,  together  with  his  deep  vein  of  self-doubt, 
were  well  concealed.  Physically  tall,  energetic  but 
somewhat  awkward,  he  was  a  good  sailor  and  a 
keen  shot.  He  managed  his  savings  astutely  and 
generously,  and  was  a  good  judge  of  a  painting. 
He  died  in  his  sleep  23  April  1986  at  his  home  in 
London. 

[Private  papers;  personal  knowledge.] 

Julian  Blllard 

JONES,  Sir  Eric  Malcolm  (1 907-1 986),  busi- 
nessman, intelligence  officer,  and  administrator, 
was  born  27  April  1907  in  Buxton,  Derbyshire, 
the  third  in  the  family  of  four  sons  and  one 
daughter  of  Samuel  Jones,  who  ran  the  family 
business  of  Samuel  Jones  &  Son,  textile  manu- 
facturers, of  Macclesfield,  and  his  wife,  Minnie 
Florence  Grove,  of  Buxton.  Jones  went  to  King's 
School,  Macclesfield,  and  left  at  the  age  of  fifteen 
to  join  the  business  in  Manchester.  In  1925  he  set 
up  on  his  own,  and  built  up  a  large  textile  agency, 
which  he  handed  over  in  1940  to  a  manager,  in 
order  to  enlist  in  the  Royal  Air  Force  Volunteer 
Reserve. 

He  was  posted  to  the  Air  Ministry  intelligence 
branch.  In  1942,  as  squadron-leader,  he  was  sent 
to  the  Government  Code  and  Cipher  School  at 
Bletchley  Park  to  stand  in  temporarily  for  the 
senior  RAF  officer  in  Hut  3,  which  housed  the 
group  responsible  for  the  analysis  and  dissemina- 
tion of  the  deciphered  German  Enigma  messages 
to  the  ministries  and  principal  commands.  So 
impressive  was  he  to  (Sir)  Edward  Travis,  direc- 
tor GC&CS  (later  the  Government  Communica- 
tions Headquarters  or  GCHQ)  that  in  April 
1943,  when  Travis  decided  that  a  formal  head  of 
Hut  3  was  needed,  he  asked  the  RAF  for  Jones, 
who  was  then  posted  to  Bletchley  as  head  of  Hut 
3  and  promoted  to  group  captain.  Jones  provided 
the  mainly  academic  staff  in  Hut  3  with  wise 
leadership  and  demanded  the  highest  standards 
of  speed  and  accuracy  in  the  production  of  their 
intelligence  reports. 

From  1945  to  1946  Jones  was  in  Washington 
as  representative  of  UK  signal  intelligence  and  it 
was  his  discussions  with  US  agencies  that  were 
the  basis  for  US-UK  co-operation  in  this  field  in 
the  future.  This  proved  of  great  importance  to 
both  governments  in  the  succeeding  years,  most 
notably  in  the  cold- war  period. 

Jones  was  formally  transferred  from  the  RAF 
to  GCHQ.  at  assistant  secretary  level,  was  made 
deputy  director  in  1950,  and  succeeded  Sir 
Edward  Travis  as  director  in  April  1952.  He 
stayed  as  director  until  i960,  when  he  took  early 
retirement,  believing  that  eight  years  was  long 
enough  in  the  post.  During  that  time  he  estab- 
lished the  organization  and  the  ethos  under 
which  GCHQ  was  to  operate  in  succeeding 
years.  For  a  man  who  left  school  at  fifteen,  he 


234 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Jones 


had  a  remarkable  interest  in  the  English  lan- 
guage. A  Dictionary  of  Modern  English  Usage 
(1926)  by  H.  W.  *Fowler  was  a  favourite  work. 
Jones  produced  instructions,  and  a  system  for 
enforcing  them,  to  ensure  that  GCHQJs  reports 
and  correspondence  were  of  the  highest  possible 
accuracy  and  clarity. 

His  directorship  spanned  a  period  of  great 
expansion  in  Soviet  military  capability,  encom- 
passing conventional  and  non-conventional 
weapons  and  rocketry  to  deliver  them.  With 
colleagues  in  the  services,  Jones  made  sure  that 
UK  signal  intelligence  had  the  staff  and  technical 
resources  to  provide  information  on  these  devel- 
opments. He  believed  that  his  task  was  manage- 
ment of  the  intellectually  brilliant  and  technically 
qualified  staff  by  whom  he  was  surrounded,  to 
give  them  the  best  chance  to  exercise  their  skills. 
A  man  of  the  highest  integrity ,  it  was  said  of  him 
that  corruption  was  unthinkable  in  his  pres- 
ence. 

He  aimed,  quite  simply,  to  be  the  best, 
whether  in  his  work,  as  a  games  player  (he  played 
golf  at  the  highest  amateur  level),  or  in  skiing, 
which  he  took  up  at  the  age  of  fifty.  With  the 
move  of  GCHQ.  to  Cheltenham,  he  bought 
Bredons  Hardwick  Manor  near  Tewkesbury  and 
with  his  wife  and  family  became  a  keen  gardener 
and  grew  high-quality  carnations. 

A  handsome  man,  he  was  deliberate  in  both 
speech  and  gait,  and  some  found  him  ponderous 
or  pompous.  Perhaps  for  this  reason,  or  through 
a  lack  of  empathy  between  Whitehall  mandarins 
and  a  man  from  a  quite  different  background,  he 
was  not  given  further  government  employment 
after  his  retirement  in  i960,  at  the  age  of  fifty- 
three.  Thereafter  he  accepted  non-executive 
directorships  in  a  number  of  companies,  includ- 
ing Simon  Engineering  Ltd.  (1966-77). 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1946,  CB  in  1953, 
and  KCMG  in  1957.  His  standing  among  US 
government  and  service  officers  was  very  high. 
He  was  awarded  the  US  Legion  of  Merit  in  1946. 
When  the  US  Air  Force  decided  to  have  its  own 
signal  intelligence  organization  in  the  early 
1950s,  the  British  government  was  asked  to  lend 
Jones  to  set  it  up.  He  felt  bound  to  refuse  the 
offer,  but  arranged  to  provide  advice. 

In  1929  he  married  Edith  Mary  ('Meg')  (died 
1984),  daughter  of  Sir  Thomas  Taylor,  silk 
merchant,  of  Macclesfield.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  Jones  died  24  December  1986  in 
Gloucester. 

[The  Times,  1  January  1987;  Ralph  Bennett,  Ultra  in  the 
West,  1979;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

D.  R.  Nicoll 

JONES,  (Frederick)  Elwyn,  Baron  Elwyn- 
Jones  (1909-1989),  lawyer  and  politician,  was 
born  24  October  1909  in  Llanelli,  the  youngest  in 
the   family   of  three   sons   and   a   daughter  of 


Frederick  Jones,  tin-plate  rollerman,  and  his  wife 
Elizabeth  Griffiths,  daughter  of  a  small  farmer 
from  Carmarthenshire.  His  father  was  a  greatly 
respected  member  of  the  local  community,  an 
elder  of  the  Tabernacle  Congregational  chapel, 
and  a  lifelong  socialist,  and  his  mother  had  an 
immensely  strong  and  influential  personality. 
The  three  other  children  all  achieved  success,  in 
the  worlds  of  science,  business,  and  education 
respectively.  Elwyn  Jones  was  educated  at  Lla- 
nelli Grammar  School,  the  University  College  of 
Wales  at  Aberystwyth,  and  Gonville  and  Caius 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  became  president 
of  the  Cambridge  Union  (1931).  In  the  Cam- 
bridge history  tripos  he  obtained  a  first-class 
(division  II)  in  part  i  (1930)  and  a  second  class 
(division  I)  in  part  ii  (1931).  He  went  on  to 
Gray's  Inn  and  was  called  to  the  bar  in  1935. 

With  his  intense  concern  for  human  freedom 
and  justice,  he  became  politically  involved  with 
the  Fabians  and  it  was  through  this  connection 
that  he  responded  to  a  request  to  go  out  and  give 
legal  help  to  the  beleaguered  Austrian  Social 
Democrats  during  the  time  of  the  chancellorship 
of  Engelbert  Dollfuss  (1932-4).  It  was  then  that 
he  became  greatly  involved  with  the  European 
problem  and  attended  political  trials  in  Ger- 
many, Greece,  Hungary,  and  Romania,  organiz- 
ing help  for  those  accused.  He  wrote  to  various 
newspapers  about  the  problems  and  went  on  to 
write  three  books  for  the  Left  Book  Qub  on  the 
Fascist  threat — Hitlers  Drive  to  the  East  (1937), 
The  Battle  for  Peace  (1938),  and  The  Attack  from 
Within  (1939). 

In  the  late  1930s  Elwyn  Jones  rejected  his 
earlier  pacifism  as  the  answer  to  the  Nazi  menace 
and  became  a  Territorial  Army  volunteer.  Dur- 
ing World  War  II  he  served  as  a  major  in  the 
Royal  Artillery  in  North  Africa  and  Italy  but 
ended  the  war  as  deputy  judge  advocate 
(1043-5),  attending  many  courts  martial  and 
inquiries  into  alleged  Nazi  brutalities.  Following 
his  election  to  Parliament  in  1945,  as  Labour  MP 
for  Plaistow  (West  Ham),  he  soon  became  parlia- 
mentary private  secretary  (1 046-51)  to  the  attor- 
ney-general, Sir  Hartley  (later  Baron)  Shawcross, 
and  joined  the  team  of  counsel  for  the  prosecu- 
tion at  the  Nuremberg  war  crimes  trials. 

In  1949  he  was  appointed  recorder  of  Merthyr 
Tydfil;  he  took  silk  in  1953.  He  became  recorder 
of  Swansea  in  1953,  of  Cardiff  in  i960,  the  year 
he  became  a  bencher  of  Gray's  Inn,  and  of 
Kingston  upon  Thames  in  1968  (until  1974).  In 
the  meantime  he  was  reasonably  active  politically 
(as  MP  for  West  Ham  South  from  1950  to  1974) 
but  still  devoted  a  good  deal  of  time  to  his 
practice  on  the  Wales  and  Chester  circuit.  How- 
ever, following  the  Labour  victory  in  the  1964 
general  election,  Elwyn  Jones  became  attorney- 
general,  holding  that  position  until  1070, 
throughout  the  Labour  government. 


235 


Jones 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


During  his  period  as  attorney-general,  in 
co-operation  with  the  lord  chancellor,  Gerald 
(Baron)  *Gardiner,  the  most  important  achieve- 
ment was  the  establishment  in  1965  of  the  Law 
Commission,  under  the  chairmanship  of  Sir 
Leslie  (later  Baron)  Scarman.  As  attorney-gen- 
eral, Elwyn  Jones  was  also  counsel  for  the  tribu- 
nal in  the  Aberfan  inquiry,  when  over  a  hundred 
children  had  been  killed  in  a  Welsh  village  school 
by  the  movement  of  a  coal  slurry  tip.  He  prose- 
cuted in  the  Moors  murder  case  and  in  cases 
arising  from  the  Official  Secrets  Act. 

Following  the  fall  of  the  Labour  government 
in  1970  he  returned  to  his  legal  practice,  by  then 
mainly  in  London.  When  Labour  returned  in 
1974,  Elwyn  Jones  became  lord  chancellor,  with 
a  life  peerage,  and  severed  his  long-standing  tie 
with  his  beloved  East  End  constituency.  As  lord 
chancellor  he  encouraged  the  growth  of  law 
centres,  whose  number  had  quadrupled  by  the 
time  he  left  office. 

Although  a  lord  chancellor  (until  1979,  when 
he  became  a  lord  of  appeal)  and  attorney-general 
of  distinction,  he  was  not  a  profound  lawyer. 
Law  as  such  was  not  his  prime  interest;  politics 
were.  He  was  very  much  a  political  lawyer  of 
swift  intelligence,  good  judgement,  and  rare 
sensibility;  more  concerned  that  the  legal  system 
should  provide  the  means  of  achieving  true 
justice  than  with  handing  down  great  judgments 
himself. 

Elwyn  Jones  was  a  member  of  the  Bar  Council 
(1956-H9)  and  chairman  of  the  Society  of  Labour 
Lawyers.  He  was  president  of  University  Col- 
lege, Cardiff,  from  1971  to  1988.  He  was  an 
honorary  fellow  of  his  Cambridge  college  (1976) 
and  received  six  honorary  degrees.  A  privy 
councillor  from  1964,  he  was  knighted  in  the 
same  year  and  appointed  CH  in  1976. 

Elwyn  Jones  was  tall  and  dark-haired,  with 
aquiline  features  and  a  ready  smile.  He  was  a 
man  of  natural  charm  and  dignity,  with  a  warm 
personality,  convivial  disposition,  and  fine  sense 
of  humour.  He  was  a  superb  raconteur  and  had  a 
very  fine  light  baritone  singing  voice,  with  which 
he  entertained  his  friends  and  which  he  some- 
times used  on  formal  occasions.  There  was  a 
disarming  simplicity  about  his  approach,  and  his 
shrewdness  and  capacity  to  grasp  the  essential 
points  of  a  controversy,  hidden  behind  an 
approach  of  urbanity  and  charming  whimsicality, 
were  often  used  to  take  the  heat  out  of  Commons 
debates,  which  might  otherwise  have  become 
acrimonious.  However,  below  the  surface  were  to 
be  found  the  true  convictions  from  which  he 
never  wavered.  When  put  to  the  test,  his  concern 
for  social  justice  would  manifest  itself  in  pas- 
sionate outbursts. 

In  1937  he  married  Pearl  ('Polly'),  daughter  of 
Morris  Binder,  a  Jewish  tailor  in  Salford.  They 
had  one  son  and  two  daughters.  Pearl  Binder  was 


a  lively  and  versatile  writer,  artist,  radio  and 
television  personality,  and  expert  on  costume. 
The  marriage  was  very  happy.  Elwyn  Jones  died 
in  Brighton  4  December  1989  and  his  wife  died 
seven  weeks  later. 

[Frederick  Elwyn-Jones,  In  My  Time  (autobiography), 
1983;  personal  knowledge.]  Emi.yn  Hooson 

JONES,  Sir  Henry  Frank  Harding  (1906- 
1987),  gas  engineer  and  company  director,  was 
born  13  July  1906  at  Gloucester  Terrace,  Hyde 
Park,  London,  the  only  son  and  eldest  of  four 
children  of  Frank  Harding  Jones,  gas  engineer 
and  company  director,  of  Housham  Tye,  Har- 
low, Essex,  and  his  wife  Gertrude  Octavia, 
daughter  of  Edmund  Kimber,  of  Plumstead, 
Kent.  He  was  educated  at  Harrow,  where  he  won 
the  Baker  prize  for  mathematics,  and  at  Pem- 
broke College,  Cambridge,  where  in  1927  he 
gained  first-class  honours  in  the  mechanical  sci- 
ences tripos.  He  was  later  elected  to  an  honorary 
fellowship  of  Pembroke  College  (1973). 

On  leaving  Cambridge  Jones  enrolled  as  a 
student  member  of  the  Institution  of  Civil 
Engineers  and  within  two  years  had  won  the 
Miller  prize  for  a  paper  on  long-distance  gas 
transmission.  A  fourth-generation  gas  engineer, 
he  was  articled  to  (Sir)  George  Evetts,  a  promi- 
nent consulting  engineer,  and  until  the  war 
intervened  was  mainly  occupied  in  merging  over 
100  individual  gas  companies  into  more  eco- 
nomic units. 

Called  up  in  1939,  Jones  served  as  an  infantry 
lieutenant  with  the  Essex  Regiment  in  France 
and  Belgium.  Following  Dunkirk,  he  served  in 
staff  appointments  in  Britain,  India,  and  Burma. 
Promoted  staff  captain  in  1941,  major  in  1942, 
lieutenant-colonel  in  1943,  and  brigadier  in  1945, 
he  took  part  in  the  Arakan  campaign  and  was 
awarded  the  MBE  (military)  in  1943.  He 
returned  from  war  service  in  1945  and  resumed 
his  career  in  gas  as  a  director  of  important  gas 
companies,  including  the  South  Metropolitan 
Gas  Company.  When  gas  was  nationalized  in 
1949,  he  was  appointed  as  the  first  chairman  of 
the  East  Midlands  Gas  Board.  He  was  promoted 
as  deputy  chairman  of  the  Gas  Council  in  1952, 
and  became  chairman  in  i960. 

On  nationalization  almost  1 ,000  separate  com- 
panies were  taken  into  public  ownership.  The 
immediate  need  was  to  rationalize  them  within 
the  structure  of  twelve  area  boards  and  to  inte- 
grate production,  which  was  dominated  by 
increasingly  uncompetitive  coal  carbonization. 
Gas  sales  were  stagnant  and  many  saw  the 
attempt  of  the  Gas  Council  to  establish  new 
process  routes  as  merely  delaying  the  inevitable 
decline.  But  in  the  space  of  a  decade  the  industry 
achieved  two  remarkable  technological  revolu- 
tions: first  a  move  to  the  production  of  town  gas 
by  the  total  gasification  of  oil,  and  then  a  more 


236 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Jones 


fundamental  change  to  the  distribution  and 
direct  utilization  of  natural  gas  with  the  con- 
sequential need  for  the  conversion  of  all  gas- 
using  appliances.  Behind  this  transformation  lay 
massive  and  radical  changes  in  organization  and 
technology. 

Jones  had  a  vision  of  the  future,  and  his 
unrivalled  grasp  of  technical  detail,  coupled  with 
his  propensity  for  detailed  planning,  a  skill  honed 
in  war,  bred  confidence  and  provided  the  neces- 
sary drive.  With  the  courage  to  allow  his  techni- 
cal staff  to  make  huge  investments  in  innovative 
facilities,  he  faced,  with  evident  imperturbability 
and  remarkable  success,  the  pressures  of  West- 
minster and  Whitehall.  It  was  a  great  team  effort 
under  a  determined  and  inspiring  leader  and  laid 
the  foundations  of  the  modern  gas  industry.  He 
retired  on  31  December  1971. 

A  quiet  man,  modest,  at  times  even  self- 
effacing,  he  was  possessed  of  a  notable  inner 
strength.  Punctilious  and  meticulous,  his  habit  of 
making  a  cool  clinical  assessment  of  every  situa- 
tion did  not  prevent  him  from  being  sensitive  to 
others  and  warm  and  generous  in  his  friendships. 
He  was  tall,  spare,  upright  in  carriage,  and  from 
his  early  thirties  had  the  characteristic  pure  white 
hair  of  his  family.  He  had  great  pride  in  his 
family  and  was  devoted  to  his  wife,  of  whom  he 
took  especial  care  during  the  latter  years  of  his 
life  when  she  became  blind. 

Knighted  in  1956,  and  appointed  KBE  in 
1965,  he  was  elevated  to  GBE  in  1972.  President 
of  the  Institution  of  Gas  Engineers  (1956-7),  he 
was  also  a  fellow  of  the  Institutions  of  Civil  and 
Chemical  Engineers  and  a  founder  fellow  of  the 
Fellowship  of  Engineering.  He  was  awarded  an 
honorary  LL  D  by  Leeds  University  (1967)  and 
honorary  doctorates  of  science  by  Leicester 
(1970)  and  Salford  (1971)  universities.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  royal  commission  on  standards  of 
conduct  in  public  life  (1974-6).  A  liveryman  of 
the  Clothworkers'  Company  since  1928,  he  was 
master  in  1972-3. 

In  December  1934  he  married  (Elizabeth) 
Angela,  daughter  of  Spencer  James  Langton,  of 
Little  Hadham,  Hertfordshire.  They  had  three 
sons  and  one  daughter.  Jones  died  in  Great 
Missenden  9  October  1987  of  stomach  cancer 
and  is  buried  at  Weston  Turville,  Buckingham- 
shire, his  main  postwar  home. 

[Trevor  I.  Williams,  A  History  of  the  British  Gas 
Industry,  1 981;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Denis  Rooke 

JONES,  Reginald  Teague-  (1889-1988),  intelli- 
gence officer.  [See  Teague-Jones,  Reginald.] 

JONES,   (William)   Clifford   ('ClifT)   (1914- 

1990),  Welsh  rugby  player  and  administrator, 
was  born  12  March  191 4  in  the  Rhondda  Valley 
at    Porth    near    Pontypridd,    Mid    Glamorgan, 


the  second  son  in  a  family  of  two  sons  and  two 
daughters  of  Daniel  Jones,  wholesale  fruit  and 
vegetable  merchant,  and  his  wife,  Elizabeth 
Mary  Lewis.  He  was  educated  at  Porth  Secon- 
dary School  and,  from  the  age  of  fourteen,  at 
Llandovery  College.  From  1933  he  attended 
Clare  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  obtained  a 
third  class  in  part  i  of  the  law  tripos  (1935)  and  a 
second  (division  II)  in  part  ii  (1936).  There  he 
proved  himself  to  be  among  the  very  first  order 
of  rugby  players,  winning  a  blue  three  times. 

It  was  at  Llandovery  College  that  his  extraor- 
dinary talent  had  been  revealed.  For  five  years, 
five  afternoons  a  week,  under  the  coaching  of 
T.  P.  ('Pope')  Williams,  he  had  been  initiated 
into  the  arts  of  rugby,  for  which,  at  five  feet  eight 
inches  and  only  ten  and  a  half  stones,  he  was  not 
well  tailored.  To  survive,  he  relied  on  his  quick 
wits  and  his  electrifying  speed  off  the  mark.  His 
swift,  breathtaking  sidestep  (off  either  foot)  he 
attributed,  as  he  claimed  in  one  of  the  embroi- 
dered anecdotes  of  which  he  was  fond,  to  the 
daily  necessity  of  avoiding  the  crowd,  traffic,  and 
lampposts  of  the  narrow  Welsh  valleys  and  the 
clustered  passages  of  his  college.  Having  played 
for  the  Welsh  secondary  schools  between  1931 
and  1933,  he  left  a  legacy  of  virtuoso  running.  He 
played  his  first  senior  game  for  Wales  (against 
England)  at  the  age  of  nineteen.  He  continued  to 
play  for  Wales  while  at  university,  but  his 
national  career  lasted  only  four  years.  He  was 
unable  to  escape  the  ravages  of  rugby's  muscular 
confrontations:  bones  were  cracked  and  joints 
displaced.  He  missed  an  international  season 
because  of  injury  in  1937.  This  prompted  his 
early  thoughts  of  quitting,  so  that  he  played  only 
thirteen  times  for  his  country  (as  captain  in  1938) 
and  a  mere  twenty-two  for  his  club,  Cardiff.  He 
was  one  of  the  greatest  outside-halves  to  have 
graced  the  game. 

While  he  was  playing  he  insisted  on  assiduous 
preparation,  bringing  along  his  own  masseur  at  a 
time  when  such  assistance  was  unheard  of. 
Although  he  was  a  supreme  individualist  he 
valued  teamwork,  as  he  emphasized  in  his  book, 
Rugby  Football,  published  in  1937.  He  benefited 
from  the  long  pass  from  his  partner  at  scrum- 
half,  Haydn  Tanner,  while  he  in  turn  was  able  to 
utilize,  as  in  the  1934  Oxford-Cambridge  match, 
the  powerful,  long-striding  skills  of  Wilfred 
Wooller  outside  him.  This  technique  came  to 
mature  fruition  in  Wales's  13-12  victory  against 
the  New  Zealand  All  Blacks  in  1935,  at  Cardiff 
Arms  Park. 

Jones  declared  his  temporary  retirement  in 
1938  in  order  to  concentrate  on  further  legal 
studies,  but  he  had  played  his  last  game  for 
Wales.  He  returned  to  play  for  Cardiff  against 
Bridgend  on  the  first  Saturday  in  September 
1939,  and  war  was  declared  the  following  day.  In 
the  same  year  he  was  appointed  assistant  solicitor 


237 


Jones 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


to  Glamorgan  county  council  and  assistant  pro- 
secuting solicitor  to  Glamorgan  Police.  However, 
he  took  up  these  posts  only  briefly,  because  when 
war  broke  out  he  joined  the  77th  Regiment  of  the 
Heavy  Anti-Aircraft  Royal  Artillery  (Territorial 
Army),  where  he  rose  to  the  rank  of  major. 
Stationed  in  Berlin  at  the  end  of  the  war  he  was 
assistant  to  the  chief  legal  officer. 

In  1946  he  returned  to  Porth  to  join  his 
father's  business  and  later  to  start  his  own,  Clun 
Fruits,  in  Pontyclun,  where  the  family  lived, 
before  finally  embarking  on  a  property  business. 
He  had  little  contact  with  rugby  for  ten  years  and 
developed  an  enduring  interest  in  water-colours, 
particularly  marine  and  Victorian  paintings. 

In  1956  his  interest  in  rugby  revived  and  he 
became  a  member  of  the  Welsh  Rugby  Union 
committee.  In  the  following  year  he  became  a 
selector,  a  position  he  held  until  1978.  In  the 
1960s  he  was  chairman  of  the  committee  which 
developed,  in  Wales,  following  the  Welsh  team's 
disastrous  visit  to  South  Africa  in  1964,  the 
world's  first  comprehensive  rugby  coaching 
scheme,  from  which  was  established  a  permanent 
coaching  organizer,  the  first  of  its  kind  in  the 
rugby    world.    He    established    a    permanent 


national  coaching  organizer.  He  was  the  Union's 
president  in  the  centenary  year  of  1 980-1.  He 
was  also  a  member  of  the  Sports  Council  of 
Great  Britain  (1967-71)  and  in  197 1  was  a 
founder  member  of  the  Sports  Council  for 
Wales.  He  presided  over  the  'golden  age'  of 
Welsh  rugby  football  in  the  late  1960s  and  1970s, 
being  behind  the  squad  training  system  which 
enabled  Wales  to  dominate  their  European  rivals. 
In  1979  he  was  appointed  OBE. 

Jones  was  dapper,  with  fair  hair  and,  in  later 
years,  nicely  rounded  features.  He  was  animated 
and  gregarious,  as  vibrant  in  his  conversation  as 
he  was  on  the  field.  He  invariably  wore  his 
Hawks'  club  tie  and  Cambridge  blues'  scarf.  In 
1939  he  married  Gwendoline  Mary,  daughter  of 
Frederick  Bartle  Thomas,  wholesale  butcher  in 
Tonypandy.  They  had  three  sons.  Jones  died  of 
a  heart  attack  27  November  1990  at  his  home  in 
Bonvilston,  near  Cardiff,  to  which  he  and  his 
wife  had  moved  in  later  years. 
[Interviews  with  Wilfred  Wooller  and  J.  B.  G.  Thomas; 
David  Smith  and  Gareth  Williams,  Fields  of  Praise,  the 
Official  History  of  the  Welsh  Rugby  Union,  1980;  Wayne 
Thomas,  A  Century  of  Welsh  Rugby  Players,  1979; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Gerald  Davies 


238 


K 


KAHN,  Richard  Ferdinand,  Baron  Kahn 
(1905-1989),  economist,  was  born  in  London  10 
August  1905,  the  second  child  and  only  son  of 
four  surviving  children  (two  younger  sons  died) 
of  Augustus  Kahn,  inspector  of  schools,  and  his 
wife,  Regina  Rosa  Schoyer,  of  Germany.  Kahn 
was  educated  at  St  Paul's  School  and  King's 
College,  Cambridge.  He  read  mathematics  for 
one  year,  obtaining  a  first  in  part  i  in  1925, 
physics  for  two  years,  obtaining  a  second  in  part 
ii  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  in  1927,  and 
economics,  obtaining  a  first  in  part  ii  in  1928,  a 
remarkable  performance  after  only  one  year. 
J.  M.  (later  Baron)  *Keynes  and  Gerald  Shove, 
his  King's  supervisors,  and  Piero  *Sraffa  encour- 
aged Kahn  to  write  a  fellowship  dissertation  for 
King's,  of  which  he  became  a  fellow  in  1930. 

In  only  a  year  and  a  half,  Kahn  produced  'The 
Economics  of  the  Short  Period',  a  remarkable 
contribution  to  the  then  emerging  theory  of 
imperfect  competition.  It  was  associated  with  the 
beginning  of  Kahn's  close  intellectual  friendship 
with  Joan  *Robinson.  Kahn's  dissertation  con- 
tained many  of  the  results  in  her  The  Economics  of 
Imperfect  Competition  (1933)  and  the  subsequent 
literature  spawned  by  it  and  Edward  Chamber- 
lin's  The  Theory  of  Monopolistic  Competition 
(1933):  the  use  of  a  reverse  L-shaped  cost  curve, 
the  kinked  demand  curve,  and  the  procedure  of 
explaining  empirical  observations  in  terms  of 
business  people's  perception  of  their  situations 
rather  than  starting  from  a  simple  axiom.  Show- 
ing that  the  unfit  were  not  purged  in  a  slump  was 
the  most  grievous  blow  dealt  to  laissez-faire  until 
Keynes  established  the  possibility  of  under- 
employment equilibrium  in  1936.  Kahn's  dis- 
sertation was  not  published  in  English  until 
shortly  after  his  death  in  1989.  (An  Italian 
translation  was  published  in  1983.)  In  retrospect 
Kahn  regretted  that  he  had  not  published  it  at 
the  time.  In  his  introduction  to  the  1989  book  he 
described  it  as  an  impressive  performance  for  its 
time  and  (economic)  age  of  its  author. 

Kahn  became  a  university  lecturer  in  the 
faculty  of  economics  and  politics  in  1933,  second 
bursar  to  Keynes  in  1935,  and  a  teaching  fellow 
at  King's  in  1936.  He  was  the  key  figure  in  the 
famous  'circus'  which  'argued  out'  the  proposi- 
tions of  A  Treatise  on  Money  (2  vols.,  1930)  and 
discussed  and  criticized  Kevnes's  drafts  as  Key- 


nes moved  from  the  Treatise  on  Money  to  The 
General  Theory  of  Employment,  Interest  and 
Money  (1936).  Kahn  also  went  regularly  with 
Keynes  to  Tilton  (the  Sussex  home  of  Keynes 
and  his  wife  Lydia  *Lopokova)  to  give  him  'stiff 
supervisions'  on  the  emerging  drafts. 

Cambridge  was  the  scene  for  two  theoretical 
revolutions  in  economic  theory  in  the  1920s  and 
1930s.  Kahn  played  crucial  roles  in  both.  His 
lifelong  scepticism  about  the  quantity  theory  of 
money  as  a  causal  explanation  of  the  general 
price  level  increasingly  sapped  Keynes's  accep- 
tance of  it  (and  Say's  law)  from  his  teacher, 
Alfred  'Marshall.  In  a  famous  article  in  193 1  on 
the  multiplier,  'The  Relation  of  Home  Invest- 
ment to  Unemployment*  (Economic  Journal,  vol. 
xli),  Kahn  used  the  apparatus  of  Keynes's  Trea- 
tise on  Money  to  put  a  precise  order  of  magnitude 
on  the  total  increase  in  employment  that  would 
ultimately  occur  if  a  primary  increase  were  cre- 
ated by  public  works.  He  showed,  under  care- 
fully specified  conditions,  that  the  investment 
expenditure  itself  would  create  a  matching  vol- 
ume of  new  saving.  This  concept  allowed  Keynes 
to  create  a  key  innovation,  the  propensity- 
to-consume  schedule,  which  became  an  integral 
part  of  the  theory  of  employment  as  a  whole  in 
The  General  Theory1.  That  it  was  the  investment 
dog  which  wagged  the  savings  tail,  rather  than 
the  other  way  around,  owes  much  to  Kahn's 
article.  A  mystery  remains,  though,  as  to  why 
Kahn,  who  had  provided  a  realistic  and  better 
alternative  in  his  dissertation,  allowed  Keynes  to 
return  to  Marshall  to  provide  the  theory  of  prices 
in  The  General  Theory. 

During  the  1930s  Kahn  wrote  a  number  of 
seminal  papers  on  imperfect  competition,  welfare 
economics,  and  international  trade.  World  War 
II  saw  Kahn,  on  Kevnes's  recommendation,  in 
Whitehall.  He  started  as  a  temporary  principal  in 
the  Board  of  Trade.  Oliver  *Lyttelton  (later  first 
Viscount  Chandos)  liked  his  work  and  had  Kahn 
seconded  to  him  in  a  number  of  different  sec- 
tions: the  Middle  East  Supply  Centre  (as  eco- 
nomic adviser,  1941-3),  then  the  Ministry  of 
Production,  the  Ministry  of  Supply,  and  finally 
the  Board  of  Trade  again  (1945).  Kahn  ended  the 
war  with  the  administrative  grade  of  principal 
assistant  secretary.  He  took  to  Whitehall  like  a 
duck  to  water,  drafting  memos,  scheming  to  get 


239 


Kahn 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


his  views  through,  while  still  having  enough  time 
and  energy  for  the  minutiae  of  administration. 
This  intense  interest  in  detail  and  a  reluctance 
to  delegate  stayed  with  Kahn  for  the  rest  of  his 
life.  He  had  excellent  ideas,  was  an  acute  and 
incisive  critic,  but  was  often  difficult  to  work 
with,  especially  when  his  notorious  anger  was 
aroused. 

After  the  war  Kahn  returned  to  Cambridge  for 
the  rest  of  his  life  (there  were  extended  periods 
away  working  for  the  United  Nations  in  the 
1950s  and  1960s).  He  became  first  bursar  of 
King's  in  1946  when  Keynes  died,  a  position 
which  he  held  until  he  was  elected  to  a  personal 
chair  in  1951.  (He  retired  from  this  post  in  1972.) 
He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1946,  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  British  Academy  in  i960,  and  created  a  life 
peer  in  1965.  He  remained,  as  he  himself  wished 
to  be  known,  a  disciple  of  Keynes,  devoting 
himself,  particularly  through  his  selfless  input 
into  the  work  of  others,  to  extending  Keynes's 
ideas  into  the  theory  of  the  long  period — espe- 
cially with  Joan  Robinson  and  also  with  Nicholas 
(later  Baron)  *Kaldor,  Sraffa,  and  Luigi  Pasi- 
netti — and  to  extending  and  defending  Keynes's 
ideas  on  money  and  the  stock  market  generally. 
Kahn  had  a  substantial  impact  on  the  views  of 
the  committee  of  inquiry  into  the  monetary  and 
credit  system  (1957-9),  chaired  by  Sir  Cyril 
(later  first  Viscount)  *Radcliffe.  He  also  dis- 
cussed the  need  for  an  incomes  policy  as  he 
spelled  out  the  implications  for  inflationary  pres- 
sures and  the  balance  of  payments  of  successfully 
sustaining  full  employment,  as  opposed  to  reach- 
ing it  (for  obvious  reasons,  Keynes's  main  objec- 
tive in  the  1930s).  In  the  1970s  and  1980s  Kahn 
turned  increasingly  to  the  history  of  theory, 
providing  authoritative  evaluations  of  Keynes's 
achievements  for  the  British  Academy  (1974),  in 
the  Journal  of  Economic  Literature  (1978),  and  in 
his  Raffaele  Mattioli  Foundation  lectures  in  Italy, 
The  Making  of  Keynes'  General  Theory  (1984). 

Kahn  lived  in  a  splendid  set  of  rooms  in 
Webb's  Court  at  King's  until  his  final  illness.  To 
those  who  did  not  know  him  well,  he  seemed  an 
intensely  private  person.  Deafness  and  ill  health 
in  his  last  years  made  him  a  rather  solitary  public 
figure.  In  reality,  he  was  kind,  generous,  and 
hospitable,  a  meticulously  considerate  host  and, 
in  his  younger  days,  a  vigorous  walker  and  rock 
climber.  He  never  lost  his  interest  in  what  was 
happening  in  King's  and  the  faculty,  or  ceased  to 
disapprove  if  things  did  not  turn  out  as  he  would 
have  wished. 

Kahn  came  from  a  deeply  religious  Jewish 
family  who  were  devoted  to  education.  Up  until 
World  War  II  Kahn's  orthodoxy  was  a  byword 
amongst  Jewish  students  and  others.  After  the 
war  his  strict  observance  fell  away.  In  his  last 
years,  though,  he  returned  to  his  earlier  faith  and 
asked  that  he  be  buried  in  the  Jewish  section  of 


the  Cambridge  cemetery.  There  his  body  now 
lies.  Kahn  never  married  but  he  never  lacked 
agreeable  female  company  either.  He  died  at  the 
Evelyn  Hospital,  Cambridge,  6  June  1989. 

[King's  College  Annual  Report,  1990;  L.  L.  Pasinetti, 
'Kahn,  Richard  Ferdinand  (born  1905)'  in  John  Eat- 
well,  Murray  Milgate,  and  Peter  Newman  (eds.),  The 
New  Palgrave:  Dictionary  of  Economics,  vol.  iii,  1987; 
L.  L.  Pasinetti  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  lxxvi,  1990;  Cristina  Marcuzzo's  (1988)  interview 
with  Kahn,  mimeo,  King's  College  library;  personal 
knowledge;  advice  of  relatives  and  friends.] 

G.  C.  Harcourt 

KALDOR,  Nicholas,  Baron  Kaldor  (1908- 
1986),  economist,  was  born  in  Budapest  12  May 
1908,  the  youngest  in  the  family  of  three  sons 
(two  of  whom  died  in  infancy)  and  one  daughter 
of  Gyula  Kaldor,  Jewish  lawyer  and  legal  adviser 
to  the  German  legation  in  Budapest,  and  his 
wife,  Jamba  Adler.  Miklos  (he  later  Anglicized 
his  name)  was  educated  at  the  Minta  Gymna- 
sium in  Budapest  (1918-25),  the  University  of 
Berlin  (1925-7),  and  the  London  School  of 
Economics  (1927-30),  where  he  obtained  a  first- 
class  honours  degree  in  economics  and  a  research 
studentship  to  study  the  problems  of  the  Danu- 
bian  succession  states.  In  1932  he  joined  the  staff 
of  LSE  as  an  assistant  in  economics  (later  assis- 
tant lecturer),  then  lecturer  (1938),  and  reader 
(1945).  He  became  an  honorary  fellow  of  LSE  in 
1970.  In  1947  he  resigned  his  post  to  become 
director  of  the  research  and  planning  division  of 
the  Economic  Commission  for  Europe  in  Gen- 
eva. In  1949  he  was  appointed  a  fellow  of  King's 
College,  Cambridge,  and  a  lecturer  in  economics 
at  Cambridge,  where  he  taught  and  researched 
for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  became  a  reader  in 
economics  in  1952  and  a  professor  in  1966,  until 
his  retirement  in  1975. 

During  his  academic  life  Kaldor  held  several 
advisory  posts  and  visiting  positions.  In  the  war 
he  worked  on  the  two  reports  by  Lord  *Bever- 
idge  on  Social  Insurance  (1942)  and  Full  Employ- 
ment in  a  Free  Society  (1944).  After  the  war  he 
took  on  several  advisory  roles  as  chief  of  the 
economic  planning  staff  of  the  US  Strategic 
Bombing  Survey  (1945),  adviser  to  the  Hungar- 
ian government  (1946),  adviser  to  the  French 
commissariat  general  du  plan  (1947),  member  of 
the  Berlin  currency  and  trade  committee  (1948), 
and  member  of  the  UN  group  of  experts  on 
national  and  international  measures  for  full 
employment  (1949).  In  1951  he  was  appointed  to 
the  royal  commission  on  the  taxation  of  profits 
and  income  and  was  the  author  of  a  famous 
memorandum  of  dissent  attacking  the  majority 
report  (1955)  for  its  conservatism  on  matters 
relating  to  the  taxation  of  capital  gains,  company 
taxation,  and  the  treatment  of  expenses  under 
schedule  D.  There  followed  several  invitations 
from  developing  countries  to  give  tax  advice: 


240 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Kent 


India  (1956),  Sri  Lanka  (1958),  Mexico  (i960), 
Ghana  (1961),  British  Guiana  (1961),  Turkey 
(1962),  Iran  (1966),  and  Venezuela  (1976).  He 
was  also  special  adviser  (1964-8  and  1974-6)  to 
the  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  in  two  British 
Labour  governments.  At  this  time  he  was  asso- 
ciated in  the  popular  mind  with  Thomas  (later 
Baron)  *Balogh.  He  accepted  a  life  barony  in 
1974  and  he  contributed  frequendy  to  economic 
debates  in  the  House  of  Lords,  being  a  trenchant 
critic  of  Conservative  economic  policy  during  the 
early  years  of  Margaret  (later  Baroness)  Thatch- 
er's government.  Like  J.  M.  (Baron)  *Keynes, 
Kaldor  was  a  public  figure,  but  a  socialist.  He 
had  a  passionate  concern  for  the  underdog,  and 
was  the  most  prolific  newspaper-letter-writing 
economist  of  his  generation.  His  membership  of 
the  House  of  Lords  gave  him  enormous  pleasure. 
In  many  ways  he  was  more  English  than  the 
English.  He  admired  their  history  and  culture 
and  revelled  in  their  institutions. 

His  advisory  work  never  seemed  to  interfere 
with  his  academic  research  and  may  even  have 
enhanced  it.  In  his  early  years  at  the  LSE  he 
made  significant  breakthroughs  in  several  key 
areas  including  the  theory  of  the  firm,  capital 
theory,  trade  cycle  theory,  and  welfare  econom- 
ics. In  1936  Keynes  produced  his  General  Theory 
and  Kaldor  was  an  immediate  convert.  He  later 
had  close  links  with  Keynes  during  World  War  II 
when  the  LSE  was  evacuated  to  Cambridge,  and 
in  the  1 950s  he  was  joint  architect  of  the  'Cam- 
bridge school'  which  extended  Keynesian  modes 
of  thinking  to  the  analysis  of  growth  and  dis- 
tribution in  capitalist  economies.  At  this  time  he 
also  became  a  prominent  tax  expert,  publishing  a 
minor  classic.  An  Expenditure  Tax  (1955).  In  the 
1960s  and  1970s  he  turned  his  attention  to  the 
applied  economics  of  growth.  He  emphasized 
particularly  the  role  of  manufacturing  industry  in 
the  growth  process  and  argued  that  the  ultimate 
constraint  on  growth  in  the  world  economy  is  the 
rate  of  land-saving  innovations  in  agriculture.  He 
was  a  strong  critic  of  general  equilibrium  theory, 
regarding  it  as  barren  for  an  understanding  of  the 
dynamic  and  cumulative  processes  that  propel 
economies  in  the  real  world.  Kaldor  also  led  the 
attack  on  the  doctrine  of  monetarism,  which  he 
regarded  as  simply  a  euphemism  for  deflation, 
that  afflicted  both  governments  and  the  econom- 
ics profession  in  the  1970s  and  1980s.  Between 
i960  and  1980  he  published  eight  volumes  of 
collected  essays  which  are  testimony  to  his 
endeavour  and  creativity. 

Kaldor  was  a  unique  figure  in  twentieth- 
century  economics.  It  was  not  only  his  intellect 
and  his  non-orthodox  approach  to  economics 
that  made  him  dominant  and  controversial;  it 
was  also  his  style,  charm,  and  sense  of  fun,  which 
made  it  impossible  not  to  listen  to  what  he  had  to 
say.  In  lectures  and  seminars  he  would  captivate 


his  audience  by  the  heavily  accented  flow  of 
English  prose  which  was  so  much  a  feature  of  his 
personality  and  an  endearing  quality  in  itself. 
The  image  of  a  rotund  and  jovial  medieval  monk 
holding  forth  in  intellectual  discourse  fits  him 
perfectly.  While  Kaldor  worked  in  his  ground- 
floor  study,  the  ever-open  door  of  his  spacious 
Edwardian  house  would  see  a  succession  of 
family  and  friends  coming  and  going.  Kaldor 
might  appear  or  not  depending  on  the  urgency  of 
the  task  at  hand.  He  was  egocentric,  but  could 
also  afford  to  be  generous  with  his  time.  He  liked 
to  compartmentalize  his  intellectual  effort,  work- 
ing for  long  periods  and  then  relaxing.  He  had 
money  enough  to  enjoy  the  summers  at  his  home 
in  the  south  of  France. 

Many  honours  came  his  way,  including  hon- 
orary doctorates  from  the  universities  of  Dijon 
(1962)  and  Frankfurt  (1982),  fellowship  of  the 
British  Academy  (1963),  the  presidency  of 
section  F  of  the  British  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science  ( 1970)  and  of  the  Royal 
Economic  Society  (1974),  and  honorary  member- 
ship of  the  American  Economic  Association 
(1975)  and  of  the  Hungarian  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences (1979).  He  gave  the  Mattioli  lectures 
(1984)  and  the  Okun  lectures  (1085).  Inexplic- 
ably, the  Nobel  prize  eluded  him. 

Kaldor 's  love  for  economics  and  politics  was 
superseded  only  by  the  love  for  his  family,  from 
which  he  derived  so  much  of  his  self-confidence 
and  inner  happiness.  In  1934,  the  year  he  was 
naturalized,  he  married  Clarissa  Elisabeth, 
daughter  of  Henry  Frederick  Goldschmidt, 
stockbroker.  They  had  four  daughters.  Kaldor 
died  from  cardiac  asthma  at  Papworth  Hospital, 
Cambridge,  30  September  1986. 

[A.  P.  Thirl  wall  in  Proceedings  of  ike  British  Academy, 
vol.  lxxiii,  1987.]  A.  P.  THIRLWALL 

KEIR,  Thelma  Cazalet-  (1 899-1989),  politi- 
cian. [See  Cazalet-Keir,  Thelma.] 

KENT,  Sot  Percy  Edward  ('Peter')  (1913- 
1986),  geologist,  was  born  18  March  1913  in 
West  Bridgford,  Nottingham,  the  youngest  of 
three  sons  and  third  of  four  children  of  Edward 
Louis  Kent,  photo-engraver  and  commercial  art- 
ist, of  West  Bridgford,  and  his  wife  Annie  Kate, 
daughter  of  Luke  Woodward,  hosiery  machine 
manufacturer  and  alderman,  of  Nottingham.  He 
won  scholarships  to  West  Bridgford  Grammar 
School  (1924)  and  University  College,  Notting- 
ham (1931),  graduating  with  first-class  honours 
in  the  London  University  B.Sc.  degree  (1934). 
He  was  awarded  a  Department  of  Scientific  and 
Industrial  Research  studentship  for  postgraduate 
research  and  was  invited  to  join  the  East  African 
archaeological  expedition  led  by  L.  S.  B.  *Leakey 
in  1934-5.  He  was  the  expedition  geologist  in 
western  Kenya  and  northern  Tanganyika;  his 


241 


Kent 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ph.D.  thesis  (1941)  was  based  on  this  work,  and 
his  lifelong  fascination  with  East  Africa  dated 
from  this  period.  His  D.Sc.  was  awarded  for 
published  work  in  1959. 

Though  he  hankered  after  the  British  Geo- 
logical Survey  or  an  academic  career,  preferably 
in  the  east  midlands,  this  was  not  to  be,  and  in 
1936  he  took  a  temporary  job  with  the  Anglo 
Iranian  Oil  Company  (later  BP)  and  was  posted 
to  Eakring,  seventeen  miles  from  Nottingham. 
While  there  he  worked  on  the  petroleum  pros- 
pects of  the  east  midlands  (oil  was  found  at 
Eakring  in  1939)  and  southern  England,  and  then 
joined  the  Royal  Air  Force  Volunteer  Reserve  in 
1941,  in  spite  of  being  in  a  reserved  occupation. 
From  1 94 1  to  1945  he  served  with  the  combined 
intelligence  unit  at  Medmenham;  he  was  men- 
tioned in  dispatches  in  1944.  After  the  Allied 
victory  in  Europe  he  worked  at  the  US  Pentagon 
on  Japanese  targets  and  was  awarded  the  US 
silver  medal  of  the  Legion  of  Merit  (1946).  He 
went  to  Hiroshima  and  Nagasaki  as  a  member  of 
the  US  investigation  team — an  experience  which 
he  kept  very  much  to  himself. 

On  demobilization  in  1946  he  rejoined  Anglo 
Iranian  and  for  the  next  fifteen  years  worked  in 
Iran,  East  Africa,  Papua,  and  North  and  South 
America,  returning  to  London  in  i960.  He 
became  BP's  chief  geologist  in  1966  and,  though 
the  title  changed,  the  role  did  not;  he  retired 
from  BP  in  1973  as  assistant  general  manager 
(exploration).  On  retirement  from  BP  he  went  to 
the  Natural  Environment  Research  Council 
(NERC),  where  he  was  a  very  active  full-time 
chairman  in  what  was  nominally  a  part-time  job 
(1973-7).  He  joined  NERC  at  a  critical  time  and 
played  a  major  part  in  the  implementation  of 
recommendations  from  the  third  Baron  *Roths- 
child,  which  transformed  relationships  between 
the  research  council  and  spending  ministries.  On 
completing  his  term  with  NERC,  in  1977  he 
returned  to  industry  and  was  still  active  as  a 
consultant  and  company  director  at  the  time  of 
his  death. 

A  meticulous  field  geologist  and  outstanding 
stratigrapher,  he  had  a  gift  for  the  synthesis  and 
interpretation  of  large  masses  of  geological  data. 
The  author  of  145  papers,  he  made  major  con- 
tributions to  the  understanding  of  the  geology  of 
eastern  England,  the  North  Sea  basins,  and  the 
tectonic  evolution  of  the  north-west  European 
continental  shelf.  His  interests  were  global  and 
his  thinking  powerfully  influenced  studies  of 
sedimentary  basins  worldwide.  Dedicated  to  his 
science,  which  was  both  profession  and  hobby, 
he  acted  throughout  his  career  rather  like  an 
international  professor  of  geology.  He  was 
demanding  but  fair,  and  always  ready  to  discuss 
problems  (when  you  could  catch  him  in  the 
office).  Kent  was  neat,  bespectacled,  quietly  spo- 
ken, and  of  medium  height.  Many  thought  him  a 


retiring  man,  a  listener  rather  than  a  talker,  but 
he  enjoyed  social  gatherings  and  was  at  his 
liveliest  in  the  company  of  women.  A  landscape 
painter  and  gardener,  he  loved  choral  singing  and 
he  and  his  first  wife  were  lifelong  members  of  the 
Friary  Congregational  church  in  West  Bridgford; 
their  home  at  38  Rodney  Road,  West  Bridgford, 
was  his  base  through  all  of  his  wanderings. 

His  honours  included  fellowship  of  the  Royal 
Society  (1966),  the  Geological  Society's  Murchi- 
son  medal  (1969),  the  MacRobert  award  (1970),  a 
Royal  Society  Royal  medal  (1971),  a  knighthood 
(1973),  and  honorary  degrees  from  Leicester 
(1972),  Durham  (1974),  Bristol  (1977),  Glasgow 
(1977),  Aberdeen  (1978),  Cambridge  (1979), 
Hull  (1981),  and  Birmingham  (1983). 

In  1940  he  married  Margaret  Betty,  daughter 
of  George  Frederick  Hood,  science  master  at 
Nottingham  High  School.  She  was  a  Nottingham 
JP  for  many  years  and  died  of  cancer  in  1974. 
They  had  two  daughters,  the  younger  of  whom 
became  a  tutorial  fellow  in  English  at  University 
College,  Oxford.  In  1976  he  married  Lorna 
Ogilvie,  daughter  of  Henry  James  Scott,  school- 
teacher. As  head  of  BP  exploration's  information 
branch,  Lorna  was  a  friend  of  long  standing,  and 
this  too  was  a  happy  marriage.  Kent,  who  had 
recovered  well  from  an  earlier  heart  attack,  died 
suddenly  9  July  1986,  while  on  a  business  trip  to 
Sheffield. 

[N.  L.  Falcon  and  Sir  Kingsley  Dunham  in  Biograph- 
ical Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxiii, 
1987,  pp.  343-73;  BP  company  records;  private  infor- 
mation; personal  knowledge.]      Geoffrey  Larminie 

KENTNER,  Louis  Philip  (1905-1987),  pianist, 
was  born  19  July  1905  in  Karwzn,  Silesia,  Hun- 
gary, the  only  son  and  elder  child  of  Julius 
Kentner,  stationmaster,  and  his  wife,  Gisela 
Buchsbaum.  He  was  educated  at  the  Gymnasium 
in  Budapest  and  the  Royal  Franz  Liszt  Academy 
of  Music,  also  in  Budapest.  This  was  a  remark- 
able beginning:  he  was  only  six  years  old,  and 
simultaneously  a  school  pupil  and  an  academi- 
cian. He  studied  the  piano  with  Arnold  Szekely 
and  composition  with  Hans  Koessler,  Leo  Wei- 
ner,  and  Zoltan  Kodaly.  Both  Weiner  and 
Kodaly  were  lifetime  influences.  He  gained  a 
diploma  in  musical  composition. 

Composition  was  his  first  ambition.  Three 
sonatinas  were  published  (by  Oxford  University 
Press)  in  the  1930s,  and  there  were  later  per- 
formances of  a  string  quartet  and  a  divertimento 
for  chamber  orchestra.  But  it  was  the  piano  that 
was  to  become  the  centre  of  his  musical  life.  His 
concert  career  began  with  a  recital  in  Budapest 
when  he  was  thirteen.  From  the  1920s  he  under- 
took a  ceaseless  round  of  concerts  around  the 
world,  his  fame  spreading  rapidly.  He  went  back 
to  Hungary,  but  with  the  political  situation 
worsening  emigration  beckoned,  and  he  decided 


242 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Keswick 


to  move  to  England  in  1935,  becoming  one  of  the 
mid-Europeans  who  transformed  Britain's  musi- 
cal life.  He  became  a  British  citizen  in  1946,  and 
London  remained  his  home  until  his  death. 

In  an  early  review  (in  the  Sunday  Referee  of  1 1 
October  1936),  headed  'A  new — and  great — 
pianist  comes  to  England',  Constant  *Lambert 
wrote:  'What  gives  Kentner's  playing  its  excep- 
tional quality,  however,  is  not  so  much  his 
technical  ability-,  which  he  shares  with  several 
virtuosos,  but  the  remarkable  intelligence  and 
musical  instinct  which  direct  this  ability. ..I  have 
never  heard  a  pianist  of  such  power  who  at  the 
same  time  has  such  delicacy  and  subtlety  of  tone 
gradation. ..a  pianist  with  a  brilliant  future.'  Lam- 
bert immediately  discerned  Kentner's  excep- 
tional musicianship,  as  did  (Sir)  William 
*Walton  and  the  *Sitwells,  who  were  warm 
supporters  and  friends.  He  became  an  admired 
performer  in  solo  recitals  and  concertos — an 
early  Mozart  concerto  with  Sir  Thomas  *Bee- 
cham  was  a  landmark — as  also  in  chamber  music, 
a  lifelong  passion.  For  some  years  there  was  a  trio 
with  Yehudi  (later  Baron)  Menuhin  and  the 
cellist  Gaspar  Cassado.  Music-making  with 
Menuhin,  who  married  Kentner's  second  wife's 
sister,  was  an  important  activity  over  the  years. 

His  repertory  was  enormous  and  ranged  from 
Bach  to  Bartok.  He  was  especially  noted  for  his 
Chopin  and  Liszt,  the  latter  being  most  remark- 
able. Liszt's  music  had  been  regarded  as  super- 
ficial and  it  was  'not  done'  to  perform  it.  It  was 
largely  due  to  Kentner's  championship  and 
deeply  felt  performances  that  Liszt  came  to  be 
treated  as  a  composer  of  serious  beauty.  In  195 1 
he  was  one  of  the  founders  of  the  Liszt  Society, 
and  from  1965  to  his  death  its  president. 

He  gave  the  first  performances  of  Bartok's 
Second  Piano  Concerto  (conducted  by  Otto 
Klemperer,  1933)  and — in  Europe — his  Third 
Concerto  (conducted  by  Sir  Adrian  *Boult, 
1946),  the  First  Piano  Concerto  of  Alan  *Raws- 
thorne  in  1942,  the  Piano  Concerto  of  (Sir) 
Michael  Tippett  (1956),  and,  with  Menuhin,  of 
Walton's  Sonata  for  Violin  and  Piano.  He  was 
gifted  with  a  formidable  technique  and  a  faultless 
memory.  But  what  governed  his  playing  was  a 
constant  quest  for  musical  truth  and  his  faithful- 
ness to  the  composer's  intention,  with  which  he 
wished  to  identify.  So  his  performances  moved 
one  both  through  their  effortlessness — though  he 
never  tried  to  dazzle — and  his  sensitivity,  accu- 
racy, and,  above  all,  musical  humility.  He  seemed 
to  be  communing  with  the  composer,  and  this 
musicianship  transmitted  itself  to  the  listener. 
He  was  one  of  the  last  great  romantic  pianists  and 
his  eightieth  birthday  concert  in  the  Queen 
Elizabeth  Hall,  London,  caused  a  spontaneous 
standing  ovation.  Fortunately,  a  number  of 
splendid  recordings  were  made. 

The    same    qualities    inspired    his    teaching. 


whether  in  master  classes  at  the  Yehudi  Menuhin 
School  of  Music  or  with  individual  pupils  in  his 
studio.  His  standards  were  high  and  criticisms 
tough,  though  spiced  with  good  Hungarian  sar- 
casm ('Why  play  the  wrong  note  when  the  right 
one  is  next  door?').  There  was  no  didactic 
method,  just  a  search  for  musical  truth.  Tech- 
nique was  taught  through  the  music,  and  Kentner 
could  translate  brilliantly  musical  points  into 
words.  He  wrote:  'no  teacher  can  put  anything 
into  a  pupil  which  is  not  already  there.  He  can 
only  awake  what  is  already  lying  dormant,  and 
guide  it  towards  possible  short  cuts,  tending  and 
nurturing  it  as  it  grows.'  And  so  his  pupils  were 
inspired.  He  also  liked  writing,  and  his  little 
book,  Piano  (1976),  is  necessary  reading  for  any 
aspiring  pianist.  He  became  an  honorary  member 
of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music  in  1970  and  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1978. 

Physically,  he  was  small  in  build,  and  he 
looked  even  smaller  on  his  very  low  (collapsible) 
piano  stool.  He  had  a  beautiful  head,  and  an 
ever-hovering  smile.  A  gentle  warmth  emanated 
from  him,  coupled  with  a  special  sense  of 
humour,  sometimes  wicked,  always  witty.  He 
was  a  brilliant  raconteur,  equalled  only  by  his 
wife  Griselda.  His  wide  reading  made  him  into  a 
typically  cultured  mid-European. 

In  193 1  he  married  a  pianist,  Ilona,  daughter 
of  Ede  Kabos,  journalist  and  writer.  They  were 
divorced  in  1945  and  in  1946  he  married  Gri- 
selda Katharine,  sister  of  Diana,  who  married 
Yehudi  Menuhin  the  following  year,  and  daugh- 
ter of  Gerard  Louis  Eugene  Gould,  of  the  special 
branch  in  the  Foreign  Office,  who  died  in  1916, 
and  his  wife,  the  pianist  Evelyn  Suart.  There 
were  no  children  of  either  marriage.  Kentner  and 
Griselda  shared  the  remainder  of  his  life,  and  he 
spoke  often  of  how  central  to  his  playing  and  life 
Griselda  was:  he  wrote  of  her  as  'beautiful, 
talented,  angelic,  highly  musical  withal'.  Kentner 
died  at  their  home  at  1  Mallord  Street,  Chelsea, 
22  September  1987. 

[Harold  Taylor  (ed.),  Kentner:  a  Symposium,  1987; 
personal  knowledge.]  Clals  Moser 

KESWICK,  Sir  William  Johnston  (1903- 1990), 
chairman  of  Jardine,  Matheson  &  Co.  and 
banker,  was  born  6  December  1903  in  Yoko- 
hama, Japan,  the  second  of  three  sons  (there 
were  no  daughters)  of  Major  Henry  Keswick,  of 
Cowhill  Tower,  near  Dumfries,  and  his  wife, 
Winifred  ('Ida')  Johnston.  Henry  Keswick  was  a 
senior  partner  of  Jardine,  Matheson  &  Co.  and 
was  directly  descended  from  Jean  Jardine,  the 
sister  of  Dr  William  *Jardine,  one  of  the  two 
founders  of  the  company  in  1832.  William 
('Tony')  Keswick  was  thus  Jardine's  great-great- 
grandnephew.  His  younger  brother,  (Sir)  John 


243 


Keswick 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Henry  *Keswick,  also  became  chairman  of  Jar- 
dine,  Matheson.  William  Keswick  went  to  Win- 
chester College  in  19 17  and  rowed  for  the  school 
before  going  on  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
in  1922  to  read  economics  and  law  for  an 
ordinary  degree  (BA,  1925). 

On  leaving  Cambridge  he  joined  Jardine, 
Matheson  in  Harbin,  Manchuria,  in  1925,  with  a 
posting  to  the  engineering  department.  He 
recalled  Harbin  as  being  a  grim  place  in  several 
respects  and  he  welcomed  later  transfers  to 
Beijing  and  Tianjin  and  subsequent  promotion  to 
the  management  team  in  Hong  Kong,  where  he 
was  taipan  (head  of  the  firm)  in  1934-5,  anQ<  in 
Shanghai,  where  he  became  taipan  in  1935. 

The  decade  of  the  1930s  was  a  difficult  and 
dangerous  time  in  China,  and  the  international 
community  in  Shanghai  was  challenged  both  by 
the  growth  of  communist  ideology  and  by  the 
aggressive  policy  of  the  Japanese  government 
towards  China,  which  led  to  attacks  on  Shanghai 
in  1932  and  1937.  The  authority  of  the  Shanghai 
municipal  council,  of  which  Keswick  had  become 
chairman  in  1938  (a  post  virtually  equivalent  to 
mayor),  was  also  under  attack,  with  the  Japanese 
pressing  for  much  greater  representation,  and  he 
survived  an  assassination  attempt  by  a  Japanese 
member  of  the  council  at  a  ratepayers'  meeting 
early  in  1941. 

By  now  the  European  war  had  already  started 
and  that  in  the  Far  East  was  about  to  begin.  In 
1 94 1  Keswick  was  seconded  as  political  adviser 
to  the  staff  of  (Alfred)  Duff  *Cooper  (later  first 
Viscount  Norwich),  then  minister  of  state  for  the 
Far  East,  in  Singapore.  He  joined  the  Special 
Operations  Executive  (SOE)  and  went  as  a  staff 
officer  to  Washington,  as  a  member  of  the  British 
Shipping  Mission  under  Sir  J.  Arthur  (later 
Baron)  *Salter.  He  then  served  on  the  staff  of  the 
2 1  st  Army  Group  in  North  Africa,  France, 
Belgium,  and  Holland,  with  the  rank  of  briga- 
dier. He  also  worked  in  the  war  cabinet  offices, 
participating  in  the  planning  of  the  Normandy 
landings.  Returning  to  London  after  the  war,  in 
1947  he  became  a  director  of  Matheson  &  Co. 
Ltd.,  the  London  correspondents  of  Jardine, 
Matheson,  and  subsequently  served  as  chairman 
from  1949  to  1966:  when  he  retired  he  remained 
on  the  board  as  a  non-executive  director  until 
1975.  He  was  always  a  free-trader,  feeling 
strongly  that  the  market  should  be  allowed  to 
determine  the  business  environment  without 
bureaucratic  intervention.  His  approach  was 
down-to-earth  and  pragmatic  and  he  was  scrupu- 
lously fair  in  all  his  dealings. 

A  large  and  imposing  figure  and  tall  of  stature, 
he  had  a  presence  and  authority  which  marked 
his  many  years  as  a  leading  figure  in  the  City  of 
London.  He  was  governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  from  1952  to  1965  and  a  director  of  the 
Bank  of  England  (1955-73)  and  of  BP  (1950-73). 


He  served  as  deputy  chairman  of  Sun  Alliance 
Insurance  Ltd.  and  a  trustee  of  the  National 
Gallery  (1964-71)  and  was  knighted  in  1972.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  King's  (later  Queen's)  Body 
Guard  for  Scotland  (the  Royal  Company  of 
Archers)  from  1949. 

In  1937  Keswick  married  Mary  Etheldreda, 
daughter  of  Sir  Francis  Oswald  *Lindley,  diplo- 
mat; they  had  three  sons  and  one  daughter.  They 
shared  a  wide  variety  of  interests  and  pastimes. 
Both  loved  gardening  (a  world  in  which  the  name 
of  Lindley  was  honoured)  and  they  created  a 
much  admired  garden  on  the  outskirts  of  Shang- 
hai; later  they  were  to  create  beautiful  gardens  at 
their  homes  at  Theydon  Bois  in  Essex  and 
Glenkiln  in  south-west  Scotland.  An  early 
friendship  with  Henry  *Moore  had  resulted  in  a 
keen  interest  in  sculpture  and  it  was  at  Glenkiln 
that  Keswick  was  to  place  his  remarkable  collec- 
tion of  statues  by  Moore,  Sir  Jacob  *Epstein,  and 
others  on  the  Galloway  moors,  where  art  and 
nature  complemented  each  other.  The  Keswicks 
also  collected  furniture  and  pictures,  many  of 
them  closely  associated  with  the  early  days  of 
Jardine,  Matheson,  and  they  enjoyed  tapestry, 
music,  and  even  hot-air  ballooning.  Keswick  died 
16  February  1990  at  the  Lister  Hospital,  West- 
minster. 

[Jardine,  Matheson  archives  at  Cambridge  University 
Library;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Jeremy  Brown 

KEYS,  William  Herbert  (1923- 1990),  trade 
unionist,  was  born  1  January  1923  at  Elliots  Row, 
Elephant  and  Castle,  London  SEi,  the  third 
child  and  second  son  in  the  family  of  four  sons 
and  one  daughter  of  George  William  Keys, 
printer,  and  his  wife,  Jessie  Powell.  His  elder 
brother  and  sister  died  before  he  was  born.  He 
spent  his  childhood  in  the  Elephant  and  Castle 
and  was  educated  at  Archbishop  Temple  Gram- 
mar School  there.  He  joined  the  army  in  1939 
and  served  in  the  Rifle  Brigade  throughout 
World  War  II,  until  1946.  He  had  a  distinguished 
war  record,  becoming  one  of  the  youngest  ser- 
geant-majors. At  one  period  in  the  war,  cut  off 
near  the  Nijmegen  bridge,  he  was  behind  enemy 
lines  for  several  days  with  a  handful  of  his  men. 
He  was  amongst  the  first  Allied  troops  to  enter 
Belsen  concentration  camp.  This  and  his  other 
wartime  experiences  confirmed  his  profound 
dedication  to  world  peace,  his  total  rejection  of 
fascism,  and  his  passionate  support  for  nuclear 
disarmament. 

'Bill'  Keys  started  his  career  in  the  printing 
works  of  the  Amalgamated  Press,  Summer 
Street,  London  SEi,  but  in  1953  he  became  a 
full-time  official  of  the  National  Union  of  Print- 
ing, Bookbinding,  and  Paperworkers  when  he 
was  appointed  national  organizer.  From  1961  to 
1970  he  was  the  secretary  of  the  union's  London 


244 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


King 


central  branch,  whilst  from  1970  to  1974  he  was 
the  general  president  of  the  Society  of  Graphical 
and  Allied  Trades  (SOGAT).  On  1  January  1975 
he  became  general  secretary  of  SOGAT,  a  post 
he  held  until  he  retired  in  1985.  He  served  on  the 
general  council  of  the  Trades  Union  Congress 
for  eleven  years  from  1974. 

He  was  a  highly  successful  general  secretary  of 
SOGAT  and  its  constituent  unions  and  became 
one  of  the  foremost  leaders  in  the  wider  trade- 
union  movement.  On  becoming  general  secre- 
tary, he  changed  SOGAT  from  being  an  inward- 
looking  organization  to  one  which  became 
involved  in  mainstream  issues.  He  believed 
strongly  that  it  had  a  role  and  responsibility  to  be 
active  within  the  Trades  Union  Congress,  the 
Labour  party,  and  society  at  large.  He  was  always 
an  internationalist  and  forged  links  with  unions 
throughout  the  world,  not  only  in  the  printing 
sphere  but  on  a  much  broader  basis.  His  stamina 
and  tenacity  made  him  a  formidable  negotiator, 
with  the  ability  to  take  apart  the  most  complex 
wage  structure  and  put  forward  a  solution  to 
disputes.  He  was  especially  renowned  for  his 
habit  of  kicking  off  his  shoes  during  the  hard 
negotiating  sessions  with  employers. 

Of  his  many  achievements,  two  stand  out.  He 
won  a  great  victory  for  the  continuation  of  his 
union's  political  fund,  threatened  by  the  Trade 
Union  Act  of  1984,  which  enforced  periodic 
ballots  on  the  issue.  He  spearheaded  and  co-ordi- 
nated the  political  fund  ballots  in  trade  unions — 
one  of  the  few  successes  of  the  trade-union 
movement  in  the  years  of  the  government  of 
Margaret  (later  Baroness)  Thatcher.  SOGAT 
was  the  first  union  to  go  to  ballot  and  other 
unions  followed.  The  other  was  his  commitment 
to  the  creation  of  one  union  for  the  printing 
industry.  He  achieved  a  number  of  steps  along 
this  way  with  the  merger  in  1975  of  the  Scottish 
Graphical  Association  and  SOGAT  and  then  in 
1982  of  NATSOPA  and  SOGAT.  Although  his 
ultimate  goal  of  one  union  evaded  him  before  his 
retirement  and  death,  he  had  put  in  place  the 
basis  of  the  SOGAT/NGA  amalgamation, 
which  took  place  in  October  1991. 

For  all  his  successes,  his  biggest  disappoint- 
ment was  his  failure  to  persuade  his  old  London 
central  branch  members  in  Fleet  Street  to  accept 
modernization  and  new  technology.  If  the  'Pro- 
gramme of  Action'  which  he  devised  in  1977  had 
been  accepted,  the  move  of  newspapers  to  Wap- 
ping  and  the  demise  of  Fleet  Street  would  not 
have  happened  in  the  brutal  way  it  did.  He 
foresaw  what  would  ensue  and  wanted  to  avoid 
it. 

On  the  wider  trade-union  scene  Keys  made  a 
significant  contribution  to  TUC  policy-making 
at  a  national  level,  particularly  in  the  role  of 
chairman  of  the  employment  policy  committee 
(1976-85)  and  of  the  printing  industries  commit- 


tee (1974-85).  He  also  presided  over  the  TUC 
media  committee  (1977-85)  and  the  equal  rights 
committee  (1974—85),  and  served  on  the  race 
relations  committee  (1974-85)  and  the  finance 
and  general  purposes  committee  (1982-5),  which 
is  regarded  as  the  TUC's  'inner  cabinet'.  As  one 
of  the  elder  statesmen  of  the  TUC,  he  was  the 
trade-union  nominee  for  the  committee  of 
inquiry  which  resolved  the  national  steel  strike 
(1980)  and  the  national  water  strike  (1983).  He 
was  one  of  the  seven  senior  TUC  leaders  who 
tried  to  resolve  the  miners'  strike  of  1984-5.  He 
was  also  the  TUC  nominee  on  the  Commission 
for  Racial  Equality  (1977—81),  the  Manpower 
Services  Commission  (1979-85),  and  the  Central 
Arbitration  Committee  (from  1972).  From  1981 
to  1985  he  was  on  the  TUC-Labour  party  liaison 
committee,  and  he  was  a  leading  light  in  the 
Trades  Unions  for  a  Labour  Victory  organiza- 
tion. 

Keys  was  warm,  generous,  and  compassionate. 
He  was  well  built,  six  feet  in  height,  and  some 
thirteen  stones  in  weight.  In  1941  he  married 
Enid,  daughter  of  William  Gleadhill,  who  trav- 
elled all  over  the  world  doing  many  jobs,  includ- 
ing work  in  the  oilfields  of  the  Persian  Gulf. 
They  had  two  sons,  Ian  and  Keith.  Keys  died  of 
heart  trouble  19  May  1990  at  his  home,  242 
Maplin  Way,  North  Thorpe  Bay,  Essex. 
[Private  information.]  John  Gennard 

KILBRANDON,  Baron  (1906-1989),  lord  of 
appeal.  [See  Shaw,  Charles  James  Dal- 
rymple.] 

KING,  Cecil  Harmsworth  (1901-1987),  pub- 
lisher, was  born  20  February  1 901  at  Poynter's 
Hall,  Totteridge,  the  fourth  child  in  the  family  of 
three  sons  and  three  daughters  of  (Sir)  Lucas 
WTiite  King,  professor  of  oriental  languages  at 
Dublin  University,  and  formerly  of  the  Indian 
Civil  Service,  and  his  wife,  Geraldine,  daughter 
of  Alfred  Harmsworth,  barrister,  and  sister  of  the 
first  Viscounts  *Rothermere  and  *Northchffe. 
Cecil  King's  boyhood  was  unhappy.  A  brother 
was  killed  at  Ypres,  another  when  the  ship  taking 
him  to  school  was  torpedoed.  'Life  has  always 
been  difficult  for  me  because  this  is  not  my 
world,'  he  wrote  in  his  candid  autobiography. 
'Until  recently  [1969]  I  have  hated  myself  and 
always  wanted  to  commit  suicide.'  He  remem- 
bered his  father  as  'an  irascible  old  gentleman' 
and  his  mother  as  violent  and  selfish.  He  hated 
his  school,  Winchester,  and  liked  Oxford  because 
at  Christ  Church  (he  gained  a  second  class  in 
modern  history  in  1922)  he  could  always  be 
alone.  There  he  fell  in  love  with  Agnes  Margaret 
(died  1985),  whose  father  was  George  Albert 
*Cooke,  canon  of  Christ  Church  and  regius 
professor  of  Hebrew.  He  married  her  in  1923, 
and  there  were  to  be  three  sons  and  a  daughter  of 


245 


King 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  marriage  (two  sons  were  to  die  in  his  old  age). 
King  also  adopted  his  deceased  nephew's  three 
children. 

After  Oxford  King's  uncle,  Viscount  Rother- 
mere,  arranged  for  him  to  begin  work  on  two  of 
his  newspapers,  the  Glasgow  Record  and  Sunday 
Mail.  While  in  Glasgow  he  developed  the  skin 
disease,  psoriasis,  which  troubled  him  for  the  rest 
of  his  life  and  precluded  him  from  being  called 
up  in  World  War  II.  King  then  returned  to  the 
south  and  joined  the  staff  of  the  Daily  Mail  in 
1923,  in  the  advertisement  department.  In  1926 
he  transferred  to  the  Daily  Mirror,  of  which  he 
became  a  director  in  1929.  In  its  heyday  the 
Mirror  was  not  a  comfortable  habitat  for  a 
withdrawn  Wykehamist,  but  when  he  joined  the 
paper,  it  was  Conservative,  middle-class,  and 
failing.  With  King's  support,  Guy  Bartholomew, 
editorial  director  for  many  years,  set  about  trans- 
forming it  into  an  American-style  tabloid,  seek- 
ing a  big  working-class  audience  and  willing  to 
sympathize  with  Labour.  King  kept  'Bart's' 
extravagances  at  bay. 

King  was  made  editorial  director  of  the  Sun- 
day Pictorial  in  1937  and  wisely  appointed 
the  twenty-four-year-old  Hugh  (later  Baron) 
Cudlipp  as  editor.  He  was  self-educated,  had 
been  brought  up  in  socialist  south  Wales,  was 
full  of  passion,  and  had  the  journalistic  flair  that 
King  lacked.  After  the  war,  Bartholomew  fired 
Cudlipp,  but  soon  King  ousted  Bartholomew  in 
195 1  and  brought  back  Cudlipp  as  editorial 
director  of  Mirror  Newspapers.  King  himself 
became  chairman  of  the  Mirror  Group  (1951- 

63)- 

King,  Cudlipp,  and  the  papers  prospered. 
King  built  a  vast  world  publishing  empire  on  this 
small,  rich  base.  In  England,  they  acquired  in 
1958  the  Amalgamated  Press  from  the  Berry 
family  and  then  took  over  the  Odham's  Group  in 
order  to  rationalize  the  women's  magazines.  In  so 
doing,  they  acquired  'Labour's  own  (and  only) 
paper',  the  Daily  Herald.  The  Labour  party's 
opposition  to  this  was  stifled  when  King  prom- 
ised to  maintain  the  failing  Herald  for  seven 
years.  Halfway  through  this  term  the  Trades 
Union  Congress  parted  with  their  interest  in  the 
Herald  and  King  changed  its  title  to  the  Sun. 

King  and  Cudlipp  were  now  deeply  involved 
in  politics.  The  Mirror  Group  was  almost  a  wing 
of  the  Labour  movement.  King  had  greater 
hopes  of  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of 
Rievaulx)  than  he  had  had  of  his  predecessor 
Hugh  *Gaitskell,  and  believed  that  without  the 
brilliant  campaign  conducted  by  Cudlipp,  Wil- 
son would  not  have  won  his  marginal  victory  in 
1964.  Although  King  hoped  to  be  Wilson's 
eminence  grise,  Wilson  was  unable  to  take  his 
advice.  Consequently  when  he  offered  to  make 
King  a  peer  and  minister  of  state,  King  scorn- 
fully rejected  the  opportunity.  As  the  govern- 


ment got  into  deeper  economic  difficulties,  King 
became  more  hostile  to  Wilson  and  encouraged 
ministers  to  be  disloyal  to  him. 

In  1963  the  Mirror  Group  was  renamed  the 
International  Printing  Corporation,  with  King  as 
chairman.  He  was  also  a  part-time  member  of  the 
National  Coal  Board  (1966-9)  and  a  member  of 
the  National  Parks  Commission  (1966-9).  In 
1965  he  became  a  part-time  director  of  the  Bank 
of  England.  King  felt  that  what  he  believed  to  be 
his  special  gifts  as  an  administrator  might  be  put 
at  the  service  of  the  nation  when  the  inevitable 
catastrophe  came.  He  tried,  at  the  dinner  parties 
he  gave  in  his  ninth-floor  suite  in  the  Mirror's 
glass  building,  to  persuade  other  business  leaders 
that  there  would  have  to  be  an  emergency 
government  containing  men  like  themselves. 
King  feared  there  would  be  hyperinflation  and 
even  bloodshed  in  the  streets.  Cudlipp  and  his 
political  executives  had  a  hard  time  keeping  this 
nonsense  out  of  the  paper.  They  tried  in  vain  to 
convince  King  that,  though  the  government 
deserved  criticism,  his  fears  were  wildly  exces- 
sive. 

King  got  Cudlipp  to  take  him  to  see  Earl 
*Mountbatten  of  Burma  in  May  1968.  He  out- 
lined his  fears  and  asked  Mountbatten  if  he 
would  be  titular  head  of  an  emergency  govern- 
ment. Mountbatten  had  taken  care  to  be  accom- 
panied by  Sir  Solly  (later  Baron)  Zuckerman,  the 
government's  scientific  adviser,  who  said  at  once 
that  this  was  rank  treachery  and  Mountbatten 
should  have  nothing  to  do  with  it.  Mountbatten 
agreed  with  Zuckerman. 

Two  days  later,  King  published  an  article  in 
the  Mirror  under  his  own  name  entitled  'Enough 
Is  Enough'.  It  read:  'Mr  Wilson  and  his  govern- 
ment have  lost  all  credit  and  we  are  now  threat- 
ened with  the  greatest  financial  crisis  in  history. 
It  is  not  to  be  resolved  by  lies  about  our  reserves 
but  only  by  a  fresh  start  under  a  fresh  leader.' 
The  City  was  appalled.  King  had  resigned  the 
previous  night  from  his  directorship  of  the  Bank 
of  England.  The  pound  had  a  bad  day.  The 
Labour  party's  reaction  was  to  give  stronger 
support  to  Wilson.  And  three  weeks  later  the 
directors  of  IPC  unanimously  dismissed  King. 

He  had  served  Fleet  Street  well  as  chairman  of 
the  Newspaper  Publishers  Association  (1961-8). 
He  put  a  stop  for  a  year  or  two  to  cheque-book 
journalism  and  made  the  Press  Council  more 
credible.  In  his  retirement  he  wrote  articles  for 
The  Times,  and  produced  his  autobiography  and 
diaries.  The  diaries  further  injured  his  name 
because  many  people  felt  he  had  betrayed  their 
confidences. 

To  lift  his  low  spirits,  King  required  stimulat- 
ing company  and  people  found  him  a  likeable 
host  at  luncheons  and  dinners.  He  particularly 
appreciated  the  voluble  Irish,  the  flamboyant 
Poles,  and  the  ebullient  Africans  he  met  as  a 


246 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


King 


publisher.  The  whole  of  his  professional  life  was 
spent  in  newspapers.  He  shared  his  uncle 
Rothermere's  gift  for  finance  but  lacked  his  uncle 
Northcliffe's  genius  for  popular  journalism.  King 
was  six  feet  four  inches  tall,  a  commanding,  burly 
figure  with  penetrating  blue  eyes,  a  quick  smile, 
and,  in  later  life,  abundant  grey  hair. 

He  retired  eventually  to  Ireland  with  (Dame) 
Ruth  Railton,  musician  and  founder  and  musical 
director  of  the  National  Youth  Orchestra.  They 
had  married  in  1962,  after  King  and  his  first  wife 
were  divorced  in  the  same  year.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  David  Railton,  army  chaplain  and 
rector  of  Liverpool.  Her  lively  personality 
brought  him  prolonged  happiness  for  the  first 
time.  King  died  17  April  1987  at  his  home  in 
Greenfield  Park,  Dublin,  where  he  had  lived  for 
the  last  part  of  his  life. 

[The  Cecil  King  Diary  1965-70,  iqrj2;  The  Cecil  King 
Diary  1970-74,  1975;  Cecil  King,  Strictly  Personal 
(autobiography),  1969;  Hugh  Cudlipp,  Walking  on  the 
Water,  1976.]  John  Beavan 

KING,  Horace  Maybray,  Baron  Maybray- 
King  (1901-1986),  Labour  politician  and 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons,  was  born  25 
May  1 90 1  at  91  Stapylton  Street,  Grangetown, 
near  Middlesbrough,  the  second  child  in  the 
family  of  two  sons  and  two  daughters  of  John 
William  King,  insurance  agent  (previously  steel- 
worker),  and  his  wife,  Margaret  Ann  Maybray. 
He  was  educated  at  Norton  Council  School  and 
Stockton  Secondary  School.  He  obtained  first- 
class  honours  in  English  at  King's  College, 
London  University,  in  1922  and  in  the  same  year 
was  appointed  to  a  teaching  post  at  Taunton's 
School  in  Southampton.  He  became  head  of 
English  in  1930,  and  remained  there  until  1947, 
when  he  became  headmaster  of  Regent's  Park 
Secondary  School  in  Southampton.  He  was  an 
inspiring  teacher,  able  to  secure  respect  in  a 
formal  environment  without  heavy  use  of  sanc- 
tions. A  duodenal  ulcer  meant  that  he  was  not 
liable  for  military  service  in  World  War  II.  For 
several  years  he  studied  part-time  for  a  Ph.D.  on 
Shakespeare,  and  his  thesis  was  accepted  by 
King's  College  in  1940.  King  published  widely 
on  subjects  as  diverse  as  Homer,  *Macaulay, 
Parliament,  and  Sherlock  Holmes. 

In  December  1924  he  married  Victoria  Flor- 
ence, daughter  of  George  Harris,  bookseller. 
Born  in  Southwark,  prior  to  her  marriage  she  was 
a  schoolteacher.  Once  in  Southampton  she 
became  a  significant  political  figure.  A  Labour 
councillor  in  1928-31  and  from  1933,  she  was 
coronation  mayor  in  1953  and  played  a  leading 
role  in  hospital  administration.  In  political  circles 
Horace  King  initially  tended  to  be  viewed  as  Mrs 
King's  husband.  The  couple  had  one  daughter. 

King  joined  the  Socialist  Society  at  university 
and  was  a  Labour  party  member  from  his  arrival 


in  Southampton.  By  the  mid- 1930s  his  concern 
over  British  foreign  policy  led  to  support  for  a 
United  Front.  He  narrowly  escaped  expulsion 
from  the  Southampton  Labour  party  after  shar- 
ing a  platform  with  communists. 

In  the  Labour  landslide  of  1945  King  unsuc- 
cessfully fought  the  safe  Conservative  constitu- 
ency of  New  Forest  and  Christchurch.  The 
following  year  he  was  elected  to  Hampshire 
county  council,  serving  with  one  three-year 
break  until  1965,  and  eventually  becoming 
Labour  party  group  leader.  He  was  elected  to  the 
House  of  Commons  in  February  1950  as  member 
for  the  extremely  marginal  Southampton  Test 
constituency.  Prior  to  the  1955  election  King 
succeeded  in  transferring  his  candidacy  to  the 
adjacent  and  much  safer  Itchen  constituency. 

King  quickly  demonstrated  a  flair  for  pub- 
licity. He  arrived  at  the  House  of  Commons  for 
the  first  time,  wearing  a  cloth  cap  in  memory  of 
(James)  Keir  *Hardie,  and  made  the  first  maiden 
speech  of  all  the  1950  entrants.  He  was  a  very 
active  back-bencher;  within  the  Parliamentary 
Labour  party  he  stood  with  the  right.  He  was  a 
keen  supporter  of  the  Anglo-American  alliance, 
making  frequent  visits  to  the  United  States,  and 
he  backed  Hugh  *Gaitskell  against  unilateralism, 
but  he  was  never  a  factionalist  and  attempted  to 
remain  on  good  terms  with  all  sections  of  the 
party. 

As  early  as  1953  King  joined  the  Speaker's 
panel.  In  November  1964,  following  Labour's 
return  to  office,  he  became  chairman  of  Ways  and 
Means  and  deputy  Speaker.  Almost  a  year  later, 
with  the  death  of  Sir  Harry  *Hylton-Foster  in 
September  1965,  he  became  the  first  Speaker 
from  the  Labour  benches.  At  the  same  time  he 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council. 

He  assumed  the  speakership  in  a  context  of 
increasing  demands  for  parliamentary  reform. 
Whilst  no  procedural  die-hard.  King  was  a 
traditionalist  with  a  generally  rosy  view  of  estab- 
lished practices.  One  innovation,  the  speeding  up 
of  Question  Time,  probably  reduced  further  the 
influence  of  the  back-bencher.  His  speakership 
saw  changes  in  parliamentary  procedure  that 
could  seem  significant  by  comparison  with  earlier 
inertia,  but  in  real  terms  they  were  modest. 
Unlike  many  of  his  predecessors,  he  had  no  legal 
training  but  his  headmasterly  and  avuncular  style 
soon  established  his  authority. 

He  retired  as  Speaker  at  the  end  of  1970.  He 
became  a  life  peer,  as  Baron  Maybray-King,  in 
1 97 1  and  attended  the  House  of  Lords  regularly 
for  several  years,  serving  as  deputy  Speaker 
there.  His  career  contained  much  that  was  char- 
acteristic of  Labour  politics  of  the  first  half  of  the 
twentieth  century.  He  was  self-improving,  cau- 
tiously reformist,  and  respectful  of  many  vener- 
able British  practices.  Yet  there  were  paradoxes. 
The  traditionalist  was  a  showman;  as  Speaker 


247 


King 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


he  turned  on  the  Blackpool  illuminations.  In 
Southampton  he  seemed  a  proper,  somewhat 
puritanical,  figure;  at  Westminster  he  was  highly 
clubbable  and  well  known  in  the  bars.  He  was  an 
accomplished  player  of  the  piano  and  piano 
accordion  and  loved  entertaining  children.  The 
bonhomie  masked  a  more  complex  and  elusive 
character.  Maybray-King  had  honorary  degrees 
from  Southampton  (1967),  London  (1967),  Dur- 
ham (1968),  Bath  (1969X  Ottawa  (1969),  and 
Loughborough  (1971),  and  was  honorary 
FRCP. 

King's  first  wife  died  in  1966.  He  then  married 
in  July  1967  Una,  daughter  of  William  Herbert 
Porter,  industrial  manager.  His  second  wife  was 
a  retired  Southampton  headmistress  and  had 
been  King's  honorary  chauffeur  in  the  last  years 
of  his  political  career.  She  died  in  1978  and 
Maybray-King  married  in  January  1981  Mrs  Ivy 
Duncan  Forster,  a  widow  from  county  Durham. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  John  Edward  Davison, 
miner.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1985,  and 
finally,  in  March  1986,  Maybray-King  married 
Sheila  Catherine,  retired  secretary  and  daughter 
of  John  Atkinson,  dental  mechanic.  There  were 
no  children  of  the  last  three  marriages.  Maybray- 
King  died  in  the  Royal  Hampshire  Hospital, 
Southampton,  3  September  1986. 

[Files  at  Southampton  Evening  Echo;  The  Times  and 
Daily  Telegraph,  4  September  1986;  private  informa- 
tion.] David  Howell 

KIRKLEY,  Sir  (Howard)  Leslie  (1911-1989), 
director  of  Oxfam,  was  born  13  March  191 1  in 
Manchester,  the  youngest  in  the  family  of  two 
sons  and  one  daughter  of  Albert  Kirkley,  a 
Manchester  schoolmaster,  and  his  wife,  Eliza- 
beth Winifred  Harris.  He  matriculated  from 
Manchester  Central  High  School,  qualified  in 
Manchester's  local  government  examinations, 
and  became  an  associate  of  the  Chartered  Insti- 
tute of  Secretaries.  His  early  career  in  local 
government  stirred  a  growing  interest  in  politics 
which  was  reinforced  by  his  staunchly  Liberal 
father  and  by  visits  to  the  Rhondda,  which  was 
then  suffering  from  the  depression.  His  con- 
sequent involvement  with  social  welfare  issues  at 
home  was  matched  by  concern  for  peace  abroad. 
An  active  organizer  for  the  Peace  Pledge  Union, 
he  registered  as  a  conscientious  objector  with 
unconditional  exemption.  In  1940  Manchester 
council  decided  to  sack  registered  COs;  Kirkley 
lost  his  job.  It  was  a  moment  of  truth  which 
revealed  his  commitment,  courage,  and  unyield- 
ing refusal  to  compromise  on  matters  of  prin- 
ciple. 

A  number  of  jobs  followed  before  his  appoint- 
ment in  1942  as  regional  secretary  for  the  Fel- 
lowship of  Reconciliation  based  in  Leeds.  Here 
he  became  a  founder  member  and  honorary 
secretary  to  the  Leeds  European  Relief  Commit- 


tee, sending  food  to  war-torn  Greece  and,  follow- 
ing the  war,  clothing  to  Germany  and  Austria. 
After  the  war  came  his  first  direct  and  successful 
experience  of  running  a  business,  for  the  Quaker 
painting  and  decorating  firm  of  Harry  Seel.  A 
secure  future  seemed  assured  when,  in  1951, 
recruited  by  Cecil  *Jackson-Cole,  he  moved  to 
Oxford  to  become  general  secretary  to  the 
Oxford  Committee  for  Famine  Relief,  one  of 
whose  founders  was  T.  R.  *Milford.  Over  the 
next  twenty-four  years  he  transformed  this  small 
local  committee  into  a  leading  national  and 
international  organization. 

The  transformation  began  with  the  Commit- 
tee's involvement  in  disaster  relief  after  the 
Greek  earthquake  in  1953.  There  followed  help 
to  refugees:  victims  of  the  Korean  war,  the 
Chinese  civil  war,  the  Hungarian  uprising,  and 
the  Algerian  war,  and  displaced  Palestinians. 
Kirkley's  personal  visits  to  disaster  areas,  and  the 
Committee's  high-profile  role,  together  with  the 
pioneering  use  of  professional  fund-raising 
methods,  achieved  rapid  growth.  As  chairman  of 
the  World  Refugee  Year's  public  relations  and 
publicity  committee,  Kirkley  visited  the  Congo 
(1961),  and  the  huge  public  response  which  the 
plight  of  the  starving  refugees  invoked  catapulted 
his  organization — which  in  1961  became  Oxfam, 
with  Kirkley  as  its  first  director — into  the  role  of 
a  major  medium  for  prompt  disaster  relief. 

The  1960s  saw  Oxfam  move  into  long-term 
development  work  with  a  network  of  field  staff. 
Kirkley  played  a  key  role  within  the  Freedom 
from  Hunger  Campaign  (1960-5)  and  con- 
sequently became  interested  in  the  causes  of 
poverty.  He  began  to  campaign  for  a  new  inter- 
pretation of  charity  to  include  the  examination  of 
the  causes  of  hunger  and  poverty  as  well  as  their 
relief.  This  soon  brought  complaints  from  the 
Charity  Commission.  Kirkley  doggedly  stood 
firm  and  successfully  moved  the  frontier  forward 
with  his  skilful  and  non-confrontational 
approach.  His  leadership  also  achieved  a  growing 
network  of  Oxfam  shops,  establishment  of 
Oxfam  Trading,  encouragement  of  independent 
Oxfams  overseas,  provision  of  development  edu- 
cation for  schools,  and  establishment  of  the 
World  Development  Movement  to  campaign  on 
issues  which  charity  law  prevented  Oxfam  from 
pursuing.  Kirkley  had  succeeded  handsomely  in 
his  aim  'to  professionalize  the  whole  business  of 
charity  without  losing  its  soul  in  the  process'.  He 
left  Oxfam  in  1974  as  a  high-profile  and  flourish- 
ing organization  of  international  renown  while, 
in  the  United  Kingdom,  the  antiquated  concept 
of  charity  had  been  challenged. 

Departure  from  Oxfam  did  not  mean  retire- 
ment. A  further  decade  of  involvement  with 
voluntary  and  public  organizations  was  to  follow: 
as  a  member  of  the  Board  of  Crown  Agents 
(1974-80),  chairman  of  the  Standing  Conference 


248 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Kirkley 


on  Refugees  and  the  British  Refugee  Council 
(1974-81),  chairman  of  the  Disasters'  Emergency 
Committee  (1977-81),  and  chief  executive  of  the 
Voluntary  and  Christian  Service  Trust,  the  par- 
ent body  of  Help  the  Aged  and  Action  Aid 
(1979-84).  Here  his  organizational  talents  pro- 
vided a  cost-effective  management  structure 
which  enabled  Help  the  Aged  to  become  a 
mainstream  charity  and  to  encourage  an  inter- 
national network  of  similar  indigenous  organiza- 
tions: Help  the  Aged  International. 

Colleagues  from  all  stages  of  his  working  life 
remember  Kirkley  for  his  particular  blend  of 
warmth,  optimism,  energy,  obstinacy,  grit,  and 
practical  business  sense.  His  efficient  adminis- 
trative skills  were  self-evident,  but  he  was  never 
a  bureaucrat,  disliking  committees  and  preferring 
to  work  through  personal  contact.  His  were 
political  skills.  His  management  strengths  lay  in 
his  ability  to  pick  people  of  talent  and  commit- 
ment and  motivate  them  to  give  of  their  best, 
allowing  them  freedom  to  operate  creatively 
while,  with  his  quiet  style  of  leadership,  he 
retained  ultimate  control. 

He  became  a  knight  commander  of  the  Order 
of  St  Sylvester  (1963),  and  was  given  the  Victor 
Gollancz  humanity  award  (1974).  He  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1906  and  knighted  in  1977. 
Honorary  MAs  came  from  the  universities  of 
Oxford  (1969),  Leeds  (1970),  and  Bradford 
(1974),  and  an  honorary  fellowship  from  Man- 


chester Polytechnic  (1971).  He  was  also  head 
shepherd  of  the  Greek  village  of  Livaderon. 

Stocky  in  build,  informal  in  dress  and  manner, 
with  straightforward  northern  bluntness  and  a 
quizzical  smile,  he  was  outwardly  easygoing, 
with  a  Quaker  preference  for  compromise  over 
confrontation.  But  the  relaxed  manner  masked  a 
steely  determination,  and  his  courage  and  ten- 
acity could  appear  as  obstinacy  to  frustrated 
colleagues.  He  had  been  raised  an  Anglican  but 
his  pacifism  during  the  war  led  him  to  join  the 
Quakers,  and  the  deep  sense  of  service  which 
motivated  him  sprang  from  his  Christian  Social- 
ist commitment. 

A  lover  of  music,  theatre,  and  country  walks, 
Kirkley  drew  rich  pleasure  from  life.  Devoted  to 
his  dogs  and  to  his  family — who  had  none  the 
less  to  take  their  place — he  was  twice  married, 
first  in  1936  to  Elsie  May  (died  1956),  daughter 
of  John  Rothwell,  accountant,  and  secondly  to 
(Constance  Nina)  Mary,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Bannister-Jones,  clergyman.  His  family  com- 
prised three  sons  and  two  daughters,  one  daugh- 
ter and  one  son  being  from  the  first  marriage. 
Despite  a  serious  heart  attack  in  1986  he  con- 
tinued to  work  for  the  things  in  which  he 
believed.  He  died  in  the  John  Radcliffe  Hospital, 
Oxford,  9  January  1989. 

[Private  and  family  information;  Oxfam  archives;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Frank  Judd 


249 


L 


LACEY,  Janet  (1903- 1988),  director  of  Christian 
Aid,  was  born  in  Sunderland  25  October  1903, 
the  younger  child  and  younger  daughter  of 
Joseph  Lacey,  property  agent,  who  had  been 
born  within  the  sound  of  Bow  Bells,  and  his  wife, 
Elizabeth  Smurthwaite,  from  the  north  of  Eng- 
land. Her  father  died  when  Janet  was  ten  and  her 
sister,  Sadie,  died  of  cancer  in  mid-life.  She  went 
to  various  schools  in  Sunderland  before  going  to 
drama  school  in  Durham.  Her  family  were  fairly 
narrow  Methodists,  mostly  teetotal,  though  her 
father  'drank  whisky  like  water'.  It  may  have 
been  her  father's  death  which  caused  Janet's 
mother  to  send  her  to  live  with  an  aunt  in 
Durham. 

Although  she  toured  in  the  theatre  world  for 
three  years,  Janet  Lacey  found  it  hard  to  make  a 
living.  At  the  age  of  twenty-two  she  applied  to 
the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association  for 
work,  and  in  1926  was  sent  to  the  YWCA  at 
Kendal  to  train  as  a  youth  leader.  She  stayed 
there  for  six  years.  Her  skills  in  drama  were  fully 
used,  and  she  received  her  first  introduction  to 
theology.  Later  she  became  an  Anglican.  During 
the  general  strike  of  1926  she  saw  much  poverty 
in  Durham  pit  villages  and  became  a  Labour 
supporter.  In  1932  she  moved  to  Dagenham,  to  a 
job  which  used  many  of  her  gifts,  in  a  mixed 
YMCA-YWCA  community  centre  at  the  heart 
of  a  vast  new  housing  estate  which  provided 
activities  'from  the  cradle  to  the  grave'. 

In  1945  she  became  YMCA  education  secre- 
tary to  the  British  Army  of  the  Rhine,  which  was 
slowly  being  demobilized.  It  was  typical  of  her 
that  she  used  the  post  to  bring  young  British 
soldiers  together  with  young  Germans  and  with 
refugees.  She  learned  much  about  running  pro- 
grammes of  social  aid  and  made  her  first  contacts 
with  ecumenical  church  leaders  like  Bishop  Hans 
Lilje  and  Bishop  George  *Bell.  She  said  she 
would  go  about  whispering  to  herself:  'I  must  not 
get  used  to  this  devastation.'  Her  capacity  for 
compassion  shaped  her  career. 

She  was  appointed  youth  secretary  of  the 
British  Council  of  Churches  in  1947,  a  job  which 
introduced  her  to  the  World  Council  of 
Churches.  She  was  a  significant  presence  at  its 
four  assemblies:  at  Amsterdam,  Evanston,  New 
Delhi,  and  Uppsala.  For  the  second  assembly  she 
wrote  and  produced  a  dramatic  presentation,  By 


the  Waters  of  Babylon  (1956).  She  got  to  know 
intimately  many  of  the  leaders  of  the  world 
church,  such  as  Visser  t'Hooft.  In  Britain  the 
peak  of  her  work  was  the  Bangor  youth  con- 
ference in  1 95 1. 

By  1952  Janet  Lacey  needed  a  task  which 
would  use  her  full  talents.  In  December  that  year 
she  was  appointed  secretary  (the  term  director 
was  only  used  later)  of  Inter-Church  Aid  (from 
i960  Christian  Aid),  a  post  she  held  until  1968. 
She  worked  from  both  Geneva  and  London, 
helping  to  establish  many  other  important  bodies 
such  as  Voluntary  Service  Overseas  and  World 
Refugee  Year,  but  her  greatest  contribution  was 
to  conceive  Christian  Aid  Week.  This  was  wholly 
her  idea  and  she  executed  it  with  characteristic 
flair.  The  first  week  raised  only  £25,000  but  by 
the  time  she  retired  it  was  raising  £2  million  a 
year.  'Need  not  creed'  was  Janet  Lacey's  slogan 
as  she  stumped  not  only  Britain  but  the  world. 

She  was  tough  and  stocky;  without  being  tall 
she  confronted  others  as  being  a  tower  of 
strength.  She  was  a  formidable,  autocratic  leader, 
often  infuriating,  but  her  compassion  in  action 
caused  even  her  critics  to  admire  her.  She  was 
blunt  to  a  fault.  She  was  a  skilled  manager,  but 
not  as  humane  in  her  management  as  the  really 
good  manager  needs  to  be,  so  that  after  she 
retired  from  Christian  Aid,  her  years  as  director 
of  the  Family  Welfare  Association  (1969-73) 
were  not  a  total  success.  She  more  successfully 
reorganized  the  Churches'  Council  for  Health 
and  Healing  (1973-7).  Although  she  could  run 
huge  organizations,  she  could  not  boil  an  egg: 
nevertheless  she  loved  entertaining  her  friends — 
at  restaurants.  She  adored  the  theatre,  music, 
and  sculpture. 

After  her  great  contribution  to  World  Refugee 
Year,  she  was  appointed  CBE  in  i960.  In  1967 
she  became  the  first  woman  to  preach  in  St  Paul's 
Cathedral.  In  1970  her  autobiographical  volume, 
A  Cup  of  Water,  was  published.  Late  in  life  she 
was  prepared  for  confirmation  by  Father  St  John 
Groser,  the  socialist  East  End  priest.  She  was 
awarded  an  honorary  DD  from  Lambeth  in  1975. 
Her  retirement  in  her  Westminster  flat  was 
happy — she  would  welcome  her  many  friends 
from  all  corners  of  the  globe — until  she  became  a 
victim  of  Alzheimer's  disease.  She  died  in  a 
Kensington  nursing  home,  11  July  1988,  after 


250 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Laing 


having  spent  several  years  living  there.  She  never 
married. 

[Janet  Lacey,  A  Cup  of  Water  (autobiography),  1970; 
personal  knowledge.]  Eric  James 

LAING,  Ronald  David  (1927-1989),  psychia- 
trist and  psychoanalyst,  was  born  7  October  1927 
at  21  Ardbeg  Road,  Glasgow,  the  only  child  of 
David  Park  McNair  Laing,  electrical  engineer, 
and  his  wife,  Amelia  Elizabeth  Kirkwood.  He 
was  educated  at  Cuthbertson  Street  Primary 
School,  Hutcheson's  Boys'  Grammar  School, 
and  the  University  of  Glasgow  medical  school, 
whence  he  graduated  MB,  Ch.B.  in  195 1.  After 
a  year  at  the  Glasgow  and  western  Scotland 
neurosurgical  unit,  Killearn  (1951),  he  worked  as 
a  psychiatrist  in  the  army  (1952-3)  and,  after 
demobilization,  in  the  department  of  psycho- 
logical medicine,  Glasgow  (1953-6). 

In  1956  he  moved  to  London,  having  been 
accepted  for  training  as  a  psychoanalyst  under  an 
experimental  scheme,  by  which  promising  young 
psychiatrists  from  the  provinces  could  be  trained 
within  the  National  Health  Service  by  the  Insti- 
tute of  Psychoanalysis,  while  working  as  regis- 
trars at  the  Tavistock  Clinic.  Despite  opposition 
from  some  of  his  teachers,  who  found  him 
arrogant  and  were  offended  by  his  failure  to 
attend  lectures  regularly,  he  qualified  as  an 
analyst  in  i960. 

From  1956  until  1967  he  worked  at  the  Tavi- 
stock Clinic  and  Institute,  first  as  a  registrar,  and 
then  as  a  research  fellow  of  the  Foundations 
Fund  for  research  in  psychiatry,  and  principal 
investigator  for  the  schizophrenia  and  family 
research  unit.  During  his  time  at  the  Tavistock 
he  was  the  leading  co-author  of  two  works, 
Sanity,  Madness  and  the  Family  (1964)  with  A. 
Esterson,  and  Interpersonal  Perception:  a  Theory 
and  a  Method  of  Research  (1966)  with  H.  Phil- 
lipson  and  A.  R.  Lee.  In  the  former  he  produced 
clinical  data  in  support  of  what  became  in  the 
1960s  and  1970s  the  fashionable  'anti-psychiat- 
ric' idea  that  schizophrenia  is  not  an  illness  but  a 
mode  of  being  into  which  the  'patient'  has  been 
forced  by  his  family.  As  Laing  put  it  in  The 
Politics  of  Experience  (1967),  'when  one  person 
comes  to  be  regarded  as  schizophrenic,  it  seems 
to  us  that  without  exception  the  experience  and 
behaviour  that  gets  labelled  schizophrenic  is  a 
special  strategy  that  a  person  invents  in  order  to  live 
in  an  unlivable  situation'  (Laing's  italics).  This 
idea  that  schizophrenics,  and,  by  extension,  neu- 
rotics, are  victims,  the  damaged  but  heroic  sur- 
vivors of  impossible  inhuman  family  and  social 
pressures,  was,  coupled  with  Laing's  charm  and 
literary  skill,  largely  responsible  for  the  fact  that 
he  became  the  leading  cult  figure  of  the  counter- 
culture of  the  1960s. 

In  i960  and  1961  Laing  published  the  two 
books  by  which  he  became  best  known,   The 


Divided  Se  If  and  The  Self  and  Others,  the  declared 
aims  of  which  were  to  'make  madness,  and  the 
process  of  going  mad,  comprehensible'  and  to 
describe  how  one  person  can  drive  another  one 
insane.  They  describe  the  subjective  experiences 
of  future  or  potential  schizophrenics  in  language 
conspicuously  free  of  the  (pseudo-)  objectifying 
jargon  of  psychoanalysis  and  psychiatry. 

Around  i960  Laing  came  under  the  influence 
of  Dr  E.  Graham  Howe,  a  psychotherapist  much 
interested  in  both  Christianity  and  eastern  reli- 
gions, who  in  the  1930s  had  worked  with  Krish- 
namurti.  This  influence  presumably  explains  the 
mystical,  religious  element  that  enters — some 
would  say  obtrudes — into  Laing's  writings  from 
the  mid-1960s  onwards,  and  the  fact  that  in 
1 97 1 -2  he  spent  a  year  in  Ceylon  learning 
meditation  with  masters  of  the  Hinayana  Bud- 
dhist tradition.  In  1962  Howe  appointed  Laing 
chairman  of  the  Langham  Clinic,  a  body  that 
provided  low-fee  psychotherapy  and  trained  psy- 
chotherapists. But  in  1965  Howe  asked  him  to 
resign  on  account  of  his  interest  in  psychedelic 
drugs. 

In  the  same  year  Laing  was  one  of  the  foun- 
ders of  the  Philadelphia  Association,  an  organ- 
ization devoted  to  establishing  and  running 
residential  communities  in  which  'schizophren- 
ics' could  find  sanctuary  and  make  their  own 
'journey  through  madness'  unimpeded  by  con- 
ventional psychiatric  treatment.  One  of  these 
communities,  Kingsley  Hall  (1965-70),  acquired 
fame  and  notoriety  as  a  place  where  people  could 
regress  into  infantile  and  uninhibited  behaviour 
and  then  resurface  with  a  new,  true,  and  authen- 
tic sanity. 

In  1972,  after  his  return  from  Ceylon,  Laing 
began  a  retreat  from  the  extreme  position  he  had 
taken  in  the  1960s.  He  had,  he  now  maintained, 
never  been  an  apostle  of  the  drug  culture,  or  an 
anti-psychiatrist,  or  an  enemy  of  the  family.  In 
his  The  Politics  of  the  Family  (1971)  he  had 
merely  tried  to  show  how  families  can  go  wrong. 
His  writings  of  the  1970s  and  1980s,  notably  The 
Facts  of  Life  (1976),  The  Voice  of  Experience 
(1982),  and  the  autobiographical  Wisdom,  Mad- 
ness and  Folly  (1985),  are  characterized  by  a  sense 
of  perplexity  and  uncertainty  and  marred  by 
unbridled  speculation.  It  is  difficult  to  take  seri- 
ously the  idea  that  we  are  all  traumatized  by 
separation  from  'our  intra-uterine  twin,  lover, 
rival,  double',  the  placenta. 

Despite  Laing's  intelligence,  charm,  energy, 
and  many  talents — he  wrote  poetry  and  was  a 
gifted  pianist  (LRAM,  1944,  ARCM,  1945) — 
and  his  remarkable  gift  for  rapport  with  the 
mentally  disturbed,  he  was  a  flawed  character. 
His  ideas  on  schizophrenia  were  more  derivative 
than  his  way  of  expressing  them  revealed;  he 
maintained  that  his  rise  to  fame  had  been  more  of 
a   solitary   struggle   than   in   fact   it   was;   and 


251 


Laing 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


his  account  of  his  childhood  in  Wisdom,  Madness 
and  Folly  is  not  strictly  truthful.  In  his  relation- 
ship to  his  1960s  followers,  he  must  be  convicted 
of  playing  to  the  gallery.  His  appearance  was 
striking.  He  was  dark  and  slender,  with  intense 
black  eyes,  and  an  air  of  abstraction  about  him. 
Laing  was  married  and  divorced  twice.  He 
married  his  first  wife  Anne,  daughter  of  Thomas 
George  Charles  Hearne,  customs  and  excise 
officer,  in  October  1952,  and  had  two  sons  and 
three  daughters  with  her;  they  divorced  in  1970. 
In  March  1974  he  married  his  second  wife  Jutta, 
daughter  of  Max  Werner,  clerk,  and  had  two 
sons  and  one  daughter  with  her.  They  divorced 
in  1986.  He  also  had  two  illegitimate  children. 
Laing  died  of  a  heart  attack  in  St  Trope/.  23 
August  1989. 

[Adrian  Laing  (son),  R.  D.  Laing,  a  Biography,  1094; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  Rycroft 

LAITHWAITE,  Sir  Gohn)  Gilbert 
( 1 894-1986),  civil  servant  and  diplomat,  was 
born  5  July  1894  in  Dublin,  the  eldest  in  the 
family  of  two  sons  and  two  daughters  of  John 
Gilbert  Laithwaite,  of  the  Post  Office  Survey,  of 
Dublin,  and  his  wife  Mary,  daughter  of  Bernard 
Kearney,  of  Clooncoose  House,  Castlerea, 
county  Roscommon.  He  was  educated  at  Clon- 
gowes,  whence  he  won  a  scholarship  to  Trinity 
College,  Oxford,  of  which  he  became  an  hon- 
orary fellow  in  1955.  He  obtained  a  second  class 
in  both  classical  honour  moderations  (19 14)  and 
literae  humaniores  (1916). 

During  World  War  I  he  served  in  the  front 
line  in  France  in  1917-18,  as  a  second  lieutenant 
with  the  10th  Lancashire  Fusiliers,  and  was 
wounded.  In  197 1  he  published  (privately 
printed  in  Lahore)  a  record  of  part  of  this  service 
in  The  21st  March  igi8:  Memories  of  an  Infantry 
Officer,  which  includes  a  lively,  detailed  account 
of  the  German  attack  at  Havrincourt,  near  Cam- 
brai,  on  21  March  1918. 

In  1919  Laithwaite  was  appointed  to  the  India 
Office,  and  thus  started  a  long  career  involved 
with  the  subcontinent.  He  became  a  principal  in 
1924  and  in  193 1  he  was  specially  attached  to  the 
prime  minister,  J.  Ramsay  *Macdonald,  for  the 
second  Indian  Round  Table  conference  in  Lon- 
don. Two  important  secretaryships  followed,  of 
the  Indian  franchise  (Lothian)  committee  under 
R.  A.  *Butler  (later  Baron  Butler  of  Saffron 
Walden),  which  toured  the  subcontinent  in  1932, 
and  of  the  Indian  delimitation  committee  from 
August  1935  to  February  1936.  From  1936  to 
1943  he  was  principal  private  secretary  to  the 
viceroy  of  India,  the  second  Marquess  of  •Lin- 
lithgow. It  was  a  time  of  growing  political  tension 
following  the  India  Act  of  1935  and  with  provin- 
cial autonomy  in  1937  imminent.  The  strains  and 
stresses  were  greatly  increased  by  the  approach 


of  war.  Laithwaite  gave  staunch  support  to  the 
viceroy  and  his  policies  and  deserves  to  share 
with  Linlithgow  the  credit  for  ensuring  that 
India's  vital  role  as  supply  centre  for  the  war 
effort,  as  well  as  a  source  of  military  manpower, 
was  quickly  and  efficiently  organized  and  main- 
tained. 

In  1943  he  returned  to  England  with  Linlith- 
gow and  was  appointed  assistant  under-secretary 
of  state  for  India.  He  was  then  appointed  an 
under-secretary  (civil)  of  the  war  cabinet  (1944- 
5)  and  secretary  to  the  Commonwealth  minis- 
terial meeting  in  London  in  1945.  As  deputy 
under-secretary  of  state  for  Burma  (1945-7)  he 
twice  visited  Rangoon  and  had  a  formative  share 
in  the  negotiations  leading  to  Burmese  independ- 
ence early  in  1948.  He  was  deputy  under- 
secretary of  state  for  India  in  1947  and  for 
Commonwealth  relations  in  1948-9,  and  he  acted 
as  one  of  the  official  secretaries  of  the  conference 
of  Commonwealth  prime  ministers  in  1948. 

In  1949  Laithwaite  became  the  United  King- 
dom representative  to  the  Republic  of  Ireland,  a 
post  upgraded  to  ambassador  in  1950.  In  1951  he 
was  sent  as  high  commissioner  to  Pakistan,  where 
he  already  had  friendly  relations  with  members 
of  the  government,  officials,  and  other  leaders. 
He  steadfastly  promoted  the  British  policy  of 
friendship  with  both  India  and  Pakistan  in  their 
disputes  over  the  future  of  Kashmir  and  the 
distribution  of  the  canal  waters  of  the  Punjab, 
and  supported  the  efforts  of  the  United  Nations 
to  reconcile  the  two  countries.  He  left  Pakistan  in 
1954  to  be  permanent  under-secretary  of  state  for 
Commonwealth  relations  from  1955  to  1959,  first 
visiting  Australia  and  New  Zealand.  From 
1963-6  he  was  vice-chairman  of  the  Common- 
wealth Institute. 

He  was  also  a  governor  of  Queen  Mary  Col- 
lege, London,  from  1959;  president  of  the 
Hakluyt  Society,  1964-9;  vice-president  of  the 
Royal  Central  Asian  Society  in  1967;  president  of 
the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  1966-9;  and  a 
member  of  the  standing  commission  on  muse- 
ums and  galleries  from  1959  to  1971.  After 
retirement  in  1959  he  played  an  active  part  in  the 
life  of  the  City  as  a  director  of  Inchcape  and  of 
insurance  companies.  He  was  admitted  a  freeman 
of  the  City  of  London  in  i960  and  was  master  of 
the  Tallow  Chandlers'  Company  in  1972-3. 

Laithwaite  was  an  industrious  and  efficient 
worker,  with  an  impressive  grasp  of  problems 
and  a  reputation  for  fairness.  He  was  rather  tall 
and  solidly  built,  dignified  and  precise  in  man- 
ner, but  exceptionally  friendly  in  a  social  context, 
even  on  first  acquaintance,  though  still  with  a 
trace  of  formality.  His  outstanding  qualities  and 
affability,  together  with  his  sense  of  humour, 
made  him  many  friends  both  at  home  and 
abroad.  His  diverse  interests  included  a  strong 


252 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Lancaster 


appreciation  of  fine  artefacts  and  while  in  India 
and  Pakistan  he  collected  carpets  and  rugs  with 
discrimination. 

He  came  from  a  Lancastrian  Roman  Catholic 
family  and  adhered  devoutly  to  that  faith,  which 
contributed  to  his  success  in  the  embassy  in 
Dublin.  In  i960  he  was  appointed  a  knight  of 
Malta.  He  was  appointed  CIE  (1935),  CSI 
(1938),  KOE  (1941),  KCMG  (1948),  GCMG 
(1953),  and  KCB  (1956).  Laithwaite  was  a  homo- 
sexual and  unmarried.  He  died  in  London  21 
December  1986. 

[The  Times,  24  December  1986;  Gilbert  Laithwaite,  The 
2 1st  March  igi8:  Memories  of  an  Infantry  Officer,  1971, 
and  The  Laithwattes:  some  Records  of  a  Lancashire 
Family,  1941  (revised  edn.,  1961);  personal  knowledge.] 
Michael  Maclagan 

LANCASTER,  Sir  Osbert  (1908-1986),  car- 
toonist, designer,  writer,  and  wit,  was  born  in 
London  4  August  1908,  the  only  child  of  Robert 
Lancaster  and  his  wife,  Clare  Bracebridge  Man- 
ger. His  grandfather.  Sir  William  Lancaster, 
became  secretary  of  the  Prudential  Assurance 
Company  and  his  father  had  a  job  in  the  City  but 
enlisted  in  the  army  in  1914.  He  was  killed  in  the 
battle  of  the  Somme  (191 6).  Lancaster  was  sent 
to  St  Ronan's  preparatory  school  in  Worthing, 
and  then  to  Charterhouse,  an  appropriate  school 
for  a  caricaturist,  as  John  *Leech,  W.  M. 
*Thackeray,  and  (Sir)  Max  *Beerbohm  had  all 
been  there.  (In  the  1950s  Lancaster  received 
Beerbohm's  warm  compliments  when  he  painted 
murals  in  the  Randolph  Hotel,  Oxford,  illustrat- 
ing scenes  from  Zuleika  Dobson.) 

Lancaster  did  not  shine  at  school  (the  head- 
master's final  report  pronounced  him  'irretriev- 
ably gauche')  but  was  admitted  to  Lincoln 
College,  Oxford,  in  1926.  Like  his  friend,  (Sir) 
John  *Betjeman,  Lancaster  became  a  'figure'  at 
Oxford.  He  wore  loud  checks,  sported  a  mono- 
cle, and  grew  a  large  moustache.  He  contributed 
cartoons  to  Cherwell,  the  university  magazine.  He 
and  Betjeman  were  fascinated  by  the  Victorians 
and  their  architecture,  an  interest  which  began 
half  in  a  spirit  of  mockery ,  but  ended  in  expert 
championship.  Lancaster  obtained  a  fourth-class 
degree  in  English  (1930),  after  an  extra  year  of 
study.  Intended  for  the  bar,  he  failed  his  bar 
examinations. 

He  then  went  to  the  Siade  School  of  Art, 
where  he  met  his  first  wife,  Karen,  the  second 
daughter  of  Sir  Austin  Harris,  vice-chairman  of 
Lloyds  Bank.  The  couple  were  married  in  1933 
and  had  one  son  and  one  daughter.  Lancaster 
found  work  alongside  Betjeman,  as  an  assistant 
editor  at  the  Architectural  Review.  In  1936  his 
Progress  at  Pelvis  Bay  began  the  long  sequence  of 
his  books  satirizing  architecture  and  mores.  He 
was  appointed  cartoonist  to  the  Daily  Express  in 
1939  and  on  1  January  the  first  of  his  pocket 


cartoons  appeared  in  its  William  Hickey  column. 
He  was  to  draw  roughly  10,000  cartoons,  with 
only  brief  interruptions,  over  the  next  forty 
years.  Lancaster's  fusion  of  topicality  and  urbane 
wit  was  consistent.  He  depicted  the  world  he 
knew — that  of  Canon  Fontwater,  Father  O'Bub- 
blegum,  Mrs  Frogmarch  (the  Tory  lady),  and, 
his  most  enduring  creation,  Maudie,  countess  of 
Littlehampton,  and  her  dim,  monocled  husband 
Willy.  Lancaster's  satire  was  not  splenetic,  and, 
except  in  the  cause  of  good  architecture,  he  was 
never  a  crusader. 

In  World  War  II  Lancaster  joined  the  Press 
Censorship  Bureau  (1939)  and  then  was  sent  to 
Greece,  with  which  he  fell  in  love,  as  a  Foreign 
Office  press  attache  (1944-6).  The  British 
ambassador  was  being  too  high-handed  with  the 
press  and  Lancaster  effectively  smoothed  things 
over.  His  first  book  to  be  published  after  the  war 
was  Classical  Landscape  with  Figures  (1947),  a 
descriptive  work  based  on  his  Greek  experience. 
The  Saracen's  Head  (1948)  and  Draynflete 
Revealed  (1949)  were  in  the  manner  of  his  pre- 
war satires,  though  the  former  was  pitched  as  a 
children's  book. 

In  1 95 1  Lancaster  worked  with  John  Piper  on 
designs  for  the  Festival  of  Britain.  In  the  same 
year,  on  Piper's  recommendation,  he  designed 
his  first  stage  set,  for  Pineapple  Poll  at  Sadler's 
Wells.  This  and  the  many  stage  designs  that  were 
to  follow  (several  of  them  for  Glyndebourne) 
released  him  from  the  austerity  of  line  and 
allowed  him  to  indulge  in  the  Mediterranean 
colour  he  loved.  In  1953  the  Lancasters  moved  to 
Leicester  House,  a  stucco  Regency  mansion  at 
Henley-on-Thames.  Karen  died  of  cancer  in 
1964  and  in  1967  Lancaster  married  Anne  Elea- 
nor Scott-James,  the  magazine  editor  and  garden 
expert.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Rolfe  Arnold 
*Scott-James,  journalist  and  author. 

The  1960s,  with  their  fashionable  fads  and 
fantasies,  were  perfect  fodder  for  Lancaster's 
type  of  social  satire.  He  would  come  into  the 
Express  office  after  having  lunch  at  one  of  his  four 
clubs  and  hold  court  for  a  while,  telling  jokes, 
before  settling  down  with  the  day's  newspapers. 
George  Malcolm  Thomson,  right-hand  man  to 
Lord  *Beaverbrook,  said  of  Lancaster:  'The 
annoying  thing  at  the  Express  was,  not  only  was 
he  the  only  one  who  could  draw;  he  could  also 
write  better  than  anyone  in  the  building.'  The 
prose,  admittedly,  was  an  acquired  taste,  and  it 
had  to  be  taken  on  its  own  terms.  When  Betje- 
man wrote  to  congratulate  Lancaster  on  'that 
deliriously  convoluted  prose  you  write',  the 
implied  censure  was  not  lost  on  Lancaster.  The 
prose  had  to  be  taken  as  part  of  the  rich  plum- 
cake  fruitiness  of  the  character  Lancaster  had 
created  for  himself.  It  was  commonly  said  that  he 
looked  like  one  of  his  own  cartoon  characters 
and,  as  he  aged,  he  resembled  more  and  more  an 


253 


Lancaster 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


effigy  of  the  English  gentleman  on  a  French 
carnival  float:  bulging  eyes,  bulbous  nose,  buf- 
falo-horn moustache,  bald  head,  striped  shirt, 
pinstripe  suit  from  Thresher  &  Glenny,  old- 
fashioned  shoes  with  rounded  toes. 

'Osbert,  it  quickly  becomes  clear,'  wrote  the 
architect  Sir  Hugh  Casson,  'was  a  performance, 
meticulously  practised  and  hilariously  inflated 
and  at  times  disturbing.'  What,  he  wondered, 
was  behind  that  'elaborately  woven  yashmak  of 
subsidiary  clauses,  this  defensive  portcullis  of 
anecdotes,  cranked  into  place  at  one's  approach?' 
Lancaster  was  a  work  of  art  as  memorable  as  any 
he  created.  It  was  as  if  he  had  chosen  to  be  a 
'living  museum'  exhibit,  representing  not  the 
period  of  his  own  life  but  that  of  his  lost 
father. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1953  and  knighted 
in  1975,  in  which  year  he  also  received  an 
honorary  D.Litt.  at  Oxford.  He  also  had  hon- 
orary degrees  from  Birmingham  (1964),  New- 
castle upon  Tyne  (1970),  and  St  Andrews  (1974). 
He  was  a  fellow  of  University  College  London 
(1967),  an  honorary  fellow  of  RIBA  and  of 
Lincoln  College,  Oxford  (1979),  and  was  made 
RDI  (1979).  He  died  in  Chelsea  27  July  1986  and 
was  buried  at  West  Wing,  Norfolk. 

[Osbert  Lancaster,  All  Done  From  Memory,  1953,  and 
With  an  Eye  to  the  Future,  1967;  Strand  Magazine, 
February  1947;  Sunday  Times,  25  July  1954;  The  Times, 
26  July  1986;  Myfanwy  Piper,  'Osbert  Lancaster', 
Spectator,  1  August  1986;  Edward  Lucie-Smith  (ed.), 
The  Essential  Osbert  Lancaster,  1988;  Richard  Boston, 
Osbert:  a  Portrait  of  Osbert  Lancaster,  1989;  personal 
knowledge.]  Hi  vis  Hillier 

LANE,  Dame  Elizabeth  Kathleen  (1905- 1988), 
High  Court  judge,  was  born  9  August  1905  in 
Bowdon,  Cheshire,  the  second  of  three  children 
and  only  daughter  of  Edward  Alexander  Coul- 
born,  mill  owner  at  Bury  in  Lancashire,  and  his 
wife,  Kate  May  Wilkinson.  Her  early  years  were 
spent  in  Bowdon  and  she  was  educated  at  home 
until  the  age  of  twelve.  Her  family  moved  to 
Switzerland  in  1913,  but  returned  in  1914  just 
before  the  outbreak  of  war.  At  Twizzletwig 
School  in  Hindhead  and  at  Malvern  Girls'  Col- 
lege, she  did  not  display  any  enthusiasm  for 
academic  studies,  preferring  to  play  games,  espe- 
cially hockey.  Given  the  opportunity  to  study  for 
Oxford  or  Cambridge,  she  decided  not  to  embark 
on  higher  education  and  never  regretted  not 
going  to  university.  She  believed  that,  on  leaving 
school,  she  would  be  'done  with  academics  and 
have  a  good  time'. 

In  1924  she  spent  a  year  in  Montreal  with  her 
elder  brother,  and  there  she  met  (Henry  Jerrold) 
Randall  Lane,  whom  she  married  in  1926  when 
she  was  twenty,  He  was  the  son  of  a  merchant  of 
the  same  name.  The  couple  went  first  to  live  in 
Manchester.  Their  only  child,  a  son,  was  born  in 


1928.  He  was  mentally  disabled  and  died  at  the 
age  of  fourteen. 

Her  husband's  decision  to  read  for  the  bar 
changed  her  entire  life,  and  led  to  her  distin- 
guished career  at  the  bar  and  on  the  bench.  They 
read  law  together,  and  in  1940  Elizabeth  Lane 
was  called  to  the  bar  by  the  Inner  Temple.  She 
was  elected  a  bencher  in  1965.  She  quickly  made 
a  name  for  herself  in  a  profession  where  few 
women  were,  at  that  time,  in  practice,  and 
prejudice  was  hard  to  overcome.  She  joined  the 
Midland  circuit  and  took  silk  in  1950,  only  the 
third  woman  to  do  this.  In  turn  she  became  an 
assistant  recorder  of  Birmingham  (1953-61),  the 
first  woman  recorder  of  Derby  (196 1-2),  and  a 
commissioner  of  the  crown  court  at  Manchester 
(1961-2).  She  also  became  a  member  of  the 
Home  Office  committee  on  depositions  in  crimi- 
nal cases  (1948)  and  chairman  of  the  Birmingham 
region  mental  health  review  tribunal  (1960-2).  In 
1962  she  was  the  first  woman  to  be  appointed  a 
county  court  judge  and  she  sat  until  1965.  She 
also  sat  as  acting  deputy  chairman  of  London 
sessions. 

In  1965  Elizabeth  Lane  was  the  first  woman  to 
be  appointed  to  the  High  Court  bench  and  was 
assigned  to  the  Probate,  Divorce,  and  Admiralty, 
later  the  Family,  Division.  On  her  appointment 
she  was  made  DBE,  an  honour  corresponding  to 
the  knighthood  customarily  conferred  upon  male 
High  Court  judges.  In  court  she  concealed, 
under  a  stern  and  even  intimidating  exterior,  a 
warm,  kindly,  and  understanding  approach  to 
the  problems  of  families  in  the  throes  of  separ- 
ation and  divorce.  She  was  particularly  under- 
standing of  the  needs  of  children.  When  she  went 
on  circuit  she  enjoyed  the  opportunity  to  try 
both  civil  and  criminal  cases,  in  which  she  was 
always  courteous.  She  was  short  in  stature  and 
wore  glasses;  correct  in  manner,  she  was  con- 
servative in  outlook.  Essentially  a  shy  and  modest 
person,  she  seldom  relaxed  except  in  private, 
when  she  was  with  close  friends.  She  was  very 
much  aware  that  she  was  setting  standards  for 
the  women  judges  of  the  future.  Her  portrait 
hangs  in  the  Inner  Temple;  it  shows  a  stern 
unbending  mien,  which  was  only  part  of  her 
character.  She  was  a  kind  and  generous  friend, 
with  an  excellent  though  rarely  displayed  sense 
of  humour. 

Between  1971  and  1973  she  chaired  the  com- 
mittee on  the  working  of  the  Abortion  Act, 
managing  controversial  and  emotive  problems 
with  skill  and  understanding.  Her  report  dis- 
played a  tolerant  and  unexpectedly  liberal  atti- 
tude. 

Her  husband,  Randall,  became  legal  adviser  to 
the  British  Council.  They  were  a  devoted  couple 
brought  closer  by  the  tragedy  of  their  son. 
Randall  was  a  great  support  to  her  in  her  career, 
and  his  death  in  1975  was  a  very  sad  loss. 


254 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Lane-Fox 


On  her  retirement  in  1979  she  left  the  Tem- 
ple, where  she  had  lived  for  many  years,  and 
moved  to  Winchester.  There  she  had  a  garden, 
which  she  had  missed  in  London.  From  time  to 
time  she  sat  in  the  Court  of  Appeal  and  much 
enjoyed  it.  She  was  very  proud  when  the  West- 
ern circuit  made  her  an  honorary  member.  She 
always  encouraged  young  women  contemplating 
a  career  at  the  bar.  In  1986  she  became  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Newnham  College,  Cam- 
bridge. She  died  in  Winchester  17  June  1988. 

[Elizabeth  Lane,  Hear  ike  Other  Side  (autobiography), 
1985;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Elizabeth  Bltler-Sloss 

LANE-FOX,  Felicity,  Baroness  Lane-Fox 
(1918-1988),  champion  of  the  disabled,  was  born 
22  June  1918  in  Newton  Kyme,  near  Tadcaster, 
Yorkshire,  the  youngest  child  in  the  family  of 
one  son  and  three  daughters  of  Captain  Edward 
Lane-Fox,  JP,  and  his  wife,  Enid  Maud  Bethell, 
herself  later  appointed  MBE  in  1967  for  work  for 
hospitals.  Both  her  parents  came  from  old  York- 
shire families,  her  mother  being  the  daughter  of 
Alfred  James  Bethell,  of  Rise,  and  her  father 
being  the  younger  brother  of  George  Richard 
Lane-Fox,  the  first  and  last  Baron  Bingley,  of 
Bramham.  At  the  age  of  two,  Felicity  developed 
periostitis,  which  left  her  with  a  permanently 
weak  right  arm.  In  1930,  at  the  age  of  twelve,  on 
a  summer  holiday  on  the  Yorkshire  coast  at 
Filey,  she  contracted  poliomyelitis  in  a  vicious 
form,  which  left  her  totally  paralysed.  Two  years 
passed  before  she  was  able  to  sit  up  or  to  hold  a 
cup  or  pencil.  During  this  period  she  was  living 
at  home  in  the  family  house  near  Wetherby. 
Deprived  of  any  formal  education,  she  acquired 
knowledge  by  her  own  efforts  supported  by 
her  mother's  wide-ranging  enthusiasms.  Her 
mother,  who  lived  until  1986,  devoted  the  netft 
fifty  -five  years  of  her  life  to  the  daily  care  of  her 
crippled  daughter.  After  her  mother  became 
incapable  of  looking  after  her,  she  was  cared  for 
by  her  sister. 

When  war  came  in  1939,  Felicity  Lane-Fox 
took  on  a  job  with  the  billeting  officer  in 
Wetherby.  After  the  end  of  hostilities  in  1945  she 
went  into  local  politics  as  a  councillor  for  the 
Wetherby  division  of  the  West  Riding  county- 
council  and  became  chairman  of  the  local  Con- 
servative Association.  Her  interest  in  politics 
took  her  from  there  in  i960  to  an  appointment  as 
assistant  at  the  Conservative  Research  Depart- 
ment and  in  1963  she  became  a  member  of  the 
executive  of  the  National  Union  of  Conservative 
and  Unionist  Associations.  Through  these  links 
with  the  party,  she  became  known  to  Margaret 
(later  Baroness)  Thatcher,  who,  on  becoming 
prime  minister,  offered  her  in  1981  a  life  peerage, 
which  she  was  only  persuaded  to  accept  after  her 
mother  convinced  her  that  the  House  of  Lords 


would  give  her  a  forum  for  speaking  on  behalf  of 
the  disabled.  This  she  assiduously  did  during  the 
next  seven  years,  making  her  maiden  speech,  a 
fortnight  after  taking  her  seat,  on  the  integration 
of  disabled  children  into  ordinary  schools.  She 
was  absent  from  the  House  on  only  three  work- 
ing days  during  her  first  year  as  a  member. 

Her  work  for  the  disabled  had  already  won  her 
an  OBE  in  1976,  for  in  spite  of  her  own  disabil- 
ity, and  with  the  indefatigable  help  of  her 
mother,  who  combined  the  roles  of  nurse,  chauf- 
feuse,  and  counsellor,  she  travelled  widely,  spoke 
frequently,  and  carried  on  a  large  correspon- 
dence on  behalf  of  a  number  of  societies  and 
projects  connected  with  disabled  people.  Among 
these  were  the  Nuffield  Orthopaedic  Centre  at 
Oxford,  where  she  was  a  member  of  the  house 
committee,  and  the  national  fund-raising  com- 
mittee of  the  Disablement  Income  Group,  of 
which  she  was  chairman.  In  1978  she  became 
patron  of  the  Handicapped  Adventure  Play- 
ground .Association.  To  all  these  activities  she 
paid  full  attention,  regularly  attending  their 
meetings,  to  which  she  was  driven  in  a  specially 
adapted  minicar  into  which  she  could  be  winched 
through  the  back  window  by  her  mother,  who  in 
spite  of  increasing  age  managed  to  propel  her  in 
the  vehicle  or  on  the  ground  with  unflagging 
energy.  For  having  learned  to  walk  with  the  aid 
of  a  caliper  and  some  human  support,  Felicity 
Lane-Fox  in  1966  slipped  on  an  icy  patch  of 
roadway,  broke  her  pelvis,  and  was  never  able  to 
walk  again. 

After  becoming  a  baroness  she  accepted  sev- 
eral further  appointments  to  societies  for  the 
disabled,  in  particular  becoming  a  member  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales's  advisory  group  on  disability 
and  of  the  committee  of  inquiry  into  arts  and 
disabled  people.  But  the  project  which  was 
closest  to  her  heart  was  the  Phipps  Respiratory 
Unit  Patients'  Association  (PRUPA).  This  unit, 
originally  established  in  Clapham  by  Dr  Geof- 
frey Spencer  to  provide  relief  and  therapy  for 
patients  suffering  from  breathing  maladies,  was, 
thanks  to  her  fund-raising  efforts,  later  moved  to 
become  part  of  St  Thomas's  Hospital  in  Lam- 
beth Palace  Road,  where  it  was  renamed  the 
Lane-Fox  Respiratory  Unit,  and  is  a  fitting 
memorial  to  her. 

Felicity  Lane-Fox  leavened  her  arduous  work 
for  the  disabled  by  a  variety  of  other  interests. 
She  enjoyed  watching  cricket,  tennis,  racing, 
drama,  and  documentaries  on  television  or  listen- 
ing to  them  on  the  radio,  as  well  as  a  game  of 
bridge  and  perhaps,  most  of  all,  social  inter- 
course and  conversation  with  her  many  friends. 
Her  life  was  an  example  of  how  to  overcome 
crippling  physical  infirmity  and  use  the  experi- 
ence of  it  to  alleviate  the  plight  of  fellow  suf- 
ferers. 


255 


Lane-Fox 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


The  fact  that  she  was  chair-bound,  and  also 
possessed  a  mane  of  thick  brown  hair,  made  it 
appear  that  her  head  was  unusually  large.  With  a 
high  forehead,  mischievous  grey  eyes,  a  classical 
nose,  and  a  magnolia  complexion,  which  never 
showed  signs  of  ageing,  her  face  gave  an  impres- 
sion of  being  poised  for  laughter,  into  which  it 
readily  dissolved.  She  died  unmarried  in  St 
Thomas's  Hospital  17  April  1988. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Edward  Ford 

LANGLEY      MOORE,      Doris      Elizabeth 

(1902-1989),  founder  of  the  Museum  of  Cos- 
tume and  Byron  scholar.  [See  Moore,  Doris 
Elizabeth  Langley.] 

LASKI,  Esther  Pearl  ('Marghanita')  (1915- 
1988),  writer,  broadcaster,  journalist,  and  lexico- 
graphical irregular  supreme,  was  born  in  Man- 
chester 24  October  1915,  the  eldest  child  (she 
had  one  sister,  two  brothers,  and  an  adopted 
brother  and  sister)  of  Neville  Jonas  Laski,  bar- 
rister (later  a  crown  court  judge),  and  his  wife, 
Seraphina  Gaster.  Her  father  called  her  'Mar- 
ghanita' (an  affectionate  adaptation  of  the  Ara- 
maic word  for  'pearl')  when  she  was  small  and 
she  later  adopted  it  herself.  She  was  educated  at 
Ladybarn  House  School  in  Manchester,  St 
Paul's  Girls'  School,  London,  and  Somerville 
College,  Oxford,  where  she  read  English  lan- 
guage and  literature,  giving  as  much  time  as  the 
syllabus  allowed  to  Anglo-Saxon  and  Middle 
English.  She  obtained  a  third-class  degree  in 
1936.  She  also  found  time  at  Oxford  for  social- 
izing and  playing  croquet  and  bridge.  It  was  at 
Oxford  that  she  met  John  Eldred  Howard,  whom 
she  married  in  1937;  he  was  to  become  a  pub- 
lisher and  founder  of  the  Cresset  Press.  He  was 
the  son  of  John  Howard,  stockbroker  and  farmer. 
They  lived  in  Oxford  during  the  war  and  about 
1948  moved  to  Capo  di  Monte,  a  picturesque 
house  on  the  edge  of  Hampstead  Heath,  where 
they  remained  for  the  rest  of  their  lives.  In  about 
1965  they  acquired  a  holiday  house  in  the  south 
of  France,  and  it  was  there  that  a  great  deal  of  her 
book  reviewing  and  her  reading  for  the  Oxford 
English  Dictionary  (OED)  was  done. 

A  primary  influence  on  her  early  life  in  Man- 
chester was  her  maternal  grandfather,  Moses 
•Gaster  (1856- 1939),  scholar  and  chief  rabbi  of 
Sephardi  Jews  in  England,  1887-19 18,  and  she 
found  his  younger  children,  her  near  contempor- 
aries, an  intellectually  stimulating  group.  She 
rarely  spoke  about  her  uncle,  Harold  *Laski,  the 
political  theorist,  and  it  can  be  assumed  that  he 
played  little  part  in  shaping  her  beliefs.  In  view 
of  the  enduring  influence  of  Moses  Gaster  it  is  a 
mark  of  Marghanita  Laski's  true  independence  of 
mind  that,  while  remaining  proud  of  her  Jewish- 
ness,  she  renounced  her  faith  even  before  she 


went  up  to  Oxford  and  declared  herself  to  be  an 
atheist. 

Her  first  novel,  Love  on  the  Supertax,  was 
published  in  1944,  and  this  was  followed  by 
numerous  other  works  (novels  unless  otherwise 
stated),  including  The  Patchwork  Book  (an 
anthology,  1946);  To  Bed  with  Grand  Music 
(written  under  the  pseudonym  Sarah  Russell, 
1946);  Stories  of  Adventure  (edited,  1946);  Victo- 
rian Tales  (edited,  1947);  Tory  Heaven  (1948); 
Little  Boy  Lost  (1949);  The  Village  (1952);  The 
Victorian  Chaise-Longue  (1953),  and  The  Offshore 
Island  (a  play,  1959).  The  film  rights  of  Little  Boy 
Lost  were  sold  to  (Sir)  John  Mills,  and  she  was 
furious  and  hurt  when  he  turned  it  into  a  musical 
starring  Bing  Crosby  (1953). 

In  the  1960s  she  turned  away  from  the  writing 
of  fiction,  and  a  string  of  thoughtful  and  literary 
works  followed,  including  Ecstasy  (1961),  an 
ambitious  book  subtitled  'A  Study  of  Some 
Secular  and  Religious  Experiences';  a  set  of 
essays  on  the  Victorian  novelist  Charlotte  M. 
*Yonge  (with  E.  G.  Battiscombe,  1965);  and  a 
series  of  studies  of  the  work  of  Jane  *Austen 
(1969),  George  *Eliot  (1973),  and  Rudyard 
*Kipling  (1974).  She  also  broadcast  widely 
acclaimed  radio  programmes  on  the  life  and  work 
of  Kipling  (1973,  1983). 

To  the  general  public  she  was  best  known  as  a 
broadcaster.  'Her  clear,  immediately  recognisable 
voice  with  a  slight  touch  of  petulance  or  arro- 
gance always  there,  was  heard  in  programmes 
such  as  Any  Questions,  the  Brains  Trust,  and  the 
Critics'  (Daily  Telegraph,  8  February  1988).  She 
also  enjoyed  speaking  from  pulpits,  and  her 
sermons  were  a  demonstration  of  her  profound 
and  continuing  interest  in  religion. 

She  gave  much  time  and  energy  from  1974 
onwards  to  the  committee  of  inquiry  into  the 
future  of  broadcasting  (1974-7,  chaired  by  Lord 
Annan);  and  to  the  Arts  Council  (from  1979), 
serving  as  its  vice-chairman  (1982-6)  and  also  as 
chairman  of  its  literature  advisory  panel 
(1980-4). 

Her  extraordinary  contribution  as  a  voluntary 
reader  for  the  Supplement  to  the  OED  was  among 
her  noblest  deeds.  From  1958  until  the  publica- 
tion of  the  final  volume  in  1986  she  supplied 
some  250,000  illustrative  examples  to  the  project, 
all  copied  out  in  her  own  hand.  For  this  purpose 
she  dredged  numerous  bulky  Edwardian  sales 
catalogues  for  the  names  of  domestic  articles,  she 
read  just  about  every  work  of  crime  fiction 
published  in  the  twentieth  century,  and  she 
scoured  the  whole  rich  literary  world  of  twen- 
tieth-century (and  some  older)  books  and  maga- 
zines for  their  unregistered  vocabulary. 

At  Oxford  and  throughout  her  life  she  was 
renowned  for  her  beauty,  her  forceful  person- 
ality, and  her  obsession  with  religious  and  secular 
beliefs.  She  died  in  the  Royal  Brompton  Hospital 


256 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Lea 


from  a  smoking-related  lung  problem  6  February 
1988;  her  husband  died  in  1992.  They  had  a  son 
and  a  daughter. 

[Observer,  7  February  1988;  The  Times,  Daily  Telegraph, 
and  Guardian,  8  February  1988;  Independent,  9  Feb- 
ruary 1988;  family  records;  private  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Robert  Blrchfield 

LAZARUS,  Ruth  Adele  (1912-1990),  socio- 
logist. [See  Glass,  Ruth  Adeue.] 

LEA,  Sir  George  Harris  (1912-1990),  lieuten- 
ant-general, was  born  28  December  19 12  at 
Franche,  Kidderminster,  Worcestershire,  the 
eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  three 
daughters  of  George  Percy  Lea,  chairman  of  the 
family  textile  business,  and  his  wife  Jocelyn 
Clare,  nee  Lea  (his  mother  and  father  were 
distant  cousins).  Educated  at  Charterhouse  and 
the  Royal  Military  College,  Sandhurst,  he  was 
commissioned  into  the  Lancashire  Fusiliers  in 
1933.  Lea  was  handsome,  broad,  and  tall — well 
over  six  feet — a  robust  and  skilful  games  player, 
but  a  gentle  and  considerate  man.  He  served  in 
Britain,  China,  and  India  before  World  War  II 
broke  out  in  1939. 

In  India  in  1941,  he  was  among  the  first  to  join 
airborne  forces,  becoming  in  1943  brigade-major 
of  4th  Parachute  brigade  during  operations  with 
the  1st  Airborne  division  in  Italy.  Within  this 
organization,  he  commanded  the  nth  battalion 
of  the  Parachute  Regiment  at  Arnhem  in  Sep- 
tember 1944.  In  the  battle  his  force  was  over- 
whelmed by  enemy  armour.  Wounded  and 
captured  with  his  soldiers,  he  mistakenly  but 
characteristically  blamed  himself  for  this  out- 
come. He  spent  the  rest  of  the  war  in  a  German 
prison  camp. 

In  the  immediate  postwar  years  he  continued 
his  service  with  airborne  forces  in  India  and  at 
home,  and  in  staff  posts  with  the  Royal  Marine 
Commando  brigade  and  NATO,  as  a  lieutenant- 
colonel,  prior  to  taking  command  of  the  Special 
Air  Service  Regiment  in  1955.  Revived  for  the 
emergency  in  Malaya,  the  unit  lacked  direction. 
Within  ten  days  of  his  arrival,  a  sergeant 
remarked:  'the  whole  outfit  came  to  life.  He 
stretched  us — and  himself — to  the  limit,  but  we 
could  see  it  was  leading  to  an  operational  future.' 
During  the  next  two  years  of  his  command,  he 
developed  the  exacting  standards  and  extraordi- 
nary skills  for  which  the  regiment  became 
renowned. 

As  a  consequence,  he  was  promoted  directly  to 
a  brigade  command  in  England  in  1957.  He  was 
then  competing  with  peers  in  the  favoured 
armoured  warfare  environment  in  Germany. 
Appointment  to  command  the  42nd  Lancashire 
territorial  division  and  North-West  District  in 


1962  appeared  to  limit  his  further  employment. 
But  he  was  selected  in  1963  to  the  politically 
sensitive  command  of  the  armed  forces  of  North- 
ern Rhodesia  and  Nyasaland,  colonies  moving 
imminently  to  self-government.  His  political  tact 
and  decisive  containment  of  dissident  groups 
were  judged  exemplary.  As  this  task  concluded, 
he  was  chosen  to  succeed  General  (Sir)  Walter 
Walker  as  director  of  Borneo  operations  early  in 
1965. 

Responsibility  for  the  civil  government  of  the 
former  British  Borneo  territories  had  passed  to 
Malaysia,  whose  authority  was  disputed  by 
neighbouring  Indonesia  and  Chinese  commu- 
nists in  Sarawak.  Lea  was  required  to  secure  a 
mountainous  border  1 ,000  miles  in  length  amidst 
dense  jungle,  and  to  pacify  the  communist  fac- 
tion. He  served  three  authorities:  the  British 
commander-in-chief  in  Singapore,  the  Malaysian 
government  in  Kuala  Lumpur,  and,  to  an  extent, 
the  sultan  of  Brunei. 

He  possessed  only  a  proportion  of  the  powers 
necessary  to  ensure  the  co-operation  of  civil 
government,  the  Malaysian  police  and  armed 
services,  and  the  Australian  and  New  Zealand 
sea,  land,  and  air  elements  which  reinforced  his 
British  forces  from  rime  to  time.  The  rest 
depended  upon  good  will,  which  he  won  by  his 
open  manner,  humour,  and  modesty.  Nothing 
ruffled  him.  Even  when  his  wooden  house  caught 
fire  and  he  lost  in  minutes  the  greater  part  of  his 
personal  possessions,  he  continued  as  if  it  were  a 
matter  of  the  least  importance.  Making  adroit  use 
of  air  and  sea  resources.  Lea  developed  the  policy 
of  pre-emptive  cross-border  attacks  by  his 
troops,  while  containing  the  Chinese  communists 
with  police  backed  by  military  units.  The  success 
of  these  methods  contributed  to  the  change  of 
political  leadership  in  Jakarta  and  the  emergence 
of  an  accord  between  Indonesia  and  Malaysia  in 
1966. 

Promoted  to  lieutenant-general,  he  was  posted 
in  1967  to  Washington  DC,  as  head  of  the  British 
services  joint  mission,  the  link  between  the 
British  and  American  joint  chiefs  of  staff.  Main- 
taining the  close  alliance  in  a  period  of  British 
economic  difficulty  and  defence  retrenchment 
was  not  easy.  But  the  Americans  opened  their 
offices  and  confidences  to  him  more  fully  than 
protocol  demanded,  because  they  liked  and 
respected  him,  as  the  chairman  of  the  American 
joint  chiefs  observed  on  his  retirement  in  1970. 
He  had  evoked  similar  responses  through  the 
greater  part  of  his  professional  life. 

Colonel  of  the  Lancashire  Fusiliers  from  1965 
to  1968,  Lea  was  deputy  colonel  and  then  colonel 
(1974-7)  of  the  Royal  Regiment  of  Fusiliers  into 
which  it  was  drawn.  He  was  appointed  MBE 
(1950),  CB  (1964),  KCB  (1967),  and  to  the  DSO 
(1957).  For  his  services  in  Borneo,  he  was  made 


257 


Lea 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Dato  Seri  Setia,  Order  of  Paduka  Stia  Negara, 
Brunei  (1965).  He  retired  to  live  in  Jersey  and 
was  on  the  board  of  several  commercial  com- 
panies. 

In  1948  he  married  Pamela  Elizabeth,  daugh- 
ter of  Brigadier  Guy  Lovett-Tayleur.  His  wife 
accompanied  him  wherever  possible  and  contrib- 
uted notably  to  his  accomplishments.  They  had  a 
son  and  two  daughters.  Lea  died  at  home  in  St 
Brelade,  Jersey,  27  December  1990. 

[Regimental  records;  private  reports;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Anthony  Farrar-Hockley 

LEACH,  Archibald  Alec  (1904-1986),  film 
actor.  [See  Grant,  Cary.] 

LEACH,  Sir  Edmund  Ronald  (1910-1989), 
anthropologist,  was  born  7  November  19 10  in 
Rochdale,  the  youngest  of  three  children  and 
second  son  of  William  Edmund  Leach,  owner 
and  manager  of  sugar  plantations  in  northern 
Argentina,  and  his  wife  Mildred  Brierley,  who 
like  her  husband  came  of  a  long  line  of  successful 
Lancashire  mill-owners.  He  was  educated  at 
Marlborough  and  Clare  College,  Cambridge, 
where,  having  changed  his  course  from  mathe- 
matics, in  which  he  obtained  a  second  in  part  i 
(1930),  he  gained  first-class  honours  in  the 
mechanical  sciences  tripos  in  1932;  he  later 
obtained  a  Ph.D.  in  anthropology  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics  in  1947. 

Restless  and  ambitious,  it  was  some  time 
before  he  found  his  true  vocation.  On  leaving 
Cambridge,  he  first  accepted  a  four-year  contract 
with  the  Far  Eastern  trading  firm  of  Butterfield 
&  Swire,  and  left  for  China  in  1933.  Chinese  art 
and  thought  deeply  affected  him.  Fascinated  by 
the  alien  culture,  he  collected  jade  and  Sung 
pottery  and  studied  Confucius.  This  probably 
helped  him  to  throw  off  some  of  his  early 
Christian  upbringing  and  to  suggest  the  lines  of 
a  possible  future  career.  For,  despite  his 
acknowledged  efficiency,  he  disliked  the  business 
atmosphere  and  determined  'never  again  to  bind 
himself  to  an  office  stool'.  Breaking  his  contract 
with  the  firm  in  1937,  he  travelled  slowly  home, 
spending  some  months  on  the  way  among  the 
Yami  of  Botel  Tobago,  taking  ethnographic  notes 
and  making  accurate  drawings  of  their  boats  and 
houses.  He  began  to  consider  an  anthropological 
career.  'I  feel  that  only  then  could  the  Hermit, 
the  Wanderer  and  the  pseudo-Philosopher 
within  me,  find  mutual  satisfaction,'  he  wrote. 

Back  in  London,  the  anthropologist  (Sir)  Ray- 
mond Firth  introduced  him  to  seminars  run  by 
Bronislaw  *Malinowski  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics.  In  1938  he  began  a  field  study  among 
the  Kurds  of  Iraq.  This  was  soon  abandoned.  A 
broken  relationship,  a  touch  of  dysentery,  and 


the  imminent  threat  of  war  all  served  to  drive 
him  home.  He  returned  to  London  dispirited  and 
uncertain  about  his  future.  He  wrote:  'I've  got  an 
enormous  amount  of  ability  at  almost  anything, 
yet  so  far  I've  made  absolutely  no  use  of  it... I 
seem  to  be  a  highly  organised  piece  of  mental 
apparatus  for  which  nobody  else  has  any  use.'  In 
July  of  1939  he  set  out  for  a  planned  economic 
study  in  the  Kachin  hills  of  northern  Burma. 
War  intervened  and  interrupted  his  work.  He 
volunteered  to  join  the  (2nd)  Burma  Rifles,  and 
was  involved  in  the  disastrous  British  retreat 
from  the  Japanese.  He  faced  much  hardship, 
suffering  serious  illness.  He  later  commanded 
Kachin  irregular  forces  behind  the  enemy  lines. 
But  after  demobilization  in  1946,  when  he  joined 
the  staff  of  the  London  School  of  Economics  as  a 
lecturer  and  later  reader  in  social  anthropology, 
his  future  career  seemed  assured,  and  his  rise  to 
eminence  was  uninterrupted. 

He  moved  to  Cambridge  in  1953  to  work 
with  Meyer  *Fortes,  was  a  university  reader 
(I957_72X  was  made  a  fellow  of  King's  College 
in  i960,  and  was  given  a  personal  chair  in 
anthropology  in  1972.  He  was  elected  provost 
of  King's  College  in  1966,  retiring  in  1979. 
Knighted  in  1975,  he  had  honorary  degrees  from 
Chicago  and  Brandeis  universities  in  1976,  hon- 
orary fellowships  of  the  London  School  of  Eco- 
nomics and  of  the  School  of  Oriental  and  African 
studies  in  1974,  and  of  his  old  college  Clare  in 
1986.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1972,  and  a  foreign  honorary  mem- 
ber of  the  American  Academy  of  Arts  and 
Sciences  in  1968.  He  was  a  trustee  of  the  British 
Museum  from  1975  to  1980. 

He  delighted  in  this  success  and  appreciated 
the  uses  of  power,  not  for  himself  but  for  the 
things  he  cared  for.  As  provost,  he  was  proud  to 
oversee  the  admission  of  women  to  King's,  and 
an  increasing  intake  of  students  from  state 
schools.  His  real  passion  was  for  teaching,  and 
disseminating  anthropological  insights  to  a  wide 
public.  He  insisted  that  in  studying  'other  societ- 
ies' we  are  really  trying  to  understand  our  own. 

He  himself  referred  to  his  first  major  work, 
Political  Systems  of  Highland  Burma  (1954),  as 
'idealist';  and  so  it  was  in  the  sense  that  his 
account  of  social  organization  emphasized  the 
abstract  patterns  of  Kachin  social  organization, 
and  argued  that  what  appeared  to  be  distinct 
types  of  social  organization  were  in  fact  different 
phases  in  a  single  process  of  oscillation  between 
ideal  forms.  This  was  a  brilliant  exercise  in 
abstraction  and  generalization,  which  sprang 
from  the  loss  of  his  original  field  notes  during  the 
war  and  his  consequent  absorption  in  the  work  of 
previous  observers  of  Kachin.  His  second  major 
work,  Pul  Eliya,  a  Village  in  Ceylon  (1961),  by 


258 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Lee 


contrast  presented  an  extremely  detailed  ethno- 
graphy. He  referred  to  it  as  'materialist'  for  its 
attempt  to  show  the  economic  basis  for  kinship 
and  caste  membership.  But  Leach  was  again 
concerned  to  explore  the  ideal  world  of  Sinhalese 
villagers,  and  to  discover  the  underlying  princi- 
ples of  organization.  These  works  are  both  clas- 
sics; other  shorter  books  and  essays  are  often  as 
brilliant.  His  reanalysis  of  some  aspects  of  Mali- 
nowski's  ethnography  of  the  Trobriands  again 
displayed  his  ability  to  master  complex  material 
and  to  discover  unsuspected  patterns.  He  applied 
this  ability-  to  kinship,  particularly  in  disagree- 
ment with  the  French  structuralist  Claude  Levi- 
Strauss,  and  later  to  a  wide  range  of  subjects, 
including  terms  of  abuse,  children's  stories,  bib- 
lical studies,  and  the  Sis  tine  chapel.  His  book 
Levi-Strauss  (1970)  was  translated  into  six  lan- 
guages and  ran  to  three  editions.  In  it  Leach 
presented  his  own  version  of  structuralism,  as  he 
did  more  overtly  in  Culture  and  Communication: 
the  Logic  by  which  Symbols  are  Connected 
(1976). 

Leach's  originality  was  genuine  and  impres- 
sive, based  in  scholarly  understanding  of  Asian 
society  and  in  his  ability  to  think  abstractly  about 
minutiae  and  to  create  grand  patterns.  His  lec- 
tures were  exciting,  and  he  was  a  popular 
teacher.  However,  Leach  said  that  he  always 
reacted  against  his  teachers  (among  whom  he 
acknowledged  Malinowski,  Raymond  Firth, 
Levi-Strauss,  and  Roman  Jakobson);  and  he  did 
not  himself  look  for  followers,  and  founded  no 
personal  school.  He  was  also  a  fearless  con- 
troversialist: he  was  socially  self-assured;  he  saw 
no  particular  virtue  in  consistency;  he  provoked 
on  principle,  and  was  surprised  when  his  teach- 
ers, colleagues,  and  friends  sometimes  felt 
wounded.  He  was  surprised  too  by  the  con- 
troversy aroused  by  his  Reith  lectures,  published 
as  A  Runaway  World?  (1968),  in  which  he 
asserted  his  belief  in  the  relevance  of  anthro- 
pology to  contemporary  issues,  and  established 
himself  as  a  witty,  passionate,  and  uninhibited 
commenter  on  public  affairs. 

Disliking  pomp  and  living  simply,  he  used  his 
personal  inherited  wealth  to  support  research 
and  publishing,  particularly  through  the  Royal 
Anthropological  Institute,  of  which  he  was  presi- 
dent (1971-5).  A  handsome  man  of  indefatigable 
energy,  humour,  and  insight,  for  several  years  he 
bore  the  painful  and  disfiguring  illness  of  cancer 
of  the  head  without  complaint. 

In  1940  he  married  Celia  Joyce,  daughter  of 
Henry  Stephen  Guy  Buckmaster,  barrister.  She 
was  a  talented  painter  who  had  also  published 
two  novels.  Like  him  a  lover  of  the  countryside, 
good  food,  and  wine,  she  provided  the  emotional 
stability  his  restlessness  needed.  They  had  a 
daughter  in  194 1  and  a  son  in  1946.  Leach  died 


in  a  Cambridge  hospice  6  January  1989,  from  an 
inoperable  tumour  of  the  brain. 

[Stephen  Hugh-Jones,  Edmund  Leach,  a  Memoir,  pri- 
vately printed  by  King's  College,  Cambridge,  1089; 
Chris  Fuller  and  Jonathan  Parry,  'Petulant  Incon- 
sistency? The  Intellectual  Achievement  of  Edmund 
Leach',  Anthropology  Today,  5  March  1089;  Stephen 
Gudeman  and  Jean  La  Fontaine,  Edmund  Leach,  a 
Bibliography  (Occasional  Papers  of  the  Royal  Anthro- 
pological Institute,  42),  1990;  E.  R.  Leach,  'Glimpses  of 
the  Unmentionable  in  the  History  of  British  Social 
Anthropology',  Annual  Review  of  Anthropology,  vol. 
xiii,  1984;  personal  knowledge;  private  letters.] 

Rosemary  Firth 

LEE,  Janet  ('Jennie'),  Baroness  Lee  of  Asher- 
idge  (1904-1988),  politician,  was  born  3  Novem- 
ber 1904  in  Lochgelly,  Fifeshire,  the  third  of 
four  children,  two  of  whom  died  young,  and  only 
daughter  of  James  Lee,  miner  and  active  member 
of  the  Independent  Labour  party,  and  his  wife, 
Euphemia  Greig.  She  was  educated  at  Beath 
Secondary  School  from  which  she  won  her  way 
to  Edinburgh  University  and  learned  from  the 
great  English  literature  teacher,  (Sir)  Herbert 
*Grierson,  how  to  read  and  how  to  write.  She 
described  her  Scottish  childhood  in  To-morrow  Is 
a  New  Day  (1939),  a  socialist  classic  suffused 
with  her  vibrant  compassion. 

Taking  the  finals  of  her  Edinburgh  MA  in 
June  1926  (she  also  gained  an  LL  B,  a  teacher's 
certificate,  and  a  diploma  in  education),  she 
longed  to  return  home,  where  the  miners'  strug- 
gle was  reaching  a  fresh  climax  as  their  commu- 
nities were  ruthlessly  destroyed  by  the  coal- 
owners  and  the  state.  She  began  to  earn  her 
living  as  a  schoolteacher,  involved  herself  in 
politics,  and,  at  a  by-election  in  North  Lanark  in 
February  1929,  she  turned  a  Tory  majority  of 
2,028  into  a  Labour  majority  of  6,578,  and 
became  the  youngest  woman  ever  elected  to 
Westminster.  Introduced  into  the  House  of 
Commons  by  Robert  *Smillie,  the  miners'  leader 
she  most  admired,  and  James  *Maxton,  she  made 
many  new  friends,  all  on  the  left  of  the  party: 
Ellen  'Wilkinson,  Sir  Charles  *Trevelyan, 
Aneurin  *Bevan,  and,  most  especially,  Frank 
Wise,  with  whom  she  fell  in  love  (he  died 
suddenly  in  1933).  All  were  outraged  by  the 
failure  of  their  own  government  to  tackle  the 
scourge  of  mass  unemployment. 

After  her  defeat  in  the  general  Labour  rout  of 
193 1,  she  became  involved  in  a  classic  battle  with 
the  Labour  leaders  about  party  discipline;  she 
believed  the  rules  binding  MPs  not  to  vote 
against  party  decisions  to  be  an  infringement  of 
their  duties  and  rights  and  said  so  forcibly.  This 
involved  her  in  arguments  with  many  of  her 
closest  associates,  notably  Aneurin  Bevan.  She 
recorded  in  her  book  one  famous  argument  with 
him:  'as  for  you,  I  tell  you  what  the  epitaph  of 
you  Scottish  dissenters  is  going  to  be — pure,  but 


259 


Lee 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


impotent... Why  don't  you  get  you  into  a  nunnery 
and  be  done  with  it?  Lock  yourself  up  in  a 
separate  cell  away  from  the  world  and  its  wicked- 
ness. My  Salvation  Army  lassie.1 

Bevan's  brilliant  remonstrance  may  have  been 
part  of  his  wooing.  On  24  October  1934  they 
were  married  at  Holborn  Registry  Office.  Bevan, 
the  Labour  MP  for  Ebbw  Vale,  was  the  son  of 
David  Bevan,  a  Welsh  miner.  Jennie  Lee's  ego, 
like  his,  could  take  a  collective  form.  She  wanted 
her  beloved  working  class  to  acquire  a  touch  of 
arrogance.  She  created  a  series  of  homes  for 
Bevan,  with  the  aid  of  her  own  mother  and 
father,  and,  to  the  surprise  of  her  parliamentary 
colleagues,  put  herself  second.  The  first  of  those 
blazing,  comradely  firesides  was  established  at 
Lane  End  Cottage  at  Brimpton  Common  in 
Berkshire  in  1939;  in  1944  they  moved  to  Clive- 
den Place  in  Chelsea;  and  finally  to  Asheridge 
Farm  in  Chesham,  Buckinghamshire.  For  their 
closest  friends,  these  homes  were  political 
havens,  heavens  on  earth.  The  Bevans  had  no 
children. 

Outside  Parliament  Jennie  Lee  played  a  big 
part  in  the  politics  of  the  1930s,  always  insisting 
on  the  international  allegiance  of  her  socialism. 
She  undertook  annual  lecture  tours  in  America 
and  some  journalism.  She  went  to  Vienna  in 
1934,  soon  after  the  fascist  attack  on  the  socialists 
there.  She  was  stirred  from  the  start  by  the 
fascist  attack  on  the  democratic  government  in 
Spain,  yet  shamed  by  the  feebleness  of  the 
British  government's  response  and,  worse,  by  the 
initial  Labour  party  response.  When  full-scale 
war  did  come,  she,  like  Bevan,  had  no  doubts 
that  the  contest  must  be  fought  on  two  fronts:  to 
defeat  the  fascist  enemy  and  to  prepare  for 
democratic  socialist  victory  afterwards.  She 
accepted  a  job  with  the  Ministry  of  Aircraft 
Production  touring  the  aircraft  factories  and  in 
1 94 1  went  on  a  propaganda  tour  to  the  United 
States:  'Don't  come  back,'  said  Bevan,  'until 
you've  brought  them  into  the  war.'  When  Hitler 
attacked  the  Soviet  Union,  she  wrote  a  speedy 
good  seller,  Our  Ally  Russia  (1941). 

In  1943,  at  a  by-election  in  Bristol  Central,  she 
stood  as  an  independent  in  support  of  the  two- 
front  war,  but  lost.  As  peace  came,  she  in  turn 
sought  her  peace  with  the  Labour  party.  In  1945 
she  won  the  mining  constituency  of  Cannock  for 
Labour  with  a  19,634  majority.  Soon  after  the 
formation  of  the  Labour  government  in  1945, 
Aneurin  Bevan  became  one  of  its  foremost  and 
controversial  figures.  He  was  the  chief  architect 
of  the  National  Health  Service  and  Jennie  Lee 
could  see  more  closely  than  anyone  what  difficul- 
ties he  had  to  encounter.  She  too  wanted  to  see 
these  principles  established  over  wider  fields.  In 
the  process  she  made  friends  with  many  of  his 
friends:  Jawaharlal  *Nehru  and  Indira  *Gandhi 
in  India,  Yigal   Allon  in   Israel,  and  Milovan 


Djilas  in  Yugoslavia.  She  could  share  his  victo- 
ries and  his  bitter  defeats.  She  felt  the  attacks 
upon  him  more  closely  than  anyone.  When  he 
died  of  cancer  in  i960,  she  felt  that  he  had  been 
murdered. 

However,  even  before  the  wounds  were 
healed,  she  resumed  her  own  political  activity — 
notably  in  the  Labour  government  formed  by 
Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx) 
in  1964.  The  titles  of  her  offices  — parliamentary 
secretary  at  the  Ministry  of  Public  Buildings  and 
Works  (1964-5),  parliamentary  under-secretary 
of  state,  Department  of  Education  and  Science 
(1965-7),  minister  of  state  (1967-70) — give  no 
proper  indication  of  how  she  became  one  of  the 
administration's  most  successful  ministers.  She 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in  1966  and 
elected  chairman  of  the  Labour  party  the  follow- 
ing year.  She  was,  in  effect,  Britain's  first  'minis- 
ter for  the  arts',  and  thereafter  no  government 
could  abandon  the  idea.  She  became  an  honorary 
fellow  of  the  Royal  Academy  in  1981.  Cambridge 
gave  her  an  honorary  LL  D  in  1974.  Above  all, 
she  played  the  leading  part  in  the  establishment 
of  the  Open  University.  A  commitment  to 
experiment  with  a  University  of  the  Air  had  been 
included  in  Labour's  manifesto  and  Wilson  had 
always  been  an  enthusiastic  supporter.  But,  with- 
out Jennie  Lee,  the  project  would  have  been  a 
pale  imitation  of  a  real  university.  She  insisted 
that  the  highest  academic  standards  must  apply 
from  the  start.  The  new  university  received  its 
first  students  in  1971,  and  by  1984  it  was 
Britain's  largest  university,  with  100,000  stu- 
dents. 

Jennie  lost  her  Cannock  seat  in  the  1970 
election  and  accepted  a  life  peerage,  as  Baroness 
Lee  of  Asheridge.  She  lived  happily  at  her 
Chester  Row  house  in  London  for  the  next 
eighteen  years,  giving  delight  and  good  instruc- 
tion to  her  family  and  friends.  She  never  lost  her 
zest  for  the  causes  of  her  youth,  most  of  them 
celebrated  in  her  last  book  of  memoirs  published 
in  1980,  My  Life  with  Nye.  Dark,  and  strikingly 
beautiful  in  her  youth,  she  had  the  physical, 
tough  vivacity  of  many  girls  of  mining  families. 
She  died  16  November  1988  at  her  London 
home,  67  Chester  Row,  Westminster. 

[Jennie  Lee,  To-morrow  Is  a  New  Day,  1939,  This  Great 
Journey,  1963,  and  My  Life  with  Nye,  1980;  Michael 
Foot,  Aneurin  Bevan,  2  vols.,  1962,  1973;  personal 
knowledge.]  Michael  Foot 

LEHMANN,  Rosamond  Nina  (1901-1990), 
novelist,  was  born  3  February  1901  in  Bourne 
End,  Buckinghamshire,  the  second  child  and 
second  daughter  in  the  family  of  three  daughters 
and  one  son  of  Rudolph  Chambers  *Lehmann, 
journalist,  Liberal  MP,  and  oarsman,  and  his 
wife,  Alice  Marie  Davis.  The  Lehmanns  were  an 
affluent  and  gifted  family.  Rosamond  Lehmann's 


260 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Lehmann 


great-grandfather  was  Robert  *Chambers  (1802- 
1871),  who  co-founded  the  publishing  company 
Chambers;  and  her  great-uncle  was  the  artist 
Rudolf  'Lehmann.  Of  the  four  Lehmann  chil- 
dren, three  grew  up  to  distinguish  themselves  in 
the  arts — Lehmann  herself;  her  younger  sister 
Beatrix,  who  became  an  actress;  and  John  •Leh- 
mann, the  poet,  editor,  and  publisher.  'I  was 
bound  to  write,'  Lehmann  recalled  in  old  age.  *I 
never  considered  anything  else  as  a  possibility.' 

She  was  educated  at  the  family  home,  Field- 
head,  until  she  won  a  scholarship  to  read  English 
at  Girton  College,  Cambridge,  in  191 9.  At  Cam- 
bridge she  contributed  occasional  pieces  to 
Granta,  the  magazine  founded  by  her  father,  and 
met  (Walter)  Leslie  Runciman  (from  1949  the 
second  Viscount  Runciman  of  Doxford),  son  of 
the  Nonconformist  shipping  magnate  and  Lib- 
eral elder  statesman,  Walter  'Runciman,  first 
Viscount  Runciman  of  Doxford.  After  graduat- 
ing with  second  classes  in  English  (1921)  and 
modern  and  medieval  languages  (1922),  she  and 
Runciman  married  in  December  1923  and  moved 
to  Newcastle.  The  marriage  was  brief  and 
unsatisfactory,  and  it  had  already  broken  down 
when  Lehmann's  controversial  first  novel,  Dusty 
Answer,  was  published  in  1927.  This  was  both  a 
critical  and  a  popular  success,  its  sales  enhanced 
by  the  author's  reputation  as  a  society  beauty. 
Her  second  novel  was,  in  contrast,  poorly  re- 
ceived by  the  critics,  who  were  disconcerted  by 
the  glum  northern  setting  and  two  unhappy 
marriages  described  in  A  Note  in  Music  (1930). 
Lehmann's  owti  marriage  had  been  dissolved  in 
1928  and  in  the  same  year  she  had  married  the 
colourful  Wogan  Philipps,  who  in  1962  became 
the  second  Baron  Milford  (died  1994),  artist  and 
communist  son  of  Laurence  Richard  Philipps, 
first  Baron  Milford,  businessman.  A  son,  Hugo, 
was  born  in  1929,  and  a  daughter,  Sarah  ('Sally'), 
in  1934. 

Between  1932  and  1953  Lehmann  wrote  the 
four  novels  by  which  she  will  be  remembered: 
Invitation  to  the  Waltz  (1932),  The  Weather  in  the 
Streets  (1936),  The  Ballad  and  the  Source  (1944), 
and  The  Echoing  Grove  (1953).  The  books  are 
autobiographical  in  tone,  with  certain  themes  and 
preoccupations  occurring  throughout,  notably 
the  heroine's  experience  of  compelling  but 
destructive  sexuality,  and  the  conflict  between 
intelligence  and  passion.  Modern  criticism  now 
stresses  Lehmann's  role  in  asserting  the  central- 
ity  of  female  experience,  whereas  she  was  once 
stigmatized  as  a  writer  of  'women's  novels'.  She 
has  been  commended  not  only  for  her  treatment 
of  particular  issues  like  homosexuality  and  abor- 
tion, but  also  for  her  technical  skill,  which 
became  fully  apparent  in  her  handling  of  the 
non-linear  chronological  and  narrative  complex- 
ities of  The  Echoing  Grove. 

Between   1930  and   1939  Lehmann  lived  at 


Ipsden  House,  Oxfordshire,  where  she  enter- 
tained a  wide  circle  of  acquaintances,  including 
the  *Woolfs,  Lytton  *Strachey,  Dora  'Carring- 
ton,  W.  H.  *Auden,  Christopher  'Isherwood, 
and  (Sir)  Stephen  Spender.  By  1939  her  second 
marriage  had  also  failed  and  in  194 1  she  began  a 
relationship  with  the  married  poet  Cecil  'Day- 
Lewis,  with  whom  she  lived  for  several  years. 
Her  own  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1944,  but 
when  Day-Lewis  was  eventually  divorced  in 
195 1  he  married  Jill  Balcon.  The  effect  of  his 
desertion  was  traumatic,  although  the  tragic 
turning-point  of  Lehmann's  life  occurred  in  1958 
when  her  daughter,  who  had  recently  married 
the  writer  P.  J.  Kavanagh,  contracted  poliomyel- 
itis in  Jakarta  and  died,  aged  twenty-four.  Leh- 
mann wrote  nothing  of  literary  significance  for 
many  years  afterwards  and  devoted  herself 
instead  to  spiritualism.  Her  impressionistic  auto- 
biography, The  Swan  in  the  Evening  (1967), 
reiterates  her  belief  in  Sally's  continuing  life,  and 
in  her  last,  confusing  novel,  A  Sea-Grape  Tree 
(1976),  the  spirit  of  Sibyl  Jardine,  monstrous 
protagonist  of  The  Ballad  and  the  Source,  con- 
verses telepathically  with  the  heroine.  Other 
publications  include  translations  of  Jacques 
Lemarchand  and  Jean  Cocteau;  a  play,  No  More 
Music  (1939);  The  Gipsy's  Baby,  and  Other  Stories 
(1946),  and  several  spiritualist  works. 

The  reprinting  of  Lehmann's  books  by  Virago 
Press  in  the  1980s  brought  her  a  new  and 
appreciative  audience.  In  1982  she  was  created 
CBE  and  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Literature.  In  1986  she  was  made  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Girton  College.  She  was  also  president 
of  the  English  Centre  of  International  PEN;  a 
member  of  the  council  of  the  Society  of  Authors, 
and  vice-president  of  the  College  of  Psychic 
Studies. 

Rosamond  Lehmann  was  tall  and  beautiful, 
with  almond-shaped  eyes,  a  firm  mouth,  and  a 
warm,  impulsive  manner.  She  died  12  March 
1990  at  her  London  home,  30  Clareville  Grove. 

(John  Lehmann,  The  Whispering  Gallery,  1955;  Sean 

Day-Lewis,  C.  Day-Lewis,  1980;  Rosamond  Lehmann's 

Album,  1985;  Judy  Simons,  Rosamond  Lehmann,  1992.] 

Judith  P*iestman 

LEHMANN,  (Rudolph)  John  (Frederick) 
(1907-1987),  editor,  publisher,  and  author,  was 
born  2  June  1907  at  Bourne  End,  Buckingham- 
shire, the  fourth  and  youngest  child  and  only  son 
of  Rudolph  Chambers  'Lehmann,  oarsman,  reg- 
ular contributor  to  Punch,  and  from  1906  to  191 1 
Liberal  MP  for  Market  Harborough,  and  his  wife 
Alice  Marie,  daughter  of  an  American,  Harrison 
Davis,  and  descended  on  her  mother's  side  from 
Sir  John  'Wentworth,  an  eighteenth-century 
governor  of  New  Hampshire.  In  the  house  and 
garden  of  Fieldhead,  where  he  was  brought  up 
with  his  sisters,  'Rosamond,  Beatrix,  and  Helen, 


261 


Lehmann 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  profession  of  letters  was  powerful  both  as 
living  presence  and  lively  inheritance.  His  pater- 
nal grandmother  belonged  to  the  notable  Scottish 
publishing  family,  W.  &  R.  *Chambers  (whence 
his  father's  second  name),  and  a  great-uncle  of 
his  father  was  W.  H.  *Wills,  assistant  editor  with 
Charles  *Dickens  of  Household  Words. 

He  went  as  a  King's  scholar  to  Eton,  where  he 
edited  College  Days.  Among  his  contemporaries 
were  Eric  *Blair  (George  Orwell),  Henry  *Yorke 
(Henry  Green),  and  Cyril  *Connolly;  of  the 
latter  two  he  contributed  notices  to  this  Diction- 
ary. He  read  history  and  modern  languages  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  obtained  a 
second  class  (division  I)  in  both  part  i  of  the 
history  tripos  (1928)  and  part  ii  of  the  modern 
and  medieval  languages  tripos  (1930).  There  his 
close  friendship  with  Julian  Bell,  nephew  of 
Virginia  *Woolf,  plunged  him  so  irresistibly  into 
the  Bloomsbury  circle  that  by  1931  he  was 
working  as  factotum  at  the  Hogarth  Press,  which 
also  published  A  Garden  Revisited  (1931),  his  first 
volume  of  poems.  His  verse,  praised  for  metrical 
skill,  elegiac  tone,  and  clarity  of  diction,  followed 
at  rare  intervals,  ending  with  the  Collected  Poems 
of  1963,  a  self-critically  thin  volume. 

As  Nazism  took  grip  in  Germany,  he  left 
publishing  to  live  as  a  poet  in  Vienna,  a  city  he 
monitored  as  Christopher  *Isherwood  did  Ber- 
lin. The  first  of  his  three  volumes  of  autobio- 
graphy, The  Whispering  Gallery  (1955),  reflects 
the  hardening  of  his  anti-fascist  view  of  that 
'pink'  decade,  while  with  heartache  he  faced  the 
dilemma  that  was  to  dog  him  insolubly:  whether 
to  be  impresario  or  artist.  In  1935  he  founded  the 
twice-yearly  (often  irregular)  hard-bound  New 
Writing,  which  abruptly  lost  its  left-wing  elitism 
when  in  1940  it  burgeoned,  as  the  paperback 
Penguin  New  Writing,  into  part  of  the  war  effort. 
This  magazine  was  his  masterpiece.  Four  or  six 
issues  a  year  during  the  war  all  sold  out  their 
75,000  or  more  copies  within  days.  A  morale 
booster  of  high  potency,  a  documentary  record  of 
war  by  the  men  fighting  it,  packed  full  of  poets 
and  story-writers  who  were  his  own  discoveries, 
this  was  the  voice  of  cultural  survival. 

In  1938  he  had  bought  Virginia  Woolf's  share 
of  the  Hogarth  Press,  but  when  his  partner- 
ship^— vigorously  described  in  Thrown  to  the 
Woolfs  (1978) — tended  in  1946,  he  launched  his 
own  firm,  John  Lehmann  Ltd.  His  good-looking 
books — 225  titles  by  1954,  when  his  supportive 
printers  withdrew — reintroduced  British  readers 
to  the  wider  world  at  a  crucial  postwar  point. 
Saul  Bellow,  George  Seferis,  and  Gore  Vidal 
ornamented  his  list,  as  did  the  no  less  influential 
Elizabeth  David.  His  services  to  European  letters 
earned  him  the  Legion  of  Honour  (1958),  the 
Greek  Order  of  George  I  (1954),  and  an  honorary 
D.Litt.  at  Birmingham  (1980).  He  was  appointed 
FRSL  (1951)  and  CBE  (1964). 


His  subsidy  from  the  Daily  Mirror  in  1954  to 
found  the  London  Magazine  and  maintain  the 
aesthetics  of  humanism  was  soon  dropped.  The 
magazine  tottered  on  too  conservatively  for  the 
current  Zeitgeist  until  Alan  Ross  took  it  over  in 
1 96 1.  For  the  remainder  of  his  life  Lehmann 
took  visiting  professorships  in  America  and 
engaged  in  literary  journalism  and  reminiscence 
of  reflective  quality,  especially  in  his  popular 
studies  of  Lewis  Carroll  (1972),  Virginia  Wool/ 
(1975),  and  Rupert  Brooke  (1980).  In  his  books,  of 
which  there  were  many,  his  writing  was  always 
courtly  and  finished,  expressive  only  between  the 
lines,  except  in  the  homosexually  libidinous 
novel  In  the  Purely  Pagan  Sense  (1976),  which  he 
predicted  would  lose  him  his  friends.  It  did 
not. 

Lehmann  was  a  tall,  broad,  and  formidable 
figure,  whose  guttural  voice  and  avuncular  pres- 
ence filled  a  room,  with  eyes,  as  William  *Plomer 
put  it,  'like  forget-me-nots  within  a  skull'.  His 
gardens  (and  gardening)  he  loved.  At  his  fre- 
quent parties  at  his  Egerton  Crescent  home  in 
London,  where  he  had  the  generosity  to  confront 
young  writers  with  their  elder  peers,  his  rooms 
were  ablaze  with  massed  flowers  from  the  coun- 
try. For  much  of  his  life  he  shared  homes  in 
London  and  near  Crawley,  West  Sussex,  with 
the  dancer  Alexis  Rassine. 

Lehmann  died  after  a  long  illness,  in  which 
hip  operations  had  interrupted  his  mobility,  in  a 
nursing  home  at  29  Devonshire  Street,  -West- 
minster, 7  April  1987. 

[Daily  Telegraph,  9  April  1987;  Independent,  10  April 
1987;  A.  T.  Tolley  (ed.),  John  Lehmann,  a  Tribute, 
Ottawa,  1987;  John  Lehmann,  In  My  Own  Time  (auto- 
biography), 1969;  personal  knowledge.] 

David  Hughes 

LEVY,  Doris  Elizabeth  Langley  (1902-1989), 
founder  of  the  Museum  of  Costume  and  Byron 
scholar.  [See  Moore,  Doris  Elizabeth  Lang- 
ley.] 

LILLIE,  Beatrice  Gladys,  Lady  Peel  (1894- 
1989),  actress  and  singer,  was  born  29  May  1894 
in  Toronto,  the  younger  daughter  (there  were  no 
sons)  of  John  Lillie,  cigar  seller,  of  Lisburn  in 
Ireland,  and  his  wife,  Lucie  Ann,  eldest  daughter 
of  John  Shaw,  a  Manchester  draper.  Following 
her  parents'  emigration  to  Toronto,  the  family 
grew  up  there  and  'Bea'  was  educated  at  St 
Agnes'  College  in  Belleville,  Ontario;  she  began 
to  appear  in  amateur  concerts  there  with  her 
mother  and  sister  as  the  Lillie  Trio.  At  the 
outbreak  of  World  War  I  they  all  returned  to 
London,  and  it  was  at  the  Chatham  Music  Hall 
in  1914  that  Bea  made  her  professional  stage 
debut. 

Already  it  was  clear  that  the  Lillie  Trio  was 
not  much  of  a  success,  and  that  if  Beatrice  Lillie 
was  to  succeed  in  the  theatre  it  would  have  to  be 


262 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Lockspeiser 


as  a  solo  act.  Almost  immediately  after  her 
London  debut  she  formed  an  alliance  with  the 
leading  World  War  I  producer  of  intimate 
revues,  Andre  *Charlot,  who  saw  in  her  not  the 
serious  singer  she  had  set  out  to  become,  but  a 
comedian  of  considerable  if  zany  qualities.  Char- 
lot  at  this  time  was  also  fostering  the  very  early 
careers  of  Gertrude  *Lawrence  (who  for  a  time 
was  Lillie's  understudy),  W.  J.  ('Jack')  •Bucha- 
nan, and  (Sir)  Noel  *Coward.  In  World  War  I 
Lillie  became  a  favourite  of  troops  on  leave  from 
the  front,  relying  on  spontaneity  and  an  impro- 
vised response  to  her  audiences,  which  Chariot 
had  to  restrain  when  it  threatened  to  go  too  far. 
Lillie's  great  talents  were  the  arched  eyebrow, 
the  curled  lip,  the  fluttering  eyelid,  the  tilted 
chin,  the  ability  to  suggest,  even  in  apparently 
innocent  material,  the  possible  double  entendre. 

In  1920  she  married  Robert  Peel,  son  of 
Robert  Peel  and  great-grandson  of  Sir  Robert 
*Peel,  prime  minister.  He  succeeded  his  father  as 
fifth  baronet  in  1925.  He  died  in  1934,  leaving  his 
wife  with  one  beloved  son,  Robert,  sixth  and  last 
baronet,  who  was  killed  in  World  War  II,  in 
1942.  The  loss  of  first  husband  and  then  son 
comparatively  early  in  her  life  (she  never  married 
again)  left  Lillie  with  a  constant  private  sadness 
that  she  seemed  able  to  overcome  only  on  stage. 
Her  career  encompassed  some  fifty  stage  shows 
in  the  West  End  and  Broadway  as  well  as  a  dozen 
films,  but  she  excelled  in  live  performance, 
demolishing  scripts  and  songs  alike  with  her  own 
particular  brand  of  solo  eccentricity.  (Sir) 
Charles  *Cochran,  Coward,  and  Florenz  Zieg- 
feld  all  employed  her  in  their  revues,  but  in  1932 
American  audiences  saw  her  as  the  Nurse  in  the 
New  York  premiere  of  Too  Good  to  be  True  by 
Bernard  *Shaw,  one  of  the  comparatively  few 
'straight'  roles  she  undertook:  others  were  in 
Robert  Morley's  first  play,  Staff  Dance  (1944), 
and  the  non-musical  version  of  Auntie  Mame, 
which  she  brought  to  London  after  the  war. 

She  made  her  cabaret  debut  at  the  Cafe  de 
Paris  in  1933,  worked  in  revue  and  troop  con- 
certs throughout  the  war,  and  made  her  own 
television  series,  based  on  her  cabaret  routines,  as 
early  as  1951.  She  then  developed,  and  toured  for 
many  years  around  the  world,  a  solo  show  called 
simply  An  Evening  with  Beatrice  Lillie,  which 
ranked  alongside  those  of  Joyce  *Grenfell  and 
Ruth  Draper.  Her  career  in  films  began  with  the 
silent  film.  Exit  Smiling,  in  1927  and  continued 
intermittently  right  through  to  Around  the  World 
in  Eighty  Days  (1956)  and  Thoroughly  Modern 
Millie  (her  last,  in  1967).  But  in  films  as  on  radio 
something  was  missing,  the  live  audience  to 
which  she  could  respond  and  which  she  often 
made  part  of  the  act.  She  was  excellent  as  the 
mad  Auntie  Mame,  or  as  Madame  Arcati  in  High 
Spirits  (1964),  a  Broadway  musical  version  of 
Coward's  Blithe  Spirit.  Coward  called  her  'the 


perfect  comedienne'  and  wrote  his  'Marvellous 
Parry'  for  her  to  sing,  while  Cole  Porter  wrote 
her  'Mrs  Lowsborough-Goodby'.  Her  entire 
career  was  a  sustained  monument  to  anarchic 
alternative  comedy  before  those  terms  had  ever 
been  invented,  and  hers  was  a  triumph  of  manic 
high  spirits.  With  her  long  face,  tall  brow,  lively 
eyes,  natural  poise,  and  radiant  personality,  she 
was  one  of  the  great  female  clowns. 

Her  last  years  were  overshadowed  by  illness; 
she  lived  in  Henley-on-Thames,  a  virtual  recluse 
had  it  not  been  for  her  devoted  manager  John 
Philip,  who  shared  the  house  with  her  for  twenty 
years  and  who  died  of  a  stroke  only  a  matter  of 
hours  after  her  death.  She  died  20  January  1989 
in  Henley. 

[Beatrice  Lillie,  Every  Other  Inch  a  Lady,  1973;  The 
Times,  21  January  1989;  private  information.] 

Sheridan  Morley 

LITTHAUER,  Hildegard  Therese  (1918- 
1989),  professor  of  social  psychology.  [See  Him- 
melweit,  Hildegard  Therese.] 

LOCKSPEISER,  Sm  Ben  (1 891-1990),  engineer 
and  government  administrator,  was  born  9 
March  1891  at  7  President  Street,  St  Luke's, 
London  Ei,  the  eldest  son  and  second  child  in 
the  family  of  three  sons  and  two  daughters  of 
Leon  Lockspeiser,  diamond  merchant,  and  his 
wife,  Rosa  Gleitzman,  of  a  devout  and  indus- 
trious Jewish  family,  recendy  arrived  from  a 
farming  background  in  Lubno,  south-west 
Poland.  Benny  Lockspeiser — so  named  in  his 
birth  certficate,  though  he  was  Ben  for  most  of 
his  life — spent  his  early  years  at  21  Thornby 
Road,  Clapham.  He  was  educated  at  the  Grocers' 
School,  Hackney,  and,  at  the  age  of  seventeen, 
already  a  gifted  pianist  and  cellist,  he  won  an 
open  scholarship  to  Sidney  Sussex  College, 
Cambridge.  After  gaining  a  first  in  part  i  of  the 
natural  sciences  tripos  (191 2),  he  transferred  to 
the  mechanical  sciences  tripos  and  obtained  a 
second  class  in  part  ii  (1913).  After  a  year  at  the 
Royal  School  of  Mines,  he  immediately  enlisted 
when  World  War  I  began.  In  1915  he  sailed  for 
Gallipoli  as  a  private  with  the  Royal  Army 
Medical  Corps.  There  he  was  stricken  with 
amoebic  dysentery  and  invalided  out  to  Egypt, 
where  on  his  recovery  he  continued  with  the 
RAMC,  identifying  the  type,  causes,  and  treat- 
ment of  that  devastating  malady. 

After  he  came  back  home,  having  been  demo- 
bilized in  19 19,  his  MA  degree  in  engineering 
gained  him  entry  to  the  armaments  and  aero- 
dynamics section  of  the  Royal  Aircraft  Estab- 
lishment at  Farnborough,  Hampshire,  where  in 
1920,  on  a  walking  holiday  at  Newlands  in  Wales, 
he  met  his  future  wife.  The  young  Lockspeisers 
set  up  home  at  'Newlands',  Victoria  Road,  Farn- 
borough, where,  with  one  move  in  the  1930s  to 


263 


Lockspeiser 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Waverley  Road,  they  lived  for  the  rest  of  their 
lives.  Lockspeiser  worked  hard  and  also 
immersed  himself  in  the  social  activities  of  the 
RAE,  which  included  music,  drama,  and  garden- 
ing, and  he  became  a  member  of  the  local  branch 
of  the  emerging  Labour  party.  In  1922  he 
founded  the  RAE  Orchestral  Society,  which  later 
became  the  Farnborough  Symphony  Orchestra 
and  which  he  himself  conducted  until  1939. 

As  one  of  a  four-man  elasticity  research  team, 
Lockspeiser  began  pioneering  work  on  chemical 
means  of  de-icing  aircraft  wings  and  other  sur- 
faces. This  led  him  to  study  how  to  prevent  the 
freezing  of  aircrew  oxygen  systems  and  of  mois- 
ture in  gas-supply  mains.  At  the  same  time  he 
worked  on  metal  fatigue  and  was  closely  involved 
in  the  design,  construction,  and  operation  of  the 
RAE's  wind  tunnel,  which  had  a  diameter  of 
twenty-four  feet.  In  1936  he  succeeded  Harold 
Roxbee  Cox  (later  Baron  Kings  Norton)  as  head 
of  the  RAE's  air  defence  department.  Moved  to 
the  Air  Ministry  in  1939  as  assistant  director  of 
scientific  research,  and  then  to  the  new  Ministry 
of  Aircraft  Production  in  1940,  to  become  deputy 
director  (armaments)  in  1 941,  in  1943  he  became 
the  MAP's  director  of  scientific  research,  and  in 
1945  director-general.  He  visited  the  German 
research  centre  at  Volkenrode,  near  Brunswick, 
in  1945  and,  as  a  result  of  seeing  the  advanced 
German  technology,  cancelled  the  contract  for  a 
Miles  M52  straight-wing  supersonic  project  in 
favour  of  an  experimental  series  of  swept-wing, 
radio-controlled,  and  rocket-powered  models. 
Their  failure  caused  criticism,  but  this  was  offset 
by  his  positive,  and  successful,  backing  of  (Sir) 
Frederic  Callan  *Williams,  of  Ferranti  and  Man- 
chester University,  in  producing  the  first  elec- 
tronic computers. 

In  1946  Lockspeiser  was  appointed  chief  sci- 
entist of  the  Ministry  of  Supply,  and  thus 
masterminded  British  research  into  problems  of 
nuclear  physics,  supersonic  flight,  and  guided 
weapons.  In  1949  he  was  appointed  to  succeed 
Sir  Edward  *Appleton  as  secretary  to  the  com- 
mittee of  the  Privy  Council  for  scientific  and 
industrial  research.  He  was  for  seven  years  there- 
after a  formidable  and  beneficial  influence  upon 
British  advances  in  science  and  industrial  devel- 
opment. He  was  always  a  devastating  debater  and 
a  competent  administrator.  Among  major  pro- 
jects he  espoused  and  advanced  in  this  creative 
period  were  the  Festival  of  Britain  in  195 1,  the 
National  Lending  Library  for  Science  and  Tech- 
nology in  1952,  a  major  clean-up  of  the  river 
Thames  in  1953,  (Sir)  Bernard  Lovell's  Jodrell 
Bank  radio  telescope  in  1954,  and  the  creation  of 
CERN  (the  European  Council  for  Nuclear 
Research),  of  which  he  became  the  first  president 
(1955-7).  He  retired  in  1956  and  became  chair- 
man of  the  technical  advisory  board  of  the  Israeli 
government  and  a  director  of  several  companies, 


notably  Tube  Investments,  Staverley,  H.  R. 
Ricardo,  and  Warburg's. 

Lockspeiser  was  knighted  in  1946  and 
appointed  KCB  in  1950.  Elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  in  1949,  he  was  also  F.Eng.  (1976), 
F.I.Mech.E.  (1946),  and  F.R.Ae.S.  (1944).  He 
was  an  honorary  fellow  of  Sidney  Sussex  College 
(1953)  and  a  life  fellow  of  the  RSA,  and  he  was 
awarded  the  US  medal  of  freedom  (silver  palms) 
in  1946.  He  had  honorary  degrees  from  Wit- 
watersrand  (1949),   Haifa  (1952),  and  Oxford 

0954)- 

He  was  a  chubby,  gentle,  kindly  figure,  of 
medium  height,  with  a  determined  chin  and  full 
cheeks.  He  surveyed  the  world  with  a  benevolent 
but  quizzical  air,  through  wire-rimmed  spec- 
tacles, from  beneath  a  broad  forehead  under  a 
mane  of  white  hair.  In  1920  he  married  a 
botanist,  Elsie,  daughter  of  Alfred  Shuttleworth, 
accountant,  of  Shuttleworth  and  Haworth,  Man- 
chester. They  had  one  son  and  two  daughters. 
Elsie  died  in  1964  and  in  1966  he  married  the 
widow  of  an  old  friend  from  the  RAE,  Mary 
Alice  Heywood,  who  died  in  1983.  Lockspeiser 
died  18  October  1990  at  home  in  Farnborough, 
five  months  short  of  his  one-hundredth  birth- 
day. 

[A.  J.  P.  Edwards  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxix,  1994;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Peter  Masefield 

LOCKWOOD,  Margaret  Mary  (1916-1990), 
actress,  was  born  15  September  1916  in  Karachi, 
India  (later  Pakistan),  the  younger  child  and  only 
daughter  of  Henry  Francis  Lockwood,  district 
traffic  superintendent  (later  chief  superinten- 
dent) on  the  Indian  railways,  and  his  third  wife, 
Margaret  Eveline  Waugh,  a  Scot,  who  had  been 
a  nurse.  She  also  had  an  older  stepbrother. 
Mother  and  children  set  up  home  in  Upper 
Norwood,  Middlesex,  when  Margaret  was  three 
and  a  half,  after  which  they  saw  little  of  her 
father.  She  attended  Sydenham  Girls'  High 
School,  taking  dancing  lessons  at  the  Italia  Conti 
School.  These  led  to  her  appearance  as  a  fairy  in 
A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  at  the  Holborn 
Empire  when  she  was  twelve.  She  left  Sydenham 
High  for  the  Cone  School  of  Dancing,  and  did 
the  rounds  of  auditions,  performing  in  clubs, 
concerts,  cabarets,  and  tea  dances.  In  1929  she 
adopted  a  family  name,  Day,  for  her  stage  name 
Margie  Day,  finally  leaving  school  altogether  at 
fourteen. 

In  1933  she  was  accepted  by  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy of  Dramatic  Art  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  and 
showed  both  talent  and  dedication,  completing 
the  two-year  course  in  fourteen  months.  Playing 
a  leading  part  in  the  annual  RADA  show,  she 
caught  the  attention  of  the  London  agent  Her- 
bert de  Leon.  He  quickly  secured  her  two  brief 
London  stage  engagements  and  second  lead  in 


264 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Logan 


the  film  Lorna  Doone  (1934),  directed  by  Basil 
•Dean.  De  Leon  remained  her  manager,  adviser, 
and  friend  until  his  death  forty-five  years  later. 

She  was  immediately  put  under  contract  by 
British  Lion  film  company  and  during  the  next 
few  years  made  over  a  dozen  films,  many  of  them 
quota  quickies,  often  appearing  on  the  London 
stage  in  the  evenings  as  well.  A  beautiful  girl  with 
abundant  dark  hair,  big  eyes,  delicate  features,  a 
beauty  spot  high  on  her  left  cheekbone  (which 
was  allowed  to  appear  for  the  first  time  in  The 
linked  Lady,  1045),  natural  poise,  and  an  unaf- 
fected speaking  voice,  she  proved  a  hard-working 
and  reliable  actress  and  was  much  in  demand. 
The  important  Gainsborough  film  company  pro- 
moted her  as  a  star,  and  in  Bank  Holiday  (1938) 
and  The  Lady  Vanishes  (1938)  she  achieved 
critical  success.  Before  long  she  was  appearing  in 
some  of  the  best  British  films  of  the  period, 
including  The  Stars  Look  Doom  and  Nig ht  Train 
to  Munich,  both  directed  by  (Sir)  Carol  *Reed. 

Her  career  entered  a  new  phase  in  1943. 
Gainsborough  had  been  acquired  by  J.  Arthur 
*Rank,  who  launched  a  series  of  frankly  escapist 
films  to  cheer  up  the  war-wean  British  public. 
These  were  novelettish  costume  melodramas, 
dubbed  'Gainsborough  Gothics',  scorned  by 
serious  critics  and  not  especially  well  made  but 
an  enormous  success  at  the  box  office.  Lockwood 
afterwards  was  always  identified  with  her  part  in 
the  best  known  of  these,  The  Wicked  Lady,  in 
which  she  starred  with  James  *.\lason. 

She  was  now  at  the  peak  of  her  career  and 
earning  a  large  salary,  the  biggest  British  film  star 
of  her  time  although  no  longer  taken  very  seri- 
ously as  an  actress.  But  her  films  began  to  decline 
in  quality  and  by  1948,  still  only  thirty-two,  her 
great  days  were  over.  Her  contract  with  Rank 
was  dissolved  in  1951.  A  woman  of  spirit,  she 
returned  to  the  stage  and  turned  also  to  tele- 
vision. Always  professional,  she  continued  to  act 
on  the  London  stage  and  on  tour  for  another 
twenty-five  years.  She  starred  in  two  television 
series,  The  Flying  Swan  (1965)  and  Justice 
(1971-4).  Her  last  film  appearance  was  in  the 
fairy  tale.  The  Slipper  and  the  Rose,  in  1976,  and 
her  last  stage  part  was  Queen  Alexandra  in 
Motherdear  in  1980. 

Not  a  great  emotional  actress,  she  was  a 
straightforward  and  intelligent  woman  -who 
worked  hard  and  lived  quietly,  earning  the  affec- 
tion of  the  British  public.  Unpretentious,  she 
disliked  the  attributes  of  stardom.  She  was  nomi- 
nated by  the  Motion  Picture  Herald  as  the  top 
money-making  star  in  Britain  in  1945  and  1946, 
and  won  the  Daily  Mail  film  award  as  best  actress 
in  British  films  in  1946,  1947,  and  1948.  Later 
she  received  the  Daily  .Mirror  television  award  in 
1 96 1,  and  Best  Actress  award  from  the  Sun  in 
1973  and  from  the  Television  Times  in  1977.  In 
1 98 1  she  was  appointed  CBE. 


In  1937  she  married  Rupert  William  Leon 

(who  was  not  related  to  her  agent),  commercial 
clerk  (later  steel  broker),  the  son  of  Emil  Arm  and 
Leon,  managing  director  of  the  British  Iron  and 
Steel  Corporation.  Her  mother  disapproved 
strongly  of  the  marriage.  Their  daughter  Julia, 
later  the  actress  Julia  Lockwood,  was  born  in 
1 94 1  but  the  marriage  failed  soon  afterwards. 
Margaret  Lockwood  wished  to  marry  Keith 
Dobson,  but  her  husband  refused  to  give  her  a 
divorce.  She  then  had  a  relationship  with  Theo 
Cowan,  who  was  in  charge  of  Rank's  publicity. 
She  later  lived  for  seventeen  years,  apparently 
happily,  with  John  Stone,  a  minor  fellow  actor 
considerably  younger  than  herself,  whom  she 
met  in  1959.  She  was  afflicted  by  ear  trouble  and, 
after  he  left  her  in  1977,  she  gradually  withdrew 
from  the  theatre.  Two  years  later  she  was  devas- 
tated by  the  death  of  her  friend  and  mentor  de 
Leon.  For  the  last  years  of  her  life  she  lived  as  a 
recluse  in  Kingston  upon  Thames.  She  died  of 
cirrhosis  of  the  liver  in  the  Cromwell  Hospital, 
Kensington,  15  July  1990. 

[Daily  Telegraph,  16  and  17  July  1990;  Independent,  17 
July  1990;  The  Times,  16  and  17  July  1990;  Daily  Mail, 
4  March  1946  and  22  June  1946;  Margaret  Lockwood, 
My  Life  and  Films,  1948,  and  Lucky  Star,  1955;  Hilton 
Tims,  Once  a  Wicked  Lady,  1989;  Who's  Who  in  the 
Theatre,  17th  edn.,  1981;  HalliwelFs  Film  Guide,  7th 
edn.,  1989.]  Rachael  Low 

LOGAN,  Sir  Douglas  William  (1910-1987), 
principal  of  London  University,  was  born  in 
Liverpool  27  March  1910,  the  younger  son  and 
youngest  of  three  children  of  Robert  Logan, 
cabinet-maker,  of  Newhaven,  Edinburgh,  and 
his  wife,  Euphemia  Taylor  Stevenson,  of  Kirk- 
caldy. He  was  educated  at  Liverpool  Collegiate 
School  and  University  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
was  a  classical  scholar  and  took  firsts  in  classical 
honour  moderations  (1930),  literae  humaniores 
(1932),  and  jurisprudence  (1933).  In  1933  he  was 
awarded  an  Oxford  University  senior  student- 
ship and  the  Harmsworth  scholarship  at  the 
Middle  Temple.  During  1935-6  he  held  the 
Henry  fellowship  at  Harvard,  and  in  1936-7  he 
was  an  assistant  lecturer  in  law  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics.  In  1937  he  was  called  to 
the  bar  (Middle  Temple)  and  elected  a  fellow  of 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge  (until  1943). 

During  World  War  II  he  worked  as  a  tempo- 
ran-  civil  senant  at  the  Ministry  of  Supply  from 
1940  till  1944,  when  he  was  appointed  clerk  of 
the  court  of  London  University.  In  1948  he 
became  principal,  a  post  which  he  held  until 
1975.  When  he  took  office  Logan  faced  some 
formidable  problems.  In  1948  Britain  was  still 
suffering  from  the  hardships  imposed  by  the  war. 
Rationing  of  food  and  petrol  was  still  in  force, 
many  necessities  were  in  short  supply,  and  the 
devastation  caused  by  German  bombs  on  Lon- 
don  meant   that   a   huge  building  programme 


265 


Logan 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


would  have  to  be  undertaken.  At  the  same  time 
such  developments  as  the  planning  of  new  com- 
prehensive schools  marked  the  increased  demand 
for  university  education.  Added  to  these  difficul- 
ties was  the  inescapable  dilemma  that  London 
University  itself  was  a  large  and  complex  organi- 
zation, made  up  of  a  number  of  colleges,  medical 
schools,  and  other  institutions  covering  a  variety 
of  specialities,  powered  by  machinery  which 
could  only  work  effectively  if  controlled  by 
somebody  equipped  with  the  capacity  to  take 
clear  decisions  and  the  determination  and  energy 
required  to  put  such  decisions  into  effect. 
Logan's  character,  education,  and  experience 
gave  him  the  toughness  to  make  this  machinery 
work  even  when  hampered  by  financial  strin- 
gency, student  militancy,  and  occasional  aca- 
demic obduracy. 

From  the  outset  he  concentrated  on  the  prob- 
lems of  reconstruction  necessitated  by  the  short- 
age of  accommodation  for  students  and  the  cost  of 
building  sites  in  central  London.  The  outcome 
was  the  acquisition  or  construction  of  seven 
university  halls  of  residence  and  the  purchase  of 
an  extensive  site  in  Bloomsbury  on  which  import- 
ant new  university  buildings  could  be  erected. 

At  this  time  London,  the  largest  university  in 
Britain,  also  had  responsibility  for  a  number  of 
colleges  outside  London  which  took  London 
degrees.  Similarly,  university  colleges  in  Africa, 
the  West  Indies,  and  Malaya,  together  with  the 
existing  universities  in  Malta  and  Hong  Kong, 
needed  the  assistance  of  London  in  maintaining 
their  academic  integrity  through  London 
degrees.  Logan  was  actively  involved  in  his 
membership  of  the  Association  of  Common- 
wealth Universities,  of  which  he  was  chairman  in 
1962-3. 

Throughout  his  term  of  office  as  principal  and 
after  his  retirement  Logan  worked  industriously 
to  better  the  conditions  of  university  staff  and 
students.  He  fought  a  long  campaign  for  the 
improvement  of  the  pensions  of  university  teach- 
ers and  was  virtually  the  author  of  the  Uni- 
versities Superannuation  Scheme,  which  came 
into  force  in  1974.  He  was  its  chairman  in 
1974-7,  deputy  chairman  in  1977-80,  and  con- 
sultant from  1980  to  1986.  In  his  youth  he  had 
been  an  enthusiastic  player  of  rugby  football, 
and,  with  the  co-operation  of  his  vice-chancellor, 
Sir  David  Hughes  *Parry,  he  took  a  leading  part 
in  the  provision  of  social  and  athletic  facilities  for 
students  on  a  university  as  opposed  to  a  college 
basis.  He  was  also  particularly  concerned  with 
the  problems  of  medical  education,  and  the 
establishment  of  the  National  Health  Service 
seemed  to  him  to  call  for  constant  vigilance  to 
safeguard  the  efficiency  of  the  London  hospital 
medical  schools. 

Logan  also  sat  for  many  years  on  committees 
dealing  with  scholarships  and  grants  for  students 


from  both  Britain  and  overseas,  including  Ath- 
lone  fellowships  and  Marshall  scholarships.  He 
was  a  member  of  the  board  of  the  National 
Theatre  (1962-8),  a  governor  of  the  Old  Vic 
(1957-80),  and  a  trustee  of  the  City  Parochial 
Foundation  (1953-67).  He  was  knighted  in  1959 
and  received  honorary  fellowships  from  LSE 
(1962),  University  College,  Oxford  (1973),  and 
University  College  London  (1975);  honorary 
degrees  were  conferred  upon  him  by  universities 
from  Melbourne  to  British  Columbia.  He  was  a 
chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  and  an  hon- 
orary bencher  of  the  Middle  Temple  (1965). 

In  1940  Logan  married  Vaire  Olive,  daughter 
of  Sir  Gerald  Woods  Wollaston,  herald;  they  had 
two  sons  before  they  divorced  in  1946.  A  year 
later  he  married  Christine  Peggy,  daughter  of 
William  Arthur  Walker,  motor  engineer  inspec- 
tor; they  had  one  son  and  one  daughter. 

'Jock'  Logan,  as  he  was  known  to  his  col- 
leagues, was  well  built,  of  medium  height  and 
somewhat  shuffling  gait.  A  prodigious  worker,  he 
had  impressive  organizing  ability  and  was  a 
consummate  draughtsman.  He  was  impatient 
with  inadequacy  and  with  opposition  based  on 
ignorance  or  vested  interest,  and  his  brusque  and 
forceful  manner  alienated  many.  He  died  in 
University  College  Hospital,  London,  19  Octo- 
ber 1987,  after  suffering  a  stroke. 

[The  Times,  20  October  1987;  Negley  Harte,  The 
University  of  London  /8j6-/g86,  1986;  Douglas  Logan, 
The  University  of  London:  an  Introduction,  1956;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]         H.  F.  Oxblry 

LORIMER,  Maxwell  George  (1908- 1990), 
comic  entertainer  and  actor.  [See  Wall,  Max.] 

LOSS,  Joshua  Alexander  ('Joe')  (1909-1990), 
bandleader,  was  born  22  June  1909  in  Spital- 
fields,  east  London,  the  youngest  of  the  family  of 
two  sons  and  two  daughters  of  Israel  Loss,  of 
Russian  origin,  a  cabinet-maker  who  had  an 
office  furnishing  business,  and  his  wife,  Ada 
Loss.  His  mother  and  father  were  first  cousins. 
Israel  Loss  recognized  his  son's  musical  talents 
and  started  him  with  violin  lessons  at  the  age  of 
seven.  It  was  hoped  that  he  might  become  a 
concert  violinist,  and,  after  education  at  the 
Jewish  Free  School,  Spitalfields,  he  studied  at 
the  Trinity  College  of  Music  and  the  London 
College  of  Music. 

His  interests  lay  in  lighter  fields  and,  after 
playing  in  cinemas  during  silent  films  and  in 
various  bands,  at  the  end  of  1930  he  formed  his 
own  first  band  to  play  at  the  Astoria  Ballroom 
(then  known  as  the  Astoria  Danse  Salon)  in 
Charing  Cross  Road,  becoming,  at  the  age  of 
twenty,  the  youngest  bandleader  in  the  West  End 
of  London.  Under  the  name  of  Joe  Loss  and  his 
Harlem  Band,  his  musicians  first  played  as  the 
no.  2  unit,  Joe  Loss  leading  on  violin,  with  three 
saxophones,  trumpet,  piano,  and  drums.  Later 


266 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Lubetkin 


they  added  a  special  tango  section,  which  fea- 
tured two  accordions  and  two  violins.  Occasion- 
ally they  deputized  for  the  Percival  Mackey  Band 
at  the  Kit-Kat  Club,  and  when  Mackey  left  to  go 
into  vaudeville  at  the  beginning  of  1932,  Joe  Ix«s 
took  over  to  initiate  a  new  'popular  price'  policy, 
playing  for  daily  tea,  dinner,  and  supper  dances, 
supported  by  and  often  combining  with  Fred 
Spedbury's  Coney  Islanders.  He  returned  to  the 
Astoria  in  1934  to  become  the  no.  1  band  and 
remained  there  until  the  outbreak  of  war  in 

1939- 

During  this  period  he  began  to  record  for  the 
Regal-Zonophone  label  and  his  first  really  big  hit 
came  with  a  recording  made  in  July  1939  of 
'Begin  the  Beguine',  with  Chick  Henderson  (who 
was  killed  by  shrapnel  in  1944)  as  vocalist. 
During  the  war  years  Joe  Loss  toured  the  coun- 
try and  after  D-Day  played  to  the  forces  at 
various  venues  in  Europe.  His  was  to  become  the 
most  prestigious  society  dance  orchestra  in  the 
country,  its  qualities  based  on  his  love  of  a  strong 
rhythm.  From  1939  it  played  a  regular  engage- 
ment at  Buckingham  Palace  and  later  at  the 
weddings  of  Princess  Margaret,  Princess  Anne, 
and  Princess  Alexandra.  After  the  war  there  were 
residencies  at  the  Hammersmith  Palais,  the  Villa 
Marina  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  and  Green's  Play- 
house, Glasgow,  and  there  were  frequent  trips  on 
the  liner  Queen  Elizabeth  II.  The  band  was  now 
always  at  least  eighteen  strong,  usually  with  three 
vocalists — his  singers,  at  various  times,  including 
Monte  Rev,  Howard  Jones,  Ross  McManus,  and 
Rose  Brennan.  (Dame)  Vera  Lynn  was  amongst 
those  given  encouragement  in  the  early  stages  of 
an  illustrious  career.  In  1970,  when  Loss  left 
Hammersmith,  the  band,  in  the  face  of  economic 
demands,  became  smaller. 

His  recording  career  was  a  busy  one.  In  1940 
he  had  a  second  big  hit  with  'In  the  Mood', 
which  became  his  signature  tune,  and  many 
others  followed.  Despite  the  emergence  of  pop, 
he  continued  to  record  his  swinging  strict-tempo 
music  and  in  the  1970s  had  two  albums  which 
sold  a  million  copies — 'Joe  Loss  Plays  Glenn 
Miller'  and  'Joe  Loss  Plays  the  Big  Band  Greats'. 
He  continued  to  record  with  EMI  until  the  end 
of  his  career,  and  became  a  well-known  name  on 
radio  and  television,  notably  with  the  long- 
running  Come  Dancing  series. 

Loss  was  a  great  supporter  of  such  charities  as 
the  Variety  Artists'  Federation  Sunshine  Coach 
Fund.  He  was  appointed  OBE  in  1978  and  LVO 
in  1984.  He  was  awarded  the  Queen's  Silver 
Jubilee  medal  in  1978  and  became  a  freeman  of 
the  City  of  London  in  1979.  Posthumously,  he 
was  made  a  fellow  of  the  City  University  when 
his  wife,  who  continued  to  run  the  Joe  Loss 
Agency,  started  in  the  1930s,  presented  the 
library  with  his  collection  of  big-band  scores. 

Loss's  generosity,  kindness,  and  courtesy,  and 


his  dislike  of  star  treatment,  made  him  one  of  the 
best-liked  figures  in  the  world  of  popular  music. 
He  was  five  feet  eight  inches  in  height,  with  a 
trim  figure  and  sleek  black  hair,  which  tumbled 
over  his  face  when  he  was  conducting  in  his 
typically  energetic  way.  He  was  always  well 
dressed,  in  later  years  in  a  white  silk  suit,  and 
usually  had  a  broad,  friendly  smile.  Away  from 
the  relentless  hard  work  of  sixty  years  as  a 
bandleader,  celebrated  by  a  Variety  Club  lunch- 
eon in  1989,  he  was  a  devoted  family  man.  In 
1938  he  married  Mildred  Blanch  Rose,  daughter 
of  a  Latvian  from  Riga,  Barnet  Rosenberg  (who 
later  changed  his  name  to  Rose),  master  tailor. 
They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter  and  were 
delighted  to  have  grandchildren  who  followed  in 
Loss's  musical  footsteps.  Loss  died  in  a  London 
hospital  6  June  1990. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Peter  Gammond 

LUBETKIN,  Berthold  Romanovitch  (1901- 
1990),  architect,  was  born  14  December  1 901  in 
Tiflis,  Georgia,  the  only  child  of  Roman  Arono- 
vich  Lubetkin,  railway  engineer,  and  his  wife, 
Fenya.  He  was  educated  at  Tenishevskaya  Gym- 
nasia, St  Petersburg,  and  the  Medvednikov 
Gymnasia,  Moscow.  He  then  attended  the  Char- 
lottenburg  School  of  Building  in  Berlin  (1922-3) 
before  moving  to  Warsaw  Polytechnic,  where  he 
took  his  diploma  in  architecture  in  1923. 

In  1925  he  assisted  the  architect  K.  Melnikov 
with  his  design  for  the  Russian  pavilion  at  the 
decorative  arts  exposition  held  in  Paris  in  that 
year  and  himself  settled  in  Paris  for  the  following 
five  years.  He  attended  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts 
(where  he  studied  under  Auguste  Perret,  from 
whom  he  no  doubt  acquired  the  rigorous  sense  of 
structural  form  apparent  in  his  own  later  work), 
the  Ecole  Superieure  de  Beton  Arme,  the  Institut 
d'Urbanisme,  and  the  Sorbonne.  From  1927  he 
worked  as  an  architect  in  partnership  with  Jean 
Ginsberg,  designing  with  him  a  block  of  flats  in 
the  Avenue  de  Versailles. 

In  1 93 1  Lubetkin  moved  to  London  and  in  the 
following  year  formed,  with  a  number  of  young 
architects  who  had  recently  qualified  from  the 
Architectural  Association  School,  a  partnership 
which  called  itself  Tecton,  under  which  name,  in 
conjunction  with  his  own,  he  practised  until  his 
retirement  in  1939  when  war  broke  out. 

Tecton's  most  important  early  work  was 
Highpoint,  in  Highgate,  London  (1935),  a  tall 
block  of  flats  ingeniously  and  elegantly  planned 
to  give  the  maximum  light  and  air  to  all  its 
apartments.  It  was  one  of  the  first  English 
buildings,  other  than  industrial,  to  display  the 
aesthetic  potentialities  of  reinforced  concrete.  A 
second  block  was  added  in  1938  which  aroused 
interest — and  some  alarm  among  purists — by  its 


267 


Lubetkin 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


use  of  caryatids  modelled  on  those  of  the  Erec- 
theion  at  Athens  to  support  the  entrance  porch; 
an  example  of  the  intellectual  perversity  that 
relieved  the  doctrinaire  nature  of  Lubetkin's 
thought.  Other  works,  which  brought  his  designs 
to  the  notice  of  a  wider  public,  were  the  gorilla 
house  (1934)  and  penguin  pool  (1935)  at  the 
London  Zoo,  which  also  revealed  that  concrete,  a 
material  hitherto  used  with  much  sophistication 
only  on  the  Continent  and  considered  in  England 
strictly  utilitarian,  was  capable  of  liveliness  and 
gaiety.  More  zoo  buildings  followed  at  Whips- 
nade  and  at  Dudley,  Worcestershire,  and  in  1938 
a  health  centre — Tecton's  first  municipal  build- 
ing— for  the  London  borough  of  Finsbury. 

The  long-term  significance  of  the  Tecton 
office  at  this  time  is  indicated  by  the  number  of 
young  architects  who  gained  their  early  experi- 
ence there  and  afterwards  became  distinguished 
in  the  profession.  They  included  Gordon  Cullen, 
Peter  Moro,  and  (Sir)  Denys  Lasdun.  The  group 
was  dispersed  in  World  War  II,  during  which 
Lubetkin  farmed  in  Gloucestershire,  working  his 
farm  at  Upper  Kilcott  himself  while  constantly 
challenging  the  validity  of  established  farming 
practices.  He  had  little  help  but  that  of  his  wife, 
whom  he  had  married  in  1939  soon  after  she 
joined  the  Tecton  office  as  a  young  architect.  An 
unusual  aspect  of  their  farm  in  wartime  was  the 
presence  in  it  of  a  number  of  exotic  animals  and 
birds  which  they  housed  at  the  request  of  Sir 
Peter  Chalmers  Mitchell,  secretary  of  the  Lon- 
don Zoological  Society,  for  whom  Lubetkin  had 
designed  a  house  near  Whipsnade  in  1938. 
Lubetkin  was  naturalized  on  24  February  1939. 

In  1947  Lubetkin  resumed  architectural  prac- 
tice in  London  in  partnership  with  Francis 
Skinner,  one  of  the  original  Tecton  group,  and 
Douglas  Bailey.  They  designed  several  housing 
schemes  for  Finsbury,  which  showed  careful 
study  of  social  needs  but  lacked  some  of  the 
invention  and  vitality  of  Tecton's  pre-war  work. 
In  1948  Lubetkin  was  architect-planner  of  the 
new  town  of  Peterlee  in  the  coal-mining  region  of 
county  Durham.  His  design  was  ambitious  and 
unorthodox  and  a  notable  departure  from  the 
suburban  style  adopted  by  the  other  postwar  new 
towns;  so  much  so  that  it  became  the  subject  of 


long-running  local  argument,  political  and  eco- 
nomic. It  was  finally  rejected  and  Lubetkin 
resigned. 

He  thereupon  retired  altogether  from  archi- 
tectural practice  for  reasons  his  friends  and 
associates  never  fully  understood.  He  became 
something  of  a  recluse,  living  in  a  very  private 
style  at  his  Gloucestershire  farm.  In  1968  his 
wife's  deteriorating  health  caused  them  to  give 
up  farming  and  move  to  a  small  flat  at  Clifton, 
Bristol,  where  she  died  ten  years  later.  There, 
too,  they  lived  in  a  modest  style  and  there 
Lubetkin  remained  after  her  death,  seeing  few 
people  and  engaged  in  writing,  the  subject  of 
which  he  did  not  disclose  and  nothing  of  which 
has  been  published. 

In  his  later  years  Lubetkin  found  a  gleeful 
enjoyment  in  the  riskier  aspects  of  motoring  and 
had  a  number  of  road  accidents,  one  of  which,  in 
1972,  resulted  in  a  shattered  femur  and  left  him 
crippled  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  giving  him  added 
reason  to  retreat  from  professional  affairs.  He 
did,  however,  make  the  journey  to  London  to 
receive  the  RIBA  Royal  gold  medal  for  archi- 
tecture, which  he  was  awarded  in  1982  (he  always 
refused  to  become  a  member  of  the  RIBA).  In 
1987  he  went  to  London  again  to  attend  in  a 
wheelchair  a  ceremony  marking  the  restoration 
of  his  penguin  pool  at  the  London  Zoo. 

Berthold  Lubetkin  (Tolek  to  all  his  friends) 
was  a  man  of  complex  character  whom  some 
found  difficult  and  devious  and  whose  motiva- 
tions often  seemed  mysterious.  He  had  left-wing 
political  allegiances  and  a  distinguished  analytical 
mind  which  ranged  widely  over  many  subjects. 
He  was  a  stimulating  conversationalist.  His  influ- 
ence on  the  style  and  standards  of  architecture  in 
Britain,  especially  in  the  1930s,  was  consider- 
able. 

He  married  in  1939  Margaret  Louise,  the 
younger  daughter  of  Harold  Church,  barrister. 
They  had  a  son  and  two  daughters.  Lubetkin 
died  at  his  home  in  Clifton  23  October  1990. 

[Peter  Coe  and  Malcolm  Reading,  Lubetkin  and  Tecton: 
Architecture  and  Social  Commitment,  1081;  John  Allan, 
Berthold  Lubetkin:  Architecture  and  the  Tradition  of 
Progress,  1992;  personal  knowledge;  information  from 
his  elder  daughter.]  J.  M.  Richards 


268 


M 


McBEAN,  Angus  Rowland  (i  904-1 090),  pho- 
tographer, was  born  8  June  1904  in  Newbridge, 
Monmouthshire,  the  elder  child  and  only  son  of 
Clement  Philip  James  McBean,  surveyor,  and  his 
wife,  Irene  Sarah  Thomas.  He  was  educated  at 
Monmouth  Grammar  School  (191 5-21)  and, 
briefly,  at  Newport  Technical  College.  His  child- 
hood was  spent  far  away  from  the  metropolitan 
sophistication  which  he  later  encountered  in  the 
1930s  and  1940s  as  Britain's  most  prominent  and 
inventive  theatre  photographer.  But  photogra- 
phy had  become  significant  to  him  long  before  he 
emerged  as  a  professional.  The  teenage  purchase 
of  a  simple  Kodak  camera  gave  him  his  first 
glimpse  of  the  possibilities  of  the  medium.  Ama- 
teur dramatics,  organized  by  an  aunt,  introduced 
McBean  to  the  magical  world  of  theatre — he 
designed  posters  and  costumes,  and  began  to 
experiment  with  the  mask-making  which  in- 
trigued him  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

McBean  was  a  bank  clerk  from  1921  to  1924. 
After  the  death  of  his  father  in  1924,  McBean's 
mother  moved  her  family  to  London,  and  Angus 
joined  the  department  store  Liberty's  (1926-33), 
as  an  antiques  salesman.  Like  many  of  his  gen- 
eration, he  was  attracted  by  the  Germanic  cult  of 
health  and  beauty  and  joined  the  Kibbu  Kift 
movement,  where  he  met  Helena  Wood,  whom 
he  married  in  1923.  They  were  separated  in  1924 
and  there  were  no  children. 

By  the  end  of  the  1920s  McBean  was  obsessed 
by  theatre.  He  met  the  Motleys  (Percy  and 
Sophia  Harris  and  Elizabeth  Montgomery),  three 
young  stage  designers  who  encouraged  his  inter- 
est in  prop-making  and  helped  him  to  secure  his 
first  design  commission — work  for  the  1933  pro- 
duction of  Richard  of  Bordeaux. 

He  continued  to  photograph,  and  in  1934 
(after  his  first  photographic  exhibition,  at  the 
Pirates'  Den  teashop  in  London)  he  became 
assistant  to  the  Bond  Street  portraitist  Hugh 
Cecil.  Though  he  disliked  Cecil's  soft-focus 
romanticism,  he  was  an  adept  studio  worker,  and 
soon  began  to  develop  the  aesthetic  and  technical 
skills  which  distinguished  his  later  career.  In 
1935  McBean  opened  his  own  studio  in  London. 
He  photographed  Ivor  *Novello  in  The  Happy 
Hypocrite  in  1936.  His  stage  photographs  were 
boldly  lit  and  dramatic,  and  soon  he  was  photo- 
graphing  at   the   Old    Vic,   documenting   now 


classic  productions:  Laurence  (later  Baron)  •Oli- 
vier in  Hamlet,  (Dame)  Edith  *Evans  in  The 
Country  Wifey  and  Diana  Wynyard  in  Pygmalion. 
McBean's  photographs  were  now  appearing  in  all 
the  London  glossy  magazines. 

But  it  was  the  mounting  in  London  of  the 
1936  exhibition  of  Surrealist  art  which  inspired 
McBean  to  begin  radical  experiments  with  pho- 
tographic portraiture.  By  1937  he  had  begun  to 
use  the  styles  and  devices  of  Surrealism  to  create 
fantastical  portraits  of  theatrical  stars  — Vivien 
•Leigh,  enveloped  in  a  plaster-of-Paris  gown  and 
posed  among  cotton-wool  clouds,  (Dame)  Flora 
•Robson  erupting  from  a  desolate  landscape,  the 
impresario  H.  G.  ('Binkie')  *Beaumont  as  a  giant 
puppet-master,  and  Patricia  Hilliard  emerging 
from  a  sea  shell.  He  photographed  himself  too,  in 
striped  pyjamas  with  an  umbrella,  in  a  neo- 
classical aquarium,  as  King  Neptune,  and  as  a 
Roman  bust,  and  sent  the  photographs  out  as 
Christmas  cards  to  an  ever-widening  circle  of 
friends  and  associates.  With  his  flowing  beard 
and  his  deep  theatrical  voice,  he  became  a  well 
known  and  much  admired  character  in  the  Lon- 
don of  the  1930s.  Immediately  after  the  end  of 
World  War  II  (during  the  course  of  which  he 
spent  some  time  in  prison  as  a  conscientious 
objector),  he  opened  a  bigger  studio  in  Covent 
Garden,  and  during  the  1940s  and  1950s  he  was 
inundated  with  commissions  from  London's 
major  theatre  companies. 

In  the  early  1960s  McBean  photographed  the 
Beatles  for  the  cover  of  their  first  long-playing 
record.  But  as  the  decade  wore  on,  and  fashions 
in  both  theatre  and  photography  began  to  alter, 
McBean's  style,  so  rooted  in  the  aesthetics  of  the 
1950s,  became  unpopular.  McBean  had  made 
those  he  portrayed  into  elegant  stars.  On  the  new 
realist  stage,  however,  actors  simply  wanted  to 
look  like  ordinary  people. 

Angus  McBean's  appearance  was  flamboyant. 
His  thick  beard  marked  him  out  immediately  as 
one  who  wished  to  be  considered  an  artist  rather 
than  a  craftsman,  and  his  colourful  and  often 
handmade  clothes  indicated  an  enduring  interest 
in  design  and  costume.  When  McBean  retired  in 
1970  and  moved  to  Flemings  Hall  near  the 
village  of  Eye  in  Suffolk,  he  became  almost 
immediately  obscure.  He  sold  his  glass  plate 
negatives  to  Harvard  University  and  in  Suffolk 


269 


McBean 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


moved  back  into  the  design  work  which  had  so 
fascinated  him  in  his  early  years.  Flemings  Hall, 
where  he  lived  with  his  companion  (and  long- 
time assistant)  David  Ball,  became  a  fitting  arena 
for  Mc Bean's  fantastical  imagination.  When  his 
photographs  were  shown  in  1976,  as  a  retro- 
spective exhibition  at  Impressions  Gallery,  York 
(and  two  years  later  at  the  National  Theatre),  the 
significance  of  his  work  within  the  history  of 
British  photography  was  finally  recognized. 
Acknowledged  too  was  his  place  as  an  elder 
statesman  of  the  burgeoning  and  culturally  pro- 
gressive international  gay  community.  During 
the  1980s  there  were  major  exhibitions  of  his 
work,  TV  documentaries,  and  numerous  photo- 
graphic commissions.  No  longer  a  half-forgotten 
name  from  the  unfashionable  past,  Angus 
McBean,  much  to  his  delight,  was  once  more  in 
demand.  He  died  8  June  1990  at  Ipswich  Heath 
Road  Hospital,  Ipswich.  The  Harvard  Theatre 
Museum  has  a  collection  of  his  photographs  and 
plates. 

[Colin  Naylor  (ed.),  Contemporary  Photographers,  2nd 
edn.,  1988;  Adrian  Woodhouse,  Angus  McBean,  1982; 
typescript  of  an  unpublished  autobiography  f.1972, 
Angus  McBean  papers  in  a  private  collection;  informa- 
tion from  David  Ball;  personal  knowledge.] 

Val  Williams 

MacCOLL,  Ewan  (191 5-1989),  songwriter, 
singer,  folk-song  revivalist,  and  dramatist,  was 
born  James  Miller  25  January  19 15  in  Salford, 
Lancashire,  the  youngest  and  only  surviving 
child  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  one  daugh- 
ter (one  of  each  sex  was  stillborn  and  one  son 
died  at  the  age  of  four)  of  William  Miller,  iron- 
moulder,  of  Salford,  and  his  wife  Betsy  Hendry, 
charwoman.  He  was  educated  at  Grecian  Street 
School,  Salford.  He  left  school  at  the  age  of 
fourteen  after  an  elementary  education  and  was 
immediately  unemployed.  He  joined  the  Young 
Communists'  League  (he  was  not  to  leave  the 
Communist  party  until  the  early  1960s)  and  then 
found  work  as  a  motor  mechanic,  factory  worker, 
and  street  singer.  He  first  began  writing  for 
factory  newspapers,  composing  satirical  songs 
and  political  poems,  while  also  taking  a  keen 
interest  in  amateur  dramatics,  in  1931  forming  a 
political  street  theatre  group,  the  Red  Mega- 
phones, which  performed  sketches  on  the  streets 
of  Salford  and  Manchester.  Both  his  parents 
were  fine  traditional  singers,  and  he  had  begun  to 
sing  and  write  songs  while  a  teenager.  One  of  his 
first  and  finest  protest  songs,  'The  Manchester 
Rambler',  dealt  with  the  'mass  trespass'  cam- 
paigns of  the  1930s,  in  which  hikers  fought 
pitched  battles  with  gamekeepers  when  they 
invaded  privately  owned  grouse  moors. 

It  was  two  decades  before  he  devoted  his 
energies  to  music.  He  spent  most  of  the  1930s 
involved  in  experimental  theatre  projects  after 


joining  forces  with  his  future  wife,  Joan  Little- 
wood,  with  whom  he  formed  a  'workers'  experi- 
mental theatre',  the  Theatre  of  Action,  at 
Manchester  in  1933.  He  wrote  and  co-produced 
a  series  of  political  satires  and  dance  dramas,  and 
was  arrested  and  charged  with  disturbing  the 
peace  after  the  police  stopped  performances  of 
his  'living  newspaper',  'Last  Edition'.  In  World 
War  II  he  was  called  up,  joined  the  army,  and 
was  arrested  for  desertion,  although  he  claimed 
there  had  been  a  case  of  mistaken  identity.  He 
was  discharged  on  medical  grounds.  He  con- 
tinued with  his  drama  projects  after  the  war,  and 
he  and  Littlewood  formed  Theatre  Workshop, 
for  which  he  became  art  director  and  resident 
dramatist.  He  changed  his  name  to  Ewan  Mac- 
Coll  in  1945.  Between  1945  and  1952  he  wrote 
eleven  plays,  including  Uranium  235  (1952),  a 
drama  with  music,  and  Landscape  with  Chimneys 
(195 1 ),  which  included  one  of  his  best-known 
songs,  'Dirty  Old  Town',  written  in  a  matter  of 
hours  on  the  opening  night  to  cover  a  scene 
change. 

He  severed  his  links  with  Littlewood  in  1952 
and  gradually  withdrew  from  the  Theatre  Work- 
shop. From  1952  onwards  he  worked  to  establish 
a  folk-song  revival  in  Britain.  He  saw  folk  music 
not  as  some  quaint  historical  curiosity  but  as  a 
political  force,  an  expression  of  working-class 
culture,  and  he  wanted  to  develop  a  style  in 
which  'songs  of  struggle  would  be  immediately 
acceptable  to  a  lot  of  young  people'.  With  help 
from  American  folklorist  Alan  Lomax  and  A.  L. 
('Bert')  Lloyd,  he  mixed  politics,  British  and 
American  folk  music,  and  jazz  in  a  radio  series, 
Ballads  and  Blues  (1953).  He  founded  the  Ballads 
and  Blues  Club,  later  renamed  the  Singers'  Club, 
in  London,  and  by  the  mid-1950s  was  considered 
one  of  the  leading  folk-singers  in  the  country. 

Initially,  MacColl  had  encouraged  the  fashion 
for  American  folk  and  blues  (he  and  Lomax  had 
even  started  a  skiffle  group,  which  included 
another  American  singer  and  song-writer,  Peggy 
Seeger,  who  was  to  become  his  third  wife),  but 
by  the  late  1950s  he  became  concerned  that 
British  traditional  music  was  being  swamped  by 
American  styles.  He  therefore  introduced  his 
controversial  'policy  rule' — singers  had  to  per- 
form songs  from  their  own  tradition,  depending 
on  whether  they  were  British  or  American. 

In  1957,  when  he  claimed  there  were  1,500 
folk  clubs  around  Britain,  he  returned  to  experi- 
mental multi-media  work,  this  time  with  a  dis- 
tinctively British  flavour.  The  Radio  Ballads, 
broadcast  on  the  BBC  Home  Service  (1958-64), 
dealt  with  the  everyday  lives  of  British  workers, 
from  railwaymen  to  boxers  or  fishermen,  and 
used  a  montage  of  interviews  and  new  songs 
written  by  MacColl.  He  wrote  many  of  his  best 
songs  for  this  widely  praised  series,  including 
'Shoals  of  Herring'  and  'Freeborn  Man'. 


270 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


McElwain 


A  fiery,  authoritative,  opinionated  figure,  he 
never  deviated  from  his  staunch  left-wing  views. 
From  1065  to  1971  he  trained  young  singers  in 
folk-singing  and  theatre  technique  in  his  Critics 
Group,  which  performed  an  annual  review  of  the 
year's  news,  the  'Festival  of  Fools'.  He  collected 
folk-songs,  and  co-wrote  two  books  with  Peggy 
Seeger  (Travellers'  Songs  from  England  and  Scot- 
land, 1977,  which  was  praised  for  its  scholarship, 
and  Till  Doomsday  in  the  Afternoon,  the  Folklore  of 
a  Family  of  Scots  Travellers,  1986).  With  her  he 
founded  Blackthorne  Records,  which  specialized 
in  their  own  recordings.  In  the  1980s,  by  which 
time  his  jet-black  hair  and  red  beard  had  turned 
white,  he  wrote  songs  to  support  the  miners' 
strike  and  the  anti-apartheid  movement.  Con- 
sidering his  enormous  and  varied  output,  it  was 
ironic  that  his  only  financial  success  came  from 
his  song  'The  First  Time  Ever  I  Saw  Your  Face', 
a  no.  1  hit  in  America  for  Roberta  Flack  in  1972. 
It  won  the  Ivor  Novello  award  in  1973.  MacColl 
was  awarded  an  honorary  degree  by  Exeter 
University  (1986). 

In  1935  he  married  Joan  Littlewood,  who  did 
not  know  the  identity  of  her  father,  but  was 
brought  up  by  a  stepfather,  Jimmy  Morritt, 
asphalter.  They  were  divorced  in  1948  and  in 
1949  he  married  Jean,  daughter  of  William  New- 
love,  a  wartime  director  of  regional  supplies  and 
part-time  artist.  They  had  a  son,  Hamish,  and  a 
daughter,  Kirsty,  a  very  successful  singer-song- 
writer. They  were  divorced  in  1974  and  he 
married  his  third  wife,  the  singer  Peggy  Seeger, 
with  whom  he  had  lived  since  the  1950s,  in  1977. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  Charles  Seeger,  musi- 
cologist, and  sister  of  the  singer  Pete  Seeger. 
MacColl  died  22  October  1989  in  the  Brompton 
Hospital,  London,  after  complications  following 
heart  surgery,  and  his  autobiography  Journeyman 
was  published  the  following  year. 

[Interview  with  Ewan  MacColl;  Ewan  MacColl,  Jour- 
neyman (autobiography),  1090;  Joan  Littlewood,  Joan 's 
Book,  1904;  Independent,  30  October  1989;  private 
information.]  Robin  Denselow 

McELWAIN,  Timothy  John  (1937-1990),  can- 
cer physician,  was  born  22  April  1937  in  Wel- 
lington, New  Zealand,  the  only  child  of  Allan  R. 
McElwain,  freelance  foreign  correspondent,  and 
his  wife,  Marjorie  ('Miranda')  Simpson,  a  com- 
mercial artist  specializing  in  fashion.  Because  of 
the  peripatetic  nature  of  his  father's  employ- 
ment, McElwain  was  educated  in  both  Australia 
and  England.  He  attended  St  Peter's  College, 
Adelaide,  from  1947  to  1949,  and  then  trans- 
ferred to  Sloane  School  in  London  (1949-51). 
Back  in  Australia,  he  went  to  Haileybury  Col- 
lege, Melbourne,  from  195 1  to  1957.  He 
returned  to  London  in  1957  to  go  to  the  London 
Polytechnic  to  study  physics,  chemistry,  zoology, 
and  botany  for  a  first  MB  exemption.  He  duly 


achieved  this,  with  passes  in  all  subjects.  He  also 
became  president  of  the  Students'  Union,  chair- 
man of  the  Debating  Society,  and  president  of 
the  Faculty  Club.  He  was  keen  on  water  sports 
and  rowing.  He  was  admitted  to  St  Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital  Medical  College  in  October 
i960,  being  about  five  years  older  than  the 
average  student.  His  maturity  is  reflected  in  the 
fact  that  he  had  no  difficulty  with  examinations, 
passing  MB,  BS  finals  with  honours  in  1965, 
when  he  obtained  a  distinction  in  applied  phar- 
macology and  therapeutics.  He  was  awarded  the 
Hay  ward  prize  in  recognition  of  his  contribution 
to  student  activities. 

McElwain  did  his  house  physician  appoint- 
ments at  Bart's,  where  he  worked  for  Gordon 
Hamilton  Fairley,  a  pioneer  of  the  drug  treat- 
ment of  cancer.  His  interest  and  ability  in  thera- 
peutics ensured  Hamilton  Fairley's  support,  and 
he  obtained  one  of  the  first  Leukaemia  Research 
Fund  fellowships  (1968-70),  to  work  on  child- 
hood leukaemia  at  the  Hospital  for  Sick  Chil- 
dren, Great  Ormond  Street.  He  passed  his 
MRCP  in  1968,  and,  after  registrar  appointments 
at  Bart's  (1967-8),  and  posts  as  lecturer  (1 970-1) 
and  senior  lecturer  (1972-3)  at  the  Royal  Mars- 
den  Hospital,  London,  he  was  appointed  in 
1973  consultant  physician  at  the  Royal  Marsden. 
He  became  head  of  the  section  of  medicine  in 
1980,  and  was  subsequently  appointed  Cancer 
Research  Campaign  professor  of  medical  onco- 
logy in  the  University  of  London  in  1983.  He 
had  been  elected  at  an  early  age  to  the  fellowship 
of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  of  London, 
in  1977. 

He  brought  to  the  Royal  Marsden  Hospital  an 
appreciation  of  the  importance  of  the  discipline 
of  internal  medicine,  not  only  in  the  proper  use 
of  drugs  to  combat  cancer,  but  also  in  the  expert 
general  medical  care  necessary  to  the  exploration 
of  the  drugs'  potential.  He  pushed  intensive 
therapy,  using  high  doses  of  anti-cancer  drugs,  to 
the  limit,  and  his  resultant  success  in  the  care  of 
myeloma,  a  highly  malignant  form  of  cancer, 
serves  as  a  confirmation  of  the  value  of  his  work. 
This  could  not  have  been  achieved  without 
prolonged,  intensive  effort,  and  courage  in  facing 
the  inevitable  institutional  resistance  and  resent- 
ments. 

As  professor  of  medical  oncology  he  was  in 
great  demand  from  organizations  abroad  and  at 
home.  He  was  always  generous  with  his  time, 
holding  such  posts  as  consultant  in  medical 
oncology  at  the  Tata  Memorial  Cancer  Centre  in 
Bombay,  India,  external  assessor  to  the  Chinese 
University  of  Hong  Kong,  and  referee  for 
research  grant  applications  to  the  Medical 
Research  Council  of  New  Zealand.  In  Great 
Britain  he  was  chairman  or  member  of  several 
important  committees  in  such  institutions  as  the 
Royal   College  of  Physicians  of  London,  the 


271 


McElwain 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Medical  Research  Council,  and  the  Wolfson 
Foundation.  However,  the  position  that  gave  him 
most  pleasure  was  his  presidency  of  the  Associa- 
tion of  Cancer  Physicians.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  editorial  boards  of  many  specialist  journals. 
He  was  a  popular  member  of  societies,  and  of 
national  and  international  committees,  where  his 
knowledge,  combined  with  good  common  sense 
and  a  pithy  expression  of  his  views,  could  often 
rescue  a  meeting  that  was  faltering. 

McElwain  was  a  large  man,  with  a  bald  head, 
who  loved  food,  wine,  and  music,  and  had  a 
remarkable  knowledge  of  contemporary  litera- 
ture. He  had  a  library  of  over  2,000  records  of 
classical  music.  With  his  wit  and  his  expansive 
personality,  he  was  a  charming  and  thoughtful 
host,  and  an  invitation  to  his  home  was  not  to  be 
missed.  In  1970  he  married  Sheila  Glennis, 
daughter  of  Richard  Howarth,  accountant,  after  a 
whirlwind  courtship  while  he  was  a  junior  doctor 
at  the  Hospital  for  Sick  Children,  Great  Ormond 
Street.  She  brought  love  and  security  to  his  life 
and,  while  carving  out  a  distinguished  medical 
career  for  herself,  was  able  to  give  him  an  elegant 
and  happy  home.  There  were  no  children.  McEl- 
wain died  at  his  home  in  Clapham,  26  November 
1990. 

[British  Medical  Journal,  vol.  cccii,  5  January  1991; 
Lancet,  8  December  1990;  British  Journal  of  Cancer,  vol. 
lxiii,  1991;  personal  knowledge.]  J.  S.  Malpas 

MACFARLANE,  (Robert)  Gwyn  (1907- 1987), 
medical  scientist,  was  born  26  June  1907  in 
Worthing,  Sussex,  the  only  child  of  Robert  Gray 
Macfarlane,  manager  of  the  Siamese  branch  of 
the  Bombay  and  Burma  Trading  Corporation  in 
Bangkok,  and  his  wife  Eileen  Montagu,  daughter 
of  the  Revd  Lancelot  Sanderson,  a  schoolmaster 
at  Harrow.  Gwyn's  father  died  of  rabies  in 
Bangkok  soon  after  his  marriage  and  before  his 
son's  birth,  and  as  a  baby  and  child  Gwyn  was 
brought  up  by  his  mother,  who  never  remarried, 
grandmother,  and  nanny.  Quite  early  in  life  he 
showed  unusual  interest  in  mechanical  things, 
and  at  Cheltenham  College  he  showed  promise  in 
mathematics  and  science  and  aimed  to  make  a 
career  in  engineering.  At  the  age  of  nineteen, 
however,  he  entered  St  Bartholomew's  Hospital 
Medical  College  and  qualified  MRCS,  LRCP 
and  MB,  BS  (Lond.)  in  1933. 

While  a  student  he  showed  a  preference  for 
laboratory  work  and  began  to  investigate  the 
clotting  (coagulation)  of  blood.  Macfarlane  had 
become  impressed  with  the  tragedy  of  the  bleed- 
ing disorder  haemophilia,  the  cause  of  which  was 
not  understood.  It  was  known,  however,  that  the 
venom  of  certain  snakes  would  promote  coagula- 
tion and  Macfarlane  wondered  whether  snake 
venom  could  be  used  therapeutically.  With  the 
help  of  the  London  zoo,  venom  was  collected 
from  several  species:  that  of  the  Russell's  viper 


was  found  to  be  most  effective,  not  only  in 
laboratory  tests,  but  also  when  applied  to  the 
bleeding  site  in  haemophiliacs.  This  was  the  start 
of  Macfarlane's  lifelong  research  into  coagulation 
and  the  mechanisms  of  haemorrhage  in  haemo- 
philia and  other  bleeding  disorders,  research  that 
led  to  an  international  reputation  and  his  recog- 
nition as  the  British  expert  in  the  field.  Soon  he 
realized  that  to  understand  the  mechanisms  of 
haemorrhage  in  disease  it  was  essential  to  find 
out  as  much  as  possible  about  the  mechanisms  by 
which  haemorrhage  from  small  wounds  ceased 
spontaneously  in  a  healthy  person.  This  enquiry 
resulted  in  his  thesis  for  the  degree  of  MD 
(London),  for  which  he  received  a  gold  medal  in 
1938. 

In  1936  Macfarlane  moved  to  the  newly 
founded  British  postgraduate  medical  school  at 
Hammersmith  Hospital  to  become  assistant  lec- 
turer in  clinical  pathology,  under  the  director- 
ship of  (Dame)  Janet  Vaughan.  At  the  BPMS  he 
developed  his  work  on  coagulation  and  assisted 
Janet  Vaughan  in  her  pioneering  work  in  organ- 
izing blood  banking  in  anticipation  of  war. 

Early  in  1939  Macfarlane  left  the  BPMS  to 
undertake  work  on  bacterial  toxins  at  the  Well- 
come research  laboratories.  In  1940  he  was 
appointed  clinical  pathologist  at  the  Radcliffe 
Infirmary,  Oxford,  where  he  remained  until  his 
retirement  in  1967,  except  for  a  period  in  1944-5, 
when  he  was  seconded  by  the  Medical  Research 
Council  to  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps,  with 
the  rank  of  major,  to  undertake  research  into  gas 
gangrene  in  battle  casualties.  After  the  war  he 
continued  his  pioneering  researches  on  coagula- 
tion and  haemophilia,  and  the  possibility  of  its 
treatment  by  extracts  derived  from  normal  blood. 
The  success  of  these  endeavours  attracted  to  the 
Radcliffe  Infirmary,  and  later  to  the  Churchill 
Hospital  (both  in  Oxford),  a  stream  of  assistants, 
who  eventually  disseminated  his  knowledge  and 
expertise  throughout  the  world. 

His  achievements  were  recognized  by  a  suc- 
cession of  honours:  he  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  in  1956  and  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  in  i960.  In  1959  he  was  appointed 
director  of  a  newly  established  MRC  Blood 
Coagulation  Research  Unit,  and  in  1964  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  haematology  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford  (having  become  a  lecturer  in 
1948  and  a  reader  in  1957).  In  1963  he  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  All  Souls  College  and  in  1964 
appointed  CBE.  He  became  president  of  the 
Haemophilia  Society  in  1982,  in  recognition  of 
his  unique  contribution  to  the  welfare  of  hae- 
mophiliacs. 

He  was  the  author  of  about  140  scientific 
papers  and  chapters  in  books  and  wrote,  with  his 
long-standing  collaborator  Dr  Rosemary  Biggs,  a 
major  book  entitled  Human  Blood  Coagulation 
and  its  Disorders  (1953);  he  also  co-edited  several 


272 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Macintosh 


other  important  books.  After  his  retirement  he 
wrote  two  notable  biographies,  Howard  Florey, 
the  Making  of  a  Great  Scientist  (1979)  and  Alex- 
ander Fleming,  the  Man  and  the  Myth  (1984). 

Macfarlane  was  of  medium  height  and  build, 
with  pleasant  features  and  a  ready  smile.  He 
dressed  somewhat  informally.  He  had  a  brilliant 
intellect  and  was  modest,  kind  and  sensitive, 
witty  and  humorous,  and  a  great  raconteur.  His 
early  interest  in  mechanical  things  led  him  to 
devise  a  prototype  machine  for  the  mechanical 
counting  of  blood  cells  and,  outside  the  labo- 
ratory, to  the  driving  of  fast  cars.  He  was  also  a 
keen  yachtsman. 

Macfarlane  married  in  1936  Hilary  Carson, 
also  at  the  time  a  newly  qualified  doctor.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  Harry  Arthur  Hamilton  Carson, 
author  of  several  standard  surgical  textbooks. 
They  had  four  sons  and  one  daughter  and 
enjoyed  a  long  and  happy  life  together.  When  at 
Oxford  they  lived  for  most  of  the  time  at 
Downhill  Farm,  a  farmhouse  near  Witney,  sur- 
rounded by  farm  animals  and  usually  with  an 
added  complement  of  friends.  Hilary  Macfarlane 
practised  as  a  Witney  general  practitioner.  After 
retirement  they  moved  first  to  a  cottage  in 
Ramsden,  a  nearby  Cotswold  village,  which  they 
rebuilt,  and  ultimately  in  1977  to  a  derelict 
crofter's  cottage  in  Wester  Ross,  Scotland,  which 
again  they  did  much  to  restore  with  their  own 
hands.  There  Macfarlane  died  26  March  1987,  of 
cardiac  ischaemia. 

[G.  V.  R.  Born  and  D.  J.  Weatherall  in  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxv,  1990; 
Alastair  Robb-Smith's  address  at  a  service  of  thanksgiv- 
ing, 9  June  1987;  personal  knowledge.]     John  Dacie 

McINTIRE,  (Heather  Mabel)  Jane  (1928- 
1990),  writer  on  cookery.  [See  Grigson, 
(Heather  Mabel)  Jane.] 

MACINTOSH,  Sir  Robert  Reynolds  (1897- 
1989),  professor  of  anaesthetics  at  the  University 
of  Oxford,  was  born  17  October  1897  in  Timaru, 
New  Zealand.  Christened  Rewi  Rawhiti  (Maori 
names  being  popular  at  the  time),  he  was  the 
youngest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  one 
daughter  of  Charles  Nicholson  Macintosh,  news- 
paper editor,  businessman,  farmer,  and  mayor  of 
Timaru  in  1901,  and  his  wife,  Lydia  Beatrice 
Thompson.  He  spent  part  of  his  childhood  in 
Argentina,  but  returned  to  New  Zealand  when 
he  was  thirteen  years  old.  He  was  educated  at 
\\  aitaki  Boys'  High  School  in  the  South  Island, 
where  he  shone  academically  and  athletically  and 
was  head  of  school.  In  December  191 5  he  trav- 
elled to  Britain  and  was  commissioned  in  the 
Royal  Scots  Fusiliers.  After  a  short  period  in 
France  he  was  transferred  to  the  Royal  Flying 
Corps,  for  which  he  had  originally  volunteered. 
He  was  mentioned  in  dispatches,  but  was  shot 
down  behind  enemy  lines  on  26  May  1917  and 


taken  prisoner.  There  followed  a  remarkable 
series  of  attempted  escapes  from  various  pris- 
oner-of-war camps,  which  have  been  docu- 
mented in  H.  E.  Hervey's  Cage-Birds  (1940). 

After  the  war  Macintosh  entered  Guy's  Hos- 
pital medical  school,  qualifying  MRCS,  LRCP  in 
1924.  Whilst  working  for  the  FRCS  (Edin.), 
which  he  obtained  in  1927,  he  undertook  anaes- 
thetic sessions  in  Guy's  dental  school.  His  skills 
were  soon  recognized  and  within  a  few  years  he 
had  built  up  a  large  West  End  dental  anaesthetic 
practice. 

In  February  1937  Macintosh  was  appointed  to 
the  first  Nuffield  chair  of  anaesthetics  in  Oxford 
and  was  awarded  the  DM  (Oxon.).  Since  he  had 
never  received  any  formal  academic  training  in 
anaesthesia,  he  spent  some  months  visiting  other 
departments,  including  that  run  by  the  only 
other  professor  of  anaesthesia,  Ralph  Waters,  in 
Madison,  Wisconsin.  Later  in  1937  he  anaes- 
thetized for  an  American  plastic  surgeon  who 
had  volunteered  to  treat  the  wounded  in  the 
Spanish  civil  war.  The  experience  of  working 
under  wartime  conditions  with  very  primitive 
equipment  convinced  Macintosh  that  there  was  a 
need  for  a  simple,  portable  vaporizer,  which 
would  deliver  known  concentrations  of  ether 
when  used  under  field  conditions.  When  he 
returned  to  Oxford  he  invoked  the  aid  of  physi- 
cists in  the  Clarendon  Laboratory,  who  produced 
the  prototype  Oxford  vaporizer  no.  I.  Between 
1 94 1  and  1945  several  thousand  vaporizers  were 
produced  in  the  Morris  car  factory  in  Cowley, 
many  being  used  in  the  armed  services  and,  later, 
in  underdeveloped  countries.  More  sophisticated 
vaporizers  and  other  items  of  equipment  (such  as 
the  Macintosh  laryngoscope)  were  subsequently 
developed  and  these,  together  with  the  superbly 
illustrated  textbooks  written  by  Macintosh  and 
other  members  of  department,  had  a  major 
impact  on  the  practice  of  anaesthesia. 

During  World  War  II  Macintosh  became  an 
air  commodore  in  the  Royal  Air  Force  in  194 1, 
with  responsibility  for  the  anaesthetic  services, 
but  he  retained  his  Oxford  connections.  The 
department  provided  training  courses  for  many 
anaesthetists  from  the  armed  services  and  else- 
where, and  was  also  deeply  involved  in  hazardous 
physiological  research  into  the  provision  of  res- 
pirable  atmospheres  in  submarines,  survival  dur- 
ing parachute  descent  from  high  altitudes,  and 
the  evaluation  of  life-jackets,  using  an  anaes- 
thetized volunteer  submerged  in  a  swimming- 
pool. 

Macintosh's  modesty  and  keen  interest  in  his 
staff  induced  great  personal  loyalty.  He  delighted 
in  his  fellowship  of  Pembroke  College  (from 
1937)  and  supported  the  college  generously,  later 
being  made  an  honorary  fellow  (1965).  He  had 
great  personal  courage  and  did  not  hesitate  to 


273 


Macintosh 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


confront  his  colleagues  over  a  matter  of  principle. 
He  was  one  of  the  first  to  press  for  enquiries 
into  the  causes  of  death  under  anaesthesia  and 
later  travelled  the  world  demonstrating  simple, 
but  safe,  anaesthetic  techniques.  These  tours 
resulted  in  his  acquisition  of  a  vast  circle  of 
friends,  who  regularly  made  the  pilgrimage  to 
Oxford. 

He  was  knighted  in  1955,  and  received  many 
other  distinctions,  including  honorary  doctorates 
from  the  universities  of  Buenos  Aires  (1950), 
Aix-Marseilles  (1952),  Wales  (1962),  Poznan 
(1968),  and  the  Medical  College  of  Ohio  (1977), 
and  honorary  fellowships  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Medicine  (1966),  the  Royal  College  of  Obste- 
tricians and  Gynaecologists  (1973),  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  (1989),  and  three  faculties  of 
anaesthesia.  He  retired  in  1965. 

He  was  a  skilled  boxer  in  his  youth,  continued 
to  take  a  keen  interest  in  sport  throughout  his 
life,  and  remained  very  active  in  retirement.  He 
was  of  average  height  and  had  a  rubicund  com- 
plexion and  suntanned  bald  pate.  He  wore  thick 
spectacles  and  had  a  soft  voice.  He  rarely  talked 
about  himself,  but  interrogated  dining  com- 
panions kindly,  if  somewhat  relentlessly.  In  1925 
he  married  Rosa  Emily  May,  daughter  of  Ernest 
William  Medway  Henderson,  builder;  they  had 
no  children  and  Rosa  died  in  1956.  In  1962 
Macintosh  married  Ann  Francis,  daughter  of 
Robert  William  Manning,  an  army  officer.  She 
had  two  sons  by  a  previous  marriage  to  Dennis 
Vincent  Wilson  Francis,  who  was  employed  in 
the  motor  industry.  Macintosh  suffered  a  fall 
whilst  walking  his  dog  and  died  in  the  Radcliffe 
Infirmary,  Oxford,  28  August  1989. 

[H.  E.  Hervey,  Cage-Birds,  1940;  Jennifer  Beinart,  A 
History  of  the  Nuffield  Department  of  Anaesthetics, 
Oxford,  /gjy-ig8/,  1987;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Keith  Sykes 

McKEOWN,  Thomas  (1912-1988),  professor  of 
social  medicine  at  the  University  of  Birmingham, 
was  born  2  November  191 2  in  Portadown, 
Northern  Ireland,  the  third  in  the  family  of  three 
sons  and  one  daughter  of  William  McKeown, 
preacher,  builder,  and  officer  in  the  Salvation 
Army,  and  his  wife,  Matilda  Duff,  also  a  Salva- 
tion Army  officer.  The  family  later  moved  to 
Vancouver,  Canada.  McKeown  was  educated  in 
Vancouver  at  Burnaby  South  High  School.  He 
went  to  the  University  of  British  Columbia, 
obtaining  a  first-class  degree  in  chemistry  (1932) 
at  the  age  of  nineteen.  He  then  obtained  a 
national  research  scholarship  to  McGill  Uni- 
versity and  a  first  doctorate  (1935)  at  the  age  of 
twenty-two.  He  proceeded  to  Trinity  College, 
Oxford,  as  a  Rhodes  scholar,  gaining  his  D.Phil, 
in  1938.  He  became  Poulton  research  scholar  and 
demonstrator  in  physiology  at  Guy's  Hospital 
medical  school,  carrying  out  research  in  endocri- 


nology. He  achieved  his  MB,  BS  in  1942,  and 
then  was  engaged  for  a  while  during  World  War 
II  under  Solly  (later  Baron)  Zuckerman,  on 
behalf  of  the  Ministry  of  Home  Security,  inves- 
tigating the  effects  of  bombing. 

In  1945  he  was  appointed  to  the  new  chair 
of  social  medicine  at  Birmingham  University, 
where  he  remained  until  his  retirement  in  1977, 
acting  as  the  university's  pro-vice-chancellor  in 
I974_7-  He  was  awarded  a  Birmingham  MD  in 
1947  and  became  a  member  (1952)  and  then  a 
fellow  (1958)  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians 
of  London.  From  1950  to  1958  he  was  joint 
editor  of  the  British  Journal  of  Preventive  and 
Social  Medicine.  He  was  the  author  of  many 
scientific  papers,  which  applied  the  broadening 
discipline  of  epidemiology  to  chronic  as  well  as 
infective  disease,  the  physiology  and  pathology  of 
growth,  nutrition  and  development,  the  growth 
of  populations,  and  the  evaluation  and  planning 
of  health  services.  It  was  in  this  last  field  that  he 
made  his  chief  mark,  forcing  a  realistic  reap- 
praisal of  the  origins  of  health  improvements.  He 
challenged  the  belief  of  many  doctors  that  health 
changes,  and  the  reductions  in  mortality  during 
the  previous  century,  had  sprung  from  clinical 
practice,  saying  that  rather  they  were  due  to 
social,  economic,  public-health-engineering,  and 
dietary  improvements.  These  ideas  were  devel- 
oped with  colleagues  over  a  period  of  many  years 
and  gave  rise  to  papers  written  jointly  with  R.  G. 
Brown  ('Medical  Evidence  Related  to  English 
Population  Changes  in  the  Eighteenth  Century', 
Population  Studies,  vol.  ix,  1955)  and  with  R.  G. 
Brown  and  R.  G.  Record  ('An  Interpretation  of 
the  Modern  Rise  of  Population  in  Europe', 
Population  Studies,  vol.  xxvii,  1972).  These  analy- 
ses eventually  found  a  unified  expression  in 
McKeown's  books.  It  was  to  the  benefit  and 
credit  of  medicine  that  this  reappraisal  should 
come  from  within  the  discipline  rather  than  from 
outside.  The  social  medicine  movement  (of 
which  he  was  a  founder),  and  the  application  of 
scientific  analysis  to  health-care  planning  (of 
which  he  was  the  leading  exponent),  led  the  way 
to  changes  in  public  health  practice  in  Britain 
and  elsewhere.  His  books  included  An  Introduc- 
tion to  Social  Medicine  (1966,  jointly  with  C.  R. 
Lowe),  The  Modern  Rise  of  Population  (1976), 
and  The  Role  of  Medicine  (1979). 

His  reformulation  of  the  role  of  medicine  was 
often  treated  with  suspicion,  enmity,  and  mis- 
representation. These  ideas  were  too  heretical, 
competing  over-forcefully  with  fixed  attitudes  to 
planning,  and  with  traditional  pathways  towards 
administrative  power  and  professional  status- 
building.  It  was  therefore  understandable  if  it 
took  the  medical  and  political  worlds  some  time 
to  catch  up,  and  if  they  never  quite  made  it.  Yet, 
by  the  time  he  retired,  McKeown  was  not  so  far 


274 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Maclean 


in  advance  as  to  justify  the  disgraceful  denial  of 
civil  honours.  He  became  honorary  FFCM  (Ire- 
land, 1980)  and  honorary  FACP  (1982),  and  was 
given  an  honorary  D.Sc.  bv  McGill  University 
(1081). 

McKeown  was  a  gifted  writer,  and  a  polished 
and  incisive  speaker.  He  was  an  impressive 
lecturer,  tall,  slim,  and  good-looking,  and  he  was 
always  so  much  in  command  of  his  subject  that 
he  would  never  refer  to  notes.  His  interests 
covered  walking,  music,  opera,  and  literature, 
and  he  had  a  special  love  of  poetry,  wine,  and 
English  puddings.  In  1040  he  married  Esme  Joan 
Bryan,  daughter  of  Thomas  William  Widdow- 
son,  a  London  dentist.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  McKeown  died  from  cancer  13  June 
1088  in  Birmingham. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  G.  Knox 


MACLEAN,  Alistair  Stuart  (1922-1987),  nov- 
elist, was  born  21  April  1922  in  Shettleston, 
Glasgow,  the  third  of  four  sons  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  the  Revd  Alistair  Maclean,  Church 
of  Scotland  minister,  of  Glasgow  and  Daviot 
(Inverness),  and  his  wife  Mary,  daughter  of 
Archie  Lamont,  warehouseman,  of  Possil  Park, 
Glasgow.  He  spent  the  first  fourteen  years  of  his 
life  in  the  Highland  districts  of  Daviot  and 
Dunlichty,  where  his  father  was  ministering.  At 
home  in  the  manse  only  Gaelic  was  spoken,  a 
curious  restriction  when  the  father  both  wrote 
and  delivered  the  English  language  with  a  fine 
eloquence  and  must  have  known  that  his  children 
would  require  it  later  in  life.  Maclean  was 
educated  at  Daviot  School,  Inverness  Royal 
Academy,  Hillhead  High  School  in  Glasgow,  and 
Glasgow  University,  from  which  he  graduated 
MA  in  1950.  In  1983  he  was  awarded  an  hon- 
orary D.Litt.  by  Glasgow  University.  He  served 
in  the  Royal  Navy  from  1941  to  1946,  much  of 
the  time  as  a  leading  torpedo  operator  on  HMS 
Royalist,  on  the  notorious  Russian  convoys  to 
Murmansk. 

From  1946  until  1956  he  taught  English, 
history,  and  geography  at  Gallowflat  School, 
Rutherglen,  Glasgow.  After  winning  a  short- 
story  competition  run  by  the  Glasgow  Herald  he 
came  to  the  attention  of  Ian  Chapman,  who 
worked  at  Collins  publishers.  Chapman  per- 
suaded him  to  write  HMS  Ulysses,  which  was 
published  in  October  1955.  It  was  an  instant  best 
seller,  with  250,000  copies  sold  in  the  first  six 
months.  HMS  Ulysses  was  a  Book  Society  choice, 
as  was  Ice  Station  Zebra  (1963);  they  were  fol- 
lowed by  The  Guns  ofNavarone  (1957).  Maclean 
then  left  his  native  Scotland  and  became  a  tax 
exile  in  Switzerland.  In  his  subsequent  nomadic 
life,  he  moved  back  to  England  and  then  to  the 


South  of  France,  California,  and  Yugoslavia. 
During  these  years  he  completed  a  total  of  thirty- 
two  books,  of  which  twenty-six  were  novels;  they 
brought  him  gross  earnings  of  around  £20  mil- 
lion. Many  of  the  books  became  films:  The  Guns 
of  Navarone  (1961),  Ice  Station  Zebra  (1968), 
Where  Eagles  Dare  (1969),  and  When  Eight  Bells 
Toll  (1971).  The  books  were  fast-moving  thrill- 
ers, without  great  literary  stature.  Women  rarely 
featured  in  them. 

Maclean  was  of  spare  build  and  about  five  feet 
seven  inches  tall.  He  had  sleek  dark  hair,  with  a 
middle  parting:  he  was  not  unattractive,  but  was 
not  an  imposing  figure.  He  had  a  thick  Scottish 
Highland  accent,  which  at  times  made  him 
difficult  to  understand.  He  was  highly  intelligent, 
with  a  fascination  for  medical  science  in  general 
and  cancer  research  in  particular.  His  life  was 
greatly  influenced  by  the  early  death  of  his 
brother,  Lachlan,  while  a  twenty-one-year-old 
medical  student  at  Glasgow  University.  He  was  a 
very  complex  character,  full  of  inhibitions  and 
strange  moods,  with  a  wry  sense  of  humour, 
which  only  appeared  when  he  was  relaxed  in  the 
company  of  friends.  He  was  introverted  and  shy 
and,  although  his  behaviour  could  be  boorish,  he 
was  extremely  generous,  not  only  with  his  mate- 
rial possessions  but  in  his  willingness  to  encour- 
age and  help  other  writers  in  their  careers.  His 
charitable  acts  were  never  flamboyant  or  publi- 
cized. 

On  2  July  1953  he  married  Gisela  Heinrich- 
sen,  of  Schleswig-Holstein,  Germany.  They  had 
two  sons  of  their  own  and  adopted  a  third. 
Whether  it  was  because,  as  a  very  shy  and  guilt- 
ridden  man,  Maclean  found  his  success  difficult 
to  cope  with  or  because  of  a  growing  drink 
problem,  his  marriage  latterly  was  unhappy,  and 
ended  in  divorce  in  1972.  In  the  same  year  he 
married,  at  Caxton  Hall,  London,  Mary  Marcelle 
Georgius,  daughter  of  Georgius  Guibourg,  a 
well-known  French  music-hall  entertainer.  Mar- 
celle wasted  his  money  on  attempted  film  pro- 
ductions and  other  extravagant  enterprises  and  a 
lifestyle  which  was  in  total  contrast  to  Maclean's 
very  modest  and  unspectacular  way  of  life.  She 
died  of  cancer  in  Los  Angeles  in  1985,  aged  fifty 
and  penniless,  in  spite  of  having  had  a  substantial 
divorce  settlement  in  1977. 

Maclean  died  2  February  1987  at  University 
Hospital,  Munich,  during  a  winter  holiday  with 
his  first  wife,  Gisela,  in  the  Black  Forest.  He  had 
been  controlling  his  hard  drinking  and  his  death 
followed  a  series  of  strokes.  He  lived  the  last 
eight  years  of  his  life  alone  in  a  rented  villa  just 
outside  Dubrovnik,  overlooking  the  Adriatic, 
with  a  view  which  reminded  him  of  his  Scottish 
west-coast  origins.  The  landlord  kept  his  apart- 
ment as  a  shrine  after  his  death,  but  the  type- 
writer, books,  and  other  symbols  of  his  writing 


275 


Maclean 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


den  were  plundered  by  federal  troops  during  the 
break-up  of  Yugoslavia  in  ioqi. 

(Jack  Webster,  Alistair  Maclean,  1991;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Ian  Chapman 

MACMILLAN,  (Maurice)  Harold,  first  Earl 
of  Stockton  (1894- 1986),  prime  minister,  was 
born  10  February  1894  at  Cadogan  Place,  Lon- 
don, the  youngest  of  three  sons  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Maurice  Crawford  Macmillan, 
publisher,  and  his  wife,  Helen  ('Nellie')  Artie, 
only  surviving  daughter  of  Joshua  Tarleton 
Belles,  surgeon,  of  Indianapolis,  and  his  wife, 
Julia  Reid.  Nellie  Belles's  first  husband,  a  young 
painter,  died  in  November  1874,  five  months 
after  their  marriage.  Ten  years  later  she  married 
Maurice  Macmillan,  a  taciturn,  austere  work- 
aholic, who  left  domestic  matters  exclusively  to 
her.  It  has  been  often  said,  not  least  by  Macmil- 
lan himself,  that  he  was  the  grandson  of  a  crofter. 
In  fact  he  was  the  great-grandson;  his  grand- 
father Daniel  left  the  croft  at  the  age  of  eleven 
to  become  a  bookseller's  apprentice  and  to  lay 
the  foundations  of  the  publishing  firm  which 
became  one  of  the  most  prosperous  and  famous 
in  Britain. 

Nellie  Macmillan  was  intensely  and  at  times 
embarrassingly  ambitious  for  her  children.  Nei- 
ther Daniel  ('Dan'),  the  brilliant  donnish  eldest 
son,  nor  Arthur,  the  gentle  self-effacing  second, 
were  suitable  instruments  for  her  purpose.  She 
concentrated  on  Harold,  who  later  wrote:  'I  can 
truthfully  say  that  I  owe  everything  all  through 
my  life  to  my  mother's  devotion  and  support.' 
But  a  price  can  be  paid  for  matriarchal  bossiness. 
Her  constant  vigilance  and  perpetual  interfer- 
ence made  her  in  the  eyes  of  some  members  of 
the  family  'a  fiend'.  Macmillan  himself  told  a 
friend  many  years  later  when  he  was  prime 
minister:  'I  admired  her  but  never  really  liked 
her...  She  dominated  me  and  she  still  dominates 
me.'  One  asset  she  gave  him  was  the  ability  to 
speak  French.  She  had  spent  time  in  Paris  before 
her  marriage,  and  in  London  she  employed 
French  maids  and  insisted  on  her  sons  speaking 
French  at  meals  'downstairs'.  Macmillan  claimed 
that  it  was  to  be  a  help  in  dealing  with  General 
Charles  de  Gaulle.  The  combination  of  a  reclu- 
sive father  and  an  obsessive  mother,  together 
with  two  much  older  and  not  very  sympathetic 
brothers,  resulted  in  a  solitary  life  for  a  small 
boy.  He  found  solace  to  some  extent,  like  Sir 
Winston  *Churchill,  in  the  affection  of  a  devoted 
nanny,  but  he  remained  all  his  life  a  bit  of  a  loner 
who  found  it  hard,  as  did  his  brothers,  to  relate 
at  all  easily  to  his  contemporaries,  to  his  children, 
and  to  women.  He  was  a  shy  and  anxious  child 
who  hated  to  be  conspicuous — curious  charac- 
teristics in  a  future  prime  minister.  To  the  end  of 
his  days  he  remained  intensely  nervous  before 
making  a  speech.  Of  his  famous  'unflappability' 


he  said  that  people  little  knew  how  much  his 
stomach  flapped  on  those  occasions.  He  suffered 
all  his  life  from  sporadic  moods  of  deep  depres- 
sion. He  was  also  a  hypochondriac,  although, 
since  he  lived  to  ninety-two,  his  health  cannot 
have  been  too  bad. 

He  was  educated  at  Summer  Fields,  Oxford, 
in  those  days  a  rather  bleak  factory  programmed 
to  produce  scholars  for  the  leading  public 
schools.  Although  unhappy  there,  he  gained  a 
scholarship  for  Eton,  where  he  was  equally 
unhappy  and  from  which  in  1909  he  was  with- 
drawn early  by  his  parents  on  grounds  of  health. 
Rumours  of  sexual  impropriety  have  no  founda- 
tion. Although  he  habitually  wore  an  Old  Eton- 
ian tie  (that  and  the  Guards'  tie  seemed  in  later 
life  to  be  the  only  ones  he  possessed)  he  had  little 
affection  for  the  place.  He  never  became  a  fellow 
and  seldom  revisited  it. 

To  bridge  the  gap  between  leaving  school 
early  and  the  goal  of  Oxford  set  by  his  parents,  a 
private  tutor  was  needed.  Their  first  choice  was 
Dilwyn  *Knox,  son  of  the  Anglican  bishop  of 
Manchester,  who  proved  cold  and  unsympa- 
thetic; their  second  choice  was  his  brother  'Ron- 
nie' *Knox,  an  Eton  and  Balliol  contemporary  of 
Dan  Macmillan  and  widely  acclaimed  at  twenty- 
two  as  one  of  the  intellectual  stars  of  his  time.  He 
struck  up  a  close  friendship  with  his  sixteen- 
year-old  pupil.  It  was  abruptly  terminated  in 
November  1910  by  Nellie  Macmillan,  who  may 
have  suspected  'inordinate  affection'  and  who 
certainly  from  her  low-church  angle  disliked 
Knox's  Anglo-Catholicism,  which  she  saw, 
rightly  in  this  case,  as  a  stepping-stone  to  that 
arch-bugbear,  'Rome'.  Their  friendship  was, 
however,  renewed  in  1912  at  Oxford,  where 
Macmillan  was  an  exhibitioner  at  Balliol  and 
Knox,  also  a  Balliol  man,  had  just  become 
chaplain  of  Trinity  College.  Knox  had  loved 
Eton  but  was  not  keen  on  Balliol.  Macmillan  was 
exactly  the  opposite.  He  blossomed  as  never 
before  at  that  supremely  elitist  college.  He  was 
secretary  and  then  treasurer  of  the  Oxford 
Union,  and  might  well  have  become  president 
but  for  World  War  I.  He  obtained  a  first  class  in 
classical  honour  moderations  (1914).  He  made  a 
host  of  friends,  and  many  years  later,  when 
chancellor  of  the  university,  would  dwell  with 
nostalgia  on  the  'golden  summer'  of  19 14 — the 
last  summer  that  so  many  of  his  Balliol  com- 
panions were  to  see.  Long  after  19 18,  Oxford  was 
to  him  a  'city  of  ghosts'  and  he  could  not  bear  to 
go  back  in  the  interwar  years.  Pictures  show  him 
at  Oxford  as  a  good-looking,  dark-haired  young 
man.  He  was  tall  and  broad-shouldered.  It  was 
not  till  the  war  that  he  grew  a  bushy  moustache 
which  did  not  improve  his  appearance  but  which 
he  kept  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Although  he  had 
the  looks  often  associated  with  the  Highlanders 


276 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Macmillan 


he  had  no  trace  of  a  Scottish  accent  but  spoke  the 
orthodox  English  of  Eton  and  Oxford. 

On  the  eve  of  war  Macmillan,  along  with 
Knox  and  another  Oxford  friend,  Guy  Law- 
rence, seriously  considered  whether  to  'Pope',  in 
the  jargon  of  their  set.  Lawrence  did  and  Knox 
followed  rather  later,  but  Macmillan,  to  Knox's 
bitter  disappointment,  wrote  in  July  191 5  to  say 
that  he  intended  to  postpone  a  decision  till  after 
the  war  'if  I  am  alive'.  In  the  end  he  resolved  to 
remain  an  Anglican.  He  took  his  religion  very 
seriously  and  continued  to  be  a  devout  high 
churchman  to  the  end  of  his  life.  In  1914  he  was 
commissioned  into  the  King's  Royal  Rifle  Corps, 
but  was  soon  transferred,  thanks  to  wire-pulling 
by  his  mother,  to  the  socially  grander  Grenadier 
Guards.  He  sailed  to  France  in  August  19 15  and 
was  wounded  three  times,  a  bullet  permanently 
damaging  his  right  hand  on  one  occasion.  The 
war  left  him  with  a  limp  handshake,  a  dragging 
gait,  and  sporadic  pain.  Mentally  it  gave  him  a 
deep  sympathy  with  the  largely  working-class 
'other  ranks'  and  strong  antipathy  to  the  'embus- 
ques',  who  held  office  jobs  far  away  from  the 
front. 

Yet,  unlike  so  many  'demobbed'  officers,  he 
was  financially  secure,  with  a  junior  partnership 
in  the  publishing  firm.  Before  taking  it  up  he 
wanted  to  travel.  His  mother  pulled  wires  again 
and  in  19 19  got  him  the  job  of  aide-de-camp 
to  Victor  Christian  William  *Cavendish,  ninth 
Duke  of  Devonshire,  governor-general  of  Can- 
ada. There  he  fell  in  love  with  one  of  the  duke's 
daughters,  Lady  Dorothy  Evelyn  Cavendish,  to 
the  consternation  of  the  formidable  duchess 
('Evie'),  who  had  intended  her  for  the  heir  of  the 
Duke  of  Buccleuch.  On  21  April  1920  they  were 
married,  amid  suitable  pomp  and  circumstance, 
at  St  Margaret's,  Westminster.  The  bride's  side 
was  lined  with  royals  and  peers,  the  bridegroom's 
with  Macmillan  authors,  including  six  OMs.  It 
seems  to  have  been  a  genuine  case  of  love  at  first 
sight  although,  as  Alistair  Home  says  in  the 
official  biography,  it  is  not  clear  'what  exactly  it 
was  that  drew  Dorothy  to  the  earnest  crofter's 
great-grandson,  the  ambitious  middle-class  pub- 
lisher's son,  with  his  shy,  somewhat  stilted  man- 
ners, his  Groucho  moustache,  and  the  shuffling 
walk  that  was  a  legacy  of  his  war  wounds'. 

Macmillan's  life  was  not  entirely  easy.  The 
publishing  firm  was  dominated  by  his  father  and 
his  two  uncles.  He  lived  during  working  days  at 
his  parents'  home  in  Chester  Square  and  on 
weekends  at  Birch  Grove,  the  family  house  in 
Sussex,  which  his  father  intended  to  leave  to 
him,  although  he  was  the  youngest  son.  A  set  of 
rooms  on  the  top  floor  was  kept  for  him  and  for 
his  wife  and  children,  who  lived  there  most  of  the 
while,  apparently  not  disconcerted  by  the  pres- 

Ience  of  the  formidable  American  matriarch, 
though  it  was  hardlv  an  ideal  arrangement.  Nor 


was  he  at  ease  with  the  Cavendish  clan  and  their 
closely  related  Cecil  cousins.  They  called  him 
'the  publisher'  behind  his  back  and  regarded  him 
as  something  of  a  snob.  He  certainly  in  those 
early  days  liked  being  a  duke's  son-in-law.  But  he 
was  bored  by  the  Cavendish  passion  for  horse- 
racing,  and  they  were  bored  by  his  prolixity.  He 
cut  a  slightly  uncomfortable  figure  at  the  vast 
Chatsworth  house  parties  which,  as  Maurice 
Macmillan  told  Alistair  Home,  must  have  been 
'absolute  hell'  for  his  father.  But  he  did  genu- 
inely enjoy  shooting  and  made  himself  into  a 
proficient,  if  slightly  over-dressed,  performer. 

Macmillan,  strongly  encouraged  by  his 
mother,  had  for  some  time  had  parliamentary 
ambitions.  Like  more  than  one  such  aspirant  he 
was  not  quite  sure  which  side  to  join.  He 
admired  David  *Lloyd  George  (later  first  Earl 
Lloyd-George  of  Dwyfor)  but  he  sensed  that  the 
Liberal  party  was  on  its  way  out.  He  stood  as  a 
Conservative  for  Stockton-on-Tees  in  the  elec- 
tion of  1923  and  lost,  but  he  won  a  few  months 
later  in  the  election  of  1924,  which  was  a  Con- 
servative triumph.  His  diffident  electioneering 
was  compensated  for  by  his  wife's  outgoing 
energy.  But  he  made  little  impression  on  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  was  regarded  as  an 
earnest  bore,  destined  at  best  for  some  minor 
office. 

In  1926  Birch  Grove  was  rebuilt  by  Nellie  and 
converted  into  a  vast  neo-Georgian  mansion. 
The  result  was  a  house  that  could  not  be  divided 
and  the  young  couple  had  no  refuge.  This  may 
have  been  a  contributor}  cause  of  marital  dis- 
aster. No  one  can  say  how  far  his  mother's 
dominating  presence  affected  Harold's  relations 
with  Dorothy,  but  in  1929 — a  year  of  calamity 
for  Harold  in  every  respect — she  fell  in  love  with 
Robert  (later  Baron)  *Boothby,  a  reckless,  good- 
looking,  'bounderish'  Conservative  MP.  The 
affair  lasted  in  various  ways  till  she  died  in  1966. 
She  craved  a  divorce,  but  Macmillan,  after  some 
hesitation,  decided  against  it  and  that,  as  the  law 
then  stood,  settled  the  matter.  They  never  sepa- 
rated. She  continued  to  act  as  his  hostess  and 
canvass  at  his  elections.  But  it  was  an  empty  shell 
of  a  marriage.  They  had  three  daughters  and  a 
son,  Maurice,  who  died  in  1984.  Lady  Dorothy 
claimed  that  their  fourth  child,  Sarah,  bom  in 
1930,  was  Boothby's.  But,  although  Boothby 
accepted  responsibility,  he  did  so  with  consider- 
able doubt  and  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  she 
really  was  his  daughter.  Lady  Dorothy's  claim 
may  have  been  a  move  to  persuade  Macmillan  to 
divorce  her.  If  so,  it  did  not  succeed.  Sarah  died 
in  1970. 

The  year  1929  brought  another  disaster.  Mac- 
millan lost  his  seat  at  Stockton  and  with  it  what 
slight  chance  he  might  have  had  of  promotion 
when  the  Conservatives  next  regained  office. 
After  a  brief  flirtation  with  the  'New  Partv'  run 


277 


Macmillan 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


by  Sir  Oswald  *Mosley,  he  was  returned  for 
Stockton  in  the  landslide  election  of  1931. 
Shortly  before  that  he  had  a  serious  nervous 
breakdown,  which  lasted  for  several  months.  He 
embarked  upon  the  uneasy  currents  of  the  1931 
Parliament  in  a  state  of  doubt  and  anxiety,  which 
he  sought  to  alleviate  by  writing  some  dull  quasi 
Keynesian  pamphlets  and  a  book,  The  Middle 
Way  (1938).  Their  dirigiste,  corporatist,  and  col- 
lectivist  tone  seemed  very  un-Conservative  even 
then. 

He  was  again  returned  for  Stockton  in  1935. 
He  supported  Winston  Churchill's  criticisms  of 
defence  policy  and  appeasement  and  signalled  his 
dislike  of  the  government's  foreign  policy  by 
resigning  the  party  whip  when  sanctions  against 
Mussolini  were  lifted  in  1936,  the  only  back- 
bencher to  do  so.  He  was  a  rather  solitary  figure. 
His  father  and  his  two  uncles  died  in  1936  and 
his  mother  in  1937.  He  now  had  far  more 
responsibility  as  a  publisher  and  found  himself  to 
be  a  good  man  of  business.  In  politics  and  private 
life  he  ploughed  a  lonely  furrow.  In  1937  he 
applied  successfully  for  the  Conservative  party 
whip,  in  the  hope  that  the  new  prime  minister, 
Neville  *Chamberlain,  would  impart  drive 
instead  of  drift  to  national  policy.  Chamberlain 
did,  but,  from  Macmillan's  point  of  view,  the 
drive  was  in  the  wrong  direction.  He  was  dis- 
mayed at  the  resignation  of  Anthony  *Eden  (later 
the  first  Earl  of  Avon) — a  heavy  blow  to  the  anti- 
appeasers.  There  were  two  groups,  one  centred 
on  Churchill  and  called  the  'Old  Guard',  the 
other  on  Eden  and  described  by  the  whips  as  the 
'Glamour  Boys'.  Macmillan  joined  the  latter.  On 
terms  of  outward  friendship  with  Churchill,  he 
was  never  a  member  of  his  'court'.  The  presence 
of  Boothby  there  was  one  reason.  Moreover, 
Macmillan  had  disapproved  of  Churchill's  atti- 
tude to  India,  and  with  his  strong  high-church 
views,  disapproved  even  more  strongly  of 
Churchill's  attitude  to  the  abdication  crisis. 
Churchill  never  personally  liked  him. 

The  Munich  agreement  had  an  ambivalent 
effect  of  Macmillan.  He  cheered  in  the  House  of 
Commons  when  Chamberlain  announced  his 
third  visit  to  Hitler,  but  later  took  the  view  that 
Britain  should  have  fought  rather  than  accept 
Hitler's  terms.  He  campaigned  unsuccessfully  in 
the  Oxford  City  by-election  against  Quintin 
Hogg  (later  Baron  Hailsham  of  St  Marylebone), 
and  in  favour  of  the  anti-Munich  candidate  A.  D. 
•Lindsay  (later  first  Baron  Lindsay  of  Birker), 
the  master  of  Balliol.  For  this  rebellion  he 
narrowly  missed  'deselection'  and  expulsion 
from  the  Carlton  Club. 

When  war  came,  Chamberlain  had  to  give 
office  to  Churchill  and  Eden,  but  their  followers 
were  excluded.  Macmillan  was  briefly  involved 
in  a  fact-finding  mission  to  Helsinki  in  January 
1940,  the  idea  being  a  possible  Anglo-French 


expedition  to  help  the  Finns  in  their  war  with  the 
USSR.  Fortunately — though  not  thanks  to  Mac- 
millan— this  insane  project  came  to  nothing;  the 
Finns  had  to  sue  for  peace  before  any  troops 
could  be  sent.  The  fall  of  Chamberlain  in  May 
1940  at  last  brought  Macmillan  some  recogni- 
tion. He  became  parliamentary  under-secretary 
to  the  Ministry  of  Supply  (1940-2).  His  Civil 
Service  private  secretary  was  John  *Wyndham 
(later  first  Baron  Egremont),  who  was  to  be 
closely  associated  with  him  as  aide  and  personal 
friend  till  he  died  in  1972.  In  June  1941  the  first 
Baron  *Beaverbrook  became  minister  of  supply, 
with  quasi-dictatorial  powers.  As  spokesman  in 
the  Commons  Macmillan  moved  up  a  rung  in  the 
ladder.  He  coped  with  his  strange  and  formidable 
chief  both  warily  and  successfully,  laying  on 
flattery,  but  keeping  his  distance,  for  he  knew 
that  Beaverbrook  could  morally  seduce  men  as 
easily  as  he  physically  seduced  women.  To  the 
end  of  Beaverbrook's  life  they  remained  on 
excellent  terms.  In  February  1942  a  reconstruc- 
tion of  the  ministry  suggested  by  Macmillan 
himself  meant  that  Beaverbrook  would  cease  to 
be  represented  by  a  parliamentary  under-secre- 
tary in  the  Commons.  Macmillan  was  shunted 
into  the  Colonial  Office  to  represent  the  first 
Baron  *Moyne  and  then  Viscount  Cranborne 
(later  fifth  Marquess  of  *Salisbury).  It  was,  he 
said,  'like  leaving  a  madhouse  in  order  to  enter  a 
museum'.  But  he  had  the  consolation  of  being 
made  a  privy  councillor  (1942),  in  those  days  a 
rare  honour  for  a  junior  minister. 

In  the  autumn  of  1942  came  the  turning-point 
of  his  career.  Churchill  appointed  him — his 
second  choice — minister  resident  with  cabinet 
rank  at  Allied  Forces  Headquarters  in  Algiers 
(1942-5).  It  was  a  make  or  break  situation.  It 
made  Macmillan.  He  displayed  remarkable  dip- 
lomatic skill  in  dealing  with  such  disparate  char- 
acters as  generals  Eisenhower,  Giraud,  and  de 
Gaulle,  and  with  Robert  Murphy,  his  American 
opposite  number.  He  was  helped  by  his  Amer- 
ican ancestry  and  his  fluency  in  French.  At  the 
Casablanca  conference  shortly  after  his  arrival  he 
acquitted  himself  with  notable  success  and  was 
warmly  congratulated  by  Eden.  This  warmth  was 
not  destined  to  last.  Despite  being  badly  burned 
and  nearly  killed  in  a  plane  accident  soon  after- 
wards, Macmillan  was  able  to  continue  in  his 
important  office,  much  appreciated  by  Churchill, 
till  the  end  of  the  war.  He  was  head  of  the  Allied 
Control  Commission  in  Italy  and  thus  in  effect, 
as  John  Wyndham  described  him,  'viceroy  of  the 
Mediterranean' — a  situation  far  from  palatable  to 
Eden. 

His  next  major  problem  was  Greece,  where 
German  withdrawal  in  October  1944  had  left  a 
situation  of  civil  war  between  the  Greek  commu- 
nists and  the  forces  of  the  centre  and  the  right. 
Macmillan  spent  some  uncomfortable  weeks  dur- 


278 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Macmillan 


ing  the  bitter  winter  of  1044-5  ■  Athens,  where 
the  British  army  of  occupation  was  very  thin  on 
the  ground  and  the  embassy  was  a  beleaguered 
garrison  under  constant  sniper  fire.  In  the  end 
Churchill  and  Eden  made  a  personal  foray; 
despite  the  hostility  of  the  Americans  and  the 
bien  pensant  left-liberal  media  in  England,  the 
communists  were  ousted. 

Then  came  the  highly  controversial  question 
of  the  'repatriation"  of  Soviet  citizens  who  had 
been  captured  by  the  Germans.  To  be  a  prisoner 
at  all  was  unforgivable  by  Stalin,  and  some  of 
them  had  fought  on  the  German  side.  Repatria- 
tion had  been  agreed  at  the  Yalta  conference 
(1045),  but  it  did  not  apply  to  White  Russians, 
who  were  also  involved  but  had  never  been 
Soviet  citizens.  When  the  war  ended  large  num- 
bers of  both  categories  were  in  British  hands  in 
northern  Yugoslavia  and  Austria.  Macmillan  dis- 
cussed the  matter  on  13  May  with  General  Sir 
Charles  *K.eightley,  who  commanded  V  Corps  at 
Klagenfurt.  It  is  clear  that  repatriation  (which 
also  involved  handing  Chetniks  and  Ustasi  over 
to  Tito's  partisan  forces  in  Yugoslavia)  was 
effected  in  deplorable  circumstances  of  force  and 
fraud,  but  there  is  no  evidence  of  a  conspiracy  on 
the  pan  of  Macmillan,  who  had  no  executive 
authority  nor  any  part  in  decisions  taken  at  Yalta 
or  the  orders  for  their  implementation  made  in 
Whitehall.  The  charge  of  being  a  war  criminal, 
made  many  years  later,  haunted  Macmillan  in  his 
old  age,  but  it  was  baseless. 

On  26  May  1945  Macmillan  returned  to  Brit- 
ain. By  now  he  had  made  his  mark.  Churchill 
appointed  him  air  minister  in  the  caretaker 
government,  pending  the  verdict  of  the  general 
election  to  be  announced  on  26  July.  The  result 
was  a  disaster  for  the  Conservatives  and  for 
Macmillan  personally.  The  party  was  defeated  by 
a  huge  majority  and  he  lost  Stockton.  He  might 
have  been  out  of  the  house  for  two  or  three  years 
and  become  a  forgotten  man  but  for  a  lucky 
chance.  The  sitting  member  for  Bromley,  a  safe 
Conservative  seat,  died  just  before  the  election 
figures  were  announced.  Macmillan  was 
promptly  adopted  as  candidate  and  was  back  in 
November  with  a  majority  of  over  5,000. 

For  the  next  six  years  he  devoted  himself  to 
the  postwar  problems  of  publishing  and  the 
opposition  front  bench.  He  had  no  difficulty  in 
holding  his  seat  in  1950  and  195 1.  On  the 
personal  side  he  had  come  to  a  bleak  but  balanced 
modus  vivendi  with  his  wife.  She  continued  to 
support  him  socially  and  politically  but  her 
obsession  with  Boothby  never  waned.  Politically 
Macmillan  was  active  in  trying  to  adapt  the 
Conservative  party  to  the  challenge  of  its  defeat. 
His  theme  was  the  occupation  of  the  'middle 
ground' — a  Conservative  heresy  thirty  years  later 
but  reasonable  at  the  time,  though  it  gave  him  a 
reputation  among  the  right  of  being  a  'neo- 


socialist',  as  Brendan  (later  Viscount)  'Bracken 
described  him.  He  hoped  for  an  alliance  with  the 
Liberals  and  even  toyed  with  proportional  rep- 
resentation. 

In  foreign  policy  he  was  a  'European'  up  to  a 
point.  He  regarded  Clement  (later  first  Earl) 
*Attlee's  refusal  in  June  1950  to  join  the  discus- 
sions of  the  six  European  nations  about  the 
Schuman  plan  as  a  disastrous  error.  But,  like 
Churchill  and  other  prominent  Conservatives,  he 
blew  hot  and  cold.  Although  he  served  for  three 
years  on  the  Council  of  Europe  at  Strasburg,  he 
wrote  in  1949  'the  Empire  must  always  have  first 
preference  for  us.' 

When  Churchill  returned  to  office  with  a 
precarious  majority  in  October  1951  he  offered 
Macmillan  the  ministry  of  housing  and  local 
government.  Macmillan  nearly  refused  and  only 
accepted  with  reluctance.  The  Conservative 
party  conference,  in  a  rush  of  blood  to  its 
collective  head,  had  insisted  on  a  mandate  to 
build  300,000  houses  a  year  compared  with  the 
200,000  or  so  achieved  by  Labour.  The  target 
was  widely  regarded  as  unattainable — or  only 
attainable  at  the  unacceptable  expense  of  indus- 
trial investment  and  infrastructure.  Injecting  into 
the  ministry  something  of  the  hustle  and  bustle 
he  had  experienced  under  Beaverbrook,  Macmil- 
lan reached  the  figure  in  1953.  He  was  helped 
inside  the  ministry  by  Dame  Evelyn  (later 
Baroness)  *Sharp,  the  first  woman  to  become 
a  permanent  under-secretarv ,  outside  it  by  Sir 
Percy  *Mills,  a  Birmingham  businessman. 
Equally  valuable  was  his  junior  minister  Ernest 
(later  Baron)  *Marples,  who  had  also  made  his 
fortune  from  humble  origins,  as  an  engineer  and 
road-builder.  He  introduced  American  principles 
into  the  torpid  British  building  industry,  with 
notable  success.  Macmillan  told  Alistair  Home: 
'Marples  made  me  PM:  I  was  never  heard  of 
before  housing.'  The  critics  were  probably  right 
about  the  damage  done  to  the  balance  of  the 
economy,  but  politically  the  achievement  was  a 
notable  feather  in  the  caps  of  both  the  party  and 
the  minister. 

In  October  1954  there  was  a  cabinet  reshuffle 
and  Macmillan  became  minister  of  defence  for 
five  unhappy  months.  At  housing  Churchill 
backed  him  and  left  him  to  get  on  with  it.  At 
defence  he  did  neither  and  Macmillan  became 
irritated  at  the  ceaseless  flow  of  memoranda  on 
the  most  detailed  topics  from  the  aged  prime 
minister.  Perhaps  this  experience  prompted  him 
to  take  the  lead  in  persuading  Churchill  to  retire 
in  favour  of  Eden.  It  was  high  time,  but  he  was 
never  forgiven  by  Clementine,  Lady  *Churchill, 
who  had  always  mistrusted  him.  Eden  succeeded 
on  5  April  1955,  and  the  ensuing  general  election 
in  May  resulted  in  a  Conservative  majority  of 
fifty-nine.  Macmillan  became  secretary  of  state 
for   foreign   affairs,    the   post   which   he   most 


279 


Macmillan 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


wanted  and  believed  would  be  the  culmination  of 
his  political  career.  He  was  very  much  Eden's 
second  choice.  The  prime  minister  would  have 
preferred  the  fifth  Marquess  of  Salisbury  (the 
former  Viscount — 'Bobbety' — Cranborne),  but 
feared  a  row  about  a  peer  in  this  position — 
unnecessarily,  in  view  of  the  later  appointments 
of  lords  Home  and  Carrington. 

Like  Churchill  over  defence,  Eden  could  not 
keep  his  hands  off  foreign  policy.  At  the  end  of 
the  year  he  used  the  ill  health  of  R.  A.  *Butler 
(later  Baron  Butler  of  Saffron  Walden)  to  move 
him  to  the  leadership  of  the  Commons  and 
replace  him  as  chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  by 
Macmillan,  who  was  replaced  by  Selwyn  *Lloyd 
(later  Baron  Selwyn-Lloyd).  Macmillan  resented 
the  change.  He  had  never  liked  Eden,  nor  Eden 
him.  He  only  introduced  one  budget.  His  more 
radical  proposals  were  vetoed  by  the  prime 
minister.  The  budget  is  mainly  remembered  for 
the  introduction  of  premium  bonds.  The  second 
half  of  1956  was  dominated  by  the  Suez  crisis. 
Macmillan  does  not  come  well  out  of  it.  He  was 
a  leading  'hawk',  and  he  totally  misjudged  the 
American  reaction.  On  25  September  he  had  a 
conversation  with  Eisenhower  at  the  White 
House,  from  which  he  inferred  that  the  Amer- 
ican president  would  support  British  military 
action  against  Gamal  Abdel  Nasser,  the  Egyptian 
leader.  Sir  Roger  Makins  (later  first  Baron  Sher- 
field),  the  British  ambassador,  was  present  and 
took  notes.  He  was  astonished  to  learn  later  that 
Macmillan  had  sent  a  dispatch  to  this  effect  to 
Eden,  for  the  discussion  in  no  way  warranted 
such  a  version  of  the  president's  attitude.  But  the 
report  inevitably  reinforced  Eden's  already  erro- 
neous view  of  the  American  reaction. 

Macmillan's  second  major  error  was  one  of 
omission.  The  Suez  operation  constituted  an 
obvious  risk  to  sterling.  He  took  no  precautions 
and  failed  to  do  what  the  French  did,  draw  out  a 
tranche  of  funds  from  the  International  Mone- 
tary Fund  well  in  advance  of  the  invasion.  The 
ensuing  run  on  the  pound  was  exactly  what  a 
chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  might  have  antici- 
pated and  avoided.  Instead  he  panicked  and  with 
all  his  power  pressed  the  case  for  withdrawal. 
'First  in,  first  out,'  was  the  justified  jibe  from 
Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx). 
Macmillan  was  unhappy  about  his  role  for  ever 
afterwards.  It  was,  he  said,  'a  very  bad  episode  in 
my  life'. 

Credulous  adherents  of  the  conspiracy  theory 
of  history  have  seen  in  Macmillan's  conduct  a 
plot  to  oust  and  replace  Eden.  There  is  no 
evidence  at  all  for  this  implausible  theory.  Eden 
resigned  on  9  January  1957  on  genuine  grounds 
of  health.  He  made  no  recommendation  to  the 
queen  about  his  successor,  merely  advising  her 
private  secretary  to  consult  Lord  Salisbury  as  a 
senior  peer  who  could  not  be  a  runner  himself. 


He  and  the  lord  chancellor  interviewed  each 
member  of  the  cabinet  separately  and  took 
slightly  perfunctory  soundings  in  the  parliamen- 
tary party  and  the  National  Union.  The  result 
was  a  strong  preference  for  Macmillan  rather 
than  Butler,  whose  attitude  over  Suez  had  been 
ambivalent,  indecisive,  and  obscure.  Macmillan 
was  appointed  by  the  queen  at  2  p.m.  next  day. 

The  outlook  for  the  Conservative  party  could 
hardly  have  been  bleaker.  Suez  had  been  a  fiasco 
and  it  looked  as  if  Labour  would  have  a  walk- 
over at  the  next  general  election.  Macmillan 
transformed  the  situation.  He  soon  dominated 
the  House  of  Commons  and  his  apparent  con- 
fidence radiated  out  to  the  electorate.  He  also 
dominated  his  party,  taking  in  his  stride  the 
resignation  of  Lord  Salisbury  over  the  release  of 
Archbishop  *Makarios  in  March  1957,  and  the 
resignations  of  Peter  (later  Baron)  Thorney- 
croft,  Enoch  Powell,  and  Nigel  *Birch  (later 
Baron  Rhyl) — the  whole  Treasury  'team' — nine 
months  later  in  protest  against  his  refusal  to 
accept  expenditure  cuts  of  £50  million  in  the 
next  budget.  On  the  eve  of  his  departure  on  a 
Commonwealth  tour  he  dismissed  the  resigna- 
tions as  'little  local  difficulties'.  Meanwhile  he 
had  mended  fences  with  Eisenhower  and,  in  the 
1958  crisis  involving  Iraq,  Jordan,  and  Lebanon, 
the  USA  and  Britain  acted  in  harmony.  Despite 
some  awkward  negotiations  with  the  trade 
unions,  he  approached  the  election  of  1959  at  the 
head  of  a  party  in  far  better  shape  than  in  1957. 
His  ebullient  behaviour  caused  the  cartoonist 
*'Vicky'  to  depict  him  ironically  as  'Supermac'. 
The  joke  backfired  and  made  him  in  Home's 
words  'something  of  a  folk  hero'.  He  was  accused 
by  many  moralists  of  excessive  'materialism'.  A 
famous  phrase  which  he  used — 'most  of  our 
people  have  never  had  it  so  good' — was 
wrenched  out  of  its  context,  which  was  a  warning 
against  rising  prices  and  contained  a  forgotten 
qualification:  'Is  it  too  good  to  be  true?'  On 
the  foreign  and  colonial  front  there  were  diffi- 
culties— Cyprus,  the  Hola  incident  in  Kenya, 
and  other  episodes.  But  Macmillan  kept  calm, 
plumped  for  autumn  1959  rather  than  spring  for 
the  election,  and  won  easily,  almost  doubling  the 
majority  he  had  inherited  from  Eden. 

His  premiership  lasted  for  another  four  years. 
But  after  the  major  triumph  of  the  general 
election  and  the  minor  one  of  defeating  Sir 
Oliver  (later  Baron)  Franks  in  i960  for  the 
chancellorship  of  Oxford  University,  the  tale  is 
anything  but  a  success  story.  It  is  clear  now — and 
many  people  thought  so  then — that  he  spent  too 
much  time  on  foreign  and  post-colonial  affairs, 
and  too  little  on  matters  at  home.  These  years 
were  the  period  when  France  and  Germany 
caught  up  and  surpassed  Britain  in  terms  of 
economic  success.  The  major  British  problems — 


280 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Macmillan 


trade-union  power  and  chronic  inflation — were 
never  recognized  by  Macmillan,  who  was  not 
helped  by  two  singularly  mediocre  chancellors  of 
the  Exchequer,  nor  by  the  expansionist  advice  of 
his  economic  guru,  Sir  Roy  *Harrod.  When 
unemployment  rose  from  500,000  to  800,000 
Macmillan,  obsessed  by  his  memories  of  Stock- 
ton-on-Tees in  the  1930s,  was  horrified. 
Attempts  at  an  'incomes  policy'  flopped  as  they 
always  have.  No  serious  effort  was  made  to 
amend  trade-union  legislation.  In  July  1962 
Macmillan  got  rid  of  his  second  chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer,  Selwyn  Lloyd,  but  made  the  major 
error  of  combining  his  dismissal  with  a  recon- 
struction of  the  government,  which  involved 
sacking  a  third  of  the  cabinet.  It  looked  like  panic 
and  probably  was.  His  prestige  never  recovered. 
He  was  not  helped  by  the  general  anti-establish- 
ment sentiment  that  dominated  the  early  1960s. 
It  was  not  exactly  pro-Labour,  but  it  was  cer- 
tainly anti-Conservative. 

In  external  affairs  Macmillan  achieved  a  cer- 
tain reclame  in  'liberal'  circles  by  his  speech  at 
Cape  Town  in  i960,  on  Monday  3  February, 
warning  of  the  'wind  of  change'  which  was 
blowing  through  Africa.  To  the  Tory  right  it  was 
anathema — 'Black  Monday' — and  led  to  the  for- 
mation of  the  Monday  Club.  Macmillan  was  of 
course  correct  about  the  strength  of  African 
nationalism,  which  was  affecting  the  Central 
African  Federation  of  the  two  Rhodesias  and 
Nyasaland  (later  Zimbabwe,  Zambia,  and 
Malawi).  The  Federation  had  to  be  dissolved  but 
the  labyrinthine  and  disingenuous  process  won 
few  friends  even  among  the  Africans  and  bitterly 
alienated  its  prime  minister,  Sir  Roy  Welensky, 
and  his  white  supporters.  They  felt  they  had 
been  double-crossed. 

Macmillan  was  determined  to  keep  in  with 
America.  He  played  the  card  of  his  American 
ancestry  for  all  it  was  worth.  The  Cavendishes 
were  related  by  marriage  to  the  Kennedys,  and 
the  president  genuinely  admired  the  wit  and 
wisdom  of  the  older  man.  During  the  Cuban 
crisis  of  1962  he  kept  in  touch  with  Macmillan 
more  closely  than  with  any  other  European 
leader,  but  there  is  no  evidence  to  suggest  that 
the  prime  minister  gave  any  advice  which 
affected  the  course  of  events.  He  did,  however, 
extract  from  Kennedy  some  concessions  about 
the  British  independent  nuclear  deterrent,  and 
the  president  paid  full  tribute  to  Macmillan  for 
his  part  in  negotiating  the  Atmospheric  Test  Ban 
treaty  with  the  USSR  on  5  August  1963.  Mac- 
millan came  to  regard  this  as  one  of  the  principal 
achievements  of  his  premiership. 

But  long  before  that  he  had  been  in  major 
trouble.  Britain  had  applied  in  July  1961  to 
accede  to  the  Treaty  of  Rome.  From  the  start  it 
was  clear  that  President  de  Gaulle  was  hostile, 
but  it  was  not  clear  that  he  could  carry  France 


with  him  till  the  referendum  on  the  presidency  in 
October  1962,  followed  by  a  sweeping  electoral 
victory  for  his  party  a  month  later.  Despite 
his  earlier  policy — he  had  tried  to  wreck  the 
European  Economic  Community  by  setting  up 
the  European  Free  Trade  Association  in  May 
i960 — Macmillan  now  put  much  political  capital 
into  accession  to  the  EEC.  But  Britain  was 
doomed.  On  29  January  1963  de  Gaulle  delivered 
his  formal  veto.  'All  our  policies  at  home  and 
abroad  are  ruined,'  Macmillan  wrote  in  his 
diary. 

If  that  was  not  enough,  a  series  of  scandals, 
connected  with  espionage,  security,  and  sex, 
erupted,  culminating  with  the  famous  John  Pro- 
fumo  affair  when  the  secretary  of  state  for  war 
denied  in  Parliament  in  March  1963  a  charge  that 
he  had  slept  with  a  woman  who  shared  his 
favours  with  those  of  the  Russian  military  atta- 
che. A  few  weeks  later  Profumo  had  to  retract 
and  resign  from  public  life.  Macmillan  was 
unfairly  criticized  as  gullible  and  out  of  touch. 
Nigel  Birch  made  a  long-remembered  attack, 
quoting  Robert  Browning's  The  Lost  Leader, 
'Never  glad,  confident  morning  again'.  The  gov- 
ernment tottered  but  survived. 

An  election  was  due  at  the  latest  by  autumn 
1964.  Macmillan,  now  nearly  seventy  and  feeling 
none  too  well,  had  to  decide  whether  to  fight  it 
himself  or  pass  the  lead  to  someone  else.  But 
whom?  He  resolved  to  go  ahead.  On  the  eve  of 
the  Conservative  conference  at  Blackpool  he  was 
taken  ill  with  an  inflamed  prostate  gland,  which 
necessitated  an  immediate  operation.  A  prostate 
operation  was  a  relatively  minor  matter  but 
Macmillan,  hypochondriac  as  ever,  convinced 
himself  that  the  malady  was  malignant  and 
decided  to  resign  at  once.  In  fact  it  was  not,  and 
there  was  no  need  to  retire  at  this  singularly 
awkward  political  moment.  He  was  to  regret  his 
decision  for  ever  after. 

When  the  operation  was  over,  it  was  indicated 
that  the  queen  would  welcome  his  advice  about 
the  succession.  He  did  not  have  to  give  it. 
Perhaps  it  would  have  been  better  if  he  had 
politely  declined,  like  Bonar  *Law  in  1923  and 
Eden  in  1957.  But  he  was  determined,  despite 
later  disclaimers,  to  block  the  obvious  heir  pre- 
sumptive, R.  A.  Butler,  whom  he  regarded  as  a 
ditherer.  After  complicated  indirect  consulta- 
tions with  the  cabinet  and  other  elements  of  the 
party — which  have  been  the  subject  of  con- 
troversy ever  since — he  plumped  for  the  four- 
teenth Earl  of  Home  (later  Baron  Home  of  the 
Hirsel)  in  preference  to  his  first  choice,  Quintin 
Hogg,  who  was  then  second  Viscount  Hailsham. 
Both  of  them  had  taken  advantage  of  a  recent  Act 
to  disclaim  their  peerages.  It  was  the  last  occasion 
when  this  informal  and  secretive  system  of  con- 
sultation was  employed. 


281 


Macmillan 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Macmillan  left  the  House  of  Commons  at  the 
election  of  October  1964.  He  declined  for  the 
time  being  the  traditional  earldom  offered  to 
ex-prime  ministers.  He  recommended  a  barony 
for  John  Wyndham  but  took  nothing  for  himself. 
He  did  not  wish  to  damage  the  prospects  of  his 
only  son  Maurice,  now  at  last  a  minister.  He  may 
also  have  dreamed  of  being  recalled  to  office 
himself  in  a  crisis  as  head  of  an  all-party  coali- 
tion. In  1966  his  wife  died.  He  missed  her  despite 
their  latterly  loveless  marriage,  but  the  Chats- 
worth  connection  remained  and  the  reigning 
duke  and  duchess  of  Devonshire  made  ample 
hospitable  amends  for  any  snubs  by  an  earlier 
Cavendish  generation.  Another  consolation  for 
his  rather  lonely  life  in  the  chilly  emptiness 
of  Birch  Grove  was  Garsington  Manor  near 
Oxford,  where  he  often  stayed  with  Sir  John 
•Wheeler-Bennett.  Then  there  was  clubland, 
which  he  regularly  frequented. 

In  the  long  twilight — or  perhaps  Indian  sum- 
mer— of  his  career  his  chancellorship  of  Oxford 
University  (from  i960)  meant  much  to  him.  It 
also  meant  much  to  Oxford.  He  attended  the 
various  occasions — dinners,  centenaries,  laying 
of  foundation  stones,  and  the  like — more  assidu- 
ously than  any  previous  chancellor.  Dons  and 
undergraduates  alike  were  fascinated  by  his 
speeches  and  his  conversation — an  inimitable 
combination  of  wit,  emotion,  and  nostalgia, 
which  made  it  almost  incredible  that  he  had  once 
been  regarded  as  a  parliamentary  bore.  He  trav- 
elled a  good  deal,  especially  in  America,  where  he 
raised  money  for  Oxford.  He  even  paid  a  visit  to 
China,  where  he  was  feted.  He  spent  much  time 
on  his  memoirs  in  six  volumes  (1966-73),  pub- 
lished profitably  by  his  firm,  in  which  he  took  a 
renewed  interest.  They  are  in  places  somewhat 
heavy  going  but  essential  for  historians.  Much 
more  'fun',  to  use  a  favourite  word  of  his,  are  his 
The  Past  Masters  (1974),  a  series  of  political 
sketches  and  reminiscences  from  1906  to  1939, 
and  his  diary  of  his  time  as  minister  resident  in 
the  Middle  East,  War  Diaries:  Politics  and  War 
in  the  Mediterranean  ig^-ig^  (1984).  He  fre- 
quently appeared  on  television,  almost  always 
with  great  success.  In  the  last  ten  years  of  his  life 
he  gave  many  long  interviews  at  Birch  Grove  to 
Alistair  Home,  his  chosen  official  biographer. 
His  relations  with  Margaret  (later  Baroness) 
Thatcher,  who  always  treated  him  with  respect, 
were  ambivalent.  She  sought  and  followed  his 
advice  about  the  Falklands  war  in  1982.  But  he 
had  led  his  party  from  left  of  centre  whereas  she 
did  so  from  the  right.  Towards  the  end  his  coded 
criticism  of  her  economic  policy  was  abundantly 
clear. 

He  changed  his  mind  about  the  peerage  and, 
on  his  ninetieth  birthday  in  1984,  his  acceptance 
of  an  earldom  was  announced.  Maurice  was  very 
ill  (he  died  on  10  March)  and  the  main  reason  for 


refusal  had  gone.  Macmillan  took  the  title  of  Earl 
of  Stockton,  after  his  old  constituency.  By  now 
he  was  almost  blind — a  great  blow  to  such  a 
voracious  reader  though  relieved  by  his  discovery 
of  "talking  books' — and  he  made  his  thirty-two- 
minute  maiden  speech  in  November  without  a 
single  note.  It  was  a  wonderful  performance, 
which  those  who  heard  it  will  never  forget. 

Macmillan's  political  hero  was  Benjamin 
•Disraeli  (first  Earl  of  Beaconsfield),  who  had 
something  of  the  same  mixture  of  wit,  irony, 
cynicism,  romance,  and  sheer  play-acting.  To  the 
end  of  his  days  Macmillan  loved  to  put  on  a 
show.  His  last  performance  was  a  speech  to  the 
Tory  Reform  Group  in  November  1986.  By  now 
well  distanced  from  Margaret  Thatcher  he  com- 
pared privatization  to  'selling  the  family  silver' — 
a  specious  simile  since  the  silver  was,  after  all, 
being  sold  to  the  family.  It  is  arguable  whether 
Disraeli  was  a  great  prime  minister,  but  he  was 
certainly  a  great  character.  The  same  can  be  said 
of  Harold  Macmillan. 

Macmillan  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  in 
1942  and  admitted  to  the  Order  of  Merit  in  1976. 
He  became  an  honorary  fellow  of  Balliol  (1957), 
honorary  DCL  of  Oxford  (1958),  and  honorary 
LL  D  of  Cambridge  (1961).  He  died  29  Decem- 
ber 1986  at  Birch  Grove,  Hay  ward's  Heath,  East 
Sussex.  He  was  succeeded  in  the  earldom  by  his 
grandson,  Alexander  Daniel  Alan  Macmillan 
(born  1943). 

[Macmillan's  own  writings  mentioned  in  the  text; 
Alistair  Home,  Macmillan,  the  Official  Biography,  2 
vols.,  1988,  1989;  George  Hutchinson,  The  Last  Edwar- 
dian at  No  10,  1980;  Nigel  Fisher,  Harold  Macmillan,  a 
Biography,  1982;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Blake 

MADDEN,  Cecil  Charles  (1902-1987),  tele- 
vision pioneer  and  dramatic  author,  was  born 
29  November  1902  at  the  British  consulate  in 
Mogador,  Morocco,  the  eldest  of  three  sons 
(there  were  no  daughters)  of  Archibald  Maclean 
Madden,  CMG,  diplomat,  and  his  wife  Cecilia 
Catherine,  daughter  of  Allen  Page  Moor,  canon, 
of  Truro.  He  was  educated  at  French  schools  in 
Morocco,  Spanish  schools,  Aldeburgh  Lodge 
Preparatory  School,  and  Dover  College.  He 
acquired  fluent  French  and  Spanish.  While 
working  in  a  secretarial  post  with  the  Rio  Tinto 
Company  in  Spain,  he  wrote  revues  in  Spanish 
and  played  Freddy  Eynsford  Hill  in  a  translation 
of  George  Bernard  *Shaw's  Pygmalion.  Four 
times  a  year  his  professional  duties  took  him  to 
New  York,  where  he  saw  Broadway  productions 
in  his  free  time. 

Between  1926  and  1932  every  holiday  was 
spent  in  Paris  working  in  theatre  management. 
Although  he  encountered  famous  stars  like  Fer- 
nandel,  Maurice  Chevalier,  Mistinguett,  and 
Miss  Bluebell,  he  was  very  proud  of  the  fact  that 


282 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


xMaegraith 


he  improved  backstage  conditions  for  the  chorus 
girls.  As  well  as  writing  revues  in  French  and 
Spanish,  he  wrote  several  plays  in  English.  In 
1933  he  joined  the  BBC  talks  department,  where 
he  produced  a  series  entitled  Anywhere  for  a 
News  Story  and  subsequently  produced  the  out- 
side broadcasting  spot  on  a  popular  Saturday 
evening  programme.  In  Town  Tonight. 

Madden  subsequently  worked  as  a  senior  pro- 
ducer in  the  new  Empire  (later  Overseas)  Service 
of  the  BBC,  and  in  1936  joined  Gerald  Cock,  the 
recently  appointed  first  head  of  the  BBC's  Tele- 
vision Service.  In  August  1936  they  were  told  to 
prepare  programmes  to  open  the  first  high  defi- 
nition sen  ice  in  the  world  on  2  November.  Plans 
changed  and  Madden  was  told  to  produce  a  show 
to  be  transmitted  to  Radiolympia  in  ten  days' 
time.  Here's  Looking  at  You  was  seen  by  visitors 
to  the  exhibition  and  the  few  television  set 
owners  then  living  around  London.  Madden 
then  created  Picture  Page,  a  magazine  pro- 
gramme transmitted  from  Alexandra  Palace  on 
the  official  opening  of  the  Television  Service. 
From  2  November  1936,  until  television  shut 
down  on  1  September  1939,  Madden  organized 
and  produced  live  programmes  of  variety,  ballets, 
and  drama,  as  well  as  Disney  cartoons.  'A  play  a 
day'  was  his  motto.  He  created  the  series  100% 
Broadway,  Cabaret  Cartoons,  and  Starlight. 

On  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  Madden 
returned  to  radio,  and  in  1940  was  made  head  of 
the  overseas  entertainment  unit  in  the  Criterion 
Theatre,  broadcasting  all  radio  programmes  to 
British  Commonwealth  forces  serving  abroad. 
He  presented  the  American  Eagle  in  Britain 
programme  from  17  November  1940  to  9  Sep- 
tember 1945,  earning  the  title  of  the  'GI's 
friend'.  General  Dwight  D.  Eisenhower  visited 
the  studio  on  2  March  1944;  on  7  June  (D-Day 
plus  one)  his  brainchild,  the  Allied  Expedi- 
tionary Forces  Programme  of  the  BBC,  began 
with  Madden  in  charge  of  the  integrated  produc- 
tion. This  programme  informed  and  entertained 
its  listeners  until  25  July  1945.  Artists  included 
Gertrude  *Lawrence,  Marlene  Dietrich,  George 
Raft,  Bing  Crosby,  and  Bob  Hope.  Major  Glenn 
Miller  conducted  the  American  band  of  AEF 
until  he  disappeared  in  December  1944,  Madden 
being  the  last  civilian  to  see  him  alive.  He  was 
also  the  man  responsible  for  discovering  Petula 
Clark  in  1942  and  the  Beverley  Sisters  in  1944. 

When  television  reopened  on  7  June  1946, 
Madden  returned  to  his  former  post  of  pro- 
grammes organizer.  In  1950  he  was  made  acting 
head  of  children's  programmes  until  April  195 1. 
He  then  became  assistant  to  the  controller  of 
television  programmes  and  created  Picture 
Parade,  a  magazine  programme  dealing  with  the 
film  industry.  He  was  also  involved  with  a  series 
of  excerpts  from  West  End  plays,  including  Look 
Back  in  Anger. 


Madden  retired  from  the  BBC  in  1964,  but  he 
continued  other  activities,  as  a  governor  of  Dul- 
wich  College  Preparatory  School,  and  president 
of  both  the  Glenn  Miller  Society  and  the  British 
Puppet  and  Model  Theatre  Guild.  His  interest  in 
young  entrants  to  the  profession  was  reflected  in 
his  work  for  RADA,  as  vice-chairman  of  the 
RADA  Associates.  He  was  involved  with  the 
British  Academy  of  Film  and  Television  Arts 
(BAFT A)  and  took  part  in  the  National  Film 
School.  His  personal  scrapbooks,  containing 
records  of  television  since  1936,  aided  research 
for  the  'fifty  years  of  televiskm'  celebrations  in 
November  1986,  when  he  was  videoed  from  the 
studio  at  Alexandra  Palace  on  2  November.  In 
the  Museum  of  Film,  Photography,  and  Tele- 
vision at  Bradford  he  is  commemorated  in  a  life- 
sized  model,  seated  in  the  gallery  at  Alexandra 
Palace.  He  was  a  BAFTA  award  winner  (1961) 
and  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts  (1950). 
In  1952  he  was  appointed  MBE.  Madden  laid  the 
foundation  of  British  television,  always  with  taste 
and  high  standards.  His  popularity  with  those 
who  worked  with  him  was  not  always  shared  by 
the  BBC  administration.  With  his  sound  know- 
ledge of  theatre  he  was  a  discoverer  of  talent  as 
well  as  an  innovator. 

Madden  was  tall,  slim,  and  always  immacu- 
lately dressed.  He  was  charming,  courteous, 
dignified,  and  had  a  great  sense  of  fun,  which 
prevented  him  from  being  pompous.  In  June 

1932  he  married  Muriel  Emily,  daughter  of 
Brigadier-General  James  Kilvington  Cochrane; 
they  had  a  son  and  daughter.  Madden  died  in 
Westminster  Hospital,  London,  27  May  1987. 

[BBC  Written  Archives  Centre,  Caversham  Park, 
Reading;  Peter  Noble,  British  Film  and  Television  Year- 
book igsj-8,  1958;  Cyrus  Andrews,  Radio  and  Tele- 
vision Who's  Who,  2nd  edn.,  1950;  personal  knowledge.] 

June  Averiix 

M^EGRAITH,  Brian  Gilmore  (1907-1989), 
professor  of  tropical  medicine,  was  born  26 
August  1907  in  Adelaide,  Australia,  the  fourth 
son  in  a  family  of  four  sons  and  one  daughter  of 
Alfred  Edward  Robert  Maegraith,  accountant, 
and  his  wife,  Louisa  Blanche  Gilmore.  He  was 
educated  at  St  Peter's,  Adelaide,  and  the  Uni- 
versity of  Adelaide,  from  which  he  graduated 
MB,  BS,  first  class  (1930),  and  took  up  a  South 
Australian  Rhodes  scholarship  to  Magdalen  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  in  193 1.  He  graduated  B.Sc.  in 

1933  and  D.Phil,  in  1934. 

He  was  awarded  a  Beit  fellowship  in  1933  and 
the  following  year  was  appointed  Staines  medical 
fellow  and  tutor  in  physiology  at  Exeter  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  remained  until  1940.  In  1937 
he  became  lecturer  and  demonstrator  in  patho- 
logy. One  of  his  proudest  boasts  was  that  he  came 
'from  the  same  town,  the  same  school,  the  same 
University  in  Australia  and  the  same  College  in 


283 


Maegraith 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Oxford'  as  Baron  *Florey,  who  developed  peni- 
cillin. 

World  War  II  proved  to  be  the  crucial  turn- 
ing-point in  his  career.  Having  been  in  the 
territorial  army  since  1932,  he  was  recruited  in 
the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps  and  dispatched 
to  France  in  1940.  He  was  evacuated  from 
Dunkirk  and  sent  to  Sierra  Leone  in  west  Africa. 
He  returned  to  Oxford  to  lead,  as  a  lieutenant- 
colonel,  the  Malaria  Research  Unit  (1943-5),  an<* 
he  was  honorary  malariologist  to  the  army  from 
1967  to  1973.  While  in  Oxford  he  was  also  dean 
of  the  school  of  medicine  from  1938  to  1944.  He 
became  FRCP  (London,  1955,  and  Edinburgh, 

I956)- 

Maegraith  first  came  to  prominence  in  the 
field  of  tropical  medicine  when  he  was  patholo- 
gist for  the  British  army  in  Sierra  Leone,  where 
his  work  on  the  kidney  and  malaria  attracted  a 
great  deal  of  attention.  It  soon  became  clear  to 
him  that  the  pathophysiology  of  malaria  and 
blackwater  fever  had  been  insufficiently  studied 
and  was  poorly  understood.  With  his  background 
as  an  Oxford-trained  physiologist  and  pathologist 
he  was  ideally  suited  to  study  this  problem.  On 
being  appointed  to  the  Alfred  Jones  and  War- 
rington Yorke  chair  of  tropical  medicine  at  Liv- 
erpool University  in  1944,  his  first  task  was  to 
make  a  thorough  review  of  the  literature  to  date 
and  he  produced  his  most  erudite  publication, 
Pathological  Processes  in  Malaria  and  Blackwater 
Fever  (1948).  The  many  ideas  enunciated  in  that 
book  were  to  form  the  basis  of  his  and  the 
department's  research  for  the  next  twenty  years. 
Another  important  achievement  of  his  early  days 
was  his  work  on  the  anti-malarial  drug  Paludrine, 
in  collaboration  with  A.  R.  D.  Adams.  In  1946, 
already  at  Liverpool,  he  was  also  appointed  dean 
of  the  School  of  Tropical  Medicine  there,  a  post 
which  he  retained  for  nearly  thirty  years  after  he 
vacated  his  chair.  As  dean  he  was  fully  convinced 
that  the  School's  impact  had  to  be  in  the  tropics 
and  he  pursued  this  objective  relentlessly  for  the 
rest  of  his  life. 

The  result  was  an  intimate  involvement  with 
south-east  Asia  and  the  creation  of  the  faculty  of 
tropical  medicine  in  Bangkok,  which  was  later 
the  best  in  the  third  world.  He  was  also  involved 
in  west  Africa,  especially  with  the  University  of 
Ibadan  and  the  Ghana  medical  school.  He  estab- 
lished Ghana's  Institute  of  Health  with  the 
support  of  Kwame  *Nkrumah,  with  whom  he 
developed  a  personal  friendship.  He  was  the 
creator  of  the  Association  of  European  Schools  of 
Tropical  Medicine,  whose  meetings  he  regularly 
attended.  As  vice-president  of  the  interim  com- 
mittee of  the  international  congresses  of  tropical 
medicine  and  malaria  he  took  a  prominent  part  in 
the  organization  of  a  number  of  the  congresses. 
He  retired  from  his  chair  in  1972  and  as  dean  in 
1975- 


A  man  of  strong  personality,  he  had  vision  and 
imagination,  and  ideas  well  ahead  of  his  time.  He 
envisaged  the  escalation  of  air  travel  and  the 
increasing  importance  of  imported  diseases,  with 
people  arriving  from  tropical  areas  well  within 
the  incubation  period  of  a  potential  infection,  the 
most  important  of  which  was  malaria.  He  wrote 
a  classic  paper  in  the  Lancet  (vol.  i,  1963),  'Unde 
Venis?',  emphasizing  the  importance  of  taking  a 
patient's  geographical  history. 

He  was  president  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Tropical  Medicine  and  Hygiene  (1969-71)  and 
received  many  medals.  He  was  appointed  CMG 
in  1968.  He  received  an  honorary  D.Sc.  from 
Bangkok  University  in  1966,  of  which  he  was 
very  proud,  and  was  awarded  the  Order  of  the 
White  Elephant  of  Thailand  in  1982.  The  Liver- 
pool School  presented  him  with  its  highest 
award,  the  Mary  Kingsley  medal  (1973)  and  also 
created  the  Maegraith  wing,  where  he  occupied  a 
room. 

For  mental  relaxation  he  taught  himself  to 
play  the  piano,  one  of  his  favourite  pieces  being 
Beethoven's  'Moonlight  Sonata'.  He  was  a  tal- 
ented amateur  painter  and  won  several  prizes  in 
competitions  for  physicians.  He  was  also  a  good 
poet  and  short-story  writer.  Although  Maegraith 
spent  the  whole  of  his  career  in  Britain,  he  never 
lost  his  Australian  approach  to  life,  with  its 
outspokenness,  occasional  brashness,  and  healthy 
disrespect  for  what  he  considered  outmoded 
convention.  A  robust,  fair-skinned,  good-looking 
man,  he  had  a  striking  appearance  and  strong 
personality.  In  1934  he  married  Lorna,  a  school- 
teacher, daughter  of  Edgar  Langley,  school- 
master. They  had  one  son,  Michael,  who  went 
into  publishing.  Maegraith  died  in  Liverpool 
2  April  1989. 

[The  Times,  5  April  1989;  Independent,  6  April  1989; 
Lancet,  vol.  i,  1989;  personal  knowledge.] 

H.  M.  GlLLES 

MANIO,  Jack  de  (1914-1988),  broadcaster.  [See 
De  Manio,  Jack.] 

M ANTON,  Irene  (1904- 1988),  plant  cytologist, 
was  born  17  April  1904  in  Kensington,  London, 
the  youngest  of  three  children  and  younger 
daughter  of  George  Sidney  Frederick  Man  ton, 
dental  surgeon,  and  his  wife,  Milana  Angele 
Terese  d'Humy.  The  eldest  child,  a  son,  had 
died  in  infancy  and  the  elder  daughter,  Sidnie 
Milana  *Manton,  became  a  prominent  zoologist. 
The  family  has  been  traced  to  Charles  Manton 
(born  1620),  chaplain  to  Charles  II.  Her  father's 
hobbies  were  cabinet-making  and  gold-  and  sil- 
ver-working and  she  undoubtedly  owed  her  deft- 
ness to  early  exposure  to  these  manual  skills.  She 
was  educated  at  the  Froebel  Educational  Insti- 
tute and  later  at  St  Paul's  Girls  School.  Oddly 
enough  in  view  of  her  later  abundant  energy,  her 


284 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Manvell 


school  found  Mamon  an  idle  pupil  with  marked 
aptitude  only  in  music.  Nevertheless  in  1923  she 
won  a  Clothworkers'  scholarship,  and  an  exhibi- 
tion from  the  school,  which  took  her  to  Girton 
College,  Cambridge  (of  which  she  became  an 
honorary  fellow  in  1985).  She  retained  her  musi- 
cal interest  and  later  became  an  accomplished 
violinist. 

About  this  time  she  came  across  E.  B.  Wil- 
son's book  The  Cell  in  Developmental  Inheritance 
(1896)  and  decided  to  read  botany  and  to  spend 
her  life  counting  chromosomes.  She  obtained 
first-class  honours  in  both  parts  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (1925  and  1926).  She  then  elected 
to  begin  her  postgraduate  work  in  Sweden  in 
Otto  Rosenberg's  laboratory.  Though  without  a 
supervisor,  after  one  year  she  managed  to  classify 
250  species  of  the  Cruciferae  on  the  basis  of 
chromosome  counting,  giving  her  the  material 
for  her  first  important  publication,  and  on  the 
way  learned  to  speak  Swedish.  Back  in  Cam- 
bridge she  completed  the  mandatory  further 
year's  residence  with  the  aid  of  a  Yarrow  bursary. 
She  gained  her  Ph.D.  in  1930. 

In  1929  she  became  assistant  lecturer  in  bot- 
any at  Manchester  University,  where  she  came 
under  the  influence  of  W.  H.  *Lang,  who  was 
working  on  Osmunda  and  turned  her  mind  to  the 
ferns,  an  interest  which  was  to  last  all  her  life.  By 
1946  she  had  accumulated  innumerable  data  on 
fern  chromosomes,  defining  genera  and  species 
and  their  phylogenetic  relationships,  and  later 
she  gathered  them  into  a  book,  Problems  of 
Cytology  and  Evolution  in  the  Pteridophyta  (1950), 
which  had  enormous  influence  and  established 
her  as  an  authority. 

In  1946  she  was  invited  to  become  professor  of 
botany  at  Leeds,  a  post  she  held  until  her 
retirement  in  1.969.  Her  medium  figure  in  blouse 
or  cardigan  and  tweed  skirt,  with  its  vigorous 
stride,  strong  face,  and  penetrating  voice,  became 
familiar.  She  had  a  heavy  load  of  teaching  and 
administration,  and  in  consequence  adopted  a 
new  lifestyle,  working  on  her  researches  late  into 
the  evening  every  day,  including  weekends  and 
holidays.  She  had  no  distracting  domestic  chores 
since  she  was,  and  remained,  unmarried  and  had 
brought  with  her  from  Manchester  her  kindly, 
patient,  and  long-suffering  housekeeper,  Edith. 
She  acquired  an  ultraviolet  microscope  and  later 
took  advantage  of  the  extra  microscopic  resolu- 
tion afforded  by  the  first  electron  microscope, 
obtained  in  1950.  She  dealt  first  with  the  flagella 
of  the  sperm  of  ferns  and  other  plant  groups, 
from  which  it  was  an  easy  step  to  the  structure  of 
the  organelles  inside  plant  cells.  Because  of  this 
work,  she  became  as  distinguished  for  her  elec- 
tron microscopy  as  for  her  fern  cytology.  She 
took  up  the  study  of  marine  flagellates  and 
published  extensively  on  the  remarkable  struc- 
tures thev  revealed.  In  the  course  of  this  work 


she  discovered  a  number  of  new  species.  Her 
ferns  were  not  neglected  either.  By  her  own 
efforts  and  that  of  many  students  and  colleagues 
she  collected  from  various  pans  of  the  world  and, 
with  chromosomes  as  the  guide,  made  the  fems 
the  best-known  group  in  the  plant  kingdom. 

The  early  years  of  her  retirement  were  trau- 
matic since  her  housekeeper  also  retired,  so  that 
she  had  to  fend  for  herself  at  home.  She  began 
work  on  the  marine  flagellates  and  was  freely 
invited  to  use  the  facilities  at  Nottingham,  Lan- 
caster, and  Imperial  College,  London,  and  occa- 
sionally laboratories  at  Ottawa  and  Marburg.  She 
made  frequent  arduous  journeys  in  places  rang- 
ing from  the  Arctic  to  South  Africa,  discovering 
and  recording  innumerable  new  species.  She  also 
made  a  valuable  collection  of  modern  paintings, 
which  she  bequeathed  to  Leeds  University. 

She  received  many  honours  and  medals.  She 
had  honorary  doctorates  from  five  universities 
(McGill,  Durham,  Lancaster,  Leeds,  and  Oslo). 
Several  societies  elected  her  to  honorary  mem- 
bership or  fellowship.  She  was  president  of  the 
Pteridological  Society  in  197 1-2  and  of  the 
Linnean  Society  from  1973  to  1976.  In  1961  she 
was  elected  FRS.  As  a  final  accolade,  she  and  her 
sister  Sidnie  received  posthumously  the  distinc- 
tion of  having  a  feature  on  the  planet  Venus 
named  the  Manton  crater.  She  died  31  May  1988 
in  the  Chapel  Allerton  Hospital,  Leeds. 

[R  D.  Preston  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxv,  1090;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  D.  Preston 

MANVELL,  (Arnold)  Roger  (1909-1987),  film 
critic  and  historian,  was  born  10  October  1909  at 
St  Barnabas  vicarage,  Leicester,  the  only  child  of 
the  Revd  Arnold  Edward  William  Manvell,  later 
canon  of  Peterborough  Cathedral,  and  his  wife, 
Gertrude  Theresa  Baines.  He  was  educated  at 
King's  School  in  Peterborough.  He  studied  Eng- 
lish literature  at  University  College,  Leicester, 
obtaining  his  Ph.D.  on  W.  B.  *Yeats  at  London 
University.  He  began  work  in  193 1  as  a  school- 
master and  adult-education  lecturer  in  Leicester, 
moving  to  the  department  of  extramural  studies 
at  Bristol  University  in  1937. 

In  1940  he  joined  the  films  division  of  the 
Ministry  of  Information,  screening  factual  films 
and  lecturing  to  non-theatrical  audiences.  Seiz- 
ing the  opportunities  offered  by  current  interest 
in  'film  appreciation',  he  wrote  Film,  published 
in  1944,  which  broke  new  ground  as  a  critical 
history  of  the  great  films  of  the  past.  It  was  an 
immediate  best  seller,  introducing  a  whole  gen- 
eration to  an  understanding  of  film  as  an  art 
form.  In  the  following  year  he  was  appointed 
research  officer  and  lecturer  at  the  British  Film 
Institute  and  was  instrumental  in  setting  up,  and 
at  first  guiding,  the  institute's  academic  series  of 
volumes  on  The  History  of  the  British  Film. 


2S5 


Manvell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


In  1946  he  began  broadcasting  and  his  name 
became  a  household  word  through  the  BBC 
series  The  Critics.  He  founded  and  edited  the 
Penguin  Film  Review  (1946-9),  and  in  1947 
became  the  first  director  of  the  senior  film- 
makers' own  organization,  the  British  Film 
Academy,  the  forerunner  of  the  BAFT  A,  where 
he  remained  until  1959.  All  the  while  he  busily 
produced  books  written  or  edited  by  himself 
alone  or  in  collaboration  with  experts  in  various 
aspects  of  the  cinema.  After  1959  he  acted  as 
consultant  to  the  British  Film  Academy,  con- 
tinuing to  write,  lecture,  and  sit  on  numerous 
committees.  He  was  also  prominent  in  the 
humanist  movement,  becoming  associate  editor 
of  New  Humanist  (1967-75).  Books  of  film  criti- 
cism, analysis,  and  history  continued  thick  and 
fast,  interspersed  with  biographies  of  Sir  Charles 
•Chaplin  (1974)  and  of  several  great  English 
actresses.  In  later  years  he  was  involved  in  film 
studies  at  Sussex  University,  Louisville  Uni- 
versity (1973),  and  the  London  Film  School,  of 
which  he  was  a  governor  (1966-74),  and  did 
useful  work  for  the  Society  of  Authors  and  other 
bodies. 

He  also  took  up  a  new  interest.  Heinrich 
Fraenkel,  a  Jewish  film  journalist  and  script- 
writer, who  had  fled  Germany  in  1933,  had 
founded  a  Free  German  movement  in  Britain 
and  written  several  slight  books  to  persuade  his 
adopted  country  that  not  all  Germans  were  Nazi. 
Manvell  began  a  fruitful  collaboration  with  him 
in  1959  with  a  thoughtful  and  well  documented 
biography,  Doctor  Goebbels  (i960).  Together, 
during  the  next  dozen  years  they  produced  eight 
solid  books  on  the  history  of  Nazism,  including 
four  biographies  and  an  account  of  the  1944  July 
plot  to  kill  Hitler.  Fraenkel  had  gone  to  the 
Nuremberg  trials  and  interviewed  many  key 
people.  He  had  valuable  contacts  in  Germany,  as 
well  as  access  to  relevant  archives.  ManvelPs 
expertise  in  scholarly  presentation,  as  well  as  his 
wide  contacts  and  fluent  style,  helped  make  this 
an  important  body  of  work. 

By  1975  film  studies  in  Britain  and  France  had 
developed  in  directions  uncongenial  to  a  man  of 
ManvelPs  generation  and  he  felt  more  at  home  in 
American  universities.  He  joined  Boston  Uni- 
versity in  1975,  was  made  a  professor  in  1982, 
and  worked  there  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  continu- 
ing his  large  and  varied  output  of  books,  of  which 
two  of  the  most  notable  were  Films  and  the 
Second  World  War  (1974)  and  Elizabeth  Inchbald, 
England's  Leading  Woman  Dramatist  (1987). 

In  1970  he  was  made  commander  of  the  Order 
of  Merit  of  the  Italian  Republic,  and  in  1971  was 
awarded  the  Order  of  Merit  (first  class)  of  the 
German  Federal  Republic.  A  scholar-teacher  of 
the  year  award  for  1984-5  from  Boston  Uni- 
versity followed,  as  well  as  an  honorary  DFA  of 
New   England   College   (1972),   and    honorary 


D.Litt.s  from  Sussex  (1971),  Leicester  (1974) 
and  Louisville  (1979)  universities. 

These  were  meagre  distinctions  for  an  influen- 
tial writer  who  had  pioneered  the  serious  study 
of  film  in  his  native  land.  Brisk  and  practical,  he 
was  a  good  organizer  and  a  prolific  writer,  who 
combined  accuracy  with  a  readable  middlebrow 
style.  Even  his  puzzling  insistence  on  the  use  of 
his  academic  title  of 'Dr'  played  its  part,  perhaps, 
in  the  emergence  of  film  as  a  respectable  subject 
for  academic  study,  belatedly  accepted  at  last  by 
British  universities.  His  assiduous  use  of  con- 
tacts, combined  with  great  energy  and  drive,  did 
much  to  spread  a  serious  appreciation  of  the 
cinema  in  Britain. 

Of  medium  height,  fairly  heavily  built,  and 
inclined  to  be  pudgy,  he  always  seemed  in  a 
hurry  to  get  to  the  next  opportunity  that  beck- 
oned. As  he  grew  older  his  hair  receded  fluffily 
and  his  eyes  peered  shrewdly  from  behind  thick 
glasses.  Ambition  and  determination  almost  hid  a 
wry,  slightly  sardonic  humour.  In  1936  he  mar- 
ried Edith  Mary,  daughter  of  John  Cook  Bul- 
man;  they  had  one  son.  The  marriage  was 
dissolved  and  in  1946  he  married  Margaret 
Hilda,  daughter  of  Percy  James  Lee,  dental 
surgeon,  of  Bristol.  After  a  divorce,  in  1956  he 
married  Louise,  daughter  of  Charles  Luson 
Cribb,  of  London.  They  divorced  in  1981  and  in 
the  same  year  he  married  Francoise  Baylis, 
daughter  of  Rene  Nautre,  company  director. 
There  were  no  children  of  the  final  three  mar- 
riages. Manvell  died  in  Boston  30  November 
1987. 

[The  Times,  2  December  1987;  Independent,  3  Decem- 
ber 1987;  Daily  Telegraph,  1  and  2  December  1987; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Rachael  Low 

MARC  (pseudonym)  (1931-1988),  caricaturist, 
cartoonist,  and  magazine  editor.  [See  Boxer, 
(Charles)  Mark  (Edward).] 

MARKHAM,  Beryl  (1902- 1986),  aviator,  horse 
trainer,  and  author,  was  born  26  October  1902  at 
Westfield  House,  Ashwell,  Rutland,  the  younger 
child  and  only  daughter  of  Charles  Baldwin 
Clutterbuck,  farmer  and  formerly  a  lieutenant  in 
the  King's  Own  Scottish  Borderers,  from  which 
he  was  cashiered  for  absence  without  leave,  and 
his  wife  Clara  Agnes,  daughter  of  Josiah  William 
Alexander,  of  the  Indian  Civil  Service.  The 
Clutterbucks  went  to  British  East  Africa  in  1904 
and  in  the  following  year  bought  Ndimu  farm  at 
Njoro,  overlooking  the  Rift  Valley,  where  they 
built  a  timber  and  flour  mill.  In  July  1906  Clara 
left  for  England  with  her  son  and  soon  divorced 
her  husband.  Left  with  her  father,  Beryl  did  not 
see  her  mother  again  until  she  was  twenty-one. 
She   lived  a  wild   childhood   with  the  farm's 


286 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Marre 


African  children,  particularly  Kibii  (whose  name 
after  initiation  was  arap  Ruta),  a  Kipsigis  boy. 

In  191 1  Beryl  was  sent  to  Nairobi  European 
School,  from  which  she  was  expelled  in  her  third 
term.  She  returned  to  the  farm  and  a  possibly 
promiscuous  early  adolescence,  not  being  sent  to 
school  again  until  19 16,  when  an  army  officer 
paid  for  her  to  attend  Miss  Seccombe's  School  in 
Nairobi,  providing  he  could  marry  her.  She  was 
again  expelled.  On  15  October  19 19,  at  the  age  of 
sixteen,  she  married  the  officer — Captain  Alex- 
ander Laidlaw  ('Jock')  Purves,  son  of  Dr  William 
Laidlaw  Purves,  founder  of  the  Royal  St  Geor- 
ge's Golf  Club  in  Scotland.  Purves  bought  land 
adjoining  Ndimu  farm,  but  the  marriage  lasted 
only  six  months.  Beryl  began  to  train  horses,  as 
her  father  had  done,  and  in  192 1  left  her  husband 
to  live  on  Soysambu,  the  farm  on  the  floor  of  the 
Rift  Valley  owned  by  the  third  Baron  *Delamere. 
She  stayed  there  as  a  trainer  until  1924,  when  she 
left  for  London,  where  she  discovered  she  was 
pregnant.  She  claimed  the  child's  father  was 
Denys  Finch  Hatton,  the  lover  of  Karen  Blixen. 
who  later  wrote  Out  of  Africa  (1937),  but  she  had 
been  so  free  with  her  sexual  favours  that  any  of  a 
number  of  people  could  have  been  responsible. 
She  had  a  late  abortion  and  returned  to  Kenya, 
where  she  met  Mansfield  Markham,  the  son  of 
Sir  Arthur  Basil  Markham,  first  baronet,  Liberal 
MP  and  owner  of  collieries  in  the  north  of 
England.  He  was  wealthy  and  they  married  in 
1927. 

In  1928  *Edward,  Prince  of  Wales,  and  his 
brother  *Henry,  Duke  of  Gloucester,  visited 
Kenya.  Beryl  became  mistress  to  Henry.  She 
agreed  to  go  to  London  to  be  with  him,  and  he 
established  her  in  a  suite  at  the  Grosvenor  Hotel. 
On  25  February  1929  she  had  a  son,  about  whom 
there  was  much  speculation.  However,  he  cannot 
have  been  fathered  by  Prince  Henry,  because 
Beryl  must  already  have  been  pregnant  when  she 
met  him.  The  boy  was  given  to  Markham's 
mother  to  bring  up.  When  Markham  threatened 
to  cite  Henry  as  co-respondent  in  a  divorce. 
Queen  *Mary,  in  an  effort  to  avoid  scandal,  made 
Henry  settle  on  Beryl  a  capital  sum  of  £15,000, 
which  provided  her  with  an  annuity  of  £500 
until  her  death. 

Beryl  stayed  in  England  until  1929,  and 
learned  to  fly.  Back  in  Kenya,  she  obtained  her 
commercial  pilot's  licence  in  1933.  Following  a 
dare,  she  decided  to  fly  the  Atlantic  from  east  to 
west.  On  4  September  1936  she  took  off  from 
Abingdon,  near  Oxford,  in  a  Vega  Gull,  without 
a  radio.  After  21  hours  35  minutes  she  landed  in 
a  bog  at  Baleine  cove,  near  Louisburg,  Nova 
Scotia,  100  yards  from  the  ocean,  having  run  out 
of  fuel.  She  was  the  first  woman  to  fly  the 
Atlantic  from  east  to  west,  and  the  first  person  to 
make  a  solo  non-stop  crossing  in  that  direction. 

Feted  in  America,  she  returned  there  in  1939, 


and  met  Raoul  Cottereau  Schumacher,  son  of 
Henri  Schumacher,  farmer,  of  Minneapolis.  A 
well-read  and  articulate  man,  Schumacher 
worked  as  a  ghost  writer.  In  1942  Beryl  married 
him,  having  divorced  Markham  in  the  same  year. 
In  June  1942  West  with  the  Night,  by  Beryl 
Markham,  was  published  in  America.  A  remark- 
able account  of  her  African  childhood,  it  reached 
thirteen  best-seller  lists.  The  book  was  lyrically 
written,  with  many  classical  and  Shakespearian 
allusions,  and  in  a  style  similar  in  places  to  that  of 
Antoine  de  Saint-Exupery,  who  had  befriended 
Beryl  in  Hollywood  and  who  may  well  have  been 
a  help  with  the  manuscript.  Beryl  later  claimed 
that  he  encouraged  her  to  write  the  book.  Some 
short  stories  she  wrote  were  later  gathered 
together  by  her  biographer,  Mary  Lovell,  and 
published  as  The  Splendid  Outcast  (1987).  Schu- 
macher divorced  Beryl  in  i960  and  died  in  1962. 

In  1950  Beryl  returned  to  Kenya  without 
Schumacher.  Her  remaining  days  were  spent 
training  horses  in  Kenya,  South  Africa,  and 
Rhodesia.  She  won  the  Kenya  top  trainer's  award 
five  times  and  the  Kenya  Derby  six  times.  In 
1 97 1  her  son,  whom  she  had  seldom  seen,  died 
after  a  car  accident  in  France,  leaving  two  daugh- 
ters, and  Markham  died  three  months  later. 

In  1979  the  Jockey  Club  of  Kenya  allocated 
Beryl  a  bungalow  at  its  racecourse.  West  with  the 
Night  was  republished  in  1982  and  hailed  as  a 
lost  masterpiece.  By  1987  140,000  copies  had 
been  sold  and  royalties  began  to  pour  in.  At  the 
last  count  the  book  had  sold  over  a  million 
copies. 

Beryl  Markham  was  five  feet  eight  inches  tall, 
of  willow\-  build,  with  blue  eyes,  fair  hair, 
slightly  wide-spaced  teeth,  and  slim,  boyish  hips. 
Her  beautiful  long  oval  face  had  a  determined 
chin.  She  was  exceptionally  promiscuous,  but 
retained  the  loyalty  of  her  male  friends.  Women 
found  her  often  ruthless  and  selfish,  although 
they  admitted  her  stamina,  physical  prowess, 
courage,  and  ability  to  withstand  pain.  She  died 
in  Nairobi  Hospital,  from  pneumonia  which 
followed  a  broken  hip,  3  August  1986. 

[Beryl  Markham,  West  with  the  Night,  1942;  Mary  S. 
Lovell,  Straight  on  till  Morning,  1987;  Errol  Trzebinski, 
The  Lives  of  Beryl  Markham,  1993;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  C.  S.  Nicholls 


MARRE,  Sir  Alan  Samuel  (1914-1990),  civil 
servant  and  ombudsman,  was  born  25  February 
19 1 4  in  Bow,  London,  the  fourth  child  and 
second  son  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  three 
daughters  of  Joseph  Moshinsky,  who  ran  a  tobac- 
conist's shop  near  Aldgate  East  station,  and  his 
wife,  Rebecca.  His  parents  were  Russian  Jews 
who  had  settled  in  England  in  1907.  Marre  (who, 


287 


Marre 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


in  1 94 1,  like  his  elder  brother,  changed  his  name 
by  deed  poll)  won  a  scholarship  to  St  Olave's  and 
St  Saviour's  Grammar  School,  Southwark,  and 
an  open  scholarship  to  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge. 
There  he  won  the  John  Stewart  of  Rannoch 
scholarship  and  secured  first-class  honours  in 
both   parts  of  the  classical   tripos  (1934  and 

1935)- 

He  entered  the  Ministry  of  Health  in  1936,  as 
an  assistant  principal.  Though  in  a  reserved 
occupation,  he  tried  to  volunteer  for  the  Royal 
Air  Force  when  war  began  in  1939,  but  he  was 
rejected  because  of  his  very  short  sight.  He 
worked  in  a  variety  of  departmental  posts,  and 
helped  to  launch  the  National  Health  Service.  He 
became  a  principal  in  1941,  assistant  secretary  in 
1946,  and  under-secretary  in  1952.  Eleven  years 
later  he  moved  to  the  Ministry  of  Labour,  where 
he  handled  policy  on  industrial  relations.  He 
returned  to  the  Ministry  of  Health  as  deputy 
secretary  in  1964,  spent  a  further  two  years  in  the 
Department  of  Employment  and  Productivity, 
then  went  back  to  his  home  department  in  1968 
as  second  permanent  under-secretary.  This  was  a 
time  of  adjustment  to  the  creation  of  the  compos- 
ite Department  of  Health  and  Social  Security,  of 
which  Richard  *Crossman  was  the  first  secretary 
of  state.  Grossman's  personality  was  not  well 
adapted  to  the  role  of  departmental  minister,  and 
he  was  notoriously  difficult  to  work  with.  It  was 
not  an  easy  or  comfortable  period  for  Marre;  but 
he  managed  to  establish  and  maintain  a  satis- 
factory relationship  with  Crossman,  who  in  his 
diary  referred  to  him  as  'a  charming  sweet 
man'. 

In  1 97 1  Marre  became  parliamentary  com- 
missioner for  administration  (parliamentary 
ombudsman),  the  second  holder  of  the  post.  In 
1973  he  additionally  became  the  first  Health 
Service  commissioner,  carrying  both  responsibil- 
ities until  his  retirement  in  1976.  He  was  subse- 
quently requested  by  the  government  to  carry 
out  two  difficult  and  sensitive  inquiries,  one  into 
the  position  of  children  handicapped  because  of 
the  drug  thalidomide  who  had  not  benefited  from 
an  earlier  overall  settlement,  the  other  into  a 
£130  million  discrepancy  in  the  report  on  teach- 
ers' pay  by  the  Standing  Commission  on  Pay 
Comparability,  chaired  by  Hugh  Clegg  (7th 
report,  1980).  From  1979  to  1985  he  was  vice- 
chairman  of  the  advisory  committee  on  distinc- 
tion awards  for  NHS  consultants,  and  from  1983 
to  1987  chairman  of  the  newly  established  com- 
mittee on  rural  dispensing,  when  he  did  much  to 
defuse  a  bitter  and  long-standing  dispute 
between  the  medical  and  pharmaceutical  pro- 
fessions. He  also  devoted  time  and  energy  to  a 
range  of  voluntary  organizations,  being  chairman 
of  Age  Concern  England  in  1977-80.  He  was 
appointed  CB  in  1955  and  KCB  in  1970. 

Marre,  with  his  horn-rimmed  spectacles  and 


bald  dome,  was  friendly  and  approachable, 
though  cool  and  restrained.  His  gifts  were  not  so 
much  originality  and  imagination  as  excellent 
judgement  and  analytical  ability,  and  he  was  also 
a  good  negotiator.  His  specific  strengths  included 
precision  in  thought  and  expression,  thorough- 
ness, respect  for  the  facts,  detachment,  and  a 
sense  of  justice.  No  one  would  have  dreamed  of 
questioning  his  intellectual  or  moral  integrity.  In 
his  official  work  he  maintained  a  scrupulous 
political  neutrality,  and  the  tradition  of  Civil 
Service  anonymity  was  thoroughly  congenial  to 
him.  There  were  some  (including  Crossman) 
who  criticized  his  appointment  as  ombudsman, 
doubting  whether,  despite  the  strengths  which 
had  served  him  so  well  as  a  departmental  civil 
servant,  he  had  the  public  relations  skills  and  the 
radically  questioning,  even  aggressive,  attitudes 
which  the  post  required.  In  fact,  he  managed  to 
come  to  terms  with  the  public  aspects  of  his  task 
and,  though  unabrasive  and  disinclined  to  attack 
the  general  ethos  of  contemporary  government, 
proved  himself  just,  persistent,  and  firmly  inde- 
pendent. He  gained  public  credit  for  his  handling 
of  some  of  the  difficult  cases  which  came  his  way. 
His  career  is  of  particular  interest  because  in  its 
later  years  it  reflects  the  transition  from  a  Civil 
Service  imbued  with  the  traditions  of  neutrality 
and  anonymity,  begun  in  1853  as  a  result  of  the 
report  by  Sir  Charles  *Trevelyan  and  Sir  Staf- 
ford *Northcote,  to  one  where  senior  officials 
appear  in  the  public  arena  and  are  held  person- 
ally accountable.  For  Marre,  this  change  was 
against  his  personal  grain,  but  he  had  the  adapta- 
bility to  adjust  to  it  successfully. 

Marre  had  a  happy  domestic  life.  In  1943  he 
married  Romola  Mary,  daughter  of  Aubrey  John 
Gilling,  bank  manager.  She  herself  had  a  distin- 
guished career  of  public  service,  particularly  on 
the  London  Voluntary  Service  Council,  being 
appointed  CBE  in  1979.  They  had  one  son  and 
one  daughter.  Marre  died  of  cancer  20  March 
1990,  at  his  home  in  Golders  Green,  London. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Patrick  Benner 

MARSHALL,    (Charles)    Arthur    (Bertram) 

(1910-1989),  humorist,  writer,  and  broadcaster, 
was  born  10  May  1910  in  Barnes,  London,  the 
younger  son  of  Charles  Frederick  Bertram 
Marshall,  consulting  engineer,  and  his  wife, 
Dorothy  Lee.  His  father  was  a  loving  husband, 
but  although  he  quite  liked  the  idea  of  children, 
to  Arthur's  disappointment  he  preferred  to  be 
where  they  were  not.  In  1920  the  family  moved 
to  Newbury  and  Arthur  was  sent  away  to  board- 
ing-school. First  he  went  to  Edinburgh  House, 
an  uncomfortable  but  enjoyable  preparatory 
school  in  Lee-on-Solent,  and  then  to  Oundle.  He 
was  happy  at  Oundle — he  seems  to  have  been 
happy  almost  everywhere — and  during  a  debate 


288 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Marshall 


in  his  last  winter  term  a  great  burst  of  laughter  at 
something  he  said  gave  him  such  a  whiff  of 
power  and  pleasure  that  he  decided  to  make  the 
raising  of  laughter  the  prime  consideration  of  his 
life.  He  then  went  to  Christ's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  obtained  a  second  class  (divi- 
sion II)  in  part  i  of  the  modern  and  medieval 
languages  tripos  (French,  1929,  and  German, 
1930)  and  a  third  class  in  part  ii  (1931). 

He  acted  at  even"  opportunity  at  Oundle  and 
at  Christ's  and  was  determined  on  a  career  in  the 
theatre.  He  mostly  played  female  parts  at  uni- 
versity, for  which  he  collected  some  excellent 
press  notices,  notably  for  his  playing  of  Lady 
Cicely,  opposite  (Sir)  Michael  'Redgrave,  in 
Captain  Brassbound's  Conversion.  He  became 
president  of  Cambridge's  Amateur  Dramatic 
Society. 

Down  from  Cambridge,  armed  with  his  glow- 
ing press  cuttings,  he  had  his  heart  set  on  going 
to  the  Royal  Academy  of  Dramatic  Art,  but  his 
mother  pointed  out  that  the  acting  profession 
would  hardly  give  an  ecstatic  welcome  to  an 
amateur  female  impersonator.  She  persuaded 
him  to  go  back  to  Oundle  instead  and  make  a 
career  as  a  schoolmaster.  In  193 1  Oundle  offered 
him  a  job  as  a  house  tutor  and  teacher  of  French 
and  German,  which  he  accepted,  quaking  in  his 
shoes.  To  his  own  surprise  he  turned  out  to  be  a 
good  teacher  and,  as  the  terms  sped  happily  by, 
he  spent  a  good  deal  of  his  free  time  writing  and 
performing  to  friends  what  were  then  called 
'turns',  three-minute  comic  monologues  in 
which,  inspired  by  Angela  'Brazil's  girls'  school 
stories  which  he  found  hilarious  when  read 
aloud,  he  impersonated  hearty  botany  mistresses 
and  stern  school  matrons.  He  wrote  Angela 
Brazil's  DNB  entry. 

In  1934  a  BBC  radio  producer  saw  Arthur 
perform  his  botany-mistress  turn  at  a  party  and 
booked  him  to  broadcast  it  on  Chariot's  Hour. 
Thus  his  professional  career  began  by  his  becom- 
ing the  world's  first  radio  drag  act.  In  the  same 
year  (C.)  Raymond  'Mortimer,  literary  editor  of 
the  New  Statesman,  asked  Arthur  to  review  a 
clutch  of  schoolgirl  stories.  His  review  was  much 
enjoyed  and  for  many  years  was  a  popular 
Christmas  feature  of  the  magazine. 

During  World  War  II  Marshall,  like  many  a 
schoolmaster,  was  drafted  into  intelligence  and 
he  had  a  busy  time,  surviving  the  evacuation  of 
Dunkirk  in  the  British  Expeditionary  Force  and 
working  with  Combined  Operations  headquar- 
ters and  SHAEF  (Supreme  Headquarters,  Allied 
Expeditionary  Force).  In  1945  he  was  a  lieuten- 
ant-colonel on  General  Dwight  D.  Eisenhower's 
staff.  He  was  appointed  MBE  in  1944.  In  1943, 
still  in  uniform,  he  wrote  and  starred  in  a  BBC 
comedy  series  on  the  radio,  A  Date  with  Nurse 
Dugdale,  which  was  a  wartime  success. 

After  the  war  Marshall  returned  to  Oundle  in 


1946  as  a  housemaster,  but  his  fascination  with 
the  theatre  was  still  strong  and,  afraid  that  he 
might  end  up  as  a  rotund  Mr  Chips  before  his 
time,  he  left  Oundle  in  1954  at  the  age  of  forty- 
four  and  became  a  social  secretary  to  his  old 
friend,  Victor,  third  Baron  'Rothschild.  In  1958 
he  changed  jobs  again  and  went  to  work  as  a 
script  reader  for  one  of  the  leading  figures  of 
Shaftesbury  Avenue's  commercial  theatre,  H.  G. 
('Binkie')  'Beaumont  of  H.  M.  Tennent  Ltd. 
Marshall  was  in  his  element  at  last.  He  was  such 
pleasant  company  that  everybody  in  the  theatre 
seemed  to  know  and  like  him  and  this  charming, 
funny,  and  non-competitive  person  was  invited 
everywhere.  He  spent  many  long  weekends  at  W. 
Somerset  'Maugham's  Villa  Mauresque  at  Cap 
Ferrat  and  months  with  Alfred  Lunt  and  Lynn 
Fontanne  in  the  USA.  No  doubt  part  of  his 
attraction  as  a  guest  was  that  when  conversation 
sagged  his  host  would  call  upon  him  to  entertain 
the  company  with  a  turn,  and  he  was  delighted  to 
oblige. 

In  1953  he  began  to  publish  his  humorous 
prose  pieces  in  book  form,  beginning  with  Nine- 
teen to  the  Dozen  (1953);  there  were  many  more. 
He  also  published  some  gratifyingly  successful 
compilations  from  the  New  Statesman  competi- 
tions and  his  own  book  reviews,  Salome  Dear, 
Not  m  the  Fridge!  (1968),  Girls  Will  Be  Girls 
(1974),  Whimpering  in  the  Rhododendrons  (1982), 
and  Giggling  in  the  Shrubbery  (1985).  In  1975  he 
started  writing  a  regular  column  for  the  New 
Statesman  and  another  for  the  Sunday  Telegraph. 
He  also  became  a  regular  broadcaster  and  chat- 
show  guest  and  in  1979  was  enlisted  as  a  team 
captain  in  the  BBC  TV  game  Call  My  Bluff, 
which  he  graced  for  ten  years.  A  measure  of  his 
aggressive  nature  and  will  to  win  was  evident  in 
his  first  appearance  on  Call  My  Bluff.  He  led  his 
team  to  an  8-0  defeat  and  laughed  so  much  he 
was  unable  to  say  'goodnight'  to  camera. 

In  the  world  of  broadcast  humour  in  the  1980s 
it  was  Arthur  Marshall  who  was  the  'alternative 
comedian'.  This  was  the  era  dominated  by  young 
writers  and  comics,  who  appealed  to  young 
viewers  and  readers  with  a  stunning  display  of 
aggressive,  sexual,  and  politically  simplistic  rou- 
tines nurtured  on  the  students'  union  circuit.  For 
those  for  whom  this  sort  of  comedy  ceased  to 
appeal  much  after  the  first  excitement.  Marsh- 
all's charming,  intelligent,  witty,  affectionate 
humour  came  as  a  breath  of  fresh  air.  He  was, 
perhaps,  the  last  flowering  of  the  humour  which 
Joseph  'Addison  and  Sir  Richard  'Steele  pio- 
neered in  the  early  eighteenth  century  and  called 
'polite  comedy'. 

With  his  unconventional  attitudes  towards 
such  things  as  religion  and  erudition,  his  distaste 
for  foreigners  (the  'Boche'  and  'Frogs'),  and  his 
eyes  sparkling  and  chins  a-wobble  at  some 
absurdity    he   had    noticed,   a   line   of  Rupert 


289 


Marshall 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


•Brooke's  should  be  bent  to  Arthur  Marshall, 
this  happiest  of  humorists,  as  'an  English  unoffi- 
cial sunbeam'. 

He  was  unmarried.  His  last  years  were  spent 
in  Devon  and  during  his  final  illness  he  was 
fortunate  to  have  an  old  friend,  Peter  Kelland,  a 
retired  schoolmaster,  to  look  after  him  and  share 
his  life.  He  died  27  January  1989. 
[Arthur  Marshall,  Life's  Rich  Pageant  (autobiography), 
1984;  private  information.]  Frank  Muir 

MARTIN,    Sir    Harold    Brownlow    Morgan 

(1918-1988),  air  marshal,  was  born  27  February 
19 1 8  in  Edgecliffe,  Sydney,  Australia,  the  only 
son  and  second  of  three  children  of  Joseph 
Harold  Osborne  Morgan  Martin,  MD,  medical 
practitioner,  and  his  wife,  Colina  Elizabeth 
Dixon.  He  was  educated  at  Randwick  High 
School  and  Lyndfield  College.  An  accomplished 
horseman,  he  became  a  cadet  in  the  Australian 
Light  Horse.  In  1937,  intent  on  world  travel,  he 
left  Sydney  as  a  crew  member  on  a  liner.  In  1940, 
in  England,  he  joined  the  Royal  Air  Force 
Volunteer  Reserve. 

During  his  first  Bomber  Command  tour  in 
No.  455  Squadron  (Royal  Australian  Air  Force) 
and  No.  50  Squadron  (Royal  Air  Force),  flying 
Hampden,  Manchester,  and  Lancaster  bombers, 
Martin  concluded  that  the  most  effective  way  of 
penetrating  enemy  defences  at  night  was  to 
disregard  regulations  and  to  fly  at  low  level.  By 
questioning  higher  policy  and  refusing  to  allow 
regulations  to  hinder  chances  of  success  he  was 
already  showing  a  boldness  and  independence  of 
mind  which  was  to  characterize  his  entire  career. 
His  first  DFC  came  in  1942,  after  twenty-five 
sorties. 

Invited  to  join  No.  617  (the  'Dambuster' 
squadron)  in  March  1943,  he  made  a  significant 
contribution  to  its  night  low-level  training  for  the 
actual  operation.  The  squadron  flew  at  night  at 
150  feet  all  the  way  to  its  targets  and  released  its 
bouncing  bombs  from  60  feet.  Martin  scored  a 
direct  hit.  The  Mohne  and  Eder  dams  were 
breached,  and  the  Sorpe  dam  damaged.  Martin 
was  appointed  to  the  DSO  and  this  was  soon 
followed  with  a  bar  to  his  DFC  for  his  courage 
and  resolution  in  a  costly  attack  on  the  Dort- 
mund Ems  canal.  Becoming  No.  617's  acting 
commander,  Martin  rebuilt  the  squadron  before 
handing  it  over,  well  trained,  to  Leonard  (later 
Baron)  Cheshire  in  1943.  He  also  convinced 
Cheshire  of  the  feasibility  of  low-level  night 
target  marking,  a  prerequisite  for  accurate 
bombing. 

In  February  1944  Martin's  action  during  an 
attack  with  'Blockbuster'  bombs  on  a  heavily 
defended  viaduct  in  southern  France,  for  which 
he  received  a  bar  to  his  DSO,  was  described  by 
Cheshire  as  the  supreme  example  of  inspired 
fearless  night  marking.  During  his  last  opera- 


tional tour  in  No.  515  Night  Intruder  Squadron, 
Martin  again  distinguished  himself,  gaining  a 
second  bar  to  his  DFC  (1944).  He  then  attended 
the  Haifa  Staff  College  before  returning  to  flying 
duties  in  No.  242  Transport  Squadron  (1946). 
With  his  war  gratuity  he  bought  a  horse. 

In  1947  Martin  was  awarded  the  Britannia 
trophy  for  a  record-breaking  Mosquito  flight  (21 
hours,  3 1  minutes)  from  London  to  Cape  Town, 
and  the  following  year  he  received  the  AFC  for 
his  crucial  contribution  to  the  first  jet  crossing  of 
the  Atlantic,  which  was  made  by  an  RAF  squad- 
ron. Serving  in  London  as  a  squadron-leader 
(1948-51),  he  began  to  take  an  interest  in  paint- 
ing, in  which  he  displayed  a  natural  talent, 
sculpture,  and  archaeology,  subjects  he  pursued 
most  of  his  life.  From  1952  to  1955,  as  a  wing 
commander,  he  was  air  attache  in  Israel,  a  post  in 
which  he  was  a  success  because  of  his  diplomatic 
flair  and  grasp  of  the  political  complexities  of  the 
Middle  East.  This  posting,  extended  at  the 
Israelis'  request,  marked  a  turning-point  in  his 
career,  and  steady  progress  followed. 

A  rewarding  NATO  staff  post  at  Fontaine- 
bleau  in  France  (1955-8)  was  followed  by  a 
course  at  the  Joint  Services  Staff  College  and 
postings,  first  as  group  captain  to  Signals  Com- 
mand, and  then  to  Cyprus,  where  he  commanded 
the  important  Nicosia  base.  In  1963  he  became 
an  air  commodore  and  was  posted  to  No.  38 
Support  Group,  where  he  enjoyed  his  contacts 
with  the  airborne  forces  but  disagreed  pro- 
foundly with  the  infantry  over  the  control  of  the 
helicopter  force.  A  course  at  the  Imperial 
Defence  College  (1965),  promotion  to  air  vice- 
marshal  (1967),  and  a  return  to  Cyprus  as  the 
senior  air  staff  officer  prepared  him  for  his  last 
command  appointments — air  officer  command- 
ing No.  38  Group  (1967-9),  then,  as  air  marshal 
(1970),  AOC-in-C  of  the  RAF  in  Germany,  and 
commander  of  the  NATO  second  tactical  air 
force,  with  its  force  of  Belgians,  Dutch,  Ger- 
mans, and  British. 

Primarily  because  of  frustration  in  his  fight 
against  Service  cuts,  he  was  unhappy  in  his  last 
RAF  post,  as  air  member  for  personnel  at  the 
Ministry  of  Defence  (1973-4).  After  his  retire- 
ment in  1974  he  spent  three  years  in  Beirut  and 
Athens  as  Middle  East  marketing  adviser  to 
Hawker  Siddeley  International,  before  returning 
to  London  as  a  consultant.  He  was  aide-de-camp 
to  the  queen  (1963-6)  and  was  appointed  CB 
(1968)  and  KCB  (1971). 

Martin,  a  vital,  alert  man  of  medium  height, 
and  powerful,  humorous  eyes,  was  universally 
liked  and  respected.  He  was  a  man  of  great 
courage  who  always  fought  unselfishly  for  what 
he  believed  was  right.  In  1985  his  lifestyle 
became  restricted  when  he  suffered  brain  damage 
after  being  knocked  down  by  a  coach,  but  he  bore 
his  lot  with  fortitude  and  patience. 


290 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Mason 


In  1944  he  married  Wendy  Lawrence,  widow 
of  Flight-lieutenant  P.  D.  Walker,  RAF,  and 
daughter  of  Grenbry  Outhwaite,  lawyer,  and  Ida 
Rentoul,  artist,  of  Melbourne.  The  marriage  was 
very  happy;  there  were  two  daughters.  Martin 
died  from  cancer  at  home,  64  Warwick  Gardens, 
London  W14,  3  November  1988. 

[The  Times  and  Daily  Telegraph,  4  November  1088; 
Paul  Brickhill,  The  Dambusters,  1951;  Russell  Braddon, 
Cheshire,  VC,  1954;  Percy  B.  Lucas,  Wings  of  War, 
1983;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Frederick  Rosier 

MASON,  Sir  Frank  Trowbridge  (1900-1988), 
engineer  officer  in  the  Royal  Navy,  was  born  in 
Ipswich  25  April  1900,  the  elder  son  and  elder 
child  of  Frank  John  Mason,  MBE,  draper  and 
later  JP  and  mayor  of  Ipswich,  and  his  wife, 
Marian  Elizabeth  Trowbridge.  He  was  educated 
at  Ipswich  School,  passing  into  the  Royal  Navy 
(executive  branch)  as  a  special  entry  (public 
school)  cadet  in  191 8.  After  two  years  as  a  cadet 
and  midshipman  in  HMS  CoUingwood  and  Queen 
Elizabeth,  he  volunteered  to  specialize  in  engi- 
neering (E).  He  underwent  specialist  engineering 
training  at  the  Royal  Naval  colleges  at  Greenwich 
and  Keyham.  In  1923  he  qualified  for  his  engi- 
neering watch-keeping  certificate  in  HMS 
Malaya  and  was  promoted  to  lieutenant  (E), 
continuing  his  service  in  that  ship  as  a  fully 
qualified  mechanical  and  marine  engineer  until 
appointed  in  1925  to  HM  Dockyard,  Malta. 

In  1928  he  was  appointed  to  HMS  Rodney,  a 
new  battleship  then  undergoing  severe  problems 
with  her  novel  16-inch  guns.  His  engineering 
skill  in  securing  improved  reliability  led  him  to 
specialize  in  ordnance  engineering  and  to  his 
reappointment  after  a  short  period  with  Messrs 
Vickers  at  Elswick.  After  promotion  to  lieuten- 
ant-commander (E)  he  served  for  three  years  in 
the  Naval  Ordnance  Department  and  in  1933-4 
he  again  served  in  HMS  Rodney,  but  this  time  as 
'senior  (second)  engineer',  responsible  to  the 
commander  (E)  for  all  propulsion,  electricity 
generating,  and  'hotel  services'  machinery  and 
equipment.  Following  his  next  promotion  to 
commander  (E)  in  December  1934,  he  served 
again  for  three  years  in  the  Naval  Ordnance 
Department.  From  there  he  was  appointed  as 
'engineer  officer'  (chief  engineer)  to  a  new 
cruiser,  HMS  Galatea,  then  flagship  of  the  rear- 
admiral,  destroyers.  In  1939  he  became  the  first 
commander  (E)  to  serve  in  HMS  Excellent,  then 
the  Naval  Gunnery  School.  He  was  appointed  in 
1943  as  fleet  gunnery  engineer  officer  to  the 
Home  Fleet  in  Scapa  Flow,  and  at  the  same  time 
received  promotion  to  captain  (E). 

From  1944  he  served  again  in  the  Naval 
Ordnance  Department  in  the  Admiralty  (Bath) 
and  in  1947  became  chief  gunnery  engineer 
officer  and  deputy  director  of  naval  ordnance.  In 


1949  he  was  the  first  engineering  specialist  to 
become  a  student  at  the  Imperial  Defence  Col- 
lege (later  the  Royal  College  of  Defence  Studies) 
and,  on  promotion  to  rear-admiral,  from  1950  to 
1952  he  held  the  post  of  deputy  engineer-in-chief 
of  the  Fleet.  After  a  year  on  the  staff  of  the 
commander-in-chief,  The  Nore,  he  was  pro- 
moted to  vice-admiral  (E)  in  1953  and  assumed 
the  post  of  engineer-in-chief  of  the  Fleet.  He  was 
appointed  CB  in  1953  and  KCB  in  1955.  He  was 
placed  on  the  inactive  list  of  the  Royal  Navy  in 

1957- 

By  the  1950s  Mason  was  among  the  last  of 
those  naval  officers  still  serving  who  had  entered 
under  the  Selborne-Fisher  scheme  of  1903, 
whose  aim  was  to  put  engineers  in  the  main 
stream  of  naval  life.  The  scheme  was  cancelled  in 
1923  and  the  navy  entered  World  War  II  techno- 
logically bereft.  In  the  immediate  postwar  era 
Mason  and  others  determined  to  resurrect  it,  in 
the  face  of  great  resistance.  But  Mason's  influ- 
ence and  the  battle  experience  of  many  senior 
officers  of  all  specializations  carried  the  day.  In 
1956  the  new  arrangements  came  into  being.  It 
was  Mason's  great  service  to  the  navy  that  he  was 
at  the  centre  of  bringing  about  a  general  list  of 
officers. 

For  thirty  years  after  leaving  the  active  list 
Mason  devoted  himself  to  the  national,  but 
greatly  neglected,  engineering  aspects  of  manu- 
facturing industry  and  to  education  in  general. 
He  was  president  of  the  Institution  of  Mechan- 
ical Engineers  (1964)  and  of  the  Institute  of 
Marine  Engineers  (1967),  as  well  as  being  a 
member  of  the  Institute  of  Plant  Engineers  and 
chairman  or  vice-chairman  of  many  other  pro- 
fessional bodies.  He  was  a  member  of  the 
National  Council  for  Technological  Awards 
(1960-4),  a  founder  fellow  of  the  Fellowship  of 
Engineering  (1976),  a  member  of  the  Smeatonian 
Society  of  Civil  Engineers,  and  assistant  to  the 
court  of  the  Worshipful  Company  of  Ship- 
wrights. He  served  on  the  councils  or  governing 
bodies  of  the  Further  Education  Staff  College 
(1964-74),  Brighton  Polytechnic  (1969-73),  the 
Royal  Naval  School  in  Haslemere  (1953-83), 
Hurstpierpoint  College  (1966-80),  and  Ipswich 
School  (1961-72).  He  was  an  active  member 
of  the  council  of  the  Navy  League  (1967-73) 
and  from  1967  held  the  life  appointment  of  high 
steward  of  Ipswich.  He  was  F.Eng.,  honor- 
ary F.I.Mech.E.,  honorary  M.I.PlantE.,  and 
F.LMar.E. 

Mason  was  good-looking  and  his  expression 
was  that  of  a  man  at  peace  with  himself.  Of 
medium  build,  he  was  always  impeccably  turned 
out,  and,  as  he  grew  older,  his  white  hair  added 
to  his  aura  of  long  and  deep  experience  and 
benign  but  firm  authority.  He  was  a  committed 
and  practising  Christian.  In  April  1924  he  mar- 
ried Dora  Margaret,  daughter  of  Sydney  Brand, 


291 


Mason 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


JP,  who,  like  Mason's  father,  was  a  draper.  They 
were  a  devoted  couple  who  had  one  son,  who 
became  archdeacon  of  Tonbridge,  and  two 
daughters,  one  of  whom  was  appointed  OBE. 
While  suffering  from  cancer  of  the  lung,  Mason 
died  from  heart  failure  at  Townfield  House, 
Hurstpierpoint,  29  August  1988. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Louis  Le  Bailly 

MATHER,  Sir  Kenneth  (191 1-1990),  geneticist, 
was  born  22  June  191 1  in  Nantwich,  Cheshire, 
the  elder  child  and  only  son  of  Richard  Wilson 
Mather,  furniture-maker,  of  Nantwich,  and  his 
wife  Annie,  daughter  of  John  Mottram,  agri- 
culturist, of  Nantwich.  His  formal  education 
started  in  191 5  at  the  Church  of  England  Boys' 
Elementary  School,  Nantwich.  He  won  a  Chesh- 
ire county  scholarship  to  Nantwich  and  Acton 
Grammar  School  (1922-8),  where  the  head- 
master developed  Mather's  interest  in  mathe- 
matics but  suggested  a  future  in  biological 
research.  In  1928  he  won  a  Cheshire  county 
university  scholarship  to  read  botany  at  Man- 
chester University,  where  he  obtained  first-class 
honours  in  193 1.  He  was  then  awarded  a  research 
scholarship  by  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture  and 
Fisheries,  to  work  at  the  John  Innes  Horti- 
cultural Institution,  Merton,  London,  on  chro- 
mosome behaviour  (cytology)  with  C.  D. 
*Darlington.  Here  Mather  developed  his  skills 
and  enthusiasm,  within  four  months  was  writing 
his  first  paper  (published  in  1932),  and  within 
two  years  was  awarded  a  London  University 
Ph.D.  (1933) 

In  1933  Mather  went  to  Svalof,  Sweden, 
where  he  decided  that  traditional  genetics  would 
not  take  the  plant  breeder  very  far  with  the 
problems  that  he  encountered  and  that  a  differ- 
ent genetical  methodology  was  needed.  He 
returned  in  1934  to  work  under  (Sir)  R.  A. 
•Fisher  in  the  Galton  laboratory,  University 
College  London.  'My  greatest  gain  was... working 
closely  with  Fisher  and  learning  from  him  the 
principles  and  practice  of  statistical  analysis, 
estimation  and  hypothesis  testing;  how  to  design 
experiments;  how  to  wring  information  effi- 
ciently from  data;  and  how  to  measure  the 
amount  of  information  available  for  the  analytic 
purpose  in  mind.  For  this  I  owe  him  a  debt 
which  has  lasted  all  my  working  life.' 

A  Rockefeller  fellowship  allowed  Mather  to 
visit  the  USA  for  the  year  1937-8  and  he  spent 
time  at  the  California  Institute  of  Technology 
and  Harvard.  In  1938  he  returned  to  the  John 
Innes  Institute  as  the  head  of  the  genetics  depart- 
ment. While  continuing  his  cytology  work  (for 
which  he  obtained  a  D.Sc.  in  1940)  and  collabo- 
rating with  Fisher,  he  paid  increasing  attention 
to  the  analysis  of  characters  showing  quantitative 
variation    (biometrical    genetics).    In    1948    he 


became  the  first  professor  of  genetics  at  Birming- 
ham University.  He  built  up  his  department, 
with  support  from  the  Agricultural  Research 
Council  (ARC),  which  established  a  unit  of 
biometrical  genetics.  Mather  expanded  his  work 
on  biometrical  genetics  and  published  widely.  In 
1965  he  was  appointed  vice-chancellor  of  the 
University  of  Southampton,  where  he  experi- 
enced mixed  fortunes.  The  student  unrest  of  the 
1960s  and  Mather's  more  traditional  approach 
did  not  mix  easily;  he  found  this  period  trying 
and  frustrating.  Nevertheless,  he  was  successful 
in  persuading  the  University  Grants  Committee 
to  authorize  a  new  medical  school,  which  he 
developed.  In  1971  he  returned  to  Birmingham 
as  an  honorary  professor  and  senior  research 
fellow,  to  concentrate  his  efforts  on  his  passion — 
biometrical  genetics.  He  worked  there  until  the 
day  before  his  death. 

Mather  wrote  283  scientific  papers,  gave 
twenty-four  broadcasts,  and  published  the  fol- 
lowing books:  The  Measurement  of  Linkage  in 
Heredity  (1938),  Statistical  Analysis  in  Biology 
(1943),  Elements  of  Genetics  (1949),  Biometrical 
Genetics  (1st  edn.  1949;  2nd  and  3rd  edns.,  with 
J.  L.  Jinks,  1971  and  1982),  Human  Diversity 
(1964),  The  Elements  of  Biometry  (1967),  Genet- 
ical Structure  of  Populations  (1973),  Introduction 
to  Biometrical  Genetics  (1977),  and  (with  C.  D. 
•Darlington)  The  Elements  of  Genetics  (1949)  and 
Genes,  Plants  and  People  (1950). 

Mather  was  appointed  CBE  in  1956  and 
knighted  in  1979.  He  was  presented  with  hon- 
orary degrees  by  Southampton  (LLD,  1972), 
Bath  (D.Sc,  1975),  Manchester  (D.Sc,  1980), 
and  Wales  (D.Sc,  1980).  He  was  elected  a  fellow 
of  the  Royal  Society  in  1949  and  was  awarded  the 
Weldon  medal  (Oxford,  1962)  and  the  Darwin 
medal  (Royal  Society,  1964).  He  was  president  of 
the  Genetical  Society  of  Great  Britain  (1949-52) 
and  an  honorary  member  in  1981.  He  served  on 
many  research  councils,  advisory  bodies,  and 
committees. 

Mather  was  short  and  stockily  built,  with 
swept-back  hair  and  glasses,  and  invariably  had  a 
pipe  in  his  mouth  or  hand.  He  did  not  suffer 
fools  gladly  and  tended  to  make  this  clear,  but  he 
would  spend  whatever  time  was  needed  to 
explain  an  idea  to  a  genuine  enquirer.  His 
determination  and  self-commitment  were  with- 
out question;  he  would  sit  with  his  pipe  firmly 
gripped  and  would  pursue  an  idea  until  he 
resolved  it.  Interruptions  on  trivial  matters  often 
resulted  in  large  quantities  of  smoke  and  short 
sentences.  The  opportunity  to  try  out  an  idea  or 
the  prospect  of  a  new  approach  was  welcomed 
warmly.  Despite  his  commitment  to  genetics  he 
showed  a  fascination  and  knowledge  of  British 
military  (especially  naval)  history. 

In  1937  he  married  a  fellow  botanist,  Mona 
(died  1987),  daughter  of  Harold  Rhodes,  manag- 


292 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Matthews 


ing  director  of  a  colour  printer's  firm  in  Saddle- 
worth.  They  had  one  son.  Mather  died  of  a  heart 
attack  20  March  1990,  at  his  home  in  Edgbaston, 
Birmingham. 

[Hand- written  draft,  1988,  of  Kenneth  Mather's  per- 
sonal record  in  the  Royal  Society  archives,  Ixmdon;  D. 
Lewis  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  vol.  xxxviii,  1992;  personal  knowledge.] 

Pete*  D.  S.  Caligari 

MATTHEWS,  Sir  Bryan  Harold  Cabot 
(1906-1986),  physiologist,  was  born  14  June 
1906  in  Qifton,  Bristol,  the  younger  son  and 
youngest  of  three  children  of  Harold  Evan  Mat- 
thews, manufacturing  pharmacist,  with  a  factory 
and  shop  in  Clifton,  and  his  wife,  Sarah  Susan- 
nah ('Ruby')  Harrison,  pharmacist.  His  elder 
brother  was  Leonard  Harrison  *Matthews, 
zoologist.  Educated  at  Clifton  College  and  King's 
College,  Cambridge,  he  graduated  with  a  second 
class  in  part  i  (1926)  and  a  first  in  part  ii  (1927) 
of  the  natural  sciences  tripos. 

Matthews  worked  in  Cambridge  all  his  life 
except  during  World  War  II.  In  1928  he  became 
Beit  memorial  fellow  for  medical  research,  and  in 
1932  assistant  director  of  research,  a  post  he  held 
until  1048.  Before  the  war  Matthews  made  a 
major  contribution  to  the  development  of  neuro- 
physiology.  Previously  single  nerve  impulses  had 
been  recorded,  but  only  with  difficulty  and 
distortion;  now  Matthews  developed  an  instru- 
ment, the  moving  iron  oscillograph,  with  its 
associated  amplifiers,  which  had  the  necessary 
sensitivity  and  frequency  response  to  record 
single  nerve  impulses.  Moreover,  it  was  easily 
photographed,  unlike  the  cathode  ray  oscillo- 
scopes. With  this  system  Matthews  worked  out 
the  basic  physiology  of  muscle  spindles,  includ- 
ing mammalian  spindles,  work  which  formed  the 
basis  of  much  subsequent  receptor  and  control 
system  physiology.  With  E.  D.  (later  Baron) 
•Adrian,  and  using  his  newly  developed  differ- 
ential amplifier,  he  investigated  potentials  from 
the  surface  of  the  brain  and  from  the  human 
brain  through  the  skull,  laying  the  foundation  for 
later  electroencephalography.  He  also  worked 
with  D.  H.  Barron  on  the  potentials  that  could  be 
recorded  from  spinal  roots.  This  work  advanced 
knowledge  of  the  way  nerve  impulses  converge 
on  cells  in  the  spinal  cord  and  set  up  graded 
potential  changes,  which  in  turn  initiate  further 
impulses  in  other  nerve  cells. 

During  this  time  in  Cambridge  Matthews  also 
developed  his  interest  in  high  altitudes.  He 
started  with  a  theoretical  study  showing  that  heat 
lost  through  breathing  becomes  greater  than  that 
gained  from  the  utilization  of  oxygen  at  altitudes 
above  30,000  feet.  He  participated  as  a  subject  in 
work  on  the  effects  of  prolonged  exposure  to  low 
oxygen  tensions  and  in  this  and  many  experi- 
ments during  the  war  he  was  prepared  to  act  as  a 


subject  in  situations  which  were  potentially  dan- 
gerous. In  1935  he  was  a  member  of  an  expedi- 
tion to  the  Andes  to  study  physiology  at  high 
altitudes.  He  spent  longer  at  the  highest  camp 
than  anyone  else  and  made  significant  scientific 
as  well  as  physical  contributions  to  the  expedi- 
tion. 

In  August  1939  Matthews  moved  to  Farn- 
borough  to  head  the  Royal  Air  Force  physio- 
logical laboratory,  which  in  1944  became  the 
RAF  Institute  of  Aviation  Medicine,  with  Mat- 
thews as  its  first  director.  He  had  great  success 
both  in  his  own  work  and  as  director  of  the 
laboratory  in  finding  quick  and  easy  solutions  to 
immediate  and  important  problems  facing  air- 
crew: lack  of  oxygen,  decompression  sickness, 
and  acceleration.  At  the  same  time  he  laid  the 
foundations  for  the  more  sophisticated  solutions 
needed  for  the  jet  age. 

After  the  war  he  returned  to  Cambridge  in 
1946  and  in  1948  became  a  reader  in  physiology. 
He  was  professor  of  physiology  from  1952  to 
1973.  He  continued  his  research  on  the  nervous 
system,  but  his  main  task,  as  head  of  the  depart- 
ment, was  to  build  it  up  again  once  staff  could  be 
recruited.  His  overriding  priority  was  to  recruit 
only  those  of  outstanding  scientific  ability.  He 
made  changes  in  the  administration  of  the 
department,  with  a  view  to  improving  the  dis- 
tribution of  resources,  and  left  his  staff  to 
develop  their  own  ideas.  He  was  a  fellow  of 
King's  College  from  1929,  director  of  studies 
there  in  1948-52,  and  a  life  fellow  from  1973. 
Matthews  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society 
in  1940  and  was  a  vice-president  in  1957  and 
1958.  Appointed  CBE  in  1944,  he  was  knighted 
in  1952. 

An  imposing  bearded  figure,  he  had  a  vigorous 
personality  and  was  a  friendly,  likeable,  and  at 
times  commanding  person.  He  had  a  love  of 
activities  with  an  element  of  challenge  to  the 
natural  elements,  such  as  skiing,  canoeing,  and, 
above  all,  long-distance  sailing.  He  cruised 
widely  and  spent  much  time  at  sea.  He  was  an 
expert  navigator  and  developed  instruments  and 
techniques  for  use  in  cruising  short-handed, 
some  of  which  became  commonplace.  In  1926  he 
married  Rachel  Katherine  (died  1994),  daughter 
of  Gustav  Eckhard,  Manchester  shipping  agent, 
and  sister  of  the  wife  of  the  economist  F.  W. 
*Paish.  They  had  a  son,  Professor  P.  B.  C. 
Matthews,  FR.S,  neurophysiologist,  and  two 
daughters.  The  marriage  broke  up  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  war  and  he  was  then  supported  for 
nearly  thirty  years  by  the  close  friendship  of  his 
sailing  companion,  Constance  Biron,  who 
changed  her  name  to  Matthews  by  deed  poll.  In 
1970,  after  his  relationship  with  Constance  had 
come  to  an  end,  he  divorced  Rachel  and  in  the 
same  year  married  Audrey  Wentworth,  widow  of 
Air  Vice-Marshal   William   Kilpatrick   Stewart 


293 


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D.N.B.  1986-1990 


and  daughter  of  Francis  Tyndale,  a  lieutenant- 
colonel  in  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps.  Mat- 
thews died  in  Cambridge  23  July  1986. 

[D.  A.  Parry  in  Annual  Report  of  King's  College, 
Cambridge,  1987;  John  Gray  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxv,  1990;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]  John  Gray 

MATTHEWS,  Denis  James  (1919-1988),  pian- 
ist, composer,  and  teacher,  was  born  27  February 
19 19  in  Coventry,  the  only  child  of  Arthur 
Matthews,  director  of  the  Norman  Engineering 
Company  at  Leamington  Spa,  and  his  wife,  Elsie 
Culver,  schoolteacher.  His  father  committed  sui- 
cide when  Denis  was  twelve.  He  was  educated  at 
Warwick  Grammar  School,  where  his  musical 
gifts  brought  him  to  the  attention  of  visiting 
adjudicators  including  Herbert  *Howells,  who 
encouraged  him  to  consider  a  career  in  music. 
Another  was  the  pianist  Harold  Craxton,  who 
offered  to  teach  him.  Winning  the  Thalberg 
scholarship  to  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music  in 
1935,  he  studied  composition  with  William 
Alwyn  and  the  piano  with  Craxton,  who  wel- 
comed him  into  a  large  and  musical  family  circle, 
giving  him  a  home  as  well  as  tuition  and  encour- 
agement. His  interests  were  initially  in  composi- 
tion, and  early  works  included  songs  and 
chamber  music,  which  he  later  described  as 
'cosily  derivative  and  romantic'.  However,  a 
piano  trio,  performed  at  a  student  concert, 
excited  favourable  press  attention;  and  in  1937  he 
added  a  composition  scholarship  to  that  for 
piano.  His  performing  and  composing  abilities 
were  sometimes  combined,  as  when  Sir  Henry 
*Wood  conducted  his  Symphonic  Movement  for 
piano  and  orchestra.  The  list  of  his  compositions 
eventually  included  a  Violin  Sonata,  Five 
Sketches  for  violin  and  piano,  a  string  quartet, 
and  a  Partita  for  wind  quintet  for  a  fellow 
student,  the  horn  player  Dennis  *Brain. 

Though  some  of  his  works  were  taken  up  by 
performers,  and  even  published,  Matthews 
found  that  his  deepening  interest  in  the  clas- 
sics— Bach,  Mozart,  and  Beethoven,  in  particu- 
lar— was  directing  him  towards  playing.  His 
professional  debut  came  with  a  Promenade  Con- 
cert in  1939,  when  he  played  Beethoven's  Third 
Piano  Concerto  under  Sir  Henry  Wood.  Beet- 
hoven was  to  remain  central  to  his  interests,  and 
was  the  subject  of  many  lecture  recitals,  some 
records  expounding  the  sketch-books,  and  two 
BBC  Music  Guide  booklets,  Beethoven  Piano 
Sonatas  (1967)  and  Brahms  Piano  Music  (1978). 
Matthews's  writings  also  included  a  chapter  on 
Beethoven,  Schubert,  and  Brahms  in  a  sympo- 
sium he  edited,  Keyboard  Music  (1972),  Arturo 
Toscanini  (1982),  and  an  autobiography,  In  Pur- 
suit of  Music  (1966). 

Having  graduated  from  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Music  in  1940  with  the  LRAM  (to  which  he 


added  the  Royal  College  of  Music's  ARCM,  as 
well  as  the  Worshipful  Company  of  Musicians' 
medal,  1938,  for  the  most  distinguished  student), 
Matthews  earned  a  living  accompanying  for 
opera  and  ballet  classes,  playing  for  social  occa- 
sions such  as  City  dinners,  and  occasionally 
giving  concerts  either  alone  or  with  student 
friends.  He  remained  all  his  life  an  excellent 
sonata  pianist,  though  latterly  he  seldom  accom- 
panied singers  in  lieder. 

In  1940  he  was  called  up,  entered  the  Royal 
Air  Force,  and,  together  with  a  number  of  other 
musicians  who  were  to  go  on  to  make  distin- 
guished careers,  joined  the  central  band  at 
Uxbridge.  He  toured  Germany  at  the  end  of  the 
war  with  the  central  band,  playing  piano  solos  at 
the  Potsdam  conference  to  Josef  Stalin,  (Sir) 
Winston  Churchill,  and*Harry  S.  Truman.  He 
also  shared  the  keyboard  with  Truman. 

Demobilized  in  1946,  Matthews  was  taken  up 
by  musicians  including  Dame  Myra  *Hess,  and 
solo  engagements  began  to  come  in.  He  played 
concertos  with  (Sir)  John  *Barbirolli  (Sir)  Mal- 
colm *Sargent,  Sir  Thomas  *Beecham,  Sir 
Adrian  *Boult,  and  other  leading  conductors, 
and  toured  widely;  he  had  also  begun  making 
records  in  1941,  in  a  repertory  centring  on 
Mozart  and  Beethoven  (and  including  a  classic- 
version  of  Beethoven's  Horn  Sonata  with  Dennis 
Brain),  but  also  embracing  modern  British  com- 
posers. He  was  closely  associated  with  the  Lon- 
don Mozart  Players,  founded  in  1949  by  another 
friend  from  the  central  band,  Harry  Blech.  Con- 
certs and  recordings  brought  him  wide  popu- 
larity, and  he  embarked  upon  a  career  that  took 
him  all  round  the  world.  In  1955  he  settled  in 
Henley,  where  he  and  his  friends  took  part  in 
festival  music-making.  However,  divorce  in  i960 
brought  him  back  to  London. 

With  the  emergence  of  a  postwar  generation  of 
virtuosi,  Matthews  found  his  career  prospering 
less  well  in  the  1960s.  To  his  friends,  he  was 
candid  about  his  powers,  believing  that  he  had 
been  fortunate  to  make  a  career  at  a  time  when 
competition  was  less  fierce.  He  was  never  a  great 
technician,  but  the  musicality  of  his  playing  gave 
his  performances  at  their  best  an  illuminating 
quality,  and  a  sense  of  the  music's  essential 
structure  and  meaning.  His  interest  in  conveying 
this  found  a  new  outlet  when  in  1971  he  was 
invited  to  be  the  first  professor  of  music  at  the 
University  of  Newcastle.  He  ran  an  enterprising 
and  successful  department,  while  continuing  to 
maintain  a  performing  career.  He  retired  in  1984. 
He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1975,  and  had  hon- 
orary degrees  from  St  Andrews  (1973),  Hull 
(1978),  and  Warwick  (1982). 

Though  prey  to  private  melancholy,  Matthews 
was  an  amusing  and  warm-hearted  companion. 
He  was  slightly  built,  with  sandy  hair  and  an 
expressive  face  that  remained  impassive  during 


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performance  but  could  take  on  a  lively,  animated 
expression  in  the  discussions  about  music  which 
were  his  greatest  joy.  He  retained  a  somewhat 
boyish  appearance  and  manner.  He  married  three 
times.  In  1941  he  married  Mira  Howe,  a  cellist, 
and  they  had  one  son  and  three  daughters.  The 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  i960  and  in  1963  he 
married  Brenda,  who  had  been  brought  up  by  Dr 
Samuel  McDermott,  a  general  practitioner  in 
Swindon,  and  taken  his  surname.  They  had  one 
son  and  one  daughter.  The  marriage  was  dis- 
solved in  1985  and  in  1986  he  married  Beryl,  a 
piano  teacher,  daughter  of  Arthur  Harold  Jordan 
Perry,  owner  of  a  textile  firm.  Matthews  died  by 
his  own  hand  in  Birmingham,  24  December 
1988,  having  suffered  from  bouts  of  severe 
depression,  particularly  after  his  marriage  to 
Brenda  McDermott  broke  up. 

[Denis  Matthews,  In  Pursuit  of  Music  (autobiography), 
1966;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Warrack 

MATTHEWS,  (Leonard)  Harrison  (1901- 
1986),  zoologist  and  naturalist,  was  born  12  June 
1 90 1  in  Clifton,  Bristol,  the  elder  son  and  eldest 
of  three  children  of  Harold  Evan  Matthews, 
manufacturing  pharmacist,  and  his  wife,  Sarah 
Susannah  ('Ruby')  Harrison,  pharmacist.  His 
sister,  Marjorie  Violet  (later  Mrs  Marshall  Sis- 
son),  was  an  exhibitioner  at  Newnham  College, 
Cambridge,  and  became  an  educational  psycho- 
logist. His  younger  brother,  (Sir)  Bryan  Harold 
Cabot  *Matthews,  became  professor  of  physio- 
logy at  Cambridge.  Harrison  or  'Leo'  Matthews 
was  brought  up  at  Clifton,  where  his  father  had 
a  pharmaceutical  factory  and  chemist's  shop,  and 
went  to  Bristol  Grammar  School.  In  1919  he 
went  up  to  King's  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
obtained  a  first  class  in  part  i  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (1922)  and  a  second  class  in  part  ii 
(1923).  He  was  also  awarded  the  Frank  Smart 
prize  in  zoology.  He  spent  much  time  during  his 
vacations  studying  the  fauna  of  the  Bristol  chan- 
nel and  on  trawlers,  visiting  the  Faroes,  Iceland, 
and  the  White  Sea,  confirming  a  liking  for  hands- 
on  zoology  that  was  to  last  his  lifetime. 

In  1924  he  applied  for,  and  obtained,  a  post 
with  the  Discovery  committee  to  work  on  whale 
biology  in  South  Georgia.  This  committee 
(known  by  the  name  of  its  research  vessel)  had 
been  set  up  by  the  British  government  to  conduct 
an  intensive  scientific  research  programme  in  the 
Southern  Ocean  to  provide  data  for  the  rational 
management  of  the  whaling  industry,  the  expan- 
sion of  which  was  causing  concern.  Matthews 
was  attracted  by  the  prospect  of  working  in  this 
remote  spot  on  the  largest  and  most  impressive 
of  all  living  things,  and  mixing  with  the  hard 
men  engaged  in  whaling.  He  travelled  to  South 
Georgia  in  the  autumn  of  1924  to  establish  a 
marine  laboratory  at  King  Edward  cove,  next  to 


the  whaling  station  where  he  was  to  do  most  of 
his  work.  This  resulted  in  major  monographs  on 
humpback,  sei,  right,  and  sperm  whales,  pub- 
lished in  Discovery  reports.  There  were  other 
papers  on  seals,  birds,  and  invertebrates  and  his 
first  book,  South  Georgia:  the  British  Empire's 
Subantarctic  Outpost  (1931),  which  remained  the 
definitive  text  for  fifty  years.  Besides  these,  there 
were  three  books,  Wandering  Albatross  (1951), 
Sea  Elephant  (1952),  and  Penguin  (1977),  aimed 
at  the  general  public,  which  vividly  captured  the 
life  of  the  sealers  and  whalers  whose  company 
Matthews  had  so  relished. 

Matthews  relinquished  his  post  with  the  Dis- 
covery committee  in  1928,  and  returned  to  Bristol 
to  work  part-time  in  the  family  firm  and  help  his 
brother  develop  scientific  instruments.  They 
established  Clifton  Instruments  Ltd.  He  also 
took  his  Cambridge  MA,  which  was  followed  by 
an  Sc.D.  in  1937.  In  1935  he  was  appointed  a 
special  lecturer  at  Bristol  University.  Here  he 
continued  to  work  on  his  South  Georgia  material 
and  widened  his  field  to  include  African  mam- 
mals. Reproductive  physiology  held  a  fascination 
for  him  and  he  was  intrigued  by  the  uncertainty 
surrounding  the  sex  of  the  spotted  hyena, 
regarded  by  Pliny  as  a  facultative  hermaphrodite. 
In  1935  he  organized  an  expedition  to  the  Balbal 
plains,  west  of  the  Ngorongoro  crater  in  Tanga- 
nyika, and  there  collected  and  dissected  103 
hyenas.  He  was  the  first  to  describe  the  extraor- 
dinary penile  clitoris  and  apparent  absence  of  a 
vulva  in  the  female  that  had  given  rise  to  Pliny's 
misapprehension. 

During  World  War  II  Matthews  became  a 
radio  officer  in  An ti- Aircraft  Command  (1941), 
and  senior  scientific  officer  in  the  Telecommuni- 
cations Research  Establishment  (1942).  He 
worked  at  the  Petersham  radiolocation  school, 
undertaking  confidential  work  on  radar  gun- 
laying  and,  later,  radar  position-indicating  sys- 
tems for  the  Pathfinder  bombers. 

Matthews  returned  to  Bristol  in  1945  as 
research  fellow.  He  continued  to  produce  a  wide 
variety  of  papers  on  the  biology  of  animals,  from 
bats  to  basking  sharks.  In  1952  he  was  appointed 
scientific  director  of  the  Zoological  Society  of 
London  (the  London  zoo),  a  post  he  held  till 
retirement  in  1966.  He  was  highly  successful  in 
developing  the  scientific  activities  of  the  society 
and  his  own  research,  particularly  on  reproduc- 
tion in  seals.  In  1954  he  was  elected  FRS. 
Unfortunately,  his  later  years  at  the  zoo  were 
clouded  by  disagreement  with  the  secretary,  Sir 
Solly  (later  Baron)  Zuckerman. 

His  retirement,  at  the  Old  Rectory,  Stansfield, 
Suffolk,  was  an  active  period.  He  continued  to 
produce  important  texts,  including  The  Life  of 
Mammals  (2  vols.,  1969  and  197 1)  and  The 
Natural  History  of  the  Whale  (1978).  His  last 


295 


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D.N.B.  1986-1990 


book  was  Mammals  in  the  British  Isles  (1982).  He 
was,  perhaps,  the  last  of  the  great  'naturalists',  a 
man  with  a  wide  interest  in  animals,  less  con- 
cerned with  laboratory  experimentation  than 
with  animals'  life  in  the  held. 

In  appearance  he  was  tall  and  well  built  and 
always  well  groomed,  not  to  say  dapper,  which 
was  surprising  in  one  who  had  spent  so  much 
time  in  rigorous  field  conditions.  In  later  life  he 
sported  a  goatee  beard  and  had  a  liking  for  bow- 
ties.  He  was  excellent  company,  something  of  a 
bon  viveur,  and  a  most  entertaining  companion, 
always  able  to  produce  an  appropriate  yarn  from 
his  travels.  He  sketched  and  painted  in  a  delight- 
ful free  style  and  his  illustrations  appeared  in 
several  of  his  published  works.  He  amassed  a 
notable  library  and  a  remarkable  collection  of 
curios  from  his  travels.  In  1924  he  married  a 
dancer,  Dorothy  Helene,  daughter  of  Henry 
Charles  Harris,  of  independent  means.  They  had 
a  son  and  a  daughter.  Matthews  died  at  home  at 
the  Old  Rectory,  Stansfield,  Suffolk,  27  Novem- 
ber 1986. 

[Sir  Richard  Harrison  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fel- 
lows of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiii,  1987;  Nigel  Bonner 
injfournalofthe  Zoological  Society  of  London,  vol.  ccxiii, 
1987,  pp.  1-5;  personal  knowledge.]    Nigel  Bonner 

MAURIER,  Dame  Daphne  du  (1907- 1989), 
novelist.  [See  Du  Maurier,  Dame  Daphne.] 

MAYBRAY-KING,  Baron  (1901-1986),  Labour 
politician  and  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. [See  King,  Horace  Maybray.] 

MED  A  WAR,  Sir  Peter  Brian  (191 5-1987),  bio- 
logist and  Nobel  prize-winner,  was  born  28 
February  19 15  in  Rio  de  Janeiro,  the  elder  child 
and  only  son  of  Nicholas  Agnatius  Medawar,  a 
Brazilian  businessman  of  Lebanese  extraction, 
and  his  British  wife,  Edith  Muriel  Dowling.  He 
was  educated  at  Marlborough  College  and  Mag- 
dalen College,  Oxford,  where  he  took  a  first-class 
degree  in  zoology  in  1935  and  a  D.Sc.  in  1947.  At 
Oxford  he  was  successively  a  Christopher  Welch 
scholar  and  senior  demy  of  Magdalen  (1935),  a 
senior  research  fellow  of  St  John's  (1944),  and  a 
fellow  by  special  election  of  Magdalen  (1938-44 
and  1946-7).  From  1947  to  1951  he  was  Mason 
professor  of  zoology  in  the  University  of  Bir- 
mingham, from  195 1  to  1962  Jodrell  professor  of 
zoology  and  comparative  anatomy  in  University 
College  London,  and  from  1962  to  1971  director 
of  the  National  Institute  of  Medical  Research, 
Mill  Hill.  From  1971  to  1986  he  was  head  of  the 
transplantation  section  of  the  Medical  Research 
Council's  clinical  research  centre,  Harrow. 

He  created  a  new  branch  of  science,  the 
immunology  of  transplantation.  During  the 
Battle  of  Britain  in  1940  a  plane  crashed  near 
Oxford,  and  Medawar,  engaged  there  in  research 
on  tissue  growth  and  repair,  was  asked  whether 


he  could  help  the  badly  burned  pilot.  Although 
he  had  nothing  to  offer  at  the  time,  this  awoke  in 
him  an  interest  in  transplantation  of  skin,  which 
was  to  form  the  core  of  his  scientific  achieve- 
ment. With  the  Glasgow  surgeon  Thomas  Gib- 
son he  discovered  the  'homograft  reaction',  the 
process  whereby  an  immunological  response 
causes  the  rejection  of  tissue  that  has  been 
transplanted  between  unrelated  individuals.  It 
took  another  two  decades  and  the  work  of  many 
people  to  find  ways  of  overcoming  this  reaction, 
by  means  of  immunosuppressive  drugs,  but  it 
was  Medawar's  first  decisive  step  that  made 
possible  organ  transplantation  as  it  was  later 
known. 

Along  the  way  he  and  his  small  research 
group,  especially  Leslie  Brent  and  Rupert  Bill- 
ingham,  made  other  important  discoveries,  most 
notably  of  immunological  tolerance  in  1954.  The 
immune  system  discriminates  efficiently  between 
skin  grafts  of  foreign  and  self  origin,  and  under 
certain  experimental  conditions,  which  Medawar 
and  his  colleagues  first  defined,  it  can  be  misled 
into  treating  as  self  what  is  in  fact  foreign.  Just  as 
a  new  branch  of  surgery  sprang  from  Medawar's 
seminal  work  on  the  homograft  region,  so  also  a 
new  branch  of  developmental  biology  sprang 
from  his  work  on  tolerance.  For  this  discovery  he 
was  awarded  the  Nobel  prize  for  medicine  in 
i960,  jointly  with  (Sir  F.)  Macfarlane  Burnet. 

It  must  not  be  thought  that  a  scientist  as  clear- 
minded  and  creative  as  Medawar  was  never 
wrong.  Indeed,  it  is  precisely  those  qualities 
which  make  his  few  mistakes  easy  to  identify.  A 
conspicuous  example  was  his  idea,  during  the 
early  1950s,  that  pigment  spreads  in  the  skin  by 
cell-to-cell  passage  of  infective  particles. 

To  a  wider  public  he  was  known  for  his 
eloquent  projection  of  ideas  in  and  about  biology. 
He  was  passionately  convinced  of  the  power  of 
the  scientific  method  not  only  to  create  what  he 
called  a  magnificent  'articulated  structure  of 
hypotheses',  but  also  to  solve  human  problems. 
His  deepest  contribution  was  to  expound  the 
deductive  view  of  scientific  activity.  For  Meda- 
war the  place  of  honour  is  occupied  by  the  'act  of 
creation',  in  which  a  new  idea  is  formulated; 
experimentation  has  the  humbler  (but  entirely 
necessary)  role  of  verifying  ideas.  He  happily 
accepted  the  consequence  that  an  idea  can  never 
formally  be  proved  true.  Even  the  faintest  whiff 
of  induction  was  dismissed  with  contumely.  He 
took  pleasure  in  searching  out  the  roots  of  this 
position  in  the  English  thinkers  of  the  last  three 
centuries.  In  all  of  this  he  was  much  influenced 
by  his  friends  the  philosophers  T.  D.  ('Harry') 
Weldon,  Sir  Alfred  *Ayer,  and  Sir  Karl  Popper. 
He  conveyed  these  convictions  with  eloquence, 
elegance,  and  an  unfailing  sense  of  humour  in  ten 
books  published  between  1957  and  1986 — 
including  The  Uniqueness  of  the  Individual  (1957), 


296 


DAB.  1986-1990 


Meiggs 


The  Future  of  Man  (i960),  Advice  to  a  Young 
Scientist  (1979),  and  The  Limits  of  Science 
(1984) — and  in  some  200  articles  and  reviews. 
His  1959  Reith  lectures  on  the  future  of  man 
powerfully  rejected  the  gloom-and-doom  view  of 
the  impact  of  science  on  ordinary  life.  'Is  the 
Scientific  Paper  a  Fraud?'  (BBC  Third  Pro- 
gramme, 1963,  reprinted  in  P.  B.  Medawar,  The 
Threat  and  the  Glory,  1990)  was  much  enjoyed  in 
scientific  circles. 

His  autobiography,  Memoir  of  a  Thinking  Rad- 
ish (1986),  relates  that  the  Oxford  senior  com- 
mon-rooms taught  him  to  regard  no  subject  as 
intellectually  beyond  his  reach.  Throughout  his 
life  he  was  quick  to  respond  to  the  ideas  of  those 
around  him:  colleagues,  students,  friends,  and 
family.  How  delighted  were  the  undergraduates 
who  attended  his  tutorials  to  find  themselves 
acknowledged  in  his  profound  1947  review  of 
cellular  inheritance  and  transformation.  He  never 
ran  a  large  laboratory,  and  even  as  director  of  the 
National  Institute  of  Medical  Research  he  and 
two  or  three  junior  colleagues  occupied  just  two 
rooms  (where  he  continued  to  do  his  own 
research  and  his  own  washing  up,  on  the  Tues- 
days and  Thursdays  that  he  kept  free  of  admin- 
istrative duties).  He  laughed  at  gigantic  research 
programmes,  and  the  possibility  that  government 
might  perceive  the  practical  benefits  of  research 
better  than  the  individual  scientist  who  carried  it 
out.  In  his  own  experimental  work,  and  above  all 
in  his  writing,  he  set  a  standard  which  inspired 
the  postwar  flowering  of  immunology. 

He  needed  and  received  the  total  love  and 
support  of  his  wife,  from  their  first  meeting  as 
undergraduates  at  Oxford  to  his  last  paralysing 
illness.  She  was  Jean,  daughter  of  Charles  Henry 
Shinglewood  Taylor,  surgeon;  they  had  two  sons 
and  two  daughters.  Jean  entered  fully  into  his 
professional  life,  filling  first  their  house  in  Edg- 
baston,  and  then  successively  Lawn  House  and 
Holly  Hill,  their  large  houses  in  Hampstead,  with 
his  students  and  colleagues,  many  of  whom 
became  her  own  friends.  They  had  a  wide  circle 
of  friends  in  the  media,  in  music,  and  especially 
in  opera,  which  he  enjoyed  intensely.  A  sudden 
visit  to  Covent  Garden  or  Glyndebourne  was  one 
of  the  joys  of  his  University  College  days.  His 
wife  collaborated  in  his  later  writings,  and  main- 
tained a  strong  interest  in  birth  control  and  in  the 
environment. 

Medawar  was  tall,  physically  strong  (an  excel- 
lent cricketer),  with  a  voice  which  could  hold  a 
lecture  theatre  in  suspense  or  reassure  a  doubting 
student.  Always  accessible  and  open  to  argu- 
ment, he  had  no  doubts  about  his  own  capacity: 
sitting  at  his  typewriter  in  University  College, 
cigarette  in  his  mouth,  he  told  James  Gowans 
that  'It  takes  an  effort  to  write  undying  prose'. 
His  books  are  lucid  and  beautifully  written. 

He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society 


(1949),  appointed  CBE  (1958)  and  CH  (1972), 
knighted  (1965),  and  admitted  to  the  Order  of 
Merit  (1981).  He  became  an  honorary  FBA  in 
1 98 1.  He  was  an  honorary  fellow  of  many  col- 
leges and  was  awarded  numerous  honorary 
degrees. 

During  his  last  fifteen  years  at  the  clinical 
research  centre  at  Harrow  he  was  partially  para- 
lysed from  a  stroke  suffered  in  1969,  while 
reading  the  lesson  in  Exeter  Cathedral  at  the 
British  Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Sci- 
ence (of  which  he  was  president  in  1968-9),  but 
his  ideas  continued  to  flow,  and  he  both  inspired 
and  received  support  from  devoted  colleagues. 
He  suffered  several  more  strokes  and  eventually 
died  from  one,  2  October  1987,  in  the  Royal  Free 
Hospital,  London. 

[P.  B.  Medawar,  Memoir  of  a  Thinking  Radish,  1986; 

N.  A.  Mitchison  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 

the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxv,  1900;  personal  knowledge.] 

Avrion  Mitchison 

MEIGGS,  Russell  (1902-1989),  ancient  histo- 
rian, was  born  20  October  1902  in  Balham, 
London,  the  only  son  and  younger  child  of 
William  Herrick  Meiggs,  of  no  fixed  occupation 
but  who  described  himself  on  his  son's  birth 
certificate  as  'general  merchant',  and  his  wife, 
Mary  Gertrude  May,  of  Brantham,  Suffolk.  Wil- 
liam Meiggs  abandoned  his  family  when  his 
children  were  young,  and  they  were  brought  up 
in  great  poverty.  Russell  Meiggs  was  educated  at 
Christ's  Hospital  and  Keble  College,  Oxford, 
taking  first  classes  in  both  classical  honour  mod- 
erations (1923)  and  literae  humaniores  (1925).  He 
then  began  to  work  on  Ostia,  the  ancient  port  of 
Rome,  as  Pelham  student  at  the  British  School  at 
Rome.  On  his  return  he  taught  at  his  old  school 
for  two  years;  then  in  1928  he  was  elected  to  a 
tutorship  at  his  former  college,  becoming  a  fellow 
in  1930  and  dean  in  1935. 

This  smooth  progress  was  interrupted  when, 
in  1939,  Meiggs  left  Keble  and  became  a  fellow 
of  Balliol  College,  Oxford.  Balliol's  classical 
teaching  had  declined  alarmingly,  and  Meiggs 
later  described  his  move  as  'like  a  First  Division 
team  needing  to  bring  in  a  goalkeeper  from  a 
Third  Division  side'.  He  remained  at  Balliol 
until  his  retirement  in  1970  and  became  pro- 
foundly identified  with  the  college.  During  this 
period  he  was  university  lecturer  in  ancient 
history. 

For  many  years  he  published  little.  He  lav- 
ished his  great  energies  on  teaching,  college 
activities,  and  that  wide  range  of  contacts  which 
often  enabled  him  to  place  a  pupil.  It  was  typical 
of  his  attitude  to  scholarship  that  he  put  so  much 
energy  into  co-operative  ventures  and  the  revi- 
sion of  standard  works.  In  195 1,  with  Antony 
Andrewes,  he  published  a  thoroughly  revised 
version  of  Sir  George  *HiU's  Sources  for  Greek 


297 


Meiggs 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


History  (1897).  He  also  revised  the  History  of 
Greece  by  J.  B.  *Bury  (third  edition,  195 1;  fourth 
edition,  1975).  Roman  Ostia  (i960,  revised  edi- 
tion, 1973),  his  first  major  book,  sprang  from 
thirty-five  years  of  work  and  reflection.  It  com- 
bines mastery  of  the  evidence  with  a  synthesis  of 
archaeology,  social  history,  economics,  and  reli- 
gion, which  goes  far  beyond  most  local  histories. 
It  anticipates  interests  which  historians  were  to 
find  increasingly  central  in  the  next  thirty  years. 
Meiggs  was  elected  FBA  in  1961.  In  1969  he 
edited  A  Selection  of  Greek  Historical  Inscriptions 
with  David  M.  Lewis.  In  1972  appeared  his 
second  main  work,  The  Athenian  Empire.  It 
handled  the  complex  and  controversial  evidence 
without  the  violent  disagreements  which  had 
infected  that  area  of  scholarship,  and  the  book  is 
almost  surprisingly  cool.  The  mastery  of  detail  is 
impressive;  the  work  is  a  judicious  account  of  the 
views  of  its  period. 

The  later  years  of  Meiggs's  retirement  were 
darkened  by  increasing  ill  health,  immobility, 
and,  at  the  end,  loss  of  sight.  With  great  courage 
he  battled  to  finish  Trees  and  Timber  in  the 
Ancient  Mediterranean  World  (1982).  Meiggs  had 
served  in  the  war  as  chief  labour  officer  in  the 
Ministry  of  Supply,  home  timber  production, 
and  had  published  Home  Timber  Production 
,939~I945  (*949)-  His  last  major  work  was  a 
pioneering  one  on  a  fundamental  feature  of 
ancient  society:  all  the  uses  of  timber  and 
the  history  of  forestation  of  the  Mediterranean 
area.  The  work  displayed  so  high  a  level  of 
technical  expertise  that  most  classical  scholars 
were  daunted,  and  disappointingly  few  reviews 
appeared.  It  points  forward  to  interests  which  are 
increasingly  attracting  historians.  Meiggs  con- 
tinued to  talk  of  finishing  his  long  projected  and 
much  desired  book  on  Herodotus,  but  ill  health 
prevented  him. 

Meiggs  was  one  of  the  great  Oxford  tutors. 
Amid  growing  specialization  he  taught  both 
Greek  and  Roman  history;  he  was  an  authority 
on  Greek  epigraphy  who  worked  closely  with 
archaeologists.  His  striking  exterior,  the  mane  of 
hair,  the  Aztec  profile  apparently  hewn  from 
some  hard  wood,  the  long  shorts,  and  the 
uniquely  shaped  grey  flannel  trousers,  made  him 
a  magnet  for  the  cameras  of  tourists,  especially  as 
he  tramped  to  and  from  his  allotment  with  spade 
and  wheelbarrow.  His  manner,  much  imitated, 
was  no  less  individual.  Challenging  questions 
were  accompanied  with  a  piercing  gaze  under 
eyebrows  of  matchless  bushiness,  and  his  rather 
ferocious  geniality  loved  to  disconcert.  In  tutor- 
ials he  liked  pupils  to  put  up  a  fight.  Slipshod 
argument  or  carelessness  over  details  did  not  pass 
unmauled,  but  he  never  had  a  'line'  for  pupils  to 
follow,  nor  a  narrow  or  exclusive  conception  of 
history. 

He  suffered  all  his  life  from  the  alternation  of 


periods  of  great  elation  with  others  of  crippling 
depression.  Physically  he  was  robust  and  Spar- 
tan, famous  for  rolling  in  the  snow  in  his  bathing 
costume.  He  was  a  gardener,  a  Christian,  a  family 
man;  quick  to  assess  people  and  usually  right 
about  them.  He  did  not  aspire  to  promotion,  and 
he  published  his  first  important  book  at  the  age 
of  fifty-eight,  giving  his  energies  without  reserva- 
tion to  pupils  and  college;  British  universities 
will  see  few  such  careers  hereafter.  He  went  his 
own  way,  choosing  widely  different  subjects  to 
work  on,  without  regard  to  fashion. 

In  some  ways  a  traditionalist,  he  welcomed  the 
coming  of  co-education  to  Balliol,  and  he  sympa- 
thized with  the  rebellious  students  of  1968.  From 
1945  to  1969  he  was  praefectus  of  Holywell 
Manor,  the  annexe  of  the  college  in  which  most 
students  from  overseas  lived.  He  had  many 
connections  in  North  America  and  was  fre- 
quently a  visiting  professor  at  Swarthmore. 

Meiggs  married  in  December  1941  the  histo- 
rian Pauline  Gregg,  daughter  of  Thomas  James 
Nathaniel  Gregg,  Post  Office  sorter.  They  had 
two  daughters.  Meiggs  died  24  June  1989  at  his 
home  in  Garsington. 

[Sir  Kenneth  Dover  in  Proceedings  of  the  British 
Academy,  vol.  lxxx,  1991;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Jasper  Griffin 

MERCER,  Joseph  (1914-1990),  footballer  and 
football  manager,  was  born  9  August  19 14  at  32 
Queen  Street,  Ellesmere  Port,  Wirral,  Cheshire, 
the  eldest  in  the  family  of  three  boys  and  one  girl 
of  Joseph  Powell  Mercer,  professional  footballer, 
of  Ellesmere  Port,  and  his  wife,  Ethel  Breeze.  He 
was  educated  at  Cambridge  Road  School  and 
John  Street  Senior  Mixed  School,  Ellesmere 
Port,  playing  football  for  the  Cheshire  schools' 
team.  His  father,  a  former  Nottingham  Forest 
player,  was  wounded  in  World  War  I,  and 
became  a  bricklayer.  He  died  when  Mercer  was 
twelve.  After  leaving  school,  Mercer  worked  for 
Shell  in  a  variety  of  unskilled  jobs,  and  played 
football  first  for  the  village  of  Elton  Green  and 
the  Shell  Mex  team,  and  later  for  Ellesmere  Port. 
Spotted  at  Elton  Green  by  an  Everton  scout,  he 
played  for  Everton  as  an  amateur  for  two  years 
before  signing  on  as  a  professional  in  193 1.  He 
became  a  regular  first-team  player  during  the 
1935-6  season  as  a  wing-half,  and  got  his  first 
England  cap  in  1938.  He  appeared  five  times  for 
England  during  the  1938-9  season,  in  which 
Everton  won  the  League  championship.  In  Sep- 
tember 1939  Mercer  joined  the  army  after  (Sir) 
Stanley  *Rous,  secretary  of  the  Football  Associa- 
tion, had  circularized  footballers  urging  them  to 
join  the  Army  Physical  Training  Corps,  so  that 
they  would  keep  fit.  He  became  a  sergeant- 
instructor,  and  ended  the  war  as  a  sergeant- 
major.    He    played    in    twenty-seven    wartime 


298 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Merrison 


internationals,  captaining  England  on  several 
occasions,  and  also  played  for  Aldershot. 

After  the  war  he  was  unhappy  at  Everton,  and 
suffered  from  knee  trouble.  He  was  contemplat- 
ing retirement  in  order  to  devote  himself  to 
running  a  grocery-  business  in  Wallasey  when 
Arsenal  offered  £7,000  for  him  in  November 
1946.  He  agreed  to  go  on  condition  that  he  could 
live  and  train  in  Liverpool,  and  he  continued  to 
do  so  throughout  his  eight  years  with  Arsenal. 
He  became  a  half-back,  and  went  on  to  captain 
Arsenal  to  two  League  championships,  in  1048 
and  1953,  and  to  success  in  the  FA  Cup  Final 
against  Liverpool  in  1950,  a  few  days  after  being 
voted  Footballer  of  the  Year.  In  April  1954  he 
broke  his  leg,  playing  against  Liverpool,  and 
retired. 

For  the  next  twenty  years  Mercer  pursued  a 
successful  career  as  a  football  manager.  He 
became  manager  of  Sheffield  United,  who  were 
relegated  to  the  second  division  at  the  end  of  his 
first  season  there,  in  1955 — an  inauspicious  start. 
In  December  1958  he  replaced  Eric  Houghton  as 
manager  of  Aston  Villa,  who  were  also  relegated 
at  the  end  of  the  season.  But,  under  his  manage- 
ment, Aston  Villa  came  top  of  the  second  divi- 
sion in  the  1959-60  season,  and  won  the  League 
cup  in  1 96 1.  Mercer  had  a  nervous  breakdown  in 

1964,  after  a  disappointing  season  when  the  club 
came  nineteenth  in  the  League  championship, 
and  he  resigned. 

He  was  out  of  football  for  fourteen  months 
before  becoming  manager  of  Manchester  City  in 

1965.  He  brought  in  Malcolm  Allison  as  assistant 
manager  and  coach,  and  for  five  seasons  this  was 
a  highly  successful  partnership.  Manchester  City 
came  top  of  the  second  division  in  Mercer's  first 
season  there,  won  the  League  championship  in 
1968  and  the  FA  cup  in  1969,  and  in  1970  won 
both  the  League  cup  and  the  European  Cup- 
winners'  cup,  beating  the  Polish  team,  Gornik 
Zabrze,  2-1  in  the  final.  It  was  the  first  English 
club  to  win  a  domestic  and  a  European  trophy  in 
the  same  season.  Mercer's  relationship  with  Alli- 
son soured  after  Allison,  ambitious  for  promo- 
tion, became  involved  in  boardroom  intrigues, 
and  Mercer  left  in  1972  to  become  manager  of 
Coventry  Gty.  In  May  1974,  after  the  resigna- 
tion of  Sir  Alf  Ramsey,  the  England  manager, 
Mercer  agreed  to  be  caretaker  manager  for  the 
rest  of  the  season.  He  was  in  charge  for  seven 
matches,  with  a  record  of  three  wins,  three 
draws,  and  one  loss.  He  was  appointed  OBE  in 
1976. 

Mercer  was  regarded  as  the  greatest  wing-half 
of  his  generation,  and  had  the  war  not  inter- 
rupted his  career  he  would  have  won  many  more 
England  caps.  As  a  manager,  his  greatest  suc- 
cesses were  with  Manchester  City,  previously 
overshadowed  by  their  neighbours  and  rivals, 
Manchester  United.  He  was  a  popular  manager, 


much  loved  for  his  amiable  manner  and  his  big 
smile.  He  was  famous  for  his  bandy  legs  and  was 
often  mistaken  for  the  jockey  Joe  Mercer. 

In  1942  he  married  Norah  Fanny,  daughter 
of  Albert  Edward  Dyson,  provision  merchant. 
They  had  one  son.  Mercer  died  9  August  1990  in 
Manchester. 

[Independent,  n  August  1990;  Joe  Mercer,  The  Great 
Ones,  1964;  Eric  Thornton,  Manchester  City,  1069; 
Andrew  Ward,  The  Manchester  City  Story,  1984.] 

Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

MERRISON,  Sir  Alexander  Walter  (1924- 
1989),  nuclear  physicist,  was  born  20  March 
1924  in  Wood  Green,  London,  the  only  child  of 
Henry  Walter  Merrison,  fitter's  mate,  who  rose 
to  be  service  manager  in  the  local  gas  board  and 
a  respected  chairman  of  the  Tottenham  group  of 
hospitals,  and  his  wife,  Violet  Henrietta  Morti- 
mer, from  Ipswich.  'Alec'  attended  Tottenham 
Grammar  School  and  Enfield  Grammar  School. 
He  went  to  King's  College,  London,  where  he 
graduated  in  physics  in  1944,  after  which  he  was 
'placed'  on  wartime  radar  at  the  Signals  Research 
and  Development  Establishment  at  Christ- 
church.  After  two  years  he  requested  transfer  to 
the  Atomic  Energy  Research  Establishment  at 
Harwell  (1946).  There  he  helped  to  equip  an 
electron  accelerator  to  produce  short  pulses  of 
neutrons,  a  new  technique  for  probing  the  struc- 
ture of  matter,  the  subject  on  which  he  was  to 
publish  his  first  papers. 

In  195 1  Merrison  accepted  a  lectureship  at  the 
University  of  Liverpool,  where  the  physicists 
were  constructing  a  proton  cyclotron  large 
enough  to  produce  the  newly  discovered  'pi-me- 
sons', the  particles  then  thought  to  be  respons- 
ible for  binding  together  the  atomic  nucleus. 
Having  assisted  in  the  completion  of  the 
machine,  he  was  awarded  a  Ph.D.  in  1957  for  his 
first  experiments  on  the  interaction  of  pi-mesons 
with  nuclear  matter.  From  that  time  on  he  was  a 
dedicated  particle  physicist.  He  had  a  gift  for 
designing  clean  experiments,  creating  new 
equipment  and  making  it  work  properly,  and 
inspiring  physicists  and  engineers  to  work 
together  hard  but  amicably.  He  also  became  an 
inspiring  teacher,  able  to  communicate  his  bub- 
bling enthusiasm  to  his  students.  From  1957  to 
i960  he  was  at  CERN,  the  newly  established 
European  accelerator  laboratory  near  Geneva. 
Together  with  G.  Fidecaro  he  confirmed  that  the 
weak  nuclear  force  responsible  for  radioactivity 
was  a  'universal  interaction'.  In  i960  he  returned 
to  Liverpool  as  professor  of  experimental  phys- 
ics, but  he  remained  closely  connected  with 
CERN  for  the  rest  of  his  life. 

In  1962  Merrison  was  engaged  by  the  Science 
Research  Council  (SRC)  to  build  an  electron 
synchotron  at  Daresbury  in  Cheshire,  but  was 


299 


Merrison 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


allowed  to  retain  his  chair.  The  machine  was 
finished  on  time  and  on  budget,  and  worked 
straight  away.  The  Daresbury  laboratory  quickly 
became  an  important  centre  of  research  in  par- 
ticle and  radiation  physics  and  as  its  director  he 
began  to  take  an  active  part  in  policy  matters 
at  the  SRC  and  elsewhere.  He  was  a  member  of 
the  government's  Council  for  Scientific  Policy 
(1967-72).  Needing  a  change  of  home  and  work 
when  his  first  wife  died  in  1968,  he  gladly 
accepted  the  vice-chancellorship  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Bristol  (where  the  pi-mesons  had 
originally  been  discovered).  He  was  elected  FRS 
in  1969. 

Merrison  arrived  in  Bristol  in  1969  to  find  the 
university  in  confrontational  turmoil  and  its 
academic  quality  depleted.  He  quickly  gained  the 
confidence  of  staff  and  students  alike,  made  new 
academic  appointments,  and  introduced  far- 
reaching  reforms  of  the  senate,  administration, 
and  personnel  management.  He  personally  pre- 
pared a  tough  and  detailed  plan  of  action  when 
faced  with  the  financial  cuts  of  1981.  It  was 
unavoidably  controversial,  and  difficult  negotia- 
tions in  the  senate  followed.  Nevertheless,  he 
eventually  succeeded  in  his  objective.  Soon  after 
becoming  vice-chancellor,  Merrison  accepted  a 
series  of  chairmanships  of  important  government 
committees.  The  first  was  the  committee  of 
inquiry  into  the  design  and  erection  of  box  girder 
bridges  (1970-3),  which  set  new  worldwide  stan- 
dards (the  Merrison  rules)  for  the  design  of  such 
bridges.  He  was  knighted  in  1976  and  became  an 
honorary  fellow  of  the  Institution  of  Structural 
Engineers  in  1981.  Bristol  gave  him  an  honorary 
LL  D  in  1 97 1  and  he  had  six  other  honorary 
degrees.  He  also  chaired  the  committee  of 
inquiry  into  the  regulation  of  the  medical  pro- 
fession (1972-5).  He  was  vice-chairman  of  the 
South  West  Regional  Health  Authority  and  was  a 
popular  choice  to  chair  the  royal  commission  on 
the  National  Health  Service  when  it  was 
appointed  in  1976.  This  reviewed  the  entire 
service  and  in  1979  issued  a  report  with  sugges- 
tions about  how  it  could  be  improved.  Many  of 
the  proposals  were  gradually  implemented  by 
administrative  action  in  the  ensuing  years. 

Merrison  played  a  full  part  in  the  committee 
of  vice-chancellors  and  principals,  being  its 
chairman  in  1979-81.  During  this  time  he  had  to 
deal  with  the  government's  new  policy  of  high 
fees  for  overseas  students.  He  became  chairman 
of  the  advisory  board  for  the  research  councils 
(1979-83),  where  he  supervised  the  planning  of 
the  nation's  basic  research  in  the  universities  and 
research  council  laboratories  and  criticized  the 
government's  cuts.  He  was  a  devoted  European, 
but  never  forgot  the  abiding  value  of  the  Com- 
monwealth. He  was  president  of  the  council  of 
CERN  in  1982-5,  and  simultaneously  (1982-3) 
chairman  of  the  council  of  the  Association  of 


Commonwealth  Universities.  At  home  he  was 
elected  president  of  the  Institute  of  Physics 
(1984-6).  He  retired  from  the  Bristol  vice- 
chancellorship  in  1984. 

He  was  sought  after  by  business  for  techno- 
logical prowess  as  much  as  administrative  flair. 
He  became  chairman  of  the  Bristol  Regional 
Board,  and  director  of  Lloyds  Bank  (1986-9)  and 
of  the  Western  Provident  Association  (1985-9), 
thereby  extending  his  interests  in  medicine.  He 
was  a  director  of  the  Bristol  Waterworks  Com- 
pany from  1984.  Business  was  perhaps  not  his 
most  natural  habitat,  but  he  threw  himself  into 
these  new  pursuits  with  characteristic  zeal  and 
open-minded  curiosity.  He  became  a  governor  in 
1969,  then  chairman  (1971-87),  of  the  Bristol 
Old  Vic,  not  only  satisfying  his  love  for  the 
theatre  but  skilfully  guiding  it  through  its  rede- 
velopment programme.  He  was  a  director  of  the 
Bristol  Evening  Post  (1979-89),  was  appointed 
deputy  lieutenant  of  the  county  of  Avon  (1974), 
and  served  as  high  sheriff  (1986-7). 

Merrison  was  stockily  built,  five  feet  ten 
inches  in  height,  with  clear  blue  eyes  and  high 
cheek-bones.  His  voice  became  boisterous  when 
he  was  excited.  In  1948  he  married  Beryl 
Glencora  (died  1968),  daughter  of  Frank  Bruce 
Le  Marquand,  a  brewer  in  Jersey.  They  had  two 
sons.  In  1970  he  married  Maureen  Michele 
Barry,  a  lecturer  in  the  history  department  at 
Bristol  and  daughter  of  John  Michael  Barry, 
entertainer.  They  had  a  daughter  and  a  son. 
Their  greatest  pleasure  was  to  entertain  friends 
and  colleagues  at  Maes-y-Ffyn,  their  farmhouse 
in  the  Llanthony  valley,  and,  after  Merrison's 
retirement,  at  Hinton  Blewett,  near  Bristol. 
Merrison  died  in  Bristol  19  February  1989. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Brian  Flowers 

MIDDLEDITCH,  Edward  Charles  (1923- 
1987),  painter,  was  born  23  March  1923  at  1  Park 
Avenue,  Chelmsford,  Essex,  the  younger  son  and 
second  of  three  children  of  Charles  Henry  Mid- 
dleditch,  cabinet-maker  and  bat  trimmer,  and  his 
wife,  Esme  Buckley.  In  the  mid- 1920s  the  family- 
moved  to  the  St  Anne's  district  of  Nottingham, 
where  Edward  went  to  Mundella  School,  but 
they  returned  to  Chelmsford  in  1939,  where  he 
attended  King  Edward  VI  Grammar  School. 

On  leaving  school  he  worked  in  an  office  until 
he  joined  the  army  in  1942,  and  two  years  later 
he  was  commissioned  in  the  Middlesex  Regi- 
ment, eventually  reaching  the  rank  of  captain.  He 
saw  active  service  in  Normandy  during  the 
winter  campaign  of  1944-5,  an^  was  wounded 
fighting  in  the  Ardennes  in  1945,  when  he  was 
awarded  the  MC.  His  interest  in  art  was  first 
marked  by  the  purchase,  when  on  leave  in  Paris, 
of  a  book  on   Goya.    After  convalescence   in 


300 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Miles 


England  he  was  posted  to  Burma,  arriving  in 
India  in  August  1945.  He  was  then  sent  to  West 
Africa  and  was  invalided  home  from  Nigeria  in 
1947  with  malaria,  and  demobilized. 

In  1948  he  attended  classes  in  painting  and 
drawing  at  the  Regent  Street  Polytechnic.  With 
an  ex-serviceman's  grant  he  was  accepted  by  the 
painting  department  of  the  Royal  College  of  Art 
in  September  of  that  year,  and  he  graduated  in 
1952.  The  strongest  influences  on  him  were 
(A.  J.)  Ruskin  *Spear,  who  taught  him  to  admire 
and  to  some  degree  emulate  the  sombre  tones 
of  Walter  *Sickert,  and  (F.)  John  *Minton, 
who  introduced  him  to  modern  French  art.  His 
friends  and  contemporaries  at  the  RCA  included 
Derrick  Greaves,  John  Bratby,  Jack  Smith,  and 
Malcolm  Hughes. 

In  1950  he  exhibited  and  sold  an  oil  painting, 
'Trafalgar  Square',  at  the  Royal  Academy,  and 
the  following  year  he  showed  views  of  the 
Thames  in  the  exhibition  'Artists  of  Fame  and 
Promise'  at  the  Leicester  Galleries.  His  pictures 
in  the  'Young  Contemporaries'  exhibition  of 
1952  attracted  the  attention  of  John  Berger,  who 
wrote  in  the  New  Statesman  and  Nation  (19 
January  1952)  that  they  were  'the  most  out- 
standing of  all'  in  the  exhibition.  His  stark 
picture  'Baby'  (1952)  was  bought  by  the  Arts 
Council,  and  his  'Crowd,  Earls  Court'  (1954) 
reflected  the  austere  mood  of  the  time.  Although, 
through  friendship,  he  was  associated  with  the 
group  labelled  'Kitchen  Sink  Painters'  by  David 
Sylvester  in  Encounter,  few  of  Middleditch's 
paintings,  then  or  later,  were  of  domestic  sub- 
jects. Rather,  his  melancholy  paintings  (such  as 
'Sheffield  Weir  II',  which  was  bought  for  the 
Tate  Gallery  from  his  first  one-man  exhibition  in 
March  1954  at  Helen  Lessore's  Beaux  Arts 
Gallery),  were  mostly  of  landscape  and  cityscape. 
Characteristic  of  this  period  is  the  dark,  bleak, 
elegiac  'Dead  Chicken  in  a  Stream'  (1955,  Tate 
Gallery). 

In  1955  he  was  included  in  'Giovani  Pittori', 
an  exhibition  which  travelled  from  Rome  to  Paris 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Congres  pour  la  Lib- 
erte  de  la  Culture,  and  won  second  prize  in  the 
Daily  Express  Young  Artists  exhibition.  With 
Bratby,  Greaves,  and  Smith  he  represented  Brit- 
ain at  the  twenty -eighth  Venice  Biennale  in  1956. 
He  visited  Spain  for  the  first  time  in  1957,  and 
the  Middleditch  and  Greaves  families  then  began 
to  share  a  large  house  in  Buckinghamshire. 

He  taught  at  Chelsea  School  of  Art  from  1958 
until  1963,  and  at  Regent  Street  Polytechnic,  the 
Cambridge  School  of  Art,  and  St  Martin's 
School  of  Art  during  the  1960s.  In  1962  he  was 
awarded  a  Gulbenkian  Foundation  scholarship. 
He  moved  to  Boxford,  Suffolk,  and  was 
appointed  head  of  the  department  of  fine  art  at 
Norwich  School  of  Art  in  1964.  A  gifted  teacher 
and  administrator,  he  had  a  profound  influence 


on  students.  On  his  retirement  in  1984  he 
became  in  1985  keeper  of  the  Royal  Academy 
Schools,  having  been  elected  ARA  in  1968  and 
RA  in  1973. 

From  the  1960s  Middleditch  frequently 
painted  flowers,  and  over  the  years  the  mood  and 
colour  of  his  painting  lightened  and  became  more 
decorative,  without  losing  its  serious  commit- 
ment to  the  evocation  of  nature.  At  Norwich  he 
made  many  silk-screen  prints,  and  in  1981  he 
published  Books  and  Folios,  Screenprints  by  Der- 
rick Greaves,  Robert  Medley  and  Edward 
Middleditch. 

Middleditch  dressed  informally;  his  rounded 
forehead  was  furrowed  under  a  widow's  peak  of 
hair,  and  deep  creases  from  the  side  of  his  nose  to 
his  mouth  were  evidence,  perhaps,  of  the  injuries 
and  illnesses  he  had  suffered.  In  1947  he  married 
Jean  Kathleen  (died  1979),  a  student  of  engrav- 
ing, daughter  of  Frank  Joseph  Thomas  White- 
house,  assistant  controller  in  the  London  and 
North-Eastern  Railway.  They  had  one  daughter. 
Ill  health  forced  Middleditch  to  retire  as  keeper 
of  the  Royal  Academy  in  1986,  and  he  died  in 
Chelmsford  29  July  1987,  at  the  time  of  his  major 
retrospective  exhibition,  mounted  by  the  South 
Bank  Centre,  London. 

[Lynda  Morris,  Edward  Middleditch:  the  South  Bank 
Centre,  1987-8;  private  information.]  Alan  Windsor 

MILES,  Sir  (Arnold)  Ashley  (1904-1988), 
microbiologist,  was  born  20  March  1904  in  York, 
the  second  of  three  children  and  only  son  of 
Harry-  Miles,  draper,  and  his  wife,  Kate  Eliz- 
abeth Hindley.  At  Bootham  School  in  York,  a 
Quaker  foundation  that  he  remembered  with 
great  affection,  he  received  a  good  grounding 
both  in  scientific  subjects  and  literature.  Thence 
he  gained  an  exhibition  to  King's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  his  leanings  towards  pathology  and 
bacteriology  were  encouraged  by  Henry  Roy- 
Dean,  the  professor  of  pathology,  and  Everitt 
G.  D.  Murray.  He  obtained  second  classes  in 
both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1924 
and  1925).  After  qualifying  in  medicine  (MRCS, 
LRCP,  1928)  at  St  Bartholomew's  Hospital, 
Miles  gave  a  remarkable  foretaste  of  his  academic 
abilities  by  obtaining  in  1929  membership  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians  while  still  a  house 
physician  (FRCP,  1937). 

In  1929  he  was  appointed  demonstrator  at  the 
London  School  of  Hygiene  and  Tropical  Medi- 
cine; this  step  was  decisive  in  shaping  his  future 
career  as  a  microbiologist  with  a  strong  interest 
in  immunity  to  infection.  His  first  researches,  on 
the  antigens  of  Brucella,  were  continued,  in 
association  with  N.  W.  Pirie,  when  he  returned 
two  years  later  to  Cambridge,  as  a  demonstrator. 
In  1935  he  became  reader  in  bacteriology-  at  the 
British  Postgraduate  Medical  School,  Hammer- 
smith, and  then,  at  the  early  age  of  thirty-three, 


301 


Miles 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


was  appointed  in  1937  to  the  chair  of  bacteri- 
ology at  University  College  Hospital  medical 
school.  Soon  afterwards  the  outbreak  of  war 
brought  many  new  responsibilities  and  difficul- 
ties. As  well  as  continuing  his  professorial  duties, 
Miles  was  a  sector  pathologist  in  the  Emergency 
Medical  Services,  acting  director  of  the  Graham 
Medical  Research  Laboratories,  and  director  of 
the  Medical  Research  Council's  wound  infection 
unit  in  Birmingham.  This  last  proved  the  most 
important  post  of  all,  for  his  researches  on 
wound  infections  in  collaboration  with  R.  E.  O. 
Williams  resulted  in  effective  recommendations 
for  their  control  in  surgical,  industrial,  and 
military  contexts. 

After  the  war  Miles  was  appointed  in  1946 
deputy  director  of  the  National  Institute  for 
Medical  Research  and  head  of  its  department  of 
biological  standards,  and  took  a  prominent  part 
in  the  work  of  the  relevant  national  and  inter- 
national organizations.  His  own  researches,  some 
of  which  were  published  in  collaboration  with  his 
wife,  now  centred  on  the  mechanisms  of  inflam- 
mation and  immunity. 

In  1952  he  was  appointed  director  of  the 
Lister  Institute  of  Preventive  Medicine,  a  private 
organization  funded  by  endowments,  grants,  and 
the  manufacture  and  sale  of  vaccines  and  anti- 
sera;  it  also  housed  several  Medical  Research 
Council  units.  In  the  same  year  he  became  MD 
and  professor  of  experimental  pathology  in  the 
University  of  London.  In  addition  to  directing 
these  manifold  activities  and  continuing  his 
own  investigative  work,  Miles  characteristically 
shouldered  other  burdens,  some  of  which  alone 
would  have  occupied  most  of  the  time  of  lesser 
men.  This  capacity  for  work  on  a  heroic  scale, 
combined  with  his  clear  and  incisive  thinking, 
made  him  much  in  demand  on  boards  and 
committees.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1961  and  served  for  five  years  both  as 
a  vice-president  and  as  biological  secretary.  His 
command  of  written  English  was  superb;  and  as 
well  as  publishing  more  than  140  papers  on  his 
own  work,  he  was  joint  editor,  with  Sir  Graham 
S.  *Wilson,  of  no  fewer  than  five  editions  of 
Topley  and  Wilson's  Principles  of  Bacteriology  and 
Immunity. 

After  his  official  retirement  from  the  Lister  in 
1 97 1,  he  spent  four  years  on  laboratory  studies  at 
the  Clinical  Research  Centre,  after  which  he  was 
invited  in  1976  to  become  deputy  director  of  the 
department  of  medical  microbiology  at  the  Lon- 
don Hospital  Medical  College.  His  last  few  years 
were  marred  by  the  results  of  a  disabling  stroke, 
despite  which  he  continued  to  work  until  a  few 
months  before  his  death. 

Miles's  contributions  to  biomedical  science 
were  recognized  by  his  appointment  as  CBE 
(1953)  and  a  knighthood  (1966);  and  by  honorary 
fellowships  of  the  Royal  College  of  Pathologists 


(1969);  King's  College,  Cambridge  (1972);  the 
Institute  of  Biology  (1975);  the  Infectious  Dis- 
eases Society  of  America  (1979);  and  the  Royal 
Society  of  Medicine  (1981).  He  also  received  a 
number  of  honorary  memberships  of  learned 
societies  and  an  honorary  D.Sc.  from  the  Uni- 
versity of  Newcastle  upon  Tyne  (1969). 

In  addition  to  his  other  attainments,  Miles  had 
a  wide  knowledge  of  literature  and  music,  and 
was  an  accomplished  pianist.  His  ability  to  con- 
verse knowledgeably  on  these  and  other  topics, 
including  for  example  botany  and  the  detailed 
anatomy  of  the  Lake  District,  made  him  a 
delightful  companion.  His  formidable  intellec- 
tual capacity,  set  off  by  his  large  frame  and 
imposing  presence,  could  be  daunting  to  stu- 
dents and  junior  staff;  but  he  was  a  kindly 
person,  who  was  intolerant  only  of  those  who 
contravened  his  own  standards  of  personal  and 
scientific  integrity. 

In  1930  he  married  a  medical  laboratory  tech- 
nician, Ellen  Marguerite  (died  January  1988), 
daughter  of  Harald  Dahl,  a  Norwegian  ship- 
broker,  of  Cardiff,  and  his  French  wife,  Sofie 
Magdalene  Hesselberg.  Ellen  was  the  sister  of 
the  writer  Roald  *Dahl.  They  had  no  children. 
Miles  died  11  February  1988  at  his  home  in 
Hampstead. 

[A.  Neuberger  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxv,  1990;  personal  knowledge.] 

Leslie  Collier 

MILFORD,  (Theodore)  Richard  (1895-1987), 
clergyman,  liberal  theologian,  and  first  chairman 
of  Oxfam,  was  born  10  June  1895  at  Yockleton 
Hall  in  Shropshire,  the  eldest  of  three  sons  (there 
were  no  daughters)  of  Robert  Theodore  Milford, 
schoolmaster,  and  his  wife,  Elspeth  Barter, 
granddaughter  of  George  *Moberly,  bishop  of 
Salisbury.  Both  sides  of  his  family  contained 
notable  academics  and  clerics.  Milford  went  to 
Clifton  College,  where  the  traditional  classical 
education  was  enhanced  by  a  strong  interest  in 
music,  unusual  at  that  time.  When  World  War  I 
broke  out  in  1914  Milford  volunteered  for  the 
army  and  was  posted  to  the  19th  Royal  Fusiliers 
and  then  (1915-19)  commissioned  in  the  Oxford 
and  Buckinghamshire  Light  Infantry,  with 
whom  he  saw  active  service  in  Mesopotamia, 
with  two  spells  of  leave  in  India.  He  was  sent  to 
Cairo  to  train  for  the  Royal  Flying  Corps  in  191 8, 
but  was  invalided  home  in  19 19. 

In  1919  he  went  to  Magdalen  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  took  a  first  in  literae  humaniores  in  1921 . 
His  connection  there  with  the  Student  Christian 
Movement  led  him  to  India,  where  he  taught  at 
Alwaye  College  in  Travancore  (192 1-3)  and  St 
John's  College,  Agra  (1923-4),  with  a  two-year 
spell  in  Liverpool  as  local  SCM  secretary 
(1924-6)  and  a  year  at  Westcott  House  (1 930-1), 


302 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Millar 


Cambridge,  training  for  ordination.  He  was  made 
priest  in  Lucknow,  India,  in  1934. 

When  he  returned  to  England  in  1935  he 
worked  again  for  the  SCM  (until  1938),  stimulat- 
ing many  young  minds  as  the  study  secretary.  At 
the  same  time  (1935-7)  he  was  a  curate  at  All 
Hallows,  Lombard  Street,  London.  In  1938  he 
became  vicar  of  St  Mary's,  the  Oxford  Uni- 
versity church,  where  he  stayed  until  1947.  Here 
a  group,  the  Colloquy,  gathered  round  him  to 
discusss  philosophical  and  theological  topics.  His 
rigorous  logical  mind  and  fearless  questioning 
had  a  lasting  influence  on  its  members,  many  of 
whom  attained  later  distinction. 

Perhaps  his  most  important  contribution  at 
this  time  was  the  part  he  played  in  the  founding 
of  Oxfam.  Dick  (he  was  never  known  by  any 
other  name)  Milford  and  a  few  others  met  in  the 
Old  Library  at  St  Mary's  on  5  October  1942,  in 
response  to  the  idea  brought  to  him  by  Henry 
Gillett,  a  Quaker,  that  in  spite  of  the  blockade 
something  should  be  done  to  help  the  victims  of 
starvation  in  Greece.  The  result  was  the  founda- 
tion of  the  Oxford  Committee  for  Famine  Relief, 
later  known  as  Oxfam.  Many  obstacles  had  to  be 
overcome  to  get  the  government  to  agree  to  this 
idea.  He  remained  chairman  until  1947,  returned 
for  a  second  period  from  i960  to  1965,  and 
continued  taking  an  active  interest  until  his 
death. 

In  1947  he  was  appointed  canon  and  chan- 
cellor of  Lincoln  Cathedral,  with  special  respon- 
sibility for  religious  education  in  the  diocese, 
including  the  Scholae  Cancellarii,  the  theological 
college  at  which  successive  ordinands  profited 
from  his  pithy  teaching.  In  1958  Milford  became 
master  of  the  Temple.  Here  the  social  and 
intellectual  climate  was  in  total  contrast  to  all 
that  had  gone  before  and  he  found  himself  at 
times  in  conflict  with  the  benchers,  notably  in 
i960  when  he  appeared  for  the  defence  in  the 
Crown  prosecution  unsuccessfully  brought 
under  the  obscenity  laws  against  the  publishers 
of  the  unexpurgated  edition  of  Lady  Chatterley's 
Lover,  by  D.  H.  *Lawrence,  which  had  been 
banned  since  1928.  These  London  years  also 
gave  further  scope  for  a  varied  ministry  of 
preaching  and  counselling.  In  1968  he  retired  to 
Shaftesbury,  where  his  activities  included  run- 
ning a  group  studying  Teilhard  de  Chardin,  with 
whose  evolutionary  philosophy  and  devotional 
intensity  he  found  himself  very  much  in  sym- 
pathy. 

Milford's  influence  was  out  of  all  proportion 
to  his  published  work.  Foolishness  to  the  Greeks 
(x953)>  based  on  talks  for  a  university  mission, 
illustrates  his  style  of  Christian  apologetic;  The 
Valley  of  Decision  (1961),  the  result  of  a  working 
party  of  the  British  Council  of  Churches, 
explores  the  moral  dilemma  posed  by  atomic 
weapons;    articles,    broadcasts,    and    addresses 


make  up  the  rest  except  for  a  little  book  of  verse 
(Belated  Harvest,  1978)  and  some  early  memoirs 
published  privately  in  his  old  age. 

Milford  was  a  handsome  and  gifted  man  with 
a  first-class  mind,  dry  wit,  boundless  intellectual 
curiosity  which  never  left  him,  and  wide  interests 
including  chess,  music,  and  sailing.  Though 
discriminating,  he  was  a  man  of  simple  tastes.  In 
1932  he  married  Nancy  Dickens  Bourchier, 
daughter  of  Ernest  Hawksley,  solicitor,  and 
great-grandaughter  of  Charles  *Dickens;  they 
had  two  daughters.  After  the  death  of  his  first 
wife  in  1936,  he  married  in  1937  Margaret 
Nowell  Smith,  daughter  of  Nowell  Charles 
Smith,  headmaster  of  Sherborne  and  former 
fellow  of  New  College,  Oxford.  They  had  a  son, 
who  died  in  infancy,  and  two  daughters.  Milford 
died  in  Shaftesbury  19  January  1987. 

[Information  from  the  family;  personal  knowledge.] 

Oliver  Tomkins 

MILLAR,  Frederick  Robert  Hoyer,  first 
Baron  Inchyra  (1 900-1 989),  diplomat  and  For- 
eign Office  official,  was  born  6  June  1900  in 
Montrose,  the  third  son  and  youngest  of  three 
children  of  Robert  Hoyer  Millar,  timber  mer- 
chant, of  Blair  castle,  Culross,  Fife,  and  his  wife 
Alice  Anne  Combe,  daughter  of  Dr  James  Sim- 
son.  Frederick  (known  as  Derick)  was  educated 
at  Wellington  College  and  New  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  took  a  second-class  honours  degree  in 
modern  history  in  1922  and  an  MA  in  1954  on 
his  election  as  an  honorary  fellow  of  the  college. 
He  played  rugby  for  the  university  without, 
however,  getting  a  blue. 

In  1922  he  was  an  honorary  attache  at  the 
British  embassy  in  Brussels.  In  the  following  year 
he  entered  the  Diplomatic  Service  as  a  third 
secretary,  first  at  Berlin  and  then  in  Paris.  He 
returned  to  the  Foreign  Office  in  1928  and 
moved  to  Cairo  as  second  secretary  in  1930.  He 
returned  to  London  in  1934  as  assistant  private 
secretary  to  the  secretary  of  state  and,  since  there 
was  then  no  personnel  department,  was  respons- 
ible for  dealing  with  all  appointments  in  the 
Foreign  Office  and  Diplomatic  Service.  Millar 
managed  this  task  with  sympathy  and  skill.  His 
judgement  of  men  and  events  was  eminendy 
sound. 

In  1939  he  went  to  Washington  as  a  first 
secretary  and  head  of  Chancery.  It  was  a  critical 
time.  Both  the  ambassador  and  his  minister  were 
Christian  Scientists  and,  during  the  final  illness 
of  the  ambassador,  the  eleventh  Marquess  of 
•Lothian,  Millar  was  in  a  difficult  position.  He 
also  had  to  deal  with  the  rapid  build-up  of  the 
British  departmental  and  military  representation 
in  Washington  and  the  initial  problems  of  the 
ambassadorship  of  the  first  Earl  of  *Halifax.  He 


303 


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D.N.B.  1986-1990 


became  counsellor  in  1941  and  was  secretary  of 
the  British  civil  secretariat  in  Washington  in 
1943-4.  His  administrative  skills  and  his  Wash- 
ington connections  served  him  in  good  stead  in 
this  testing  period. 

In  1944  he  became  counsellor  and  in  1947 
assistant  under-secretary  in  the  Foreign  Office. 
He  returned  to  Washington  as  minister  in  1948. 
He  played  an  important  part  in  the  establishment 
and  early  years  of  NATO,  becoming  in  1950  its 
UK  deputy  and  in  1952  the  permanent  repre- 
sentative on  the  NATO  council.  In  1953  he  was 
appointed  UK  high  commissioner  in  Germany, 
where  he  had  an  influential  role  during  the 
transition  from  Allied  control  to  diplomatic 
recognition,  and  in  1955  he  became  the  first 
postwar  ambassador  at  Bonn. 

An  excellent  administrator  and  effective  oper- 
ator in  the  Foreign  Service,  in  1957  he  returned 
to  the  Foreign  Office  as  permanent  under-secre- 
tary of  state  and  head  of  the  Diplomatic  Service, 
at  a  time  when  the  Foreign  Service  had  been 
badly  shaken  and  divided  by  the  Suez  crisis.  His 
robust  but  sympathetic  manner  and  his  admin- 
istrative ability  soon  restored  morale  and  made 
him  an  outstanding  and  popular  head  of  the 
service.  He  retired  in  1961,  when  he  was  created 
a  hereditary  peer  as  Baron  Inchyra.  He  took  his 
title  from  Inchyra  House,  his  Perthshire  home, 
and  sat  on  the  cross-benches.  He  was  king- 
at-arms  of  the  Order  of  St  Michael  and  St 
George,  and  became  a  member  of  the  Queen's 
Body  Guard  for  Scotland.  He  was  also  a  gover- 
nor of  Wellington  College  for  many  years. 

On  his  retirement  from  the  Foreign  Service  he 
accepted  a  number  of  appointments  in  banking, 
finance,  industry,  and  insurance.  He  was  also 
chairman  of  the  British  Red  Cross  and  of  the 
Anglo-Netherlands  Society  in  London.  In 
between  these  activities  and  in  his  final  retire- 
ment he  energetically  pursued  his  favourite  sport 
of  shooting.  He  was  appointed  CVO  (1938), 
CMG  (1939),  KCMG  (1949),  and  GCMG 
(1956). 

In  appearance  Inchyra  was  very  tall  and  rather 
portly  with  a  florid  complexion  and  a  bald  head. 
He  generally  moved  slowly  in  a  dignified  man- 
ner. He  was  a  good  companion,  and  had  been  a 
popular  figure  in  Oxford  and  a  member  of  the 
Bullingdon  Club. 

In  193 1  he  married  (Anna  Judith)  Elizabeth 
('Bunchie'),  daughter  of  Reneke  de  Marees  van 
Swinderen,  the  Netherlands  minister  in  London, 
and  his  American  wife.  Bunchie  was  a  strong  and 
attractive  character  and  a  great  help  to  her 
husband  in  his  career.  There  were  two  sons  and 
two  daughters  of  the  marriage.  In  April  1989 
Inchyra  was  incapacitated  by  a  massive  stroke, 
but  lingered  on  until  he  died  at  the  Royal 
Infirmary,   Perth,    16  October    1989.    He   was 


succeeded  in  the  barony  by  his  elder  son,  Robert 
Charles  Reneke  Hoyer  Millar  (born  1935). 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Sherfield 

MILLER,  James  (191 5-1989),  songwriter, 
singer,  folk-song  revivalist,  and  dramatist.  [See 
MacColl,  Ewan.] 

MITCHELL,  Denis  Holden  (1911-1990),  tele- 
vision and  radio  producer,  was  born  1  August 
191 1  in  Cheadle,  Cheshire,  the  younger  child 
and  only  son  of  Ernest  George  Mitchell,  Con- 
gregational minister,  and  his  wife,  Ethel  Alder- 
son.  The  family  went  to  South  Africa  when  he 
was  six.  When  he  was  ten  his  mother  returned 
with  him  to  Britain  to  arrange  his  education  and 
provide  him  with  a  home.  He  attended  a  Con- 
gregational public  school  in  Caversham,  Surrey, 
where  he  twice  failed  his  matriculation  exam- 
ination. 

He  shared  his  mother's  enthusiasm  for  drama, 
and  as  a  teenager  his  temporary  work  included 
the  carrying  of  spears  at  the  Old  Vic  theatre.  At 
the  age  of  eighteen  he  was  told  by  his  father  that 
he  must  return  with  his  mother  to  South  Africa, 
where  he  was  to  stay  until  1949.  His  first  work 
was  as  a  bank  clerk,  and  during  his  holidays  he 
appeared  as  an  actor  in  local  stage  productions,  as 
well  as  acting  and  writing  radio  scripts  for  the 
South  African  Broadcasting  Corporation. 

On  the  outbreak  of  war  Mitchell  volunteered 
for  service  in  the  South  African  artillery,  but 
because  of  his  knowledge  of  drama  and  radio  he 
was  soon  transferred  to  the  entertainment  unit  of 
the  Union  Defence  Force,  being  promoted  to  the 
rank  of  captain  and  placed  in  command  of  its 
operation  in  the  Middle  East  and  Italy.  One  of 
the  members  of  his  unit  was  Sidney  *James. 

At  the  end  of  the  war  he  worked  briefly  for  a 
local  newspaper,  and  then  joined  the  staff  of  the 
South  African  Broadcasting  Corporation.  His 
programme  work  covered  a  wide  range,  but  his 
main  concern,  he  insisted,  was  with  'real  people 
and  real  voices',  and  his  own  personality,  quiet 
and  sympathetic,  explains  why  no  interviewer 
has  extracted  more  by  saying  less.  His  passion  for 
drama  had  already  vanished,  never  to  return. 

On  the  advice  of  the  BBC  features  producer, 
D.  G.  *Bridson,  who  had  visited  South  Africa, 
he  returned  to  Britain  in  1949  and  in  1950 
became  the  BBC's  features  producer  in  Man- 
chester, near  to  his  birthplace.  Most  of  his 
programmes  were  based  on  interviews  with  peo- 
ple whose  voices  were  rarely  heard:  the  homeless, 
nurses,  the  unemployed,  and  criminals.  He 
always  walked  alone,  often  at  night,  usually 
finding  people  by  chance.  At  a  time  when  cam- 
eras and  microphones  were  mainly  studio-based, 
he  worked  out  in  the  streets,  recording  people  in 
their  own  surroundings. 


304 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Mitchell 


In  1955  he  was  briefly  attached  to  the  BBC 
Television  Service  in  London,  where  he  made 
his  first  documentary  film,  about  teenagers, 
which  gained  an  award  at  the  Brussels  Experi- 
mental Film  Festival.  On  his  return  to  Man- 
chester in  1956  he  continued  to  make  television 
documentaries,  notably  Morning  in  the  Streets 
(1959),  which  won  both  the  Prix  Italia  and  an 
award  of  the  Society  of  Film  and  Television  Arts. 
He  joined  the  Television  Service  at  Shepherd's 
Bush  in  1959,  continuing  his  own  style  with  So/to 
Story,  about  a  London  busker,  but  he  also 
returned  to  Africa  to  make  a  series.  The  Wind  of 
Change,  and  in  1961  he  produced  Chicago,  the 
storv  of  a  city  'seen  through  the  eyes  of  the 
people  who  live  there,  from  the  very  poor  to  the 
extremely  rich'  (Denis  Mitchell's  notes  propos- 
ing the  film). 

He  left  the  BBC  in  1962,  and  the  following 
year  formed  Denis  Mitchell  Films  Ltd.,  a  small 
company  which  survived  until  his  death.  It  made 
documentaries  for  many  organizations,  including 
ATY,  the  BBC,  Rediffusion,  Southern  Tele- 
vision, and  Channel  4.  Much  of  his  most  per- 
sonal work  was  made  for  Granada  Television, 
based  again  in  Manchester,  and  his  subjects 
(especially  in  the  series  This  England,  1964-7) 
were  usually  'ordinary  folk';  but  his  interviewing 
technique  was  equally  effective  in  Private  Lives 
(1972-3),  in  which  the  subjects  came  from  many 
classes  of  society.  A  programme  which  he  always 
regarded  as  one  of  his  best  was  a  portrait  of 
Quentin  Crisp.  Towards  the  end  of  his  life  he 
became  increasingly  keen  on  making  very  short 
programmes,  lasting  between  five  and  ten  min- 
utes, whose  subjects  were  inevitably  men  and 
women  in  various  walks  of  life.  He  made  over 
100  documentaries,  and  in  1975  received  the 
SFTA's  Desmond  Davis  award  for  his  out- 
standing talent. 

Mitchell  was  of  medium  height,  with  hazel 
eyes  and  brown  hair;  he  was  gentle  and  softly 
spoken,  and  frequently  smiling.  In  1938  he 
married  in  Durban  Dorothea  ('Sally'),  daughter 
of  William  Arthur  Bates,  telegraphic  engineer  in 
the  Post  Office.  They  had  two  daughters,  the 
younger  of  whom  died  in  1970.  His  first  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  South  Africa  in  1948,  and  in 
195 1  he  married  Betty  Annie,  a  BBC  secretary 
and  the  daughter  of  a  transport  inspector,  Albert 
Elmer  Home.  They  had  one  son.  His  second 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1965,  and  in  the  same 
year  he  married  (Norah)  Linda,  who  had  been 
his  secretary  in  the  BBC,  the  daughter  of  John 
Hastings  Webster,  chartered  accountant.  They 
were  to  live  in  the  Norfolk  countryside,  the 
location  of  his  film  Never  and  Always  (1977), 
which  expressed  its  social  history  as  seen  by  the 
local  people.  Mitchell  died  30  September  1990 
at   his   home   in    Great   Massingham,   Norfolk 


(although  his  death  certificate  gives  1  October  as 
the  day  of  death). 

[Broadcasting,  Entertainment,  Cinematograph,  and 
Theatre  Union  history  project,  National  Film  and 
Television  Archive,  21  Stephen  Street,  London;  pri- 
vate information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Norm  as  Swallow 

MITCHELL,  Joseph  Stanley  (1009-1987), 
radiotherapist  and  physicist,  was  born  in  Bir- 
mingham 22  July  1909,  the  eldest  of  the  three 
children  and  only  son  of  Joseph  Brown  Mitchell, 
schoolteacher,  and  his  wife,  Ethel  Maud  Man 
Arnold,  also  a  schoolteacher.  He  won  an  open 
scholarship  to  King  Edward  VI  High  School, 
Birmingham,  where  he  won  a  state  scholarship, 
which  he  took  up  at  Birmingham  University  in 
1926,  studying  preclinical  subjects.  Two  years 
later  he  won  a  scholarship  to  St  John's  College, 
Cambridge,  where  he  read  natural  sciences  and 
obtained  first  classes  in  both  parts  of  the  tripos 
(1930  and  1931). 

He  completed  his  clinical  training  in  Birming- 
ham, qualifying  MB,  B.Chir.  (Cambridge)  in 
1934,  and  served  as  a  house  officer  at  Birming- 
ham General  Hospital.  He  returned  to  Cam- 
bridge to  study  for  his  Ph.D.  (1937)  on  the 
physics  of  radiation.  He  held  first  an  Elmore 
research  studentship  and  then  a  Beit  memorial 
fellowship.  In  1936  he  was  elected  to  a  fellowship 
of  St  John's  College,  which  he  held  until  his 
death.  He  took  up  the  post  of  radiological  officer 
at  the  Christie  Hospital  and  Holt  Radium  Insti- 
tute in  Manchester  (1937-8)  and  in  1938  was 
appointed  assistant  in  research  to  the  regius 
professor  of  physic  at  Cambridge,  J.  A.  *Ryle. 

In  1939  he  became  radiotherapist  to  the  Emer- 
gency Medical  Service  in  Cambridge  and  in  1944 
was  selected  to  go  to  Chalk  River,  Montreal, 
Canada,  to  take  charge  of  medical  investigations 
at  the  National  Research  Council  laboratory, 
where  the  joint  British  and  Canadian  Atomic 
Energy  Project  was  installed.  He  later  described 
demanding  a  foot  of  concrete  to  be  laid  over  the 
entire  floor  of  the  laboratory  to  protect  the 
workers  from  the  spilled  radiation.  He  continued 
studies  on  the  biological  effects  of  radiation  and 
was  the  first  to  realize  the  potential  value  of 
the  gamma-emitting  radiation  of  the  isotope 
6oCobalt  in  the  treatment  of  cancer. 

After  World  War  II  Mitchell  was  elected  to 
the  new  Cambridge  chair  of  radiotherapeutics  in 
1946  and  became  the  director  of  the  radio- 
therapeutic  centre  at  Addenbrooke's  Hospital, 
Cambridge.  He  became  internationally  known 
for  his  work  on  the  treatment  of  cancer  by 
irradiation.  He  also  tried  to  improve  cancer 
treatment  with  a  cancer-seeking  drug  (Synkavit) 
to  carry  radioactivity  to  cancer  cells,  but  had 
limited  success.  The  acme  of  his  academic  career 
came  with  his  appointment  as  regius  professor  of 


305 


Mitchell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


physic  at  Cambridge  in  1957.  He  set  about 
establishing  a  postgraduate  medical  school.  The 
first  of  the  clinical  chairs  (medicine)  was  set  up  in 
1963  and  surgery  in  1965.  When  the  new  pro- 
fessor of  medicine  initiated  steps  towards  a 
clinical  school  (opened  in  1976),  Mitchell  gave  it 
his  wholehearted  support  from  the  outset,  and  in 
1974  he  made  a  generous  offer  to  vacate  the 
regius  chair  in  1975,  so  that  a  new  regius 
professor  of  physic  could  be  in  post  before  the 
clinical  school  was  due  to  open.  He  reverted  to 
his  previous  chair  of  radiotherapeutics,  retiring 
in  1976  but  continuing  his  research  and  training 
of  Ph.D.  students.  He  wrote  numerous  articles 
and  a  few  books,  including  Studies  in  Radio- 
therapeutics  (i960). 

His  skills  were  recognized  in  1952  by  the 
Royal  Society  electing  him  to  their  fellowship. 
He  was  appointed  CBE  (1951)  and  MD  (1957), 
and  a  fellow  of  the  Faculty  (later  Royal  College) 
of  Radiologists  (1954)  and  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  (1958).  He  became  Dunham  lecturer 
at  Harvard  (1958),  Withering  lecturer  at  Bir- 
mingham University  (1958),  and  honorary  D.Sc. 
of  Birmingham  (1958).  He  was  also  Pirogoff 
medalist  of  the  USSR  Academy  of  Sciences 
(1967),  an  honorary  member  of  the  German 
Roentgen  Society  (1967),  Silvanus  Thompson 
lecturer  of  the  British  Institute  of  Radiologists 
(1968),  and  a  foreign  fellow  of  the  Indian 
National  Academy  of  Sciences.  In  1970  he  was 
Linacre  lecturer  of  St  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, and  was  appointed  honorary  consultant 
to  the  Atomic  Energy  Authority. 

Mitchell  was  a  well-built  man,  a  little  portly  in 
later  years,  and  with  a  well  developed  moustache. 
Although  in  public  he  appeared  somewhat  dour, 
in  private  he  had  a  ready  sense  of  humour.  Even 
in  the  heat  of  summer  he  always  wore  the 
waistcoat  of  his  three-piece  suit.  He  was  kind  and 
gentle,  and  showed  immense  compassion  when 
treating  his  cancer  patients.  He  had  a  German 
grandfather  and  spoke  fluent  German.  He 
showed  a  great  interest  in  the  Anglo-German 
Medical  Society  and  was  president  of  the  British 
section  from  1959  to  1968.  In  1934  he  married 
Lilian  Mary  Buxton,  MB,  Ch.B.,  and  he  later 
helped  her  direct  the  outfitting  business  she 
inherited  from  her  father,  George  Buxton.  She 
devoted  her  life  to  supporting  him  and  his 
research  until  she  died  in  1983.  They  had  a  son 
and  a  daughter.  Mitchell  died  in  Cambridge  22 
February  1987. 

[D.  H.  Marrian  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiv,  1988;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Ivor  H.  Mills 

MOMIGLIANO,  Arnaldo  Dante  (1908-1987), 
ancient  historian,  was  born  5  September  1908  in 
Caraglio,  near  Cuneo,  Italy,  the  only  son  and 
eldest  of  three  children  of  Riccardo  Salomone 


Momigliano,  grain  merchant,  and  his  wife,  Ilda 
Levi.  His  was  a  prominent  Jewish  intellectual 
family;  his  father  and  mother  died  in  a  concen- 
tration camp  in  World  War  II.  He  was  educated 
at  home,  and  from  1925  at  Turin  University, 
where  he  came  under  the  influence  of  Gaetano 
De  Sanctis  in  ancient  history  and  Augusto  Ros- 
tagni  in  Greek  literature. 

Immediately  after  graduating  in  1929,  he  fol- 
lowed De  Sanctis  to  Rome,  where  he  joined  the 
group  of  scholars  employed  on  the  Enciclopedia 
Italiana,  for  which  he  wrote  over  230  articles, 
including  the  long  and  important  'Roma  in  eta 
imperiale'  (1936).  At  the  same  time,  from  the  age 
of  twenty-four  he  was  teaching  Greek  history  at 
Rome  University  as  assistant  and  from  1932  as 
substitute  for  De  Sanctis. 

Despite  his  connections  with  De  Sanctis  and 
Benedetto  Croce  (both  openly  opposed  to  Fas- 
cism) in  1936  he  won  the  concorso  for  the  post  of 
professor  of  Roman  history  at  Turin  University; 
his  inaugural  lecture  (published  posthumously  in 
1989)  was  devoted  to  'The  Concept  of  Peace  in 
the  Graeco-Roman  World'.  In  September  1938 
he  was  dismissed  on  racial  grounds. 

His  second  book,  on  the  emperor  Claudius 
(1932),  had  been  favourably  noticed  by  Hugh 
*Last,  professor  of  Roman  history  at  Oxford, 
who  arranged  for  its  translation  into  English 
(1934);  he  therefore  wrote  to  Last,  who  applied 
on  his  behalf  to  the  Society  for  the  Protection  of 
Science  and  Learning  (founded  to  assist  aca- 
demic refugees),  which  responded  with  an  invita- 
tion and  a  small  grant  for  a  year  to  continue  his 
researches  in  Oxford.  He  arrived  on  30  March 
1939,  and  his  wife  and  daughter  followed  shortly. 
In  1940  he  was  interned  briefly  as  an  'enemy 
alien'  on  the  Isle  of  Man;  throughout  the  war  the 
family  lived  in  rented  rooms,  supported  first  by 
the  Society,  then  by  research  grants  from  the 
Rockefeller  Foundation  arranged  through  the 
Oxford  University  Press.  During  this  period  he 
was  preparing  a  major  book  on  'Liberty  and 
Peace  in  the  Ancient  World'  (later  abandoned, 
although  substantial  fragments  survive).  He  was 
the  youngest  (and  only  Italian)  member  of  that 
remarkable  group  of  refugee  classical  scholars 
who  congregated  in  the  library  of  the  Ashmolean 
Museum,  and  who  subsequently  repaid  their 
debt  to  Britain  by  transforming  classical  studies 
in  the  Anglo-Saxon  world. 

After  the  war  Momigliano  was  reinstated  as 
supernumerary  professor  at  Turin  in  1945.  In 
1947  he  was  appointed  lecturer  at  Bristol  Uni- 
versity and  in  1949  he  was  promoted  to  reader. 
In  1 95 1  he  moved  to  the  chair  of  ancient  his- 
tory at  University  College  London,  where  he 
remained  until  1975.  From  1964  he  was  also 
professor  at  the  Scuola  Normale  Superiore  of 
Pisa. 

For  many  years  he  played  an  important  part 


306 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Momigliano 


on  the  editorial  boards  of  the  Journal  of  Roman 
Studies,  Rtvtsta  Storica  Itahana,  and  History  and 
Theory.  After  retirement  he  was  appointed  an 
associate  member  of  All  Souls  College,  Oxford 
(1975-82),  and  from  1983  a  visiting  (later  hon- 
orary) fellow  at  Peterhouse,  Cambridge.  From 
1975  to  his  death  he  was  Alexander  White 
visiting  professor  at  Chicago,  where  he  spent  a 
semester  each  year,  and  he  also  lectured  widely 
throughout  Europe  and  in  Israel.  The  deaths  of 
most  of  his  family  and  childhood  friends  in 
concentration  camps  meant  that  his  connections 
with  Germany  remained  distant. 

Momigliano's  early  work  was  in  the  tradition 
of  Italian  idealist  and  critical  historical  studies, 
and  showed  a  firm  grounding  in  classical  philo- 
logy. His  first  book  was  on  the  Hellenistic  Jewish 
book  of  Maccabees  (1930);  after  his  biography  of 
Claudius,  he  wrote  a  study  of  Philip  of  Macedon 
(1934).  These  were  all  highly  professional  works, 
distinguished  by  critical  use  of  sources,  sym- 
pathy with  the  subject,  and  a  mastery  of  the 
extensive  bibliography.  By  the  time  of  his  exile 
his  own  bibliography  already  comprised  208 
items  (apart  from  encyclopaedia  articles). 

The  move  to  England,  with  the  need  to  master 
another  culture  and  another  language,  coincided 
with  a  period  of  deep  questioning  of  the  meaning 
of  European  history.  By  the  end  of  the  war  he 
had  identified  a  new  subject  for  research,  the 
history  of  historiography  from  antiquity  to  the 
present  day;  his  immense  learning  and  sound 
judgement  made  him  the  acknowledged  creator 
and  master  of  a  new  area  of  study  for  a  genera- 
tion. The  long  delayed  publication  of  the  1962 
Sather  lectures  after  his  death  {The  Classical 
Foundations  of  Modern  Historiography,  1990) 
showed  that  he  had  already  then  established  the 
framework  for  researches  which  he  pursued  in 
detail  over  the  next  twenty-five  years;  these  are 
included  in  his  Contrihuti  alia  Storia  degli  Studi 
Classici  e  del  Mondo  Antico  (1955  onwards), 
which  when  finally  completed  will  run  to  four- 
teen large  volumes.  Many  selections  from  these 
essays  have  been  published,  in  English,  Italian, 
French,  and  German.  Some  have  criticized  the 
fact  that  he  preferred  the  essay  to  the  book;  but 
his  choice  relates  to  his  conception  of  history  as 
a  way  of  life  and  an  attitude  of  mind,  rather  than 
a  set  of  permanent  results. 

His  influence  was  felt  in  many  areas.  His  work 
on  Edward  *Gibbon,  George  *Grote,  and 
nineteenth-century  continental  scholarship  is 
particularly  important.  He  opened  up  the  study 
of  late  antiquity  in  Britain  ( The  Conflict  between 
Paganism  and  Christianity  in  the  Fourth  Century, 
1963).  His  work  on  early  Rome  inspired  a  new 
generation  of  Italian  scholars.  In  1972  he  helped 
to  establish  a  joint  degree  in  anthropology  and 
ancient  history  at  University  College  London, 
and  comparative  themes  are  evident  in  his  Lon- 


don seminar,  culminating  in  Alien  Wisdom:  the 
Limits  of  Hellenization  (1975).  Since  his  early 
contacts  with  Croce,  he  had  been  interested  in 
the  idea  of  liberty  and  its  relation  to  the  concept 
of  the  person;  this  provoked  a  controversial 
study,  The  Development  of  Greek  Biography 
(1971),  and  towards  the  end  of  his  life  papers  on 
the  idea  of  the  person  and  biography  in  late 
antiquity.  He  retained  a  lifelong  interest  in  Jew- 
ish history,  and  his  latest  work  centred  on  the 
history  of  ancient  religion. 

It  was  in  the  lecture  and  the  seminar  that  his 
distinctive  combination  of  immense  learning  and 
facility  with  ideas  had  most  impact.  Although  his 
accent  remained  impenetrably  Piedmontese,  he 
wrote  English  with  an  unacademic  elegance  and 
wit,  and  Italian  'like  an  Englishman1.  His  teach- 
ing presented  no  general  theory  of  history,  for  he 
respected  too  much  the  autonomy  of  the  past  to 
wish  to  impose  general  patterns  on  it;  as  he  said 
once:  'I  have  now  lost  faith  in  my  own  theories, 
but  I  have  not  yet  acquired  faith  in  the  theories  of 
my  colleagues.'  To  him,  theory  was  created  by 
the  historian,  not  by  the  facts;  it  was  this  empha- 
sis on  the  role  of  the  observer  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  history  which  was  one  of  his  most 
distinctive  contributions  to  the  study  of  history. 
Another  was  his  insistence  that  methodology  (as 
opposed  to  ideology)  was  the  central  theme  of  the 
history  of  historiography. 

His  teaching  followed  the  continental  tradition 
of  seminars,  and  his  efforts  were  directed  towards 
the  next  generation  of  scholars.  In  England  the 
main  centre  of  his  activity  was  the  Warburg 
Institute:  he  contributed  many  lectures,  and 
from  1967  to  1983  conducted  a  regular  seminar 
there,  which  became  the  centre  for  young  histori- 
ans throughout  Britain;  in  Italy  his  annual  semi- 
nar at  Pisa  attracted  audiences  of  hundreds;  his 
Chicago  seminar  was  equally  famous.  None  who 
presented  a  paper  on  these  occasions  could  forget 
the  mixture  of  awe  and  fear  which  he  inspired,  as 
he  summed  up  the  problem  with  greater  clarity 
and  learning  than  the  speaker  could  ever  hope  to 
achieve. 

Widely  held  to  be  the  most  learned  man  of  his 
age,  he  was  'a  masters'  master'  (George  Steiner), 
and  one  of  the  dominant  figures  in  European 
historical  studies  for  a  generation,  in  which  he 
seemed  to  many  to  be  the  embodiment  of  history 
itself.  Stocky,  untidy,  and  of  immense  vitality,  a 
non-drinker  always  on  the  move,  with  his  pock- 
ets full  of  medicines,  carbon  copy  cash-books  (for 
writing  references  in),  and  bunches  of  keys,  his 
books  in  a  string  bag,  his  scarf  attached  by  a 
safety  pin,  he  took  scant  interest  in  administra- 
tion, and  lived  for  intellectual  discussion.  He  was 
immediately  approachable,  and  paid  no  attention 
to  rank:  he  lacked  all  pomposity  and  most  of  the 
social  graces,  even  forgetting  his  own  retirement 
dinner — an  art  which  he  described  as  la  triumph 


307 


Momigliano 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


of  the  Id  over  the  Ego'.  He  would  move  in  a 
cloud  of  younger  scholars;  and  an  hour  with  him 
would  often  change  their  lives.  He  was  fascinated 
by  ideas,  new  and  old;  in  his  later  years  he 
became  more  insistent  on  the  need  to  know,  and 
returned  to  ancestral  traditions  of  rabbinic  learn- 
ing and  exact  scholarship,  but  he  never  lost  his 
delight  in  discussion.  To  those  he  respected 
intellectually,  especially  the  young,  he  was  gen- 
erous to  a  fault;  he  would  dismiss  openly  those 
who  did  not  measure  up  to  his  standards.  As  a 
result  he  had  many  devoted  friends  and  disciples, 
and  not  a  few  enemies.  For  he  was  a  man  of 
passion,  capable  of  quarrelling  magnificently  and 
permanently;  yet  it  must  be  said  that  he  never 
did  so  without  good  cause,  personal  or  intellec- 
tual. 

Through  his  writing  and  his  personality 
Momigliano  made  a  major  contribution  to  intel- 
lectual life  in  England,  Italy,  and  America.  But 
he  remained  true  to  his  origins;  during  a  lifetime 
of  exile  he  retained  his  Italian  citizenship,  and  as 
a  free  thinker  was  proud  of  his  three  inheri- 
tances, Celtic  Piedmont,  Italy  of  the  Risorgi- 
mento,  and  the  Jewish  tradition  of  learning. 

He  held  a  number  of  visiting  professorships  in 
America;  he  became  a  fellow  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1954,  and  president  of  the  Society 
for  the  Promotion  of  Roman  Studies  (1965-8); 
he  received  many  honorary  degrees,  and  an 
honorary  KBE  in  1974.  He  married  in  1932 
Gemma,  daughter  of  Adolfo  Segre,  civil  servant. 
They  had  one  daughter,  Anna  Laura.  Momi- 
gliano died  1  September  1987  in  the  Central 
Middlesex  Hospital,  London,  and  was  buried  in 
the  Jewish  cemetery  at  Cuneo. 

[Rivista  Storica  Italiana,  vol.  c,  1988,  fasc.  II;  Peter 
Brown  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  Ixxiv, 
1988;  Carlo  Dionisotti,  Ricordo  di  Arnaldo  Momigliano, 
Bologna,  1989;  L.  Cracco  Ruggini  (ed.),  Omaggio  ad 
Arnaldo  Momigliano,  Como,  1989;  History  and  Theory 
Beiheft,  vol.  xxx,  1991;  Momigliano  papers  in  Scuola 
Normale  Pisa,  Society  for  the  Protection  of  Science  and 
Learning  (Bodleian  Library,  Oxford),  and  Oxford  Uni- 
versity Press;  personal  knowledge.]   Oswyn  Murray 

MOON,  Sir  (Edward)  Penderel  (1 905-1 987), 
Indian  civil  servant  and  writer,  was  born  13 
November  1905  in  Green  Street,  May  fair,  Lon- 
don, the  only  son  and  second  of  five  children  of 
Robert  Oswald  Moon,  consultant  cardiologist, 
and  his  wife,  Ethel  Rose  Grant  Waddington.  Dr 
Moon  wrote  about  philosophy  and  Greek  medi- 
cine as  well  as  diseases  of  the  heart;  he  stood 
several  times  as  a  Liberal  candidate  for  Parlia- 
ment. 

Penderel  Moon  followed  his  father  to  Win- 
chester and  New  College,  Oxford,  was  placed  in 
the  first  class  in  liter ae  humaniores  (1927),  and  in 
the  same  year  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at  All 
Souls  College,  Oxford,  which  he  held  until  1935. 
In  1929  he  was  appointed  to  the  Indian  Civil 


Service,  arriving  in  India  on  29  November.  He 
was  posted  to  the  Punjab  and  attached  for 
instruction  to  Gurdaspur  district  under  (Sir) 
Evan  Jenkins,  later  private  secretary  to  the  vice- 
roy and  governor  of  the  Punjab,  who  formed  very 
early  a  high  opinion  of  his  administrative  ability. 
By  the  time  he  had  charge  of  the  difficult  district 
of  Multan,  it  was  known  that  Moon  decided 
quickly  and  acted  firmly  but  was  not  notably 
tolerant  of  the  opinions  of  others,  even  his  elders. 
None  the  less,  he  was  appointed  in  1938  private 
secretary  to  the  governor  of  the  Punjab,  Sir 
Henry  Craik;  he  was  young  for  this  key  position 
and  was  also  unusual  in  winning  races  on  the 
governor's  horses. 

After  his  spell  as  private  secretary,  Moon  was 
posted  in  1941  as  deputy  commissioner  to  Amrit- 
sar,  the  focal  point  of  the  Sikh  religion  and  of 
special  importance  in  war  in  view  of  the  Sikh 
contribution  to  the  Indian  army.  Like  many 
young  British  officers  in  the  ICS,  Moon  con- 
sidered that  the  government  of  the  second 
Marquess  of  *Linlithgow  was  dragging  its  feet 
about  Indian  advance  towards  self-government. 
In  November  1942  he  addressed  to  the  Punjab 
government  a  letter  arguing  that  those  impris- 
oned for  preaching  civil  disobedience  should 
receive  better  treatment;  this  was  in  order,  but 
when  he  received  an  unsympathetic  reply, 
explaining  the  critical  war  situation,  Moon's 
reaction  was  not.  He  sent  a  copy  of  the  govern- 
ment's letter,  with  his  own  acid  comments,  to  a 
brother  of  Rajkumari  Amrit  Kaur,  secretary  to 
M.  K.  *Gandhi.  She  was  at  the  time  in  gaol.  This 
letter  was  intercepted  and  Moon  was  in  serious 
trouble.  Eventually  the  new  governor,  Sir  Ber- 
trand  Glancy,  persuaded  him  not  to  insist  on 
dismissal,  but  to  resign;  he  refused  the  sugges- 
tion of  a  proportionate  pension. 

Moon  returned  to  England  in  April  1943,  on 
six  months'  leave  pending  retirement,  but  in 
1946  Viscount  (later  first  Earl)  *Wavell,  now 
viceroy,  on  the  advice  of  his  private  secretary,  Sir 
Evan  Jenkins,  invited  him  to  return,  on  contract, 
as  secretary  to  the  boards  of  development  and 
planning.  In  April  1947  he  became  revenue 
minister  of  the  state  of  Bahawalpur  and  stayed  on 
after  India's  independence,  serving  as  chief  com- 
missioner of  Himachal  Pradesh,  as  chief  commis- 
sioner of  Manipur  state,  and  as  adviser  to  the 
planning  commission.  The  tone  of  an  address  to 
the  Indian  Administrative  StafT  College  suggests 
that  he  was  sometimes  as  critical  of  the  new 
rulers  of  India  as  of  the  old. 

During  the  war  Moon  had  published  Strangers 
in  India  (1944),  in  which  he  argued  that  the  ills  of 
India  could  not  be  solved  by  a  foreign  govern- 
ment; it  was  followed  by  Warren  Hastings  (1947), 
brilliantly  written  in  a  simple,  lucid  style  and 
notable  for  its  sympathy  with  "Hastings. 

His  last  appointment  in  India  ended  in  1961. 


308 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Moore 


He  was  knighted  in  1962  for  services  to  good 
relations  between  Britain  and  India,  to  which 
indeed  he  had  notably  contributed.  After  his 
return  to  England  he  held  brief  appointments 
with  the  World  Bank  and  as  adviser  to  the 
government  of  Thailand  but  soon  put  the  main 
thrust  of  his  life  into  scholarly  work  on  India.  In 
1 96 1  he  published  Divide  and  Quit,  which  he 
later  believed  the  most  likely  to  survive  of  any  of 
his  books.  It  contains  a  lucid  account  of  the 
events  leading  up  to  the  partition  of  India  and 
Pakistan,  and  an  unflinching  assessment  of 
responsibility  together  with  a  day-by-day 
account  of  his  own  actions  and  observations  as 
revenue  minister  and  district  magistrate  in  the 
border  state  of  Bahawalpur  during  the  months 
immediately  following  the  division  of  the  Punjab 
and  the  slaughter  that  followed.  There  can  be  no 
doubt  that  his  power  of  swift  decision,  and  his 
application  of  common  sense  amounting  to  bril- 
liance, saved  many  lives;  his  account  constitutes 
first-hand  historical  evidence  of  a  high  order.  His 
Gandhi  and  Modern  India  is  an  admirable  coun- 
terpoise to  his  Warren  Hastings. 

From  1965  to  1972  he  was  a  fellow  of  All 
Souls,  being  the  college's  estates  bursar  in 
1966-9,  and  from  1972  to  1982  he  was  at  the 
India  Office  Library  and  Records,  preparing  for 
publication,  with  Nicholas  Mansergh,  the  India 
Office  documents  on  The  Transfer  of  Power 
1942-/  (twelve  volumes).  He  found  time  also  to 
edit  Wavell:  the  Viceroy's  Journal  (1973),  a  labour 
of  love  carried  out  with  his  usual  clarity  and 
distinction.  When  he  died  his  last  and  most 
substantial  book,  The  British  Conquest  and 
Dominion  of  India  (1989),  was  still  in  proof.  It 
was  written,  as  always,  with  clarity,  detachment, 
and  mastery  of  complex  material. 

Moon's  life  was  not  all  spent  toiling  at  a  desk. 
Before  retiring  from  All  Souls  he  bought  a  mixed 
farm  near  Aylesbury,  which  he  later  enlarged.  He 
employed  a  manager,  but  took  pleasure  not  only 
in  the  business  of  the  farm  but  in  the  physical 
work  of  haymaking  and  harvest;  he  was  a  gen- 
erous employer.  He  was  a  good  horseman  and 
enjoyed  both  hunting  and  racing.  He  sang  in 
Oxford  in  the  Bach  Choir  and  had  a  particular 
admiration  for  the  music  of  *Handel. 

Penderel  Moon  resembled  in  many  ways  an 
aristocrat  of  the  Enlightenment.  In  appearance 
he  was  trim  and  slight;  in  personal  habit,  ascetic. 
In  scholarship,  as  in  farming,  he  combined  the 
confident  mastery  of  the  professional  with  the 
detachment  of  the  amateur  of  independent 
means.  He  was  decisive  in  his  opinions  and  often 
autocratic,  a  champion  of  the  peasant  but  no 
egalitarian.  In  youth,  he  liked  to  surprise  and 
even  to  shock,  but  he  never  took  up  a  position 
merely  for  effect. 

He  married  in  1966  Pauline  Marion,  daughter 
of  the  Revd  William  Everard  Cecil  Barns;  the 


marriage  was  not  a  success  and  was  soon  dis- 
solved; there  were  no  children.  Moon  died  2  June 
1987  at  home  at  his  farm  in  Wot  ton  Underwood, 
Buckinghamshire. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Philip  Mason 

MOORE,  (Charles)  Garrett  (Ponsonby),  elev- 
enth Earl  of  Drogheda  (1910-1989),  chairman 
of  the  Financial  Times  and  the  Royal  Opera 
House,  Covent  Garden,  was  born  at  40  Wilton 
Crescent,  London,  23  April  1910,  the  elder  child 
and  only  son  of  Henry  Charles  Ponsonby  Moore, 
tenth  Earl  of  Drogheda,  diplomat,  and  his  wife 
Kathleen,  daughter  of  Charles  Maitland  Pelham 
Burn,  of  Grange  Park,  Edinburgh.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Eton  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
which  he  left  early,  without  a  degree.  After  two 
years'  bookkeeping  at  the  Mining  Trust,  the  first 
turning-point  of  his  career  came  in  1932  when,  at 
Brooks's  Club  in  London,  he  met  Brendan  (later 
Viscount)  *Bracken,  and  went  to  work  for  him  at 
the  Financial  News,  selling  advertising  space. 
He  worked  hard  at  mastering  the  detail  of  the 
newspaper  business,  made  a  considerable 
impression  on  Bracken,  and  developed  a  long, 
close  relationship  with  him.  In  World  War  II  he 
served  briefly  in  France,  as  a  captain  with  the 
53rd  battalion  of  the  Heavy  Anri-Aircraft  Regi- 
ment, Royal  Artillery,  and  was  then  appointed  to 
the  staff  of  the  war  cabinet  secretariat  (1941)  and 
later  the  Ministry  of  Production  (1942-5).  By  the 
end  of  the  war  he  was  back  at  the  Financial  News, 
as  managing  director. 

In  1945,  at  Bracken's  instruction,  he  went  out 
and  bought  the  Financial  Times.  The  two  news- 
papers merged  under  the  one  title.  For  twenty- 
five  years,  as  managing  director  of  the  Financial 
Times  (1945-70),  Drogheda  (who  succeeded  his 
father  in  1957)  devoted  himself  to  its  commercial 
expansion  and  editorial  improvement,  taking 
particular  pleasure  in  stimulating  its  coverage  of 
the  arts,  the  other  great  passion  and  interest  of 
his  life.  He  allowed  the  editor,  Sir  L.  Gordon 
Newton,  to  edit,  but  pursued  him  daily  with  a 
string  of  memoranda,  demanding  answers  to 
pertinent  questions.  If  none  was  received  Dro- 
gheda persisted. 

He  used  the  same  tactic  at  Covent  Garden, 
where,  after  serving  as  secretary  to  the  board 
from  195 1,  he  was  its  chairman  from  1958  to 
1974.  He  bombarded  the  general  administrators, 
Sir  David  *Webster  and  later  Sir  John  Tooley, 
with  the  same  missives,  which  were  known  as 
Droghedagrams.  At  Covent  Garden  Drogheda 
attempted  to  insist  that  the  board  was  entitled  to 
approve  executive  artistic  decisions,  such  as  the 
choice  of  designer  for  a  particular  opera.  Webster 
resisted  and  (Sir)  Georg  Solti,  engaged  by  Dro- 
gheda as  musical  director  from  1961,  never 
tolerated  such  interference.  Solti's  appointment, 


309 


Moore 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  decision  to  give  opera  in  the  original  language 
rather  than  in  English,  and  the  high  standards 
that  resulted  were  the  principal  achievements  of 
Drogheda's  chairmanship,  which  also  saw  the 
birth  and  growth  of  the  Friends  of  Covent 
Garden.  The  Droghedagrams  were  addressed 
also  to  those  critics  on  the  Financial  Times\ 
pages  and  elsewhere  whose  views  did  not,  in  the 
author's  opinion,  do  the  opera  house  justice. 
These  would  arrive  by  messenger  on  a  motor 
cycle  early  in  the  morning  the  review  appeared. 
It  was  not  unknown  for  them  to  be  brought 
round,  should  the  victim  live  close  enough  to  his 
house  in  Lord  North  Street,  by  Drogheda  him- 
self, in  slippers,  pyjamas,  and  dressing-gown. 

Drogheda's  handsome  looks  and  languid 
appearance  concealed  an  iron  determination  to 
secure  his  ends.  Charming,  but  obdurate;  a 
dandy,  but  determined;  debonair,  but  persistent, 
he  would  stop  at  nothing  on  the  newspaper's  or 
the  opera  house's  commercial  behalf,  pursuing 
advertisers  or  possible  benefactors  without  com- 
punction. He  struck  up  friendships  with  employ- 
ees of  every  rank,  and  treated  very  many  with 
great  personal  kindness.  He  had  an  acute  mind, 
which  expressed  itself  fluently  and  clearly  on 
paper,  but  was  guided,  he  himself  thought, 
always  by  instinct. 

Drogheda  was  chairman  of  Financial  Times 
Ltd.  (1971-5)  and  of  the  Newspaper  Publishers' 
Association  (1968-70).  He  chaired  the  London 
celebrations  committee  for  the  queen's  silver 
jubilee  in  1977.  From  1941  he  served  as  a 
director  of  the  Economist,  to  which  he  was  much 
attached.  He  was  a  commander  of  the  Legion  of 
Honour  of  France  (i960)  and  of  the  Order  of 
Merit  of  Italy  (1968)  and  was  grand  officer  of  the 
Order  of  Leopold  II  of  Belgium  (1974).  He  was 
appointed  OBE  in  1946,  KBE  in  1964,  and 
knight  of  the  Garter  in  1972. 

He  married  in  1935  Joan  Eleanor,  daughter  of 
William  Henry  Carr,  who  left  her  mother  when 
she  was  born.  She  was  an  excellent  pianist,  whose 
immaculate  musical  taste  served  him  often  in 
good  stead.  They  had  one  child,  a  son.  Drogheda 
died  24  December  1989,  at  Englefield  Green, 
Surrey,  eight  days  after  his  wife.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded in  the  earldom  by  his  son,  Henry  Dermot 
Ponsonby  Moore  (born  1937). 

[David  Kynaston,  The  Financial  Times:  a  Centenary 
History,  1988;  Frances  Donaldson,  The  Royal  Opera 
House  in  the  Twentieth  Century,  1988;  Garrett  Dro- 
gheda, Double  Harness,  Memoirs,  1978;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  Jeremy  Isaacs 

MOORE,  Doris  Elizabeth  Langley  (1902- 
1989),  founder  of  the  Museum  of  Costume  and 
*Byron  scholar,  was  born  23  July  1902  in  Liver- 
pool, the  second  daughter  in  the  family  of  three 
daughters  and  one  son  of  Joseph  Langley  Levy, 
writer  and  newspaper  editor,  and  his  wife,  Mabel 


Ada  Rushden,  theatrical  designer.  The  family 
moved  to  South  Africa  when  she  was  eight,  and 
she  was  educated  at  convent  schools  there.  In 
Pleasure:  a  Discursive  Guide  Book  (1953)  she 
described  her  comfortable  and  indulged  child- 
hood. Although  she  had  no  formal  education,  she 
read  widely,  under  the  guidance  of  her  father. 

She  moved  to  London  in  the  early  1920s,  and 
her  first  book,  Anacreon:  29  Odes  (1926),  was  a 
verse  translation  from  the  Greek.  This  was 
followed  by  The  Technique  of  the  Love  Affair 

(1928)  by  'a  Gentlewoman',  a  manual  of  advice  to 
a  woman  on  how  to  catch  a  husband.  Pandora's 
Letter  Box,  Being  a  Discourse  on  Fashionable  Life 

(1929)  was  written  for  her  two-year-old  daugh- 
ter. She  wrote  six  romantic  novels  between  1932 
and  1959,  and  several  books  on  household  man- 
agement, including  The  Bride's  Book  (1932, 
revised  in  1936  as  Our  Loving  Duty).  Her  biogra- 
phy of  Edith  *Nesbit  (1933,  revised  1967)  drew 
on  extensive  conversations  with  members  of  the 
novelist's  family  and  family  letters,  transcripts  of 
which  were  invaluable  for  later  biographers. 

She  was  passionately  interested  in  clothes,  and 
dressed  in  the  height  of  fashion  each  season.  She 
loved  hats,  and  early  in  life  decided  that  when 
depressed  one  should  go  out  and  buy  a  hat.  Her 
own  clothes  formed  the  basis  of  a  collection  of 
costumes,  to  which  she  added  historical  cos- 
tumes, discovered  in  salerooms,  country  house 
auctions,  and  attics.  She  admitted  to  a  certain 
amount  of  bargaining,  plotting,  and  machination 
in  obtaining  such  items.  Her  most  exciting  acqui- 
sition was  the  Albanian  costume  bought  by  Lord 
*Byron  on  his  grand  tour  of  1809,  which  he  wore 
for  the  portrait  painted  by  Thomas  *Phillips  in 
1 8 14.  She  was  one  of  the  first  to  study  the  history 
of  fashion  seriously,  and  all  her  life  she  wrote  and 
lectured  on  it,  organized  exhibitions,  and  pro- 
duced television  programmes.  In  1949  she 
brought  out  The  Woman  in  Fashion,  a  history  of 
fashion  in  which  some  of  the  most  famous 
beauties  of  the  day,  most  of  them  personal 
friends,  were  photographed  wearing  costumes 
from  her  collection.  In  1955  followed  The  Child 
in  Fashion. 

She  campaigned  for  many  years  for  a  museum 
of  costume  to  be  founded  in  London,  and  she 
persuaded  Christian  Dior  to  bring  his  collection 
over  from  Paris  in  order  to  raise  money  for  the 
project.  The  museum  was  opened  in  1955, 
housed  temporarily  in  Eridge  castle,  near  Tun- 
bridge  Wells,  Kent,  and  then  in  the  Brighton 
Pavilion.  It  moved  permanently  to  the  rebuilt 
Assembly  Rooms  in  Bath  in  1963.  The  costumes 
were  displayed  by  creating  period  tableaux  with 
life-size  dummies  and  furniture  and  objects  from 
the  correct  historical  period.  There  were  also 
collections  of  babies'  clothes  and  dolls'  clothes, 
an  underwear  room  with  foundation  garments 


3io 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Moore 


from  200  years,  a  display  of  millinery,  accessories 
such  as  fans,  socks,  ribbons,  buttons,  belts, 
gaiters,  mittens,  and  bedroom  slippers,  and  a 
collection  of  dresses  worn  by  the  royal  family. 
She  was  anxious  to  keep  the  museum  up  to  date, 
and  created  a  modern  room  for  clothes  from  1907 
to  the  current  year.  Each  year  new  specimens 
were  added,  chosen  as  representative  of  current 
fashion,  and  a  different  fashion  expert  was  asked 
to  choose  one  outfit  as  'dress  of  the  year'.  The 
dress  for  1963  was  designed  by  Mary  Quant,  and 
the  1967  'dress'  was  a  trouser  suit.  Doris  Langley 
Moore  retired  as  adviser  to  the  museum  in  1974, 
and  left  her  collection  to  the  city  of  Bath. 

Her  interest  in  costume  extended  to  the  stage 
and  to  films,  but  the  decor  for  her  ballet  The 
Quest,  first  performed  at  Sadler's  Wells  in  1943, 
was  done  by  John  Piper.  The  scenario  was 
adapted  by  her  from  Edmund  *Spenser's  The 
Faerie  Queene,  showing  the  victory  of  St  George 
over  the  forces  of  evil.  (Sir)  William  *Walton 
wrote  the  score  especially  for  the  ballet,  (Sir) 
Frederick  *Ashton  was  the  choreographer,  and 
the  soloists  were  (Dame)  Margot  Fonteyn,  (Sir) 
Robert  *Helpmann,  (Dame)  Beryl  Grey,  and 
Moira  Shearer  in  her  first  role.  She  also  worked 
as  a  costume  designer  for  the  theatre  and  films, 
and  designed  Katharine  Hepburn's  dresses  for 
The  African  Queen  (1951). 

Doris  Langley  Moore  first  came  across  Byron 
when  she  was  fifteen,  when  her  father  gave  her  a 
copy  of  Don  Juan,  She  remained  devoted  to  him 
al!  her  life.  'I  was  perhaps  the  only  woman  to 
whom  nothing  but  pleasure  has  come  from 
loving  that  poet.'  In  1924,  the  centenary  of 
Byron's  death,  she  was  invited  to  join  the  com- 
memoration committee,  and  in  193 1  she  accom- 
panied the  Greek  prime  minister  on  a  visit  to 
Byron's  tomb.  She  was  present  when  his  tomb  in 
Hucknall  church  was  opened  in  1938  to  see  if  he 
really  was  buried  there.  She  became  a  founding 
vice-president  of  the  Byron  Society  in  1971.  She 
was  the  first  person,  apart  from  Byron's  family, 
to  be  allowed  access  to  the  large  collection  of 
uncatalogued  Wentworth  and  Lovelace  papers 
in  the  possession  of  Lady  Wentworth,  Byron's 
great-granddaughter.  Her  last  novel,  My  Cara- 
vaggio  Style  (1959),  about  the  forgery  of  the  lost 
Byron  memoirs,  was  written  while  she  was 
immersed  in  these  papers. 

The  first  of  her  three  scholarly  works  on 
Byron,  The  Late  Lord  Byron,  appeared  in  196 1. 
In  this,  she  started  with  the  death  of  Byron  and 
built  up  a  picture  of  him  from  the  attempts  of 
others  to  write  about  him.  Lord  Byron,  Accounts 
Rendered  (1974)  won  the  British  Academy's  Rose 
Mary  Crawshay  prize  in  1975.  Based  on  Byron's 
accounts,  found  among  the  papers  of  his  Italian 
secretary,  this  book  examines  Byron's  finances  as 
a  means  of  gaining  insight  into  his  domestic  life. 
Ada,  Countess  of  Lovelace  (1977)  is  a  biography  of 


Byron's  daughter.  The  publication  of  these 
works  had  enormous  influence  on  the  subsequent 
course  of  Byron  studies.  Doris  Langley  Moore 
was  appointed  OBE  in  1971. 

She  was  an  attractive  woman,  with  a  high 
forehead  and  a  handsome  profile.  She  moved  in 
fashionable  London  circles,  but  she  was  a  diffi- 
cult person,  and  some  of  her  friendships  ended  in 
bitterness.  In  1926  she  married  Robert  Sugden 
Moore,  wool  merchant,  the  son  of  Fred  Denby 
Moore,  also  a  wool  merchant.  They  had  one 
daughter,  Pandora.  They  were  divorced  in  1942. 
She  died  in  the  Middlesex  Hospital,  London,  24 
February  1989. 

[Independent,  28  February  1989;  Guardian,  2  March 
1989;  Doris  Langley  Moore,  The  Museum  of  Costume: 
Guide  to  the  Exhibition  and  Commentary  on  the  Trends  of 
Fashion,  1967.]  Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

MOORE,  Gerald  (1899- 1987),  pianist  and 
accompanist,  was  born  30  July  1899  in  Watford, 
Hertfordshire,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of  three 
sons  and  a  daughter,  who  died  in  childhood,  of 
David  Frank  Moore,  who  owned  a  men's  out- 
fitting establishment,  and  his  Welsh-born  wife, 
Chestina  Jones.  He  was  educated  at  Watford 
Grammar  School.  Musical,  with  perfect  pitch,  he 
learned  the  piano  locally  with  Wallis  Bandey. 
When,  owing  to  a  financial  crisis,  the  family 
decided  to  emigrate  to  Toronto,  Canada,  the 
thirteen-year-old  Gerald  had  to  start  again  with 
his  piano  studies.  His  mother  arranged  an  audi- 
tion with  Michael  Hambourg,  founder  of  a 
school  of  music  in  Toronto.  This  resulted  in  a 
scholarship  and  much  expert  coaching.  Ham- 
bourg's  cellist  son,  Boris,  later  took  Moore  as  his 
accompanist  on  a  tour  of  forty  engagements  in 
western  Canada.  When  Moore  finally  was 
shipped  back  to  London,  in  19 19,  it  was  another 
Hambourg  son — Mark  *Hambourg,  the  well- 
known  pianist — who  offered  to  take  over  his 
training. 

But  Moore  was  not  cut  out  for  a  career  as  a 
soloist  and  on  the  advice  of  (Sir)  Landon 
•Ronald,  then  principal  of  the  Guildhall  School 
of  Music,  he  concentrated  on  accompanying.  He 
went  on  tour  with  baritone  Peter  Dawson  and 
was  engaged  on  an  exclusive  basis  by  the  tenor 
John  Coates.  Coates  taught  him  to  work  and 
awakened  his  realization  of  the  importance  of  the 
piano  part  in  the  basic  structure  of  the  song: 
Moore  said  he  owed  everything  to  him. 

In  1 92 1  Moore  made  his  first  record  (for 
HMY),  with  Renee  Chemet,  the  French  violin- 
ist. The  studio  had  a  large  horn  contraption  into 
which  the  violinist  played.  In  spite  of  the  piece 
being  a  gentle  lullaby  Moore  had  to  play  for- 
tissimo throughout  in  order  to  be  heard  at  all  on 
the  record. 

A  vital  step  forward  for  Moore  was  the  arrival 
on  the  recording  scene  of  the  microphone.  At  last 


3" 


Moore 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


his  playing  would  be  faithfully  reproduced  on 
records.  At  first  he  was  greatly  shocked  by 
hearing  himself.  But  by  listening  carefully  he  was 
able  to  improve,  technically  and  musically,  and 
raise  his  playing  to  a  new  standard,  which  took 
him  to  the  top.  Apart  from  many  instrumen- 
talists, his  famous  vocal  partners  included  Elena 
Gerhardt,  Elisabeth  Schumann,  (Dame)  Maggie 
*Teyte,  John  McCormack,  Hans  Hotter, 
Kathleen  *Ferrier,  (Dame)  Elisabeth  Schwarz- 
kopf, Victoria  de  los  Angeles,  Dietrich  Fischer- 
Dieskau,  and  (Dame)  Janet  Baker. 

When  (Dame)  Myra  *Hess  started  her  series 
of  lunchtime  concerts  in  the  National  Gallery, 
during  World  War  II,  she  asked  Moore  to  give  a 
talk  at  the  piano  on  his  experiences  as  an  accom- 
panist. He  revealed  a  sense  of  verbal  timing  of 
which  any  professional  comic  would  be  proud. 
His  unique  blend  of  wit  and  wisdom  not  only 
pleased  the  cognoscenti  but  also  won  over  ordi- 
nary people  who  had  no  idea  that  classical  music 
could  be  fun.  This  kind  of  treatment  has  its 
dangers,  but  not  with  Moore,  who  always  put  the 
music  first  and  used  the  jokes  to  sugar  the  pill. 
The  talk  became  immensely  popular. 

Moore  played  throughout  the  world  as  an 
accompanist  and  included  many  tours  of  Amer- 
ica as  a  lecture-recitalist.  His  favourite  festivals 
included  Edinburgh,  Salzburg,  and  King's  Lynn 
(where  he  played  piano  duets  with  Ruth,  Lady 
Fermoy). 

Moore  retired  from  the  concert  platform  in 
1967,  at  the  comparatively  early  age  of  sixty- 
seven,  when  he  was  at  the  top  of  his  form.  A 
farewell  concert,  which  was  recorded,  was  given 
in  his  honour  at  the  Royal  Festival  Hall  on  20 
February  1967.  After  Moore  gave  up  public 
playing  his  great  affection  for  Schubert  became 
an  obsession:  he  embarked  on  the  huge  task  of 
recording  over  500  Schubert  songs.  Three  sets 
of  these — 'Schone  Mullerin',  'Winterreise',  and 
'Schwanengesang',  all  with  Fischer-Dieskau — 
were  issued  on  compact  disc  and  form  a  lasting 
tribute  to  his  work.  His  playing  was  remarkable 
for  flawless  technique  and  a  rare  ability  to  make 
the  piano  'sing'. 

Moore  was  a  talented  writer.  His  best-known 
book  was  the  autobiography  Am  I  Too  Loud? 
(1962).  He  became  CBE  (1954),  honorary  RAM 
(1962),  FRCM  (1980),  honorary  D.Litt.,  Sussex 
(1968),    and     honorary    Mus.D.,     Cambridge 

(i973)- 

Moore  was  a  stocky,  thickset  figure  not  readily 
associable  with  the  ravishingly  delicate  effects  he 
could  obtain  from  the  piano.  His  zest  for  living, 
his  enormous  vitality,  and  his  sense  of  humour 
were  strong  preservatives  in  a  very  hard-working 
life.  Away  from  music  Moore  enjoyed  in  early 
life  tennis  and  golf  and,  later,  bridge,  gardening, 
and  watching  cricket.  He  had  an  ideal  partner  in 


his  wife,  Enid  Kathleen  (died  1994),  daughter  of 
Montague  Richard,  ironmonger,  of  Beckenham, 
whom  he  called  'the  most  perfect  of  all  accom- 
panists'. They  had  no  children.  Moore  had  had  a 
previous  marriage,  in  Canada  in  1929,  which 
lasted  only  three  or  four  years  and  which  ended 
in  divorce.  Moore  died  in  his  sleep  at  home  in 
Penn,  Buckinghamshire,  13  March  1987. 

[Gerald  Moore,  Am  I  Too  Loud?,  1962,  Furthermoore, 
1983,  and  Collected  Memoirs,  1986;  family  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Joseph  Cooper 

MOORE,  Henry  Spencer  (1898- 1986),  sculp- 
tor, was  born  30  July  1898  at  Castleford,  York- 
shire, the  youngest  of  four  sons  and  seventh  of 
eight  children  of  Raymond  Spencer  Moore,  coal- 
miner,  of  Castleford,  and  his  wife  Mary,  daugh- 
ter of  Neville  Baker,  coalminer,  of  Burntwood, 
Staffordshire.  He  was  educated  at  Castleford 
Secondary  (later  High)  School,  where  his  natural 
talents  were  immediately  recognized  by  the 
young  art  mistress,  Alice  Gostick. 

Moore's  father  held  responsible  positions  in 
the  colliery,  and  the  family  lived  on  a  newly  built 
estate,  with  the  children  attending  modern,  well 
equipped  schools.  Raymond  Moore  was  a  self- 
improving  man,  with  a  taste  for  music  and 
literature,  and,  as  was  the  case  with  the  family  of 
D.  H.  *Lawrence,  living  not  so  far  away  in  the 
Nottinghamshire  coalfield,  he  saw  schoolteaching 
as  the  way  in  which  his  clever  children  could 
better  themselves  and  lead  a  more  satisfying  and 
less  arduous  life  than  his  own.  It  was  expected, 
therefore,  that  Henry  would  become  a  school- 
teacher, like  his  older  brother  and  his  sisters.  In 
1915,  on  leaving  school,  he  returned  as  a  student 
teacher  to  his  old  elementary  school  at  Castle- 
ford, in  order  to  gain  some  practical  experience 
before  going  to  teacher  training  college.  Mean- 
while, his  private  ambition  was  to  become  a 
professional  sculptor. 

With  a  world  war  in  progress,  and  compulsory 
conscription  introduced  in  January  19 16,  Moore 
knew  that  his  training  was  going  to  be  inter- 
rupted. Rather  than  await  his  call  up,  he  decided 
in  19 1 7  to  volunteer  for  a  regiment  of  his  own 
choice.  Travelling  to  London  for  the  first  time, 
he  tried  for  the  Artists'  Rifles — an  indication  of 
his  secret  wishes — but  was  rejected,  and  went 
into  the  Civil  Service  Rifles  instead.  After  a  brief 
training,  Private  Moore  was  sent  in  August  191 7 
to  the  front  line  in  France;  in  December  1917  he 
was  gassed  in  the  assault  on  Cambrai  and 
returned  to  England  as  a  stretcher  case,  very 
fortunate  to  survive.  After  convalescence  he 
returned  to  duty  as  a  physical  training  and 
bayonet  instructor,  with  the  rank  of  lance-corpo- 
ral. He  went  back  to  France  just  before  the 
armistice  was  signed  in  November  1918,  but  as  a 
teacher  he  was  entitled  to  early  demobilization, 


312 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Moore 


and  he  was  back  at  his  old  school  in  Castleford  in 
February  191 9. 

In  later  life,  Moore  rarely  spoke  about  his 
wartime  experiences,  and  then  often  in  a  some- 
what light-hearted  manner.  He  admitted  to  being 
a  callow  young  man,  pleased  to  have  broken  away 
from  the  parental  home,  and  at  the  time  unaware 
of  the  tragic  implications  of  the  war — in  sharp 
contrast  to  slightly  older  contemporaries  such  as 
the  Yorkshire-born  (Sir)  Herbert  *Read,  later  to 
become  Moore's  close  friend  and  champion. 

It  was  expected  that  Moore  would  become  a 
teacher  specializing  in  art,  and  in  September 
1919,  with  an  ex-serviceman's  grant,  he  began 
his  formal  training  at  the  Leeds  School  of  Art, 
commuting  by  train  from  his  home  in  Castleford. 
It  was  immediately  clear  that  he  was  an  out- 
standing student,  and  he  completed  the  two-year 
drawing  course  in  his  first  year.  In  his  second 
year  at  Leeds  Moore  asked  for  sculpture  lessons, 
and  his  progress  was  remarkable  enough  for  him 
to  win  a  scholarship  to  the  Royal  College  of  Art 
in  London,  which  was,  with  the  Slade  School, 
the  leading  art  school  in  Britain. 

Moore  studied  in  the  sculpture  school  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Art  from  September  1921  until 
the  summer  of  1924,  when  he  was  awarded  his 
diploma.  He  learned  little  from  his  teachers,  but 
won  the  interest  and  support  of  the  college's 
principal,  (Sir)  William  *Rothenstein,  and 
enjoyed  the  company  of  his  fellow  students, 
particularly  those  who  had  come  with  him  from 
Leeds,  the  painters  Raymond  Coxon  and  Edna 
Ginesi,  and  the  sculptor  five  years  his  junior, 
(Dame)  Barbara  *Hepworth.  Together  they  vis- 
ited exhibitions,  made  their  first  trips  to  look  at 
art  in  Paris,  and  worked  very  hard  with  great 
confidence  and  dedication.  Moore  lived  mainly 
in  Hammersmith  in  west  London,  and  for  a  time 
attended  draw  ing  classes  in  the  local  studio  of  the 
sculptor  and  painter,  (G.  C.)  Leon  *Underwood. 
Drawing  always  mattered  for  Moore,  who  saw  it 
as  the  essential  adjunct  to  sculpture. 

The  decisive  experience  for  the  young  Moore 
was  his  hours  spent  studying  the  sculpture  in  the 
Victoria  and  Albert  and,  more  importantly,  the 
British  Museum.  The  tradition  of  western  sculp- 
ture had  reached  a  culmination  in  the  work  of 
Auguste  Rodin,  and  Moore  knew  instinctively 
that  his  generation  would  need  to  form  a  new 
language  for  this  powerful  but  difficult  three- 
dimensional  art  if  it  was  to  speak  with  a  clear  and 
distinctive  twentieth-century  voice.  Following 
the  examples  of  (Sir)  Jacob  *Epstein,  Henri 
Gaudier-Brzeska,  and  Constantin  Brancusi, 
Moore  felt  that  the  way  forward  must  be  to  look 
at  those  other  sculptures  outside  the  classical/ 
medieval/Renaissance/Rodin  tradition:  namely 
archaic  Greek,  Egyptian,  Assyrian,  and  more 
significantly  sculptures  that  until  the  twentieth 
century  had  not  been  recognized  as  art  at  all  but 


as  antiquities  or  curiosities,  from  pre-European 
Mexico,  Africa,  and  Oceania. 

It  was  this  broad  sculptural  heritage,  to  which 
might  be  added  such  great  archaeological 
remains  as  Stonehenge,  that  the  young  Moore 
studied.  He  visited  Italy  on  a  six-month  travel- 
ling scholarship  in  1925,  and  though  he  admired 
the  paintings  of  Giotto  and  Masaccio  he  seems 
not  to  have  wanted  to  look  at  sculpture:  perhaps 
this  is  the  reason  why  he  surprisingly  never 
competed  for  the  prix  de  Rome.  His  appreciation 
of  Donatello  and  Michelangelo  came  later  in  life. 
At  the  time  Moore  preferred  to  return  to  Lon- 
don, where  he  had  a  part-time  teaching  position 
in  the  sculpture  school  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Art.  This  gave  him  both  financial  security  and 
enough  time  to  make  his  own  sculptures,  and 
prepare  for  that  crucial  test  that  faces  any  art- 
ist— a  first  one-man  exhibition. 

This  came  for  Moore  in  January  1928  at  the 
Warren  Gallery,  where  the  artist  showed  forty- 
two  sculptures  and  fifty-one  drawings.  Though 
giving  rise  to  some  controversy,  it  was  an 
undoubted  success.  'A  very  "advanced"  show 
and  one  that  will  shock  the  orthodox,  it  contains 
much  sculpture  of  overwhelming  power,'  said 
the  Daily  Herald.  Moore  was  particularly  pleased 
that  among  the  purchasers  of  his  work  were 
artists  of  the  calibre  of  Augustus  *John  and  Jacob 
Epstein.  There  followed  immediately,  later  in 
1928,  Moore's  first  public  commission.  On 
Epstein's  recommendation  he  was  asked  to  carve 
a  relief  for  the  facade  of  the  new  London 
underground  headquarters  near  St  James's  Park, 
symbolizing  the  west  wind,  part  of  a  decorative 
scheme  to  which  (A.)  Eric  *Gill  and  Epstein 
himself  also  contributed.  But  providing  sculp- 
ture for  buildings  was  not  the  route  forward  that 
Moore  wished  to  pursue,  and  in  general  he 
always  avoided  such  commissions.  At  this  stage 
in  his  career  he  also  avoided  making  modelled 
sculpture  for  casting  in  bronze,  believing  that  the 
future  lay  in  the  direct  carving  of  wood  and 
stone. 

In  July  1929  Moore  married  a  student  at  the 
Royal  College  of  Art,  Irina  Anatolia  Radetzkv. 
The  daughter  of  Anatol  Radetsky,  who  was  lost 
in  the  Russian  revolution,  from  an  upper-class 
mercantile  family,  she  had  been  born  in  Kiev  in 
1907  and  had  come  to  England  in  192 1-2  to  stay 
with  step-grandparents  in  Little  Marlow,  Buck- 
inghamshire. A  woman  of  striking  and  exotic 
beauty,  she  was  Moore's  support  and  best  critic 
for  the  whole  of  his  long  career.  They  had  one 
daughter.  Irina  died  in  1989. 

On  their  marriage,  the  Moores  moved  into  a 
ground-floor  studio  with  accommodation  above 
at  11A  Parkhill  Road  in  Hampstead.  The  apart- 
ment was  found  by  Barbara  Hepworth,  who  lived 
nearby  in  The  Mall  Studios  with,  from  193 1,  the 


313 


Moore 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


painter  Ben  "Nicholson.  The  poets  Herbert  Read 
and  Geoffrey  *Grigson,  the  writer  Adrian 
•Stokes,  and  the  painters  Paul  *Nash  and  Ivon 
•Hitchens  were  all  close  neighbours.  This 
Hampstead  circle  became  the  most  receptive  to 
modern  ideas  in  the  visual  arts  in  Britain,  and  its 
interests  reflected  the  rival  continental  avant- 
garde  movements  of  abstraction  and  Surrealism. 
At  this  time  Moore's  sculpture  entered  its  most 
experimental  phase,  and,  though  still  relatively 
small  in  size,  his  carvings  in  stone  and  wood,  and 
the  pages  of  drawings  for  sculpture,  showed  an 
astounding  originality  of  invention,  on  which 
rests  his  international  fame. 

With  the  outbreak  of  war  in  September  1939 
everything  changed.  During  the  1930s  Moore 
had  led  a  regular  and  productive  life,  teaching 
part-time  at  the  Chelsea  School  of  Art,  working 
in  his  Hampstead  studio,  and  during  the  holidays 
making  larger  works  in  the  garden  of  his  cottage 
in  Kent.  The  war  stopped  his  teaching,  and  the 
bombing  and  the  threat  of  invasion  made  it 
impossible  to  work  in  London  or  Kent.  When  his 
Hampstead  studio  was  damaged  by  bombs  in 
October  1940,  he  took  the  house  at  Perry  Green, 
Much  Hadham,  Hertfordshire,  in  which  he  was 
to  live  and  work  until  his  death.  With  the  gradual 
addition  of  land  and  studios  this  was  the  centre 
of  all  his  later  activity,  rarely  left  for  long. 

Moore  had  more  or  less  stopped  making 
sculpture,  and  from  1940  to  1942  worked  as  an 
official  war  artist  in  the  scheme  supervised  by  Sir 
Kenneth  (later  Baron)  *Clark,  director  of  the 
National  Gallery,  and  an  admirer  of  Moore's  art. 
He  had  begun  to  draw  the  women  and  children 
sheltering  from  the  bombing  on  the  platforms  of 
London  underground  stations  at  night,  and  the 
coloured  finished  drawings  he  made  from  his 
sketches  quickly  won  international  attention.  An 
artist  hitherto  associated  exclusively  with  the 
avant-garde  seemed  uncannily  able  to  capture  the 
resignation  and  resistance  felt  by  the  ordinary 
people  of  London. 

When  Moore  returned  to  sculpture  in  1943-4 
it  was  with  two  public  commissions — a  madonna 
and  child  for  St  Matthew's  church,  North- 
ampton, and  a  family  group,  originally  intended 
for  the  Village  College  at  Impington,  Cambridge- 
shire. In  both  cases  Moore  knew  he  had  to  make 
a  sculpture  that  would  speak  directly  to  a  wide 
community,  and  this  led  to  fundamental  changes 
in  both  his  art  and  materials  and  techniques  used 
to  make  it.  Moore  always  held  broad  socialist 
principles,  supporting  the  Labour  party;  he 
believed  that  the  artist  had  a  social  responsibility, 
and  he  was  pleased  to  find  that  his  work  could  be 
appreciated  in  a  public  situation,  and  that  his 
own  obsession  with  the  female  human  form 
could  be  shared  by  others. 

This  social  commitment  also  led  Moore  to 


give  his  time  generously  to  serve  on  public 
bodies.  He  was  a  trustee  of  the  Tate  Gallery 
(194 1 -8  and  1949-56),  and  of  the  National 
Gallery  (1955-63  and  1964-74);  a  member  of 
the  Arts  Council  (1963-7),  and  of  its  art  panel 
for  many  years  from  1942  onwards.  He  was 
appointed  a  member  of  the  National  Theatre 
board  in  1957  and  the  Royal  Fine  Art  Commis- 
sion (1947-71).  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1966.  He  accepted  many 
prizes  and  twenty-one  honorary  degrees,  and 
membership  of  a  number  of  foreign  academies. 

In  1946  the  first  fully  retrospective  exhibition 
of  Moore's  work  was  held  at  the  Museum  of 
Modern  Art  in  New  York.  Two  years  later  he 
won  the  international  sculpture  prize  at  the 
Venice  Biennale,  and  in  1956  he  was  commis- 
sioned to  make  a  sculpture  for  the  new  Unesco 
headquarters  in  Paris.  By  the  time  he  was  sixty 
Moore  was  generally  regarded  as  Britain's  great- 
est artist  and  the  world's  greatest  living  sculptor. 
More  than  200  museums  worldwide  own  exam- 
ples of  his  work, ,  with  particularly  strong  hold- 
ings in  the  Art  Gallery  of  Ontario,  Toronto,  and 
the  Tate  Gallery,  London.  In  over  fifty  cities  his 
sculpture  stands  in  prominent  public  places, 
notably  outside  the  National  Gallery  of  Art  in 
Washington,  the  Lincoln  Center  in  New  York, 
the  Houses  of  Parliament  in  London,  and  in 
Dallas,  Chicago,  Amsterdam,  Zurich,  Berlin, 
Singapore,  and  Hong  Kong.  By  the  time  of  his 
death  he  had  had  more  exhibitions  than  any 
other  artist,  with  the  exception  only  of  Pablo 
Picasso;  particularly  celebrated  were  those  in 
Florence  in  1972,  Paris  in  1977,  and  New  York  in 
1983.  The  official  bibliography  devoted  to  his 
work  published  in  1992  lists  over  10,000  pub- 
lications. 

Despite  this  public  acclaim  and  celebrity, 
Moore's  work  in  his  last  phase  took  on  a  more 
personal  and  private  quality.  Throughout  the 
1950s  he  had  made  a  series  of  large  seated  and 
reclining  female  figures,  but  in  the  1960s  the 
sculptures  became  distinctly  more  abstract.  The 
reclining  figure  was  broken  up  into  two,  three,  or 
even  four  parts,  and  sometimes  made  on  a  grand, 
monumental  scale,  much  larger  than  life  size.  In 
such  sculptures — the  'Sheep  Piece'  of  1971-2, 
the  'Three  Piece  Vertebrae'  of  1968  and  1978-9, 
and  the  'Large  Four  Piece  Reclining  Figure'  of 
1972-3,  for  example — Moore  is  at  his  most 
majestic,  making  work  of  a  boldness  no  other 
sculptor  has  attempted.  The  figure  references 
almost  disappear,  and  in  the  big  'Arch'  of 
1963/9,  'Hill  Arches'  (1972),  or  the  'Mirror 
Knife  Edge'  in  Washington  (1977),  the  work 
takes  on  a  powerful  architectural  quality  that 
enhances  the  feeling  of  some  mysterious  timeless 
memorial. 

Moore's  working  methods  remained  much  the 


314 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Moores 


same  from  1944  onwards:  ideas  were  developed 
by  the  artist  as  plaster  maquettes,  no  more  than 
hand  size,  which  he  could  alter  and  shape  like 
small  carvings.  Then,  with  the  help  of  assistants, 
the  forms  could  be  enlarged  to  a  human  dimen- 
sion or,  if  appropriate,  to  a  monumental  scale. 
The  plaster  sculpture  was  usually  cast  in  bronze, 
the  most  durable  material  a  sculptor  can  use,  and 
works  were  sold  in  editions  of  three  to  ten  copies. 
Nearly  1,000  works  are  listed  in  the  complete 
catalogue  of  Moore's  sculptures,  and,  as  most 
were  issued  in  editions,  the  probable  complete 
tally  must  be  over  6,000. 

Such  a  production,  spread  over  more  than 
sixty  years,  made  Moore  a  very  wealthy  man.  In 
the  mid-1970s  he  was  paying  over  £1  million  a 
year  in  tax,  and  it  was  partly  this  that  led  him  in 
1977,  with  the  assistance  of  his  only  child  Man, 
who  had  been  born  in  1946,  to  set  up  the  Henry- 
Moore  Foundation.  This  charitable  foundation 
was  established  to  advance  public  appreciation  of 
the  fine  arts  and  in  particular  of  the  works  of 
Henry  Moore,  and  by  the  time  of  Moore's  death 
it  was  already  playing  an  active  role  arranging 
Moore  exhibitions  worldwide,  and  funding  fel- 
lowships, publications,  galleries,  and  exhibitions 
devoted  to  sculpture. 

Moore's  fame  as  a  sculptor  was  matched  by 
the  renown  that  his  drawings,  water-colours,  and 
graphic  works  brought  him.  As  he  grew  older,  so 
he  spent  more  time  drawing,  not  so  much  studies 
for  sculpture,  but  drawings  made  for  their  own 
sake,  of  rocks,  roots,  and  landscapes,  as  well  as 
the  human  form.  It  was  the  natural  world,  and 
the  human  presence  in  it,  that  lay  at  the  heart  of 
all  Moore's  work,  in  whatever  medium.  He  did 
not  seek  to  express  beauty,  rather  an  image  of 
power  and  vitality.  Though  without  formal 
beliefs,  Moore  had  a  religious  sense  of  life,  and  it 
is  perhaps  this  quality  that  has  given  his  best 
work  a  universal  relevance  which  speaks  to  peo- 
ple of  whatever  race  and  religion  in  a  way  that  no 
artist  before  Moore  had  been  able  to  achieve.  He 
was  regarded  as,  and  is  likely  to  remain,  a 
towering  figure  in  twentieth-century  art. 

In  personal  appearance  and  manner  Moore 
belied  such  an  impression.  It  was  often  said  that 
he  looked  more  like  a  successful  farmer  than  an 
artist.  He  had  an  attractive  modesty  that  hid 
great  self-confidence  and  ambition.  He  kept  a 
light  Yorkshire  accent  all  his  life,  and  expressed 
himself  in  simple  straightforward  terms,  avoid- 
ing any  philosophizing.  Interpretations  of  his 
work  he  left  to  others;  he  was  the  maker,  driven 
by  some  creative  force  that  he  could  not  and 
perhaps  did  not  wish  to  understand.  At  times  he 
seemed  almost  surprised  at  his  own  reputation, 
expressing  a  boyish  delight  at  visits  from  prime 
ministers  and  presidents,  accepting  a  CH  in  1955 
and  the  OM  in   1963  but  declining  any  title. 


Moore  died  at  Perry  Green,  Much  Hadham,  31 
August  1986,  and  was  buried  there. 

[Herbert  Read,  Henry  Moore,  1965;  Donald  Hall, 
Henry  Moore,  1966;  John  Russell,  Henry  Moore,  1973; 
William  Packer,  Henry  Moore,  1985;  Roger  Berthoud, 
The  Life  of  Henry  Moore,  1987;  Susan  Compton,  Henry 
Moore,  1988;  David  Mitchison  and  Julian  Stallabrass, 
Henry  Moore,  1992;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alan  Bowness 

MOORES,  Cecil  (1902-1989),  businessman,  was 
born  10  August  1902  in  Manchester,  the  fourth 
child  and  second  son  in  the  family  of  four  sons 
and  four  daughters  of  John  William  Moores, 
builder,  and  his  wife,  Louisa  Fethney.  He  com- 
pleted state  elementary  and  secondary  education 
and  in  the  early  1920s  worked  in  a  variety  of  jobs, 
which  included  training  as  an  analytical  chem- 
ist. 

In  1924  he  joined  his  elder  brother,  (Sir)  John 
Moores,  in  helping  to  run  the  embryo  Little- 
woods  Pools  business.  By  1932  it  was  so  thriving 
and  successful  that  John  Moores  concentrated 
his  attention  on  diversification  and  left  the  core 
pools  business  in  the  safe  control  of  his  brother 
Cecil.  Cecil  Moores's  name  became  synonymous 
with  what  was  Britain's,  indeed  probably  the 
world's,  largest  football  pools  business.  He  was 
also  a  director  of  the  Littlewoods  Organization, 
lending  his  considerable  experience  and  talents 
to  the  progress  of  the  other  major  businesses  in 
the  group,  such  as  chain  stores  and  mail  order. 

He  was  a  loyal  Briton,  buying  the  famous 
Bapton  herd  of  dairy  shorthorn  cattle  in  the  early 
1950s  to  prevent  its  being  exported  to  America. 
Under  his  direction  the  herd  won  many  prizes  in 
national  competitions  and  when  he  eventually 
came  to  sell  it  he  imposed  a  rigid  condition  that 
it  should  stay  in  Aberdeenshire,  to  which  he  had 
moved  it  at  the  time  of  its  acquisition. 

His  devotion  to  the  work  ethic  was  profound, 
his  philosophy  being  'it  is  fun  to  work  hard  and 
to  build  a  business'.  This  went  hand  in  hand  with 
a  concern  for  the  working  conditions  and  benefits 
available  to  his  employees,  all  of  whom  referred 
to  him  affectionately  as  'Mr  Cecil'.  He  had  a 
highly  developed  social  conscience  and  provided 
the  company's  employees  with  numerous  social 
benefits  long  before  the  welfare  state  became  a 
reality.  This  concern  was  extended  to  his  cus- 
tomers— for  example,  in  1957  he  initiated  a 
'winners  advisory  sen  ice'  to  help  winners  of  very 
large  sums  to  adjust  to  their  good  fortune.  He 
believed  in  practical  involvement  in  management 
and  his  personal  presence  was  manifest  daily 
throughout  the  pools  company.  He  arrived 
before  most  of  the  staff  and  usually  did  not 
depart  until  long  after  they  had  gone  home. 

His  drive  and  organizing  ability  came  to  frui- 
tion with  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939.  Virtually 
overnight  the  pools  company  was  turned  into  an 
efficient  war  production  machine,  manufacturing 


315 


Moores 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


and  supplying  everything  from  parachutes  to 
Wellington  bombers.  The  speed  and  efficiency 
with  which  a  largely  female  clerical  labour  force 
was  retrained  and  applied  to  these  new  activities 
was  due  in  very  large  measure  to  the  abilities  of 
Cecil  Moores.  After  the  war  he  speedily  guided 
Littlewoods  Pools  back  to  its  pre-eminent  posi- 
tion. He  oversaw  all  the  major  developments  in 
the  pools  industry,  including,  for  example,  the 
mechanization  of  the  business,  the  provision  of  a 
nationwide  coupon  collector  service  (from  1957), 
and  the  use  of  Australian  fixtures  during  the 
summer  (from  1949). 

He  was  also  keenly  interested  in  many  sports. 
As  a  young  man  he  was  an  amateur  soccer  player 
for  Hyde  United  and  later  played  for  the  amateur 
Liverpool  side,  the  Azoics.  Throughout  his  life 
he  was  a  supporter  of  both  Liverpool  and  Ever- 
ton  football  clubs.  He  pursued  numerous  other 
sporting  activities  including  golf,  horse-racing, 
snooker,  game  shooting,  and  salmon  and  trout 
fishing — at  all  of  which  he  characteristically 
became  proficient.  In  1975  he  was  the  driving 
force  behind  the  formation  of  the  Football 
Ground  Improvement  Trust  (later  the  Football 
Trust),  which  provided  about  £40  million  per 
year  to  help  football  at  all  levels. 

Cecil  Moores  was  of  medium  height  and 
stocky  build,  with  straight  brown  hair  and  blue 
eyes.  He  was  a  devoted  family  man  of  simple 
tastes,  who  lived  unostentatiously  in  the  house  he 
had  bought  in  Formby  before  World  War  II.  In 
1930  he  married  Doris  May  (died  1988),  daugh- 
ter of  Thomas  Steel,  electrician.  They  had  a 
daughter  and  two  sons,  the  elder  of  whom  died  as 
a  result  of  a  motor  accident  in  1977.  Although  he 
retired  in  1979  as  chairman  of  Littlewoods  Pools, 
in  old  age  Cecil  Moores  continued,  as  president 
of  the  business,  to  attend  his  office  daily,  main- 
taining regular  contact  with  the  business  he 
loved.  He  died  29  July  1989  whilst  on  a  fishing 
holiday  at  Loch  Trool  in  Dumfries  and  Gallo- 
way, Scotland.  He  left  £1,946,440  gross  and 
£1,828,996  net. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Malcolm  A.  Davidson 

MOORMAN,  John  Richard  Humpidge  (1905- 
1989),  bishop  of  Ripon  and  ecumenist,  was  born 
in  Leeds  4  June  1905,  the  younger  son  and 
second  of  three  children  of  Frederic  William 
Moorman,  professor  of  English  at  Leeds  Uni- 
versity, and  his  wife,  Frances  Beatrice  Hum- 
pidge. His  father  died  when  he  was  fourteen.  He 
was  educated  at  Gresham's  School,  Holt,  and 
Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  of  which  he  was 
made  an  honorary  fellow  in  1959.  In  1926  he 
obtained  a  second  class  (division  II)  in  part  i  of 
the  history  tripos  and  in  1928  a  second  class  in 
part  i  of  the  theology  tripos.  Whilst  at  Cambridge 
Professor  F.  C.  *Burkitt  encouraged  him  to  make 


the  first  of  what  became  almost  annual  visits  to 
Assisi,  thus  prompting  a  lifetime's  interest  in  St 
Francis.  He  gained  his  BD  with  The  Sources  for 
the  Life  ofS.  Francis  of  Assisi (1940);  and  followed 
this  with  the  more  popular  Saint  Francis  of  Assisi 
(1950);  his  magnum  opus,  A  History  of  the  Francis- 
can Order,  in  1968;  and  his  final  work,  Medieval 
Franciscan  Houses,  in  1983.  His  library  of  Fran- 
ciscan books  (later  given  to  St  Deiniol's  library, 
Hawarden)  numbered  well  over  2,000  volumes, 
whilst  Moorman  himself  achieved  international 
recognition  as  the  leading  English  Franciscan 
scholar. 

Moorman's  scholarly  interests,  however,  were 
pursued  not  in  an  academic  context  but  in  the 
parishes  and  diocese  he  was  to  serve.  He  trained 
for  ordination  in  the  Church  of  England  at 
Westcott  House,  Cambridge,  under  B.  K.  Cun- 
ningham, of  whom  he  was  later  to  write  a 
memoir  (1947).  In  1929  he  was  ordained  to  a 
curacy  at  Holbeck  in  his  native  city  of  Leeds.  He 
served  his  second  curacy  at  Leighton  Buzzard 
from  1933  until  1935,  when  he  was  appointed 
rector  of  Fallowfield,  Manchester,  where  he 
remained  until  the  early  years  of  World  War  II. 
His  innate  pacifism,  coupled  with  a  concern  to  do 
work  more  obviously  connected  with  the  war 
effort,  led  him  to  resign  his  benefice  and  take 
employment  as  a  farmhand  in  Wharfedale.  At 
night,  by  the  light  of  an  oil  lamp,  he  completed 
his  Church  Life  in  England  in  the  Thirteenth 
Century,  which  gained  him  a  doctorate  of  divinity 
at  Cambridge  in  1945. 

Moorman's  deep  interest  in  the  spiritual  and 
scholarly  training  of  Anglican  clergy  was  first 
recognized  in  his  appointment  early  in  1945  to 
Lanercost  Priory,  where  men  could  be  trained 
for  the  rural  ministry.  In  the  following  year, 
however,  Bishop  George  *Bell  invited  him  south 
to  reopen  Chichester  Theological  College.  Here 
Moorman  restored  both  the  financial  fortunes 
and  academic  standing  of  the  oldest  of  Anglican 
theological  colleges,  serving  at  the  same  time  as 
chancellor  of  Chichester  Cathedral.  In  1953  his 
best-known  work,  A  History  of  the  Church  in 
England,  was  published:  it  illustrated  well  the 
clarity  of  his  mind,  the  independence  of  his 
judgements,  and  also  his  concern,  like  that  of  his 
father-in-law,  that  history  should  be  both  well 
written  and  enjoyable  to  read. 

In  1956  Moorman  resigned  an  appointment 
for  the  second  occasion  in  his  life,  this  time  to 
concentrate  on  his  Franciscan  writings.  The 
invitation  in  1959  to  become  bishop  of  Ripon  was 
both  timely  and  inspired.  Not  only  did  the 
diocese  include  the  great  city  of  Leeds  with  its 
university,  of  which  both  he  and  his  wife  were  to 
receive  honorary  doctorates,  but  also  the  dales 
which  they  enjoyed  as  keen  walkers,  bird-watch- 
ers, and  lovers  of  rural  life  in  general.  The 
pastoral  care  of  the  clergy,  their  housing,  pay, 


3i6 


DVB.  1986-1990 


Morris 


and  continuing  ministerial  education,  were  para- 
mount concerns  of  his  sixteen-year  episcopate 
and  he  saw  administrative  efficiency  as  subserv- 
ing these  ends. 

The  most  significant  development  in  Moor- 
man's life,  however,  came  in  his  appointment  by 
Archbishop  Michael  *Ramsey  (later  Baron  Ram- 
sey of  Canterbury)  as  chief  Anglican  observer  at 
the  second  Vatican  Council  from  1962  to  1965. 
His  fluency  in  the  Italian  tongue,  coupled  with 
his  warm  gift  of  friendship  (not  least  his  personal 
friendship  with  Cardinal  Montini,  who  was  to 
become  pope  in  1963),  and  his  deep  knowledge 
of  Church  history  marked  him  out  as  one  of  the 
best-known  visitors  to  Rome  in  those  years.  He 
thus  became  in  1967  the  Anglican  chairman  of 
the  preparatory  commission  which  led  to  the 
setting  up  of  the  Anglican-Roman  Catholic 
International  Commission,  of  which  he  was  a 
member  from  its  inception  in  1969  until  1983. 
During  this  time  he  was  also  the  driving  force  in 
establishing  the  Anglican  Centre  in  Rome  and 
personally  assembled  books  for  its  library. 

Although  Moorman  was  slight  of  suture  and 
reserved  by  nature  he  had  an  authoritative  pres- 
ence. He  was  an  accomplished  pianist  and  a  keen 
gardener.  In  1930  he  married  Man-  Caroline 
(died  1994),  an  authority  on  William  •Words- 
worth, daughter  of  George  Macaulay  *Tre- 
velyan,  regius  professor  of  modern  history  at 
Cambridge.  They  had  no  children.  From  his 
mid-teens  Moorman  kept  a  diary,  making  daily 
entries  until  a  week  before  his  death  13  January 
1989  in  Durham,  to  which  he  had  retired  four- 
teen years  earlier. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

Michael  Manktelow 

MORRIS,  Charles  Richard,  Baron  Morris  of 
Grasmere  ( 1 898-1990),  university  teacher  and 
administrator,  was  born  25  January  1898  in 
Sutton  Valence,  Kent,  the  elder  child  and  elder 
son  (the  younger  was  (Sir)  Philip  Robert  •Mor- 
ris, educationist)  of  Meshach  Charles  Morris, 
inspector  of  schools,  and  his  wife  Jane,  daughter 
of  James  Brasier,  of  St  Cross,  Winchester, 
Hampshire.  He  was  educated  at  Tonbridge 
School  and  Trinity  College,  Oxford,  where  he 
obtained  a  first  class  in  literae  humanwres  (1921). 
He  then  became  a  fellow  and  tutor  in  philosophy 
at  Balliol  College,  Oxford  (1921-43). 

His  natural  inclination  towards  an  educational 
career  was  fostered  by  his  parents  and  aug- 
mented by  the  general  ethos  of  Balliol  under  the 
inspiring  mastership  of  A.  D.  *Lindsay  (later 
first  Baron  Lindsay  of  Birker).  The  horror  and 
carnage  of  World  War  I  turned  that  inclination 
into  an  absolute  commitment  to  education  as  the 
great  liberating  force  beneficial  to  individuals  and 
society  alike.  Morris  gave  this  expression  in 
many  ways,  including  by  financially  supporting 


his  younger  sibling's  education  and  by  espousing 
movements  to  enlarge  access  to  education  at  all 
levels  at  home  and  abroad. 

The  first  dozen  years  at  Balliol  were  'paradise'. 
Morris  had  able  and  responsive  pupils  who 
admired  him  for  his  mastery  of  the  subject  and 
respected  him  for  his  remarkable  insight  into 
their  nature  and  capability.  He  wrote  three, 
largely  expository,  books.  The  first,  A  History  of 
Political  Ideas  (1924),  was  written  with  his  wife, 
Man-.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Ernest  de  *Selin- 
court,  professor  of  English  at  Birmingham  Uni- 
versity. They  had  a  long,  mutually  supportive 
marriage,  based  on  shared  values,  of  which  there 
was  a  son  and  a  daughter.  Her  brother  intro- 
duced him  to  the  Lake  District,  for  which  he 
developed  a  lasting  affection.  The  other  books 
were  Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume  (1931)  and  Idealistic 

Log"  (i933)- 

The  comfortable  life  of  the  archetypal  Oxford 
don  was  challenged  in  the  early  1930s  by  the  vast 
social  tragedy  of  the  depression  and  the  evident 
threat  to  democracy  posed  by  the  European 
dictators,  especially  Adolf  Hider.  The  Morrises 
responded  privately  by  assisting  refugees  and 
publicly  by  Charles  becoming  an  Oxford  city 
councillor  (1939-41)  and  campaigning  against 
the  election  of  a  Conservative  member  in  the 
Oxford  parliamentary  by-election  of  1938, 
because  he  deemed  inadequate  and  unacceptable 
the  Conservative  government's  responses  to  the 
dictators'  threat  to  democracy  and  to  evident 
social  injustice  in  Britain.  In  this  period  Morris 
joined  with  J.  S.  (later  Baron)  *Fulton  to  write  In 
Defence  of  Democracy  (1935). 

In  1939  Morris  became  a  wartime  civil  servant 
in  the  ministries  of  Supply  (until  1042)  and 
Production  (1942-3),  experiencing  at  first  hand 
the  workings  of  a  'command'  economy  and 
negotiating  with  counterparts  in  the  USA  for  the 
supply  of  essential  war  materials.  After  this  he 
did  not  return  to  Oxford  but  took  up  the  post  of 
headmaster  of  King  Edward's  School,  Birming- 
ham, to  which  he  had  been  appointed  in  1941. 
He  stayed  until  1948,  when  he  became  vice- 
chancellor  of  the  University  of  Leeds.  This 
brought  him  and  his  wife  closer  to  the  Lake 
District,  where  in  1943  she  had  inherited  a 
house,  gloriously  situated  above  Grasmere, 
which  was  to  become  their  real  home  for  the  next 
forty-seven  years. 

Morris  was  ideally  suited  to  this  vice-chan- 
cellorship, for  which  it  seemed  all  his  previous 
experience  had  been  a  preparation.  Though  he 
was  short  of  stature,  his  bright  eyes  and  lively 
intelligence  commanded  the  affection  and  respect 
of  colleagues  and  students.  He  led  the  university 
through  postwar  austerity  and  produced  a  devel- 
opment plan  to  ensure  that  Leeds  was  well 
placed  to  take  early  advantage  of  the  resources 
which  accompanied  the  government's  acceptance 


317 


Morris 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


of  the  report  of  the  committee  on  higher  educa- 
tion chaired  by  Baron  *Robbins  (1961-4).  He 
also  foresaw  that  internal  structures  of  uni- 
versities must  change.  He  was  an  influential 
figure  in  the  committee  of  vice-chancellors  and 
principals,  was  its  chairman  from  195 1  to  1955, 
and  was  much  in  demand  for  service  on  public 
bodies  in  the  United  Kingdom  as  diverse  as  the 
royal  commission  on  local  government  in  Greater 
London  (1957),  the  Schools'  Broadcasting  Coun- 
cil (1954-64),  and  the  advisory  committee  for  the 
wool  textile  industry  (1952).  He  made  a  major 
contribution  to  the  development  of  universities 
overseas  through  his  membership  of  the  Inter- 
University  Council  for  Higher  Education  Over- 
seas (1957-64)  and  of  the  committee  of  inquiry 
into  Australian  universities  (1957),  whose  defini- 
tive report  was  accepted.  Some  of  these  activities 
continued  in  retirement,  when  he  also  helped  the 
newer  universities  of  Bradford  and  Lancaster. 

Morris  was  one  of  Britain's  outstanding 
university  administrators  and  was  universally 
admired  for  his  combination  of  practicality  and 
total  commitment  to  education.  He  was  knighted 
in  1953,  appointed  KCMG  in  1963,  and  made  a 
life  peer  in  1967.  He  received  eight  honorary 
doctorates.  He  died,  as  he  would  have  wished,  at 
Grasmere,  30  May  1990,  two  years  after  his 
wife's  death.  There  is  a  portrait  of  him  in  the 
University  of  Leeds  by  Robert  *Buhler. 

[Information  from  Balliol  and  Trinity  Colleges, 
Oxford,  and  Leeds  University;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  Frederick  Dainton 

MORRIS,  Oohn)  Marcus  (Harston)  (1915- 
1989),  magazine  editor  and  publisher,  and  crea- 
tor of  Eagle  and  Girl  strip  cartoon  magazines, 
was  born  25  April  19 15  in  Preston,  Lancashire, 
the  second  child  and  eldest  of  three  sons,  the 
youngest  of  whom  died  in  childhood,  of  the  Revd 
Walter  Edmund  Harston  Morris  and  his  wife, 
Edith  Nield.  In  191 8  his  parents  moved  to 
Southport.  He  was  educated  at  Dean  Close 
School  in  Cheltenham  and  Brasenose  College, 
Oxford,  where  he  obtained  a  second  class  in 
liter ae  humaniores  in  1937.  He  then  moved  to 
Wycliffe  Hall  and  gained  a  second  in  theology  in 
1939.  A  curate  in  1939-40  at  St  Bartholomew's, 
Roby,  he  was  ordained  priest  in  1940  and  moved 
to  Great  Yarmouth  (1940-1).  He  was  a  chaplain 
in  the  Royal  Air  Force  Volunteer  Reserve  from 
1 94 1  to  1943  and  rector  of  Weeley  thereafter.  In 
1945  he  became  vicar  of  St  James's,  Birkdale, 
Southport,  where  his  talents  as  a  Christian  pub- 
licist were  shown  in  a  unique  magazine,  Anvil, 
which  circulated  far  beyond  the  parish. 

In  1948  he  engaged  a  young  artist,  Frank 
*Hampson,  to  work  first  on  Anvil  and  by  1949  on 
a  new  project,  a  strip  cartoon  magazine  for  boys. 
Morris  saw  clearly  that  boys  were  buying  horror 
comics,  produced  for  American  servicemen  of 


limited  intelligence,  because  they  wanted  action 
stories  in  strip  cartoon  form,  and  not  because 
they  wanted  pictures  of  savage  sexual  assaults  on 
busty  women.  Hampson  turned  out  to  be  a  great 
strip  cartoon  artist,  devising  his  own  stories  and 
characters  and  inventing  spaceships  and  futuris- 
tic gadgets.  He  devised  a  cartoon  about  Dan 
Dare,  space  pilot,  and  he  and  Morris  sent  the 
dummy  of  a  new  paper,  Eagle ,  to  publishers.  In 
October  1949  the  dummy  was  bought  by  Hulton 
Press,  which  employed  Morris  and  Hampson. 

After  unprecedented  publicity,  the  first  issue 
of  Eagle  went  on  sale  on  14  April  1950  and  was 
an  immediate  success.  It  was  printed  on  good 
paper  in  four-colour  rotogravure,  on  presses 
built  by  Eric  Bemrose  of  Liverpool.  The  stories 
boys  wanted — space  adventure,  cops  and  rob- 
bers, cowboys  and  Indians,  fun  and  humour — 
and  features  they  did  not  know  they  wanted  until 
they  had  them,  such  as  adventures  of  Christian 
heroes  (these  last  proved  fifth  in  popularity), 
were  told  in  strip  cartoon  form.  The  depiction  of 
historical  scenes  and  clothing  had  to  be  accurate 
and  the  science  in  Dan  Dare,  space  pilot  of  the 
future,  must  be  beyond  criticism:  Hampson 
could  invent  what  did  not  yet  exist,  provided 
there  was  no  reason  why  it  should  not,  but  Dan 
must  never  do  anything  impossible,  such  as 
travelling  at  more  than  the  speed  of  light. 

The  Morris  family  moved  to  Epsom  in  1950 
and  Hampson's  team  was  given  a  studio  in  the 
house.  Although  many  girls  read  Eagle,  the 
majority  wanted  their  own  paper,  and  Girl 
appeared  in  November  1951,  to  be  followed  in 
January  1953  by  Robin  (to  teach  smaller  children 
to  read)  and  in  March  1954  Swift  bridged  the  gap 
to  the  papers  for  older  readers.  The  universal 
popularity  of  these  magazines  was  not  weakened 
by  the  fact  that  parents  and  teachers  approved  of 
them.  They  gave  rise  to  annuals,  the  Eagle  Club, 
and  other  expressions  of  belonging,  including 
carol  services,  which  filled  St  Paul's  and  other 
cathedrals.  Morris  dressed  as  a  parson  only  for 
these  events.  His  brilliance  as  an  editor  was 
recognized  when  (Sir)  Edward  *Hulton  made 
him  managing  editor  of  Housewife  (1954-9)  and 
included  him  as  a  member  of  the  Hulton  Press 
management  committee. 

Morris  left  at  the  end  of  1959  to  join  the 
National  Magazine  Company  (a  subsidiary  of  the 
Hearst  Corporation  of  America)  as  editorial 
director  in  i960.  From  1964  until  1982  he  was 
managing  director  and  editor-in-chief.  In  the 
1960s  the  company  published  eleven  magazines, 
including  Good  Housekeeping,  She,  Vanity  Fair, 
and  Connoisseur.  In  the  1970s  Morris  bought 
Queen  and  amalgamated  it  with  Harper's,  and 
launched  Cosmopolitan  in  Britain.  In  association 
with  Conde  Nast  he  formed  COMAG,  perhaps 
the  biggest  media  distribution  company  in  the 
country.  He  became  deputy  chairman  of  the 


3i8 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Moynihan 


National  Magazine  Company  in  1979  (the  chair- 
man had  to  be  American).  He  increased  the 
circulation  of  his  company's  magazines  at  a  time 
when  other  magazines  were  struggling  or  going 
out  of  business.  He  retired  in  1984.  From  1952  to 
1983  he  was  honorary  chaplain  of  St  Bride's, 
Fleet  Street. 

Morris's  nine  years  at  Hulton  Press  were 
exceeded  in  responsibility  and  success  by  his 
twenty-five  years  at  the  National  Magazine  Com- 
pany, and  yet  it  was  for  his  creation  of  Eagle  and 
Girl  and  for  his  powerful  influence  for  good  on  a 
whole  generation  that  he  is  remembered  and 
revered.  He  was  appointed  OBE  in  1983. 

Morris  was  tall,  thin,  and  fair,  and  looked  like 
a  sardonic  Leslie  *Howard.  In  1941  he  married 
Jessica,  one  of  two  actress  daughters  of  John 
Hamlet  Dunning,  a  representative  for  Clarks' 
shoes.  They  had  a  son,  who  died  in  a  car  accident 
in  1968,  and  three  daughters.  Morris  died  16 
March  1989  at  King  Edward  VII  Hospital  for 
Officers,  London.  His  memorial  service  filled  St 
Bride's  in  Fleet  Street  to  overflowing. 

[Chad  Varan,  Before  I  Die  Again,  1992;  private  infor- 
mation; personal  knowledge]  Chad  Varah 

MOSHLNSKY,  Alan  Samuel  (1914-1990),  civil 
servant  and  ombudsman.  [See  Marre,  Sir  Alan 
Samuel.] 

MOYNIHAN,     (Herbert     George)     Rodrigo 

(1910-1990),  painter,  was  born  17  October  1910 
in  Santa  Cruz  de  Tenerife,  Canary  Islands,  the 
elder  son  and  elder  child  of  Herbert  James 
Moynihan,  fruit  broker,  and  his  Spanish  wife, 
Maria  de  la  Puerta.  His  childhood  and  youth 
were  peripatetic  and  between  1924  and  1927  he 
attended  high  school  in  Madison,  New  Jersey.  In 
1927-8  he  was  once  more  in  Europe  and  declared 
his  intention  to  study  painting.  In  1928  he  was 
enrolled  as  a  student  at  the  Slade  School  of  Fine 
Art,  University  of  London,  where  he  studied 
under  Professor  Henry  *Tonks.  A  break  in  his 
progress  occurred  after  his  first  year,  when 
paternal  pressure  banished  him  to  a  broking 
office  in  the  City;  Tonks  intervened  on  his  behalf 
and  from  then  onwards  (he  graduated  in  193 1) 
painting  was  his  life. 

An  early  cosmopolitanism  in  his  outlook  and 
tastes  distinguished  him  from  the  run  of  his 
fellow  students.  At  the  same  time  there  emerged 
characteristics  of  both  innate  conservatism  and 
decided  radicalism  which  were  to  shape  the  rest 
of  his  career  and  were  marked  features  of  his 
personality. 

He  first  came  to  public  notice  through  the 
exhibition  'Objective  Abstractions'  held  at 
Zwemmer's  Gallery,  London,  in  March  1934, 
which  he  shared  with  Geoffrey  Tibbie,  Graham 
Bell,  and  others.  His  works,  evolved  from  ele- 
ments of  still  life,  were  thickly  encrusted,  non- 


figurative  paintings,  indebted  to  the  later 
paintings  of  J.  M.  W.  *Tumer  and  Claude 
Monet;  in  this,  they  ran  counter  to  the  prevailing 
geometric  abstraction  of,  for  example,  Ben 
•Nicholson  or  Piet  Mondrian.  Although  the 
works  caused  interest,  he  received  little  encour- 
agement and,  by  the  late  1930s,  he  returned  to 
representational  painting  and  gained  consider- 
able and  increasing  success  over  the  following 
fifteen  years.  He  was  associated  with,  although 
not  a  member  of,  the  Euston  Road  School 
(1937-9)  through  his  friendship  with  (Sir)  Wil- 
liam *Coldstream,  Victor  Pasmore,  Tibbie,  and 
Bell.  Unlike  them,  he  was  not  especially  drawn  to 
proletarian  subject  matter  and  his  suave  handling 
of  paint  and  restricted  colour  range  was  distinct 
from,  for  example,  Pasmore  or  Claude  *Rogers  at 
that  time. 

In  the  1940s  he  became  a  celebrated  'con- 
servative' artist  known  for  his  wartime  paintings 
such  as  'The  Medical  Inspection'  (1943,  Imperial 
War  Museum)  and  'Private  Clarke,  A.T.S.' 
(1943,  Tate  Gallery).  He  was  called  up  in  1940, 
trained  as  a  gunner,  joined  the  camouflage  sec- 
tion, and  was  invalided  out  after  two  years.  He 
was  an  official  war  artist  (1943-4)  an^  became 
ARA  (1944).  After  the  war  he  became  professor 
of  painting  at  the  Royal  College  of  Art,  London 
(1948-57),  and  in  195 1  he  produced  his  one 
book,  Goya.  In  1953  he  was  appointed  CBE  and 
in  1954  RA.  It  seemed  he  was  cast  in  a  mould  all 
too  familiar  in  the  history  of  British  art — of 
brilliant  early  achievement  followed  by  establish- 
ment renown.  By  the  mid-1950s  he  sensed  he 
was  trapped.  The  renewed  possibilities  of 
abstraction,  the  break-up  of  his  first  marriage, 
and  his  resignation  from  the  Royal  College  and 
the  Royal  Academy  (both  1957)  all  contributed  to 
remarkable  changes  in  his  art  and  his  personal 
circumstances. 

The  painterly  daring  of  his  early  objective 
abstractions  was  harnessed  to  boldness  of  scale 
and  dramatic  colour  to  produce  a  handful  of 
outstanding  works.  He  was  at  first  encouraged  by 
the  example  of  contemporary  French  tachisme 
and  later  by  Sam  Francis  and  .American  abstract 
expressionism,  which  he  came  to  know  well  on 
several  extended  visits  to  New  York  in  the  1960s 
with  his  second  wife.  It  was  during  this  period 
that  they  joindy  edited  (with  Sonia  Orwell  and 
John  Ashbery)  the  influential  quarterly  Art  and 
Literature  (1964-8). 

Gradually  the  gestural  freedom  and  liberality 
of  options  of  this  phase  became  burdensome;  a 
hard-edge  abstraction  resulted  in  which  areas  of 
discrete  colour  are  enlivened  by  bands,  chevrons, 
and  diamonds  of  contrasting  hues.  A  'sense  of 
place'  collides  with  severe  geometric  organiza- 
tion. At  the  same  time  Moynihan  continued 
drawing  from  nature  in  the  landscape  near  his 


319 


Moynihan 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


homes  in  France  (near  Aix-en-Provence)  and  in 
Canada  (New  Brunswick). 

In  197 1  he  resumed  painting  from  life,  chas- 
tened yet  enriched  by  his  second  foray  into 
abstraction.  There  then  began  what  is  perhaps 
his  most  notable  contribution  to  painting — a 
series  of  still  lifes  of  the  quotidian  objects  on 
shelf  or  table  top  in  his  studio.  They  are  painted 
in  a  light  but  intense  scheme  of  colour,  combin- 
ing utmost  dexterity  of  handling  and  subtle, 
unfussy  composition.  Such  qualities  also  inform 
the  portraits  of  the  1970s  and  1980s  which 
include  penetrating  studies  of  Francis  Bacon,  Sir 
William  Coldstream,  Friedrich  von  Hayek,  and 
Benedict  *Nicolson  (the  last  two  in  the  collection 
of  the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  as  is  his  'The 
Rt.  Hon.  Margaret  Thatcher,  P.M.',  1984).  In 
1979  he  was  re-elected  to  the  Royal  Academy, 
the  year  after  his  full-scale  retrospective  was  held 
there.  He  had  been  honoured  by  a  fellowship  of 
University  College  London  in  1970. 

Moynihan's  personality  mixed  Spanish  hau- 
teur, English  conservatism,  and  a  mercurial 
intellectual  curiosity.  He  was  well  read  and  well 
travelled  and  in  conduct  was  both  confidential 
and  secretive,  sybaritic  yet  disciplined.  Attrac- 
tive, attentive,  and  amorous,  he  had  several  love 
affairs.  Early  good  looks,  Mediterranean  in  cast, 
continued  to  give  distinction  to  a  face  he 
recorded  in  a  series  of  perceptive  self-portraits. 
In  later  years  poor  health  diminished  his  activ- 
ities. In  painting,  his  place  is  assured  by  the  still 
lifes  of  his  last  decades  in  which  visual  values 
alone  effect  a  brooding  and  magical  transforma- 
tion of  the  oppressive  material  of  day-to-day 
life. 

In  1 93 1  Moynihan  married  the  painter  Elinor 
Bellingham  Smith  (died  1988),  daughter  of  Guy 
Bellingham  Smith,  obstetrician  and  registrar  at 
Guy's  Hospital  and  collector  of  drawings  and 
prints.  They  had  one  son.  They  were  divorced  in 
i960  and  in  the  same  year  he  married  the  painter 
Anne  Dunn,  divorced  wife  of  Michael  Wishart 
and  daughter  of  Sir  James  Hamet  Dunn,  first 
baronet,  industrialist.  They  also  had  one  son. 
Moynihan  died  in  London  in  his  South  Kensing- 
ton studio  6  November  1990. 

[Richard  Shone  and  John  Ashbery,  Rodrigo  Moynihan, 
1988;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Richard  Shone 

MUGGERIDGE,  (Thomas)  Malcolm  (1903- 
1990),  journalist  and  broadcaster,  was  born  24 
March  1903  in  Croydon,  the  third  of  five  sons, 
one  of  whom  died  in  1922  (there  were  no 
daughters),  of  Henry  Thomas  Benjamin  Mug- 
geridge, Labour  politician,  and  his  wife  Annie 
Booler,  from  Sheffield.  His  father,  elected  MP 
for  Romford  in  1929,  was  a  self-educated  Fabian 
with  an  unwavering  dedication  to  socialism.  He 


was  the  formative  influence  on  his  son's  early 
years  and  as  a  small  boy  Malcolm  accompanied 
him  on  his  street-corner  electioneering.  After 
attending  Selhurst  Grammar  School,  Mugger- 
idge  went  to  Selwyn  College,  Cambridge,  where 
he  studied  natural  sciences  but  left  with  a  pass 
degree  (1923).  It  was  here  that,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Alec  Vidler  (a  lifelong  friend)  and  later  of 
Wilfred  *Knox,  his  religious  instincts  were  first 
aroused  and  he  even  thought  at  one  stage  of 
following  Vidler  into  the  Anglican  ministry. 
However  he  opted  instead  for  a  teaching  post  at 
Union  Christian  College,  Alwaye,  near  Madras, 
India,  where  he  remained  for  two  years 
(1925-7). 

But  Muggeridge  was  perpetually  restless  and, 
after  quarrelling  with  the  college  principal,  he 
returned  to  England  and  took  a  job  as  a  supply 
teacher  in  Birmingham.  Shortly  afterwards,  in 
1927,  he  married  Katherine  Rosalind  ('Kitty'), 
daughter  of  George  Cumberland  Dobbs  (an 
employee  of  the  famous  travel  agent  Sir  Henry 
*Lunn)  and  his  wife  Rosie,  the  youngest  sister  of 
Beatrice  *Webb.  Kitty  thereafter  was  to  be  the 
only  permanent  fixture  in  his  life. 

He  taught  English  for  a  time  at  Cairo  Uni- 
versity (1927-30)  and  whilst  there  began  to 
submit  reports  of  the  Egyptian  political  scene  to 
the  Manchester  Guardian.  In  August  1930  he 
arrived  in  Manchester  and  was  recruited  on  to 
the  staff  of  the  paper  as  a  leader-writer,  on  the 
recommendation  of  Arthur  *Ransome.  He  would 
perhaps  have  risen  high  on  the  staff  but  for  the 
sudden  death  by  drowning  of  E.  T.  Scott,  who 
took  over  the  editorship  from  his  famous  father 
C.  P.  *Scott.  Muggeridge  had  developed  a  strong 
antipathy  to  Scott's  successor,  W.  P.  *Crozier, 
and  was  in  a  mood  of  disappointment  following 
the  formation  of  the  national  government  in 
1931.  In  September  1932  he  and  Kitty  decided  to 
go  and  live  in  Russia,  which  they  regarded,  like 
many  young  nonconformists  of  the  time,  as  the 
new  Jerusalem. 

Muggeridge,  however,  was  quickly  disillu- 
sioned and  after  reporting  first  hand  on  the 
Ukraine  famine — almost  the  only  western  jour- 
nalist to  do  so — he  went  to  Switzerland  and 
worked  for  the  League  of  Nations.  In  1934  he 
took  a  job  in  India  as  assistant  editor  of  the 
Calcutta  Statesman  and  then  worked  for  a  short 
time  on  the  staff  of  the  London  Evening  Stan- 
dard. Muggeridge  always  chafed  at  being  a  mere 
journalist  and  had  already  written  a  play  and 
three  novels  (one  of  which,  'Picture  Palace',  a 
satirical  account  of  his  time  on  the  Manchester 
Guardian,  had  been  recalled  and  suppressed  by 
the  publisher).  In  1936,  encouraged  by  his  great 
friend  Hugh  *Kingsmill,  he  abandoned  full-time 
journalism  and  went  to  live  at  Whatlington  in 
Sussex.  In  1936  he  published  a  critical  biography 


320 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Murdoch 


of  Samuel  *Butler  and  in  1938  another  novel,  In 
a  Valley  of  This  Restless  Mind.  He  also  wrote  The 
Thirties  (1940),  a  social  survey  of  the  decade 
which  first  revealed  his  formidable  powers  as  a 
political  satirist  and  was  remarkable  for  its  anar- 
chic wit  and  skilful  use  of  quotation  (a  hallmark 
of  Muggeridge's  style). 

At  the  outbreak  of  war  Muggeridge  joined  the 
Intelligence  Corps  and  after  a  few  months  was 
transferred  to  MI6.  He  was  sent  to  Lourenco 
Marques  in  Mozambique,  where  he  proved  an 
effective  agent  in  the  fight  to  prevent  the  sinking 
of  Allied  shipping  by  German  U-boats.  He  also 
served  in  North  Africa,  Italy,  and,  at  the  end  of 
the  war,  in  Paris,  where  he  was  instrumental  in 
protecting  (Sir)  P.  G.  *Wodehouse,  then  under 
suspicion  of  collaborating  with  the  Germans.  He 
was  decorated  with  the  Legion  of  Honour  and 
the  croix  de  guerre  with  palm. 

Muggeridge  always  liked  to  swim  against  the 
tide  and  in  1945  joined  the  Conservative  Daily 
Telegraph  as  a  leader-writer.  He  then  became  the 
Telegraph's  Washington  correspondent  (1946-7). 
He  was  the  paper's  deputy  editor  in  1950-2.  In 
late  1952,  to  universal  surprise,  he  accepted  the 
editorship  of  Punch,  the  first  non-member  of 
staff  ever  to  do  so.  He  proved  an  effective  editor, 
transforming  the  staid  old  periodical  with  his 
lively  and  satirical  journalism.  But,  after  an  initial 
rise,  the  circulation  fell  again  and  Muggeridge 
resigned  in  1957.  By  now  he  was  already 
involved  in  television  as  a  presenter  of  the  BBC's 
Panorama,  a  magazine  programme  devoted  to 
politics  and  the  arts.  Muggeridge  had  a  natural 
flair  for  television  and  with  his  outspoken  views, 
drawling  voice,  and  long  cigarette  holder  quickly 
became  a  household  name.  Briefly  suspended  by 
the  BBC  in  late  1957,  after  he  had  published  in 
the  USA  an  article  attacking  the  cult  of  mon- 
archy, he  appeared  on  a  wide  variety  of  pro- 
grammes throughout  the  1960s  and  1970s, 
notably  a  series  of  autobiographical  documenta- 
ries, including  Twilight  of  Empire  and  Ladies  and 
Gentlemen  It  Is  My  Pleasure — an  account  of  a 
lecture  tour  in  America. 

All  his  life  Muggeridge  had  been  restless, 
dissatisfied,  and  tormented  by  strong  appetites 
for  women  and  drink.  At  about  the  age  of  sixty- 
he  made  a  series  of  renunciations — of  drinking, 
meat-eating,  smoking,  and  casual  love  affairs.  He 
and  Kitty  had  finally  settled  at  Park  Cottage  in 
Robertsbridge,  an  idyllic  setting  at  the  end  of  a 
long  farm  track  in  the  Sussex  countryside.  Here 
Muggeridge  experienced  for  the  first  time  a 
degree  of  contentment  and  peace.  He  developed 
a  routine  of  early  rising,  writing,  and  long  walks 
(in  which  visitors  were  expected  to  join).  He 
rediscovered  his  faith  and  became  in  print  and  on 
television  a  formidable  apologist  for  Christianity. 
He  was  the  first  to  introduce  Mother  Teresa  to  a 


worldwide  audience  with  his  film  Something 
Beautiful  for  God,  later  published  in  book  form 
(1971).  Muggeridge  was  received  into  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  in  1982. 

Muggeridge  was  a  man  of  middle  height,  with 
bright  blue  eyes  and  a  bulbous  nose.  He  had  an 
enormous  vitality  and  charm  and  was  blessed 
with  generous  instincts  which  usually  won  over 
even  his  fiercest  opponents  (of  whom  there  were 
many).  He  had  no  ambition  for  office  of  any  kind 
and  generally  acted  on  impulse.  His  enormous 
success  as  a  television  personality  came  about  by 
chance  and  may  have  encouraged  a  natural  van- 
ity. But  he  never  lost  the  ability  to  laugh  at 
himself.  He  was  sustained  throughout  his  life  by 
the  love  of  his  wife,  Kitty,  who  died  in  1994. 
They  had  three  sons  and  a  daughter.  Muggeridge 
died  14  November  1990  after  a  long  decline  and 
was  buried  near  his  father  in  Whatlington. 

[Malcolm  Muggeridge,  Chronicles  of  Wasted  Time:  vol. 
i  The  Green  Stick,  1972,  vol.  ii  The  Infernal  Grove,  1073; 
Malcolm  Muggeridge,  Like  It  Was  (diaries),  1 981;  Ian 
Hunter,  Malcolm  Muggeridge:  a  Life,  1980;  Richard 
Ingrams,  God's  Apology,  a  Chronicle  of  j  Friends,  1977, 
and  Muggeridge:  the  Biography,  1995;  Gregory  Wolfe, 
Malcolm  Muggeridge:  a  Biography,  1995;  personal 
knowledge.]  Richard  Ingrams 

MURDOCH,  Richard  Bernard  (1907-1990), 
actor  and  comedian,  was  born  6  April  1907  at  the 
family  home  in  Keston,  Kent,  the  only  son  of 
Bernard  Murdoch,  tea  merchant,  and  his  wife 
Amy  Florence,  daughter  of  Avison  Tern-  Scott, 
archdeacon  of  Tonbridge.  He  was  educated  at 
Charterhouse  School  and  Pembroke  College, 
Cambridge,  which  he  left  without  gaining  a 
degree,  his  appetite  for  a  career  in  show  business 
being  whetted  by  success  with  the  Cambridge 
Footlights. 

Murdoch's  professional  stage  career  began  in 
1927  at  the  King's  theatre,  Southsea,  in  the 
chorus  of  the  musical  play  The  Blue  Train.  He 
then  worked  in  the  chorus  and  played  small  parts 
in  various  musical  comedies  and  revues  including 
That's  a  Good  Girl  (1928),  Oh  Lettyl  (1929), 
Cochran's  igjo  Revue,  and  Stand  Up  and  Sing 
(1931).  This  was  followed  in  the  1930s  by  Andre 
•Chariot's  West  End  revues  and  the  musical 
comedy  Over  She  Goes  (1936).  By  the  mid- 1930s 
his  reputation  as  a  first-class  light  comedian  was 
growing. 

In  1938  the  BBC  teamed  Murdoch  with 
Arthur  *Askey  in  the  radio  series  Band  Waggon, 
in  which  they  were  alleged  to  live  in  a  flat  in 
Broadcasting  House,  and  many  sketches  were 
based  on  this  notion.  Their  humour  was  a 
forerunner  of  much  radio  comedy  to  come,  for 
although  their  comic  interludes  only  took  up  ten 
minutes  of  the  weekly  one-hour  programme,  the 
fantasy  of  their  living  in  Broadcasting  House, 
and  the  creation  of  such  mythical  characters  as 
Mrs  Bagwash  the  charlady  and  her  daughter 


321 


Murdoch 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Nausea  and  their  pet  animals,  a  goat  called 
Lewis,  and  two  pigeons  Basil  and  Lucy,  pre- 
ceded IT  MA  and  Hancock's  Half  Hour  and  was  a 
strong  influence  on  many  nascent  comedy 
scriptwriters. 

In  1938,  after  two  series,  the  stage  rights  to 
Band  Waggon  were  acquired  by  the  impresario 
Jack  *Hylton,  and  Murdoch  with  Askey  and  a 
supporting  cast  toured  the  provincial  music-halls 
and  finished  with  a  run  at  the  London  Palladium 
in  1939.  The  debonair,  sophisticated  West  End 
style  of  Murdoch  blended  neatly  with  the  more 
down-to-earth  humour  of  Liverpudlian  Arthur 
Askey,  whose  reputation  was  based  on  his  suc- 
cesses in  seaside  concert  party.  It  was  Askey  who 
gave  Murdoch  the  nickname  'Stinker'.  Together 
they  were  enormously  successful. 

In  1 94 1  Murdoch  joined  the  Royal  Air  Force 
as  a  pilot  officer  working  in  the  intelligence  sector 
of  Bomber  Command.  Later  he  was  posted  to  the 
Air  Ministry  in  London,  where  he  was  promoted 
to  squadron-leader  in  the  directorate  of  admin- 
istrative plans,  under  the  command  of  Wing 
Commander  Kenneth  *Horne.  The  two  quickly 
became  friends  and  as  both  were  regular  broad- 
casters it  was  only  a  matter  of  time  (1944)  before 
they  dreamed  up  the  mythical  RAF  station  Much 
Binding  in  the  Marsh.  This  became  the  RAF 
segment  of  a  Services  series  Merry  Go  Round, 
alternating  with  the  Royal  Navy  show  HMS 
Waterlogged,  written  by  and  starring  Eric  Barker, 
and  the  army  contribution  Stand  Easy,  with 
Charlie  Chester. 

Murdoch  and  Home  wrote  the  scripts  of  the 
Much  Binding  shows  and  when  peace  came  in 
1945  they  duly  transferred  it  to  a  civilian  milieu, 
where  it  thrived  until  1954.  From  then  on 
Richard  Murdoch's  career  was  varied  and  inter- 
esting and  included  a  tour  of  South  Africa,  a 
season  in  Canada  playing  William  the  waiter  in 
G.  B.  *Shaw's  You  Never  Can  Tell,  and  a  round- 
the-world  trip  for  the  Australian  Broadcasting 
Corporation  in  a  series  of  programmes  called 
Much  Murdoch. 

His  next  major  success  was  the  BBC  radio 
series  The  Men  from  the  Ministry  (1961-77),  in 
which  he  co-starred  first  with  Wilfrid  Hyde- 
White  and  later  with  Deryck  Guyler.  Towards 
the  end  of  his  life  Richard  Murdoch  appeared  in 
several  episodes  of  the  television  series  Rumpole 
of  the  Bailey,  playing  the  aged  barrister  'Uncle 
Tom'. 

Murdoch  was  six  feet  one  inch  tall  and  good 
looking.  He  was  always  polished  and  well  man- 
nered and  was,  to  quote  James  Green,  the  show 
business  columnist,  'a  subtle  and  charming  comic 
actor'.  In  1932  he  married  Peggy,  daughter  of 
William  Rawlings,  solicitor.  They  had  one  son 
and  two  daughters.  Richard  Murdoch  died  9 
October  1990.  As  a  keen  golfer  he  could  not  have 


wished  for  a  better  end,  for  he  died  while  playing 
golf  at  Walton  Heath,  Surrey. 

[Norman  Hackforth,  Solo  for  Home,  1976;  Barry  Took, 
Laughter  in  the  Air,  1976;  personal  knowledge.] 

Barry  Took 

MURLESS,  Sir  (Charles  Francis)  Noel 
(1910-1987),  racehorse  trainer,  was  born  24 
March  19 10  at  Duckington  Grange,  Malpas, 
Cheshire,  the  elder  son  (there  were  no  daughters) 
of  Charles  Herbert  Murless,  farmer,  and  his  wife 
Mary  Constance,  daughter  of  Frank  Lloyd,  auc- 
tioneer, of  Wrexham,  north  Wales.  Having 
ridden  and  hunted  from  early  boyhood,  Noel 
Murless  was  inspired  to  make  a  career  in  racing 
by  seeing  Poethlyn,  owned  by  his  parents'  neigh- 
bour, Mrs  Hugh  Peel,  win  the  Grand  National  in 
1919. 

For  a  short  time  Noel  Murless,  while  perform- 
ing the  duties  of  a  stable  lad,  rode  in  steeple- 
chases and  hurdle  races  with  limited  success,  as 
an  amateur  and  then  as  a  professional,  for  Frank 
Hartigan,  a  trainer  in  Weyhill,  Hampshire.  On 
leaving  Weyhill  in  1930,  Murless  commenced  a 
period  of  five  years  as  assistant  to  Hartigan's 
brother  Hubert,  first  at  the  Curragh,  and  then  at 
Penrith  in  Westmorland.  In  July  1935  he  com- 
menced training  at  Hambleton  Lodge,  near 
Thirsk  in  the  North  Riding  of  Yorkshire,  with 
five  horses  belonging  to  Lady  Maureen  Stanley, 
Dick  Taylor,  J.  T.  Rogers,  and  Andrew  John- 
stone. On  2  September  1935  he  obtained  his  first 
success  with  J.  T.  Rogers's  Rubin  Wood  in  the 
Lee  plate  at  Lanark.  He  had  only  one  winner 
again  in  1936,  but  in  1939  he  won  ten  races. 

During  World  War  II  Murless  conducted  a 
small  stable  at  Middleham  in  Yorkshire,  having 
been  rejected  by  the  forces  because  of  injuries  to 
his  feet,  sustained  in  1930.  After  the  war  Murless 
came  further  to  the  fore,  and  in  1946  he  was 
leading  northern  trainer  with  thirty-four  races 
worth  £15,337  to  his  credit.  He  was  leading 
northern  trainer  again  in  1947,  obtaining  his  first 
important  success  with  Closeburn  in  the  Stew- 
ards' cup  at  Goodwood.  Following  the  retire- 
ment of  Fred  Darling  at  the  end  of  1947,  Murless 
was  invited  to  succeed  him  in  the  powerful 
Beckhampton  stable,  near  Calne  in  Wiltshire, 
on  the  recommendation  of  the  stable  jockey 
(Sir)  Gordon  *Richards,  who  had  been  greatly 
impressed  by  his  always  carrying  his  own  saddle 
and  other  evidence  of  personal  attention  to  detail. 
Patrons  of  the  stable  included  King  *George  VI, 
J.  A.  Dewar,  the  whisky  millionaire,  Sir  Percy 
•Loraine,  Major  and  Mrs  Macdonald-Buchanan, 
and  Colonel  Giles  Loder.  In  his  first  season  at 
Beckhampton,  Murless  almost  brought  off  the 
Newmarket  classic  double.  The  Cobbler  was 
only  beaten  by  a  head  in  the  Two  Thousand 
Guineas,  and  Queenpot  won  the  One  Thousand 
Guineas.  At  the  end  of  that  season  of  1948, 


322 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Mynors 


Murless  was  champion  trainer,  having  won  sixty- 
three  races  worth  £66,542.  In  1949  Major  Mac- 
donald-Buchanan's  Abernant  was  beaten  by  a 
short  head  in  the  Two  Thousand  Guineas,  but 
G.  R.  H.  Smith's  Ridgewood  won  the  St  Leger. 
The  grey  Abernant  became  an  excellent  sprinter, 
twice  winning  both  the  July  cup  at  Newmarket 
and  the  Nunthorpe  stakes  at  York  (1949  and 
1950). 

Having  moved  to  the  palatial  Warren  Place 
stable  at  Newmarket  towards  the  end  of  1952, 
Murless  performed  a  remarkable  feat  by  winning 
the  Two  Thousand  Guineas  and  Derby  of  1957 
with  Sir  Victor  Sassoon's  Crepello,  a  heavy- 
topped  colt  with  far  from  the  best  legs.  In  1957 
he  also  won  the  Oaks  with  Carrozza,  leased  by 
the  queen  from  the  National  Stud,  and  thus 
became  that  year's  champion  trainer,  having  won 
races  worth  £1 16,898.  He  was  the  first  to  amass 
a  six-figure  sum  in  a  season.  In  1959  he  broke  his 
own  record  by  winning  £145,727,  when  Ali 
Khan's  grey  filly,  Petite  Etoile,  won  the  One 
Thousand  Guineas,  Oaks,  Sussex  stakes,  York- 
shire Oaks,  and  Champion  stakes. 

During  i960  Murless  won  the  Derby  and  St 
Leger  with  Sir  Victor  Sassoon's  St  Paddy. 
Although  another  St  Leger  was  won  with  Vera 
Lilley's  ill-tempered  Aurelius  in  196 1,  and  Mur- 
less was  champion  trainer  for  the  third  consec- 
utive time,  the  season  was  marred  by  Sir  Victor's 
Pinturischio  being  so  badly  nobbled  while 
favourite  for  the  Derby  that  he  could  never  run 
again.  A  third  record  was  broken  in  1967,  when 
Murless  won  sixty  races  worth  £256,899,  includ- 
ing the  Two  Thousand  Guineas  and  Derby  with 
H.  J.  Joel's  Royal  Palace,  and  the  One  Thousand 
Guineas  with  R.  C.  Boucher's  Fleet.  The  King 
George  VI  and  Queen  Elizabeth  stakes  and  the 
Eclipse  stakes  were  won  by  Stanhope  Joel's 
Busted,  who  had  improved  greatly  since  joining 
Murless  from  Ireland.  When  champion  trainer 
again  in  1968,  Murless  won  the  One  Thousand 
Guineas  with  Caergwrle,  bred  and  owned  by  his 
wife.  Murless  was  champion  trainer  for  the  ninth 
and  final  time  in  1973,  obtaining  the  last  of  his 
nineteen  classic  successes  with  G.  Pope's  Myste- 
rious in  the  Oaks.  He  retired  at  the  end  of  1976, 
and  sold  Warren  Place  to  his  son-in-law,  Henry 
Cecil. 

A  tall,  handsome  man,  with  rather  aquiline 
features  and  large  brown  eyes  in  a  weather- 
beaten  face,  Murless  had  brown  hair,  which  was 
silver  in  late  middle  age,  brushed  straight  back 
from  his  forehead.  He  was  impatient  with  people 
who  sought  information  about  horses  with  a  view 
to  making  money,  something  to  which  he  himself 
was  almost  indifferent.  On  the  other  hand,  he 
would  go  to  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  not  least  with 
younger  people,  to  help  those  anxious  to  increase 
their  knowledge  of  the  thoroughbred.  Although 
he  had  no  liking  for  the  limelight,  he  had  many 


close  friends,  mainly  amongst  owners  and  breed- 
ers, who  found  him  a  generous  and  amusing 
host.  He  was  knighted  in  the  silver  jubilee 
honours  in  June  1977,  and  elected  to  the  Jockey- 
Club  the  following  month.  To  a  great  extent  his 
success  was  due  to  his  inexhaustible  patience  and 
natural  empathy  with  his  horses,  whose  hallmark 
was  a  muscular  robustness.  To  conserve  nervous 
energy,  he  always  kept  them  absolutely  relaxed. 
On  taking  over  Beckhampton,  he  gave  orders 
that  the  horses'  heads  should  be  held  by  one  rack 
chain,  instead  of  three,  while  being  dressed  over, 
so  that  they  could  cope  with  irritation  by  flies. 

On  28  November  1940  Murless  married 
Gwendolen  Mary  Lindsay,  daughter  of  William 
Lindsay  Carlow,  coal  exporter,  of  Craigend, 
Troon,  Ayrshire.  The  only  child  of  the  marriage, 
Julia,  married  the  future  champion  trainer  Henry- 
Cecil  in  1966.  Murless  died  9  May  1987  of 
emphysema  and  chronic  bronchitis  at  his  home. 
The  Bungalow,  Woodditton,  Newmarket. 

[Tim  Fitzgeorge-Parker,  The  Guv'nor,  1980;  Spirting 
Life,  11  May  1987;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Richard  Onslow 

MYNORS,    Sir    Roger    Aubrey    Baskerville 

(1903-1989),  classical  scholar,  was  born  28  July 
1903  at  Langley  Burrell,  Wiltshire,  the  eldest  of 
four  sons  and  second  of  five  children  of  the  Revd 
Aubrey  Baskerville  Mynors,  rector  of  Langley 
Burrell,  and  his  wife,  Margery  Musgrave,  daugh- 
ter of  the  Revd  Charles  Musgrave  Harvey,  pre- 
bendary of  St  Paul's  Cathedral.  His  younger  twin 
Humphrey  (later  first  baronet),  to  whom  he  bore 
a  confusing  resemblance  in  earlier  years,  was  to 
become  deputy  governor  of  the  Bank  of  England, 
a  position  that  had  been  held  by  his  mother's 
brother,  Sir  Ernest  Musgrave  Harvey,  first  bar- 
onet. He  was  educated  at  Eton  (scholar  1916)  and 
Balliol  College,  Oxford  (exhibitioner  1922), 
where  he  obtained  firsts  in  classical  honour 
moderations  (1924)  and  literae  humaniores  (1926), 
as  well  as  the  Hertford  (1924),  Craven  (1924), 
and  Derby  (1926)  scholarships. 

He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  Balliol  in  1926; 
pupils  remember  how  he  introduced  them  to 
authors  remote  from  the  syllabus.  In  1940  he 
went  to  the  exchange  control  department  of  the 
Treasury  as  a  temporary  principal.  In  1944  he 
was  elected  to  the  Kennedy  chair  of  Latin  at 
Cambridge,  where  he  became  a  fellow  of  Pem- 
broke College,  but  he  never  seemed  to  settle.  In 
1949  he  was  disappointed  not  to  become  master 
of  Balliol,  when  Sir  David  *Keir  was  preferred. 
In  1953  he  returned  to  Oxford  as  Corpus  Christi 
professor  of  Latin  in  succession  to  Eduard 
*Fraenkel,  and  he  remained  at  Corpus  Christi 
College  till  his  retirement  in  1970. 

His  contribution  to  learning  for  most  of  his  life 
centred  on  Latin  manuscripts.  He  saw  them  as 
part  of  the  cultural  history  of  Europe;  for  him  the 


323 


Mynors 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


scribes  were  not  anonymous  symbols  at  the  foot 
of  the  page,  but  human  beings  and  friends,  who 
could  be  placed  and  dated  and  sometimes  identi- 
fied. He  was  a  rapid  and  meticulous  collator  from 
an  age  without  microfilms;  his  'apparatus  crit- 
icus'  was  always  elegant  and  unfussy,  like  every- 
thing else  including  his  handwriting,  but  he  was 
not  assertive  enough  to  offer  many  conjectures  of 
his  own.  He  edited  the  Institutiones  of  Cassio- 
dorus  (1937),  Catullus  (1958),  Pliny's  letters 
(1963),  the  Panegyrici  Latini  (1964),  and  Virgil 
(1969).  He  was  a  medievalist  at  least  as  much  as 
a  classical  scholar,  and  he  did  much  to  promote 
Nelson's  Medieval  Texts,  where  he  was  generous 
with  unobtrusive  help  to  others.  He  produced 
catalogues  of  the  manuscripts  of  Durham  Cathe- 
dral before  1200,  a  sumptuous  book  (1939),  and 
of  Balliol  College,  a  conspicuously  professional 
performance  (1963).  He  was  a  precise  and  eco- 
nomical translator  who  contributed  much  to  the 
Toronto  translation  of  Erasmus  (from  1974)  and 
took  part  in  the  final  revision  of  the  New  English 
Bible. 

He  was  a  fascinating  lecturer  whom  under- 
graduates flocked  to  hear,  not  because  he  helped 
them  for  their  examinations  but  because  they 
found  him  so  interesting.  He  supervised  graduate 
students  by  describing  his  own  researches  and 
inspiring  them  to  do  likewise.  He  was  a  courte- 
ous chairman,  yet  with  something  in  his  manner 
that  discouraged  time-wasters.  He  was  a  delight- 
ful letter-writer  to  his  friends,  with  great  sym- 
pathy for  the  young,  but  did  not  hurry  to  reply 
on  matters  of  business.  He  was  not  easy  to  find, 
but  was  there  to  help  when  it  mattered  most.  His 
charm  was  memorable,  but  there  was  a  touch  of 
astringency  towards  the  incompetent  and  self- 
important,  and  in  spite  of  his  urbanity  he  showed 
a  diffidence  that  was  not  entirely  assumed. 
Though  the  least  didactic  of  teachers,  he  could 
throw  off  a  remark  that  changed  one's  approach 
to  the  subject,  and  sensible  people  followed  up 
his  most  tentative  suggestions. 

For  many  years  he  occupied  himself  with  a 
commentary  on  Virgil's  Georgia  that  appeared 
posthumously  in  1990.  It  paid  no  particular 
regard  to  recent  periodical  articles,  or  to  the  fads 
and  fancies  of  a  younger  generation  of  scholars. 
Instead  it  showed  an  expert  knowledge  of  ancient 
and  modern  agriculture,  a  flair  for  integrating 
interesting  things  from  a  wide  range  of  reading, 
and  a  sensitive  ear  for  what  the  poet  is  actually 
saying.  Above  all  it  was  directed  by  the  author's 
feeling  for  the  countryside,  and  particularly  for 
Treago,  the  estate  he  inherited  near  St  Weonards 
in  Herefordshire.  Anybody  who  wishes  to  know 
what  Mynors  was  like  should  read  this  book. 

He  became  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  in 
1944  and  was  knighted  in  1963.  He  was  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Balliol  (1963)  and  Corpus 
Christi  (1970)  colleges,  Oxford,  of  Pembroke 


College,  Cambridge  (1965),  and  of  the  Warburg 
Institute.  He  was  an  honorary  member  of  the 
American  Academy  of  Arts  and  Sciences,  the 
American  Philosophical  Society,  and  the  Istituto 
di  Studi  Romani.  He  held  honorary  degrees  from 
the  universities  of  Cambridge,  Durham,  Edin- 
burgh, Sheffield,  and  Toronto. 

In  1945  he  married  Lavinia  Sybil,  daughter  of 
the  Very  Revd  Cyril  Argentine  *Alington,  dean 
of  Durham  and  formerly  his  headmaster  at  Eton, 
and  his  wife,  Hester  Margaret,  a  daughter  of  the 
fourth  Baron  *Lyttelton;  it  was  to  prove  an 
ideally  happy  union.  There  were  no  children.  His 
sister-in-law  Elizabeth  was  married  to  Lord 
Home  of  the  Hirsel.  Mynors  died  17  October 
1989  as  the  result  of  a  road  accident  outside 
Hereford;  he  was  driving  back  to  Treago  after 
working  on  his  catalogue  of  the  manuscripts  in 
Hereford  Cathedral  library.  As  he  left  the  cathe- 
dral he  was  heard  to  say  that  he  had  had  a  good 
day. 

[R.  G.  M.  Nisbet  in  Gnomon,  vol.  lxii,  1990;  M. 
Winterbottom  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol. 
lxxx,  ioqi;  personal  knowledge.]      R.  G.  M.  Nisbet 

MYRES,  (John)  Nowell  (Linton)  (1902-1989), 
historian,  archaeologist,  and  Bodley's  librarian  at 
Oxford,  was  born  at  1  Wellington  Place,  Oxford, 
27  December  1902,  the  younger  son  and  second 
of  three  children  of  (Sir)  John  Linton  *Myres, 
archaeologist  and  historian,  and  his  wife  Sophia 
Florence  Ballance,  who  was  of  Huguenot 
descent.  Books  brought  over  by  her  forebears  in 
1685,  as  well  as  sixteenth-century  incunabula 
bought  with  his  own  pocket  money,  contributed 
to  the  boyhood  inheritance  of  the  future  cus- 
todian of  Bodley.  From  his  preparatory  school  on 
the  Surrey-Sussex  border  he  won  a  scholarship 
to  Winchester.  Deeply  influenced  by  the  college 
architecture  and  the  inspired  history  teaching  of 
A.  T.  P.  *Williams,  later  bishop  of  Durham  and 
of  Winchester,  he  went  to  New  College,  Oxford, 
in  1 92 1  determined  to  make  history  his  subject; 
substituting  the  history  preliminary  examination 
for  classical  honour  moderations,  he  took  a  first 
in  liter ae  humaniores  (1924)  in  three  years  and 
another  in  modern  history  (1926)  in  two. 

After  appointment  as  a  college  lecturer  in 
modern  history  in  1926  he  was  elected  a  Student 
of  Christ  Church  in  1928;  thereafter,  apart  from 
wartime  civil  service  (1940-5),  in  which  he  rose 
to  be  head  of  the  fruit  and  vegetable  products 
division  of  the  Ministry  of  Food  (he  was  a  keen 
vegetable  gardener),  tutoring  and  lecturing  were 
his  formal  occupation  for  the  next  twenty 
years. 

They  were  also  years  of  strenuous  extra- 
collegial  activity.  Earlier  excavations  at  St 
Catharine's  Hill,  Winchester,  and  at  Caerleon 
amphitheatre  were  now  followed  by  others  at 
Colchester,  Butley  Priory  in  Suffolk,  and  Ald- 


324 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Myres 


borough  in  Yorkshire.  In  193 1  he  was  invited  to 
contribute  a  section  on  the  English  Settlements, 
based  on  archaeological  as  well  as  historical 
sources,  to  the  first  volume  (Roman  Britain  and 
the  English  Settlements,  1936)  of  the  new  Oxford 
History  of  England.  R.  G.  *Collingwood  was  his 
fellow  author. 

Librarian  of  Christ  Church  from  1938,  Myres, 
with  his  versatile  scholarship  and  proven  ability 
as  an  administrator,  was  a  natural  choice  in  1947 
as  successor  to  Sir  H.  H.  Edmund  Craster  as 
Bodley's  librarian,  after  a  brief  tenure  by  H.  R. 
Creswick.  His  own  tenure  lasted  for  eighteen 
years  and  involved  integrating  the  1939  extension 
with  the  parent  institution,  the  major  repair  and 
internal  reordering  of  the  buildings  round  the 
schools  quadrangle,  and  supervision  of  a  total 
structural  overhaul  of  the  fabric  of  Duke  Hum- 
frey,  the  fifteenth-century  reading  room  above 
the  vault  of  the  Divinity  School.  He  also  pre- 
sided over  the  establishment  of  the  new  law 
library  in  St  Cross  Road.  He  widened  the  Bod- 
leian's  status  and  repute  by  setting  up  and 
hosting  the  copyright  libraries  conference  and 
establishing  the  standing  conference  of  national 
and  university  libraries;  also  he  founded  the 
Society  of  Bodley's  American  Friends.  Though  a 
non-professional,  in  1963  he  was  elected  presi- 
dent of  the  Library  Association.  Bitter  disagree- 
ment with  the  university  authorities  over  their 
refusal  to  accept  his  defence  of  the  Bodleian's 
claim  to  the  premises  of  the  Indian  Institute  led 
to  his  resignation  after  a  dramatic  debate  in 
Congregation  in  1965.  (As  Bodley's  librarian  he 
invariably  wore  a  dark  coat  and  striped  trousers, 
even  when  riding  a  bicycle,  and  in  later  life  grew 
a  huge  beard  like  his  father's.) 

From  now  on  Myres  gave  his  whole  mind  to 
archaeology  and  the  pursuit  of  the  course  he  had 
set  himself  in  1931.  His  Rhind  lectures  of  1964-5 
appeared  in  1969  as  Anglo-Saxon  Pottery  and  the 
Settlement  of  England;  in  1973  came  The  Anglo- 
Saxon  Cemeteries  of  Caistor-by-Norwich  and 
Markshall  (jointly  with  Barbara  Green);  1977  saw 
the  achievement  of  the  long-envisaged  A  Corpus 
of  Anglo-Saxon  Pottery  of  the  Pagan  Period; 
finally,  in  1986,  he  was  able  to  bring  out  a 
revision  and  reassessment,  as  an  independent 
volume  of  the  Oxford  History,  of  his  English 
Settlements  of  fiftv  vears  earlier. 


Many  societies  benefited  from  his  unremitting 
involvement  in  their  affairs,  notably  the  Oxford 
University  Archaeological  Society,  the  Council 
for  British  Archaeology  (of  which  he  was  a  joint 
originator),  the  Sachsensymposium,  and  the 
Society  for  Medieval  Archaeology.  The  Society 
of  Antiquaries  of  London,  whose  president  he 
was  in  1970-5,  awarded  him  their  gold  medal 
(1976)  for  services  to  archaeology.  He  was  a 
valued  member  of  many  official  bodies,  amongst 
them  the  Royal  Commission  on  Historical  Mon- 
uments (1969-74)  and  the  Ancient  Monuments 
Board  (1959-76).  He  was  especially  noted  for  his 
friendliness  and  sense  of  fun,  as  also  for  his 
helpfulness  to  younger  scholars.  Totally  without 
pomposity,  he  brightened  his  later  bedridden 
days  with  the  use  of  one  of  his  doctoral  robes  as 
a  dressing-gown.  Quick  to  apply  modern  terms 
to  ancient  situations,  he  chuckled  a  lot  when 
giving  the  title  'Charlemagne  on  Miniskirts'  to  a 
learned  but  light-hearted  note  in  Antiquity  (vol. 
xlii,  1968,  p.  125). 

Myres  was  elected  FBA  in  1966  and  appointed 
CBE  in  1972.  He  was  a  fellow  (1951-77)  and 
sub-warden  of  Winchester,  honorary  fellow  of 
New  College  (1973),  and  successively  research, 
emeritus,  and  honorary  Student  (1971)  of  Christ 
Church.  He  received  honorary  doctorates  from 
the  universities  of  Toronto  (1954),  Reading 
(1964),  Belfast  (1965),  and  Durham  (1983).  In 
1929  he  married  a  teacher,  Joan  Mary  Lovell 
(died  1 991),  sister  of  Charles  Stevens,  his  school 
friend  and  fellow  excavator  of  St  Catharine's 
Hill,  and  daughter  of  George  Lovell  Stevens, 
farmer  in  southern  Africa.  They  had  two  sons, 
the  elder,  Timothy,  associate  professor  of  zool- 
ogy in  the  University  of  Calgary,  the  younger, 
Rear- Admiral  John  Myres,  hydrographer  of  the 
Royal  Navy.  Myres  died  at  his  home,  The  Manor 
House,  Kennington,  25  July  1989. 

[Oxford  Times,  24  January  1986;  The  Times,  26  July 
1989;  J.  N.  L.  Myres,  'Recent  Discoveries  in  the 
Bodleian  Library',  Archaeologia,  vol.  ci,  1967;  A.  J. 
Taylor  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  Ixxvi, 
1090;  bibliography  (1926-78)  in  V.  I.  Evison  (ed.), 
Angles,  Saxons  and  jfutes:  Essays  Presented  to  J.  N.  L. 
Myres,  1981,  continued  to  1988  in  British  Academy 
Proceedings,  as  above;  unpublished  autobiography  in  the 
possession  of  the  family;  personal  knowledge.] 

Arnold  J.  Taylor 


325 


N 


NEAGLE,  Dame  Anna  (1904- 1986),  stage  and 
film  actress,  and  film  producer,  was  born  (Flor- 
ence) Marjorie  Robertson  in  Forest  Gate,  Essex, 
20  October  1904,  the  only  daughter  and  youngest 
of  three  children  of  Herbert  William  Robertson, 
a  captain  in  the  merchant  navy,  and  his  wife, 
Florence  Neagle.  She  was  educated  at  the  High 
School,  St  Albans,  and  at  Wordsworth's  Physical 
Training  College,  South  Kensington.  After  being 
a  student  dance  teacher,  from  1925  to  1930  she 
appeared  in  the  chorus  of  revues  produced  by 
Andre  *Charlot  and  (Sir)  Charles  *Cochran. 

In  1930  she  changed  her  name  to  Anna 
Neagle.  Her  first  significant  film  part  was  in 
Goodnight  Vienna  (1932),  directed  by  Herbert 
*Wilcox,  who  went  on  to  direct  thirty-two  films 
with  Neagle.  Her  first  major  film  success  was  in 
Nell  Gwyn  (1934),  and  she  gradually  became 
synonymous  with  the  historical  picture,  espe- 
cially when  Wilcox  directed  her  in  Victoria  the 
Great  (1937),  an  unexpectedly  popular  and  crit- 
ical success.  It  won  the  Picturegoer  gold  medal 
award  and  the  gold  cup  at  the  Venice  film 
festival.  Neagle  and  Wilcox  went  to  America  to 
publicize  its  release  and  on  their  return  repeated 
the  formula  successfully  in  Technicolor  with 
Sixty  Glorious  Years  (1938). 

Anna  Neagle  went  to  America  in  1939  and 
made  four  films  with  RKO  studios:  Nurse  Edith 
Cavell  (1939)  and  three  musical  comedies,  Irene 
(1940),  No,  No,  Nanette  (1940),  and  Sunny 
(1941).  She  was  the  first  actress  to  appear  on  the 
cover  of  Life  magazine.  On  her  return  to  Britain 
she  started  work  on  a  film  of  the  life  of  the  aviator 
Amy  *Johnson,  They  Flew  Alone  (1941).  Her 
next  film  was  Yellow  Canary  (1943),  about  a 
Women's  Royal  Naval  Service  intelligence 
worker  mistaken  for  a  Nazi  spy. 

In  1945  her  films  became  less  heroic,  and  more 
escapist  light  entertainment,  as  she  continued  to 
straddle  her  film  career  with  stage  appearances 
and  tours.  She  appeared  in  the  film  /  Live  in 
Grosvenor  Square  (1945),  co-starring  (Sir)  Rex 
•Harrison,  and  went  on  a  European  ENSA 
(Entertainments  National  Service  Association) 
tour  in  the  play  French  Without  Tears.  After  the 
war  Neagle  starred  in  a  distinctive  series  of 
musical  comedies  with  Michael  Wilding.  The 
first  of  the  'London  series'  was  Piccadilly  Incident 
(1946),  which  won  the  Daily  Mail  national  film 


award,  as  did  its  successor,  The  Courtneys  of 
Curzon  Street  (1947).  For  her  performances  in 
both  films  Neagle  received  the  Picturegoer  gold 
medal.  The  third  film  in  the  Neagle-Wilding 
partnership  was  Spring  in  Park  Lane  (1948). 

Aware  of  her  previous  success  in  'bio-pics', 
Herbert  Wilcox  directed  Neagle  as  Odette  San- 
som,  a  Special  Operations  Executive  undercover 
agent,  who  had  been  tortured  by  the  Nazis,  in  the 
film  Odette  (1950).  As  a  result  Neagle  was 
appointed  an  honorary  ensign  (1950)  of  the  First 
Aid  Nursing  Yeomanry  (FANY),  an  appropriate 
award  for  an  actress  who  went  on  to  play 
Florence  Nightingale  in  The  Lady  with  a  Lamp 
(i95i)- 

In  1957  Anna  Neagle  produced  These  Danger- 
ous Years,  starring  Frankie  Vaughan,  and  was 
directed  for  the  first  time  by  a  person  other  than 
Herbert  Wilcox  (Cyril  Frankel)  in  No  Time  for 
Tears  (1957).  After  her  first  box-office  flop,  The 
Lady  Is  a  Square  (1958),  financial  problems  beset 
Neagle  and  Wilcox  and  her  attempt  to  start  a 
dance  school  failed.  Eventually,  however,  theatre 
appearances  helped  to  resuscitate  her  flagging 
career. 

Neagle  was  distinctive  for  her  ability  to  main- 
tain a  'regal  presence'  on  screen.  She  was  an 
'English'  beauty  with  a  striking  bone  structure, 
who  maintained  her  dancer's  figure  throughout 
her  life.  She  could  look  equally  at  home  in  a 
glamorous  ball  gown  or  a  practical  flying-suit. 
Despite  her  variety  of  parts,  her  portrayals  of 
heroines  firmly  placed  her  as  a  British  icon  in  a 
patriotic  style  of  film-making.  She  was  appointed 
CBE  in  1952  and  DBE  in  1969.  She  also  received 
the  freedom  of  the  City  of  London  (1981)  and 
the  Order  of  St  John  (1981). 

In  1943  she  married  Herbert  Sydney  Wilcox 
(died  1977),  film  director  and  producer,  the  son 
of  Joseph  John  Wilcox,  sculptor  and  manager  of 
a  billiard  hall.  They  had  no  children.  Anna 
Neagle  died  3  June  1986  at  a  nursing  home  in 
West  Byfleet,  Woking,  Surrey. 

[Anna  Neagle,  It's  Been  Fun,  1949,  and  There's  Always 
Tomorrow,  1974;  British  Film  Institute  microfiche  jack- 
ets.] Sarah  Street 

NICHOLSON,  Norman  Cornthwaite  (1914- 
1987),  poet  and  critic,  was  born  8  January  1914  at 
14  St  George's  Terrace,  Millom,  Cumberland, 
the  only  child  of  Joseph  Nicholson,  tailor  and 


326 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Norwich 


draper,  also  of  Millom,  and  his  wife,  Edith 
Cornthwaite,  the  daughter  of  a  butcher.  His 
mother  died  when  he  was  five,  and  his  father 
remarried  three  years  later.  He  was  educated  at 
Millom  Secondary  School,  but  in  his  adolescence 
he  developed  tuberculosis,  and  from  1930  to 
1932  was  confined  to  hospital  in  Hampshire.  One 
of  his  lungs  was  removed.  This  was  the  only 
period  in  Nicholson's  life  when  he  spent  any 
considerable  time  away  from  his  native  and 
ancestral  Millom,  the  source  of  much  of  his 
inspiration  both  in  verse  and  prose. 

He  began  writing  at  an  early  age.  He  was 
encouraged  in  this  by  a  local  clergyman,  the 
Revd  Samuel  Taylor,  who  put  him  in  touch  with 
Brother  George  Every,  poet,  literary  critic,  and 
theologian,  and  a  contributor  to  the  Criterion; 
through  Every,  Nicholson  was  introduced  in 
1938  to  the  editor  of  that  journal,  T.  S.  *Eliot, 
who  showed  an  interest  in  his  poems.  In  the  same 
year,  Nicholson  began  to  give  lectures  on  lit- 
erature to  local  Workers'  Educational  Association 
classes,  material  from  which  he  used  in  his  first 
critical  book,  Man  and  Literature  (1943);  but 
already,  in  1942,  he  had  edited  a  Penguin  Antho- 
logy of  Religious  Verse,  and  before  that  had  started 
to  publish  poems  in  periodicals,  including  some 
in  the  United  States. 

Nicholson's  upbringing  was  in  the  Methodist 
church,  to  which  his  stepmother  belonged,  but  in 
1940  he  was  confirmed  in  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land. His  Christian  faith  was  central  to  him 
throughout  his  fife.  Much  of  his  poetry  and  his 
verse  plays  drew  on  this  faith,  nourished  by  his 
devotion  to  the  landscapes,  history,  people,  and 
stories  of  Cumberland.  All  are  abundantly  pre- 
sent in  his  first  individual  volume  of  poems,  Five 
Rivers,  which  Eliot  accepted  for  Faber  &  Faber 
and  which  was  published  in  1944.  This  had  been 
preceded  in  1943  by  a  selection  of  his  work 
published  in  one  volume  alongside  selections 
from  Keith  *Douglas  and  J.  C.  Hall.  Nicholson 
went  on  to  publish  another  ten  books  and  pam- 
phlets of  poems,  including  a  Selected  volume  in 
1966,  augmented  in  1982.  All  were  well  received, 
as  authentic  and  sometimes  gently  quirky  prod- 
ucts of  a  life  which,  though  restricted  by 
Nicholson's  fragile  health  ('My  ways  are  circum- 
scribed,' he  wrote  in  a  poem,  'The  Pot  Gera- 
nium'), had  broader  visions  of  a  universe  of  rock, 
rivers,  hills,  and  the  sea. 

In  appearance,  he  was  craggy,  increasingly 
bewhiskered  with  impressive  sideburns.  He  had  a 
fine  head,  brightly  flashing  and  mischievous  eyes, 
and  an  engaging  and  often  roguish  smile.  His 
voice,  as  a  result  of  lung  operations,  was  hoarse 
but  also  strikingly  vigorous:  he  was  a  splendid 
reader  not  only  of  his  own  poems  but  of  other 
poets  too,  especially  his  beloved  *Wordsworth, 


parts  of  whose  Prelude  he  read  in  a  memorable 
series  of  BBC  Third  Programme  broadcasts  in 
the  early  1960s.  He  was  a  much  sought-after 
reader  at  literary  gatherings  up  and  down  the 
country  and,  though  these  expeditions  often 
exhausted  him,  he  enjoyed  them. 

In  1956  he  married  a  teacher,  Yvonne  Edith, 
daughter  of  John  Oswald  Gardner,  engineering 
draughtsman.  The  partnership  was  a  very  happy- 
one,  until  her  death  in  1982.  Her  loss  left  him 
desolate;  and,  much  though  he  enjoyed  the 
literary  recognition  and  honours  that  increas- 
ingly came  to  him  in  his  later  years,  they  could 
not  compensate  for  her  absence.  They  had  lived 
cheerfully  in  the  small  terraced  house  in  Millom 
which  had  always  been  Nicholson's  home 
(indeed,  he  had  been  born  there,  when  it  was  also 
his  father's  shop),  and  he  continued  to  live  there 
after  Yvonne's  death.  There  were  no  children. 

He  was  elected  FRSL  in  1945,  and  that  year 
was  given  the  Heinemann  award.  In  1967  he 
shared  the  Cholmondeley  award  for  poetry  with 
Seamus  Heaney  and  Brian  Jones.  He  received  a 
Society  of  Authors'  travelling  bursary  in  1973 
(spent  visiting  Scandinavia)  and  an  Arts  Council 
bursary  in  1977,  which  was  also  the  year  he  was 
awarded  the  Queen's  medal  for  poetry.  He 
received  an  honorary  MA  from  the  University  of 
Manchester  in  1959  and  another  from  the  Open 
University  in  1975.  Manchester  Polytechnic  con- 
ferred on  him  an  honorary  fellowship  in  1979, 
and  he  received  a  Litt.D.  from  the  universities  of 
Liverpool  (1980)  and  Manchester  (1984).  One  of 
his  most  treasured  honours,  which  he  delighted 
in  showing  to  visitors,  was  the  OBE,  conferred  in 
1 98 1.  Perhaps  even  more,  he  was  deeply  moved 
by  a  volume  of  poems  and  prose  pieces  by  many 
distinguished  writers,  Between  Comets  (edited  by 
William  Scammell),  published  and  presented  to 
him  on  his  seventieth  birthday  in  1984. 

Among  Nicholson's  many  other  publications 
were  books  and  anthologies  concerned  with  the 
history  and  topography  of  the  Lake  District,  four 
verse  plays,  two  early  novels,  and  a  life  of 
William  *Cowper  (1951).  The  most  individual 
and  revealing  of  all  is  Wednesday  Early  Closing 
(1975),  a  memoir  of  his  early  years,  full  of  the 
characters,  anecdotes,  sights,  sounds,  and  smells 
of  his  Millom  boyhood.  He  died  30  May  1987  at 
Whitehaven. 

[Norman  Nicholson,  Wednesday  Early  Closing,  1975; 
Philip  Gardner,  Norman  Nicholson,  1973;  personal 
knowledge.]  Anthony  Thwaite 

NORWICH,  first  Viscountess  (i  892-1986), 
beauty,  actress,  memorable  hostess  and  guest, 
and  autobiographer.  [See  Cooper,  L\dy  Diana 
Olivia  Winifred  Maud.] 


327 


o 


OAKESHOTT,  Michael  Joseph  (i  901  -1990), 
philosopher,  was  born  11  December  1901  at 
Chelsfield,  Kent,  the  second  of  three  sons  (there 
were  no  daughters)  of  Joseph  Francis  Oakeshott, 
of  Harpenden,  a  Fabian  civil  servant  who  had 
played  a  part  in  founding  the  London  School  of 
Economics,  and  his  wife,  Frances  Maude  Helli- 
car.  Oakeshott  was  educated  at  St  George's 
School,  Harpenden,  a  progressive  co-educational 
school,  and  has  left  moving  accounts  of  the 
excitements  a  boy  of  scholarly  disposition  might 
enjoy  as  he  came  into  contact  with  his  classical 
inheritance.  Oakeshott  went  to  Gonville  and 
Caius  College,  Cambridge,  in  1920,  and  after  a 
year  in  Germany  in  1923-4  following  graduation 
(he  was  placed  in  the  second  division  of  the  first 
class  in  both  parts — 1922  and  1923 — of  the 
history  tripos),  and  a  short  period  as  a  school 
master  at  Lytham  St  Anne's  Grammar  School, 
became  a  history  fellow  of  the  college  in  1925. 

His  early  interests  were  in  religion  and  histori- 
ography. Both  led  him  on  to  philosophy  and 
generated  Experience  and  Its  Modes  (1933),  in 
which  he  distinguished  the  different  forms  of 
human  activity.  R.  G.  *Collingwood  admired 
particularly  its  treatment  of  history,  but  the 
reception  of  the  book  was  cool.  The  1,000  copies 
printed  took  over  thirty  years  to  sell  out.  In  1936 
Oakeshott  collaborated  with  Guy  Griffith  on  A 
Guide  to  the  Classics:  or  How  to  Pick  the  Derby 
Winner,  an  analysis  of  horse-racing  whose  second 
edition  was  called  How  to  Pick  the  Winner  (1947). 
In  1939  he  published  an  anthology  of  political 
writings  with  commentary:  The  Social  and  Polit- 
ical Doctrines  of  Contemporary  Europe. 

During  World  War  II  he  enlisted  as  a  gunner 
and  rose  to  be  a  captain  in  Phantom,  a  special 
unit  whose  dangerous  work  it  was  to  report  on 
the  effect  of  artillery  fire  from  close  to  the  front. 
In  1945  he  returned  to  Cambridge  and  wrote  his 
famous  introduction  to  *Hobbes's  Leviathan 
(1946).  Editing  the  Cambridge  Journal  from  1947 
until  its  demise  in  1954,  he  contributed  actively 
to  making  it  a  centre  of  intellectual  resistance  to 
the  ideas  of  social  engineering,  collectivism,  and 
state  planning  dominant  at  that  period.  His  love 
of  freedom  was  so  radical  that  his  conservatism 
had  anarchic  tendencies.  Most  of  the  essays  later 
reprinted  in  Rationalism  in  Politics  (1962)  first 
appeared  in  the  journal.   In   1949  he  went  to 


Nuffield  College,  Oxford,  as  an  official  fellow, 
and  in  1951  he  was  appointed  to  the  chair  of 
political  science  at  the  LSE. 

The  contrast  between  the  public  profile  and 
enthusiastic  socialism  of  Harold  *Laski,  his 
predecessor,  and  Oakeshott's  sceptical  conser- 
vatism made  this  a  dramatic  appointment,  and 
Oakeshott's  famous  inaugural  lecture,  Political 
Education  (1951),  made  an  appropriate  splash. 
Oakeshott  lived  during  his  years  at  the  LSE  in  a 
small  flat  in  Covent  Garden.  He  administered  the 
government  department  at  the  School  with  unos- 
tentatious efficiency,  sending  a  stream  of  elegant 
handwritten  notes  to  his  colleagues,  and  was  a 
familiar  figure  in  the  common-room.  Avoiding 
committees  when  he  could,  he  none  the  less 
played  his  part,  and  his  unmistakable  prose  in, 
for  example,  describing  the  duties  of  a  tutor,  was 
to  pass  unscathed  through  several  revisions  of  the 
B.Sc.  (Econ.)  degree. 

In  1 96 1  the  University  of  London  established 
the  one-year  master's  degree,  and  although 
Oakeshott  thought  it  an  absurd  idea,  he  set  up  an 
option  within  it  on  the  history  of  political 
thought,  which  led  to  a  distinguished  seminar  he 
ran  with  several  colleagues.  It  drew  scholars  from 
all  over  the  world,  and  he  continued  to  attend 
until  his  late  seventies.  The  work  he  did  for  this 
seminar,  continually  revised,  appeared  in  On 
History  (1983). 

Oakeshott  retired  from  the  School  in  1969  and 
eventually  moved  to  Acton,  near  Langton 
Matravers  in  Dorset.  Two  cottages  near  a  stone 
quarry  had  been  knocked  together,  and  Oake- 
shott lined  the  walls  with  book  cases.  Typically, 
he  made  something  stylish  out  of  the  second- 
hand materials  around  him.  There  he  lived  until 
he  died,  though  he  often  went  to  London  to  stay 
with  his  friends  William  and  Shirley  Letwin,  or 
travelled  to  Hull  or  Durham,  where  favourite 
pupils  were  established  in  departments.  He  did 
venture  to  Harvard,  and  to  Colorado  College  in 
Colorado  Springs,  a  favourite  place  which  eli- 
cited 'A  Place  of  Learning',  later  republished 
among  other  essays  on  education  in  The  Voice  of 
Liberal  Learning  (1989),  edited  by  Timothy 
Fuller.  More  commonly,  he  travelled  to 
France. 

Oakeshott  was  slight  of  build  and  elegant  in 
his  dress  without  being  ostentatious.  Many  of  his 


328 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Oakeshott 


clothes,  like  the  furniture  of  his  cottage  in 
Dorset,  were  picked  up  second-hand.  In  every- 
thing he  did  he  was  stylish  without  being  pre- 
cious. His  voice  was  light,  but  carried  remarkably 
well.  No  one  could  better  him  at  making  some 
sense  out  of  the  most  opaque  academic  paper;  he 
was  a  matchless  discussant.  The  real  passion  of 
his  life,  however,  was  to  understand  the  uniquely 
human.  Philosophy  he  took  to  be  the  search  for 
the  postulates  of  human  activities.  As  exclusively 
concerned  to  understand  rather  than  control  the 
world,  it  was  a  pure,  almost  morbid,  preoccupa- 
tion. In  Experience  and  Its  Modes,  the  most 
insidious  of  errors  was  found  to  be  irrelevance, 
applying  to  one  mode  of  activity  the  criteria 
appropriate  to  another.  In  his  masterpiece  On 
Human  Conduct  (1975),  on  which  he  had  been 
working  for  years  at  the  LSE  but  which  came  out 
after  he  had  retired,  the  idea  that  experience  is 
composed  of  a  few  discrete  modes  (practice, 
history,  science,  poetry)  was  loosened  and 
replaced  by  'conditional  platforms  of  under- 
standing', from  which  the  enquirer  casts  his  net 
to  see  what  may  be  caught  by  any  particular  set 
of  ideas. 

Oakeshott  argued  that  a  modern  state  is 
best  understood  in  terms  of  a  distinction 
between  two  sorts  of  human  association,  which 
he  called  'civil'  and  'enterprise'.  Characteris- 
tically, the  first  of  the  three  essays  in  the  book 
tells  us  what  it  is  to  inquire  philosophically 
about  human  conduct,  the  second  postulates 
the  purely  ideal  forms  of  civil  and  enterprise 
association,  and  only  in  the  third,  long,  histor- 
ical essay  does  Oakeshott  engage  with  the  his- 
torical literature  on  the  modern  state,  of  which 
he  had  undoubtedly  the  most  profound  under- 
standing of  anyone  in  his  generation.  He  has 
often  been  described  as  a  'Conservative  philo- 
sopher', but  he  regarded  this  expression  as  a 
solipsism,  for  philosophers  should  not  be  par- 
tisans. Nevertheless  he  did  eloquently  charac- 
terize a  Conservative  disposition:  it  correspon- 
ded to  his  own  character. 

Oakeshott  refused  public  honours  and  hon- 
orary doctorates  from  several  universities,  but  he 
did  accept  honorary  doctorates  from  Colorado, 
Durham,  and  Hull.  In  1966  he  became  a  fellow  of 
the  British  Academy. 

In  1927  he  married  Joyce  Margaret,  daughter 
of  Guy  Fricker,  OBE,  electrical  engineer,  of 
Harpenden.  They  had  one  son.  The  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1938  and  in  the  same  year  he 
married  Katherine  Alice  (died  1964),  daughter  of 
Charles  Frederick  Burton,  of  Neuilly-sur-Seine. 
There  were  no  children  and  the  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1951.  In  1965  he  married  Christel, 
who  had  been  brought  up  in  Nuremberg,  the 
daughter  of  Johann  Schneider,  bookkeeper  and 
later  dairv  worker.  Thev  had  no  children.  Oake- 


shott died  at  his  home  in  Acton.  Dorset,  18 
December  1990. 

[Nevil  Johnson  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  bwx,  1991;  Jesse  Norman  (ed.).  The  Achievement  of 
Michael  Oakeshott,  1993;  personal  knowledge.] 

Kenneth  Minogue 

OAKESHOTT,  Sm  Walter  Fraser  (1903- 1987), 
schoolmaster  and  scholar,  was  born  1 1  Novem- 
ber 1903,  the  second  of  two  sons  among  the  four 
children  of  Walter  Oakeshott,  medical  practi- 
tioner, of  Lydenberg,  South  Africa,  and  his 
wife,  Kathleen  Fraser.  After  Dr  Oakeshott's 
early  death,  his  wife  brought  the  family  home 
to  England.  Walter  went  to  Tonbridge  School, 
where  he  became  head  boy,  leaving  with  an 
exhibition  to  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  in  1922.  He 
achieved  first  classes  in  classical  honour  modera- 
tions (1924)  and  literae  humaniores  (1926). 

He  became  an  assistant  master  at  Tooting  Bee 
School,  whence  in  1927  he  proceeded  to  Mer- 
chant Taylors'  School.  In  1931,  after  a  year  spent 
working  for  the  Kent  county  education  commit- 
tee, he  was  appointed  an  assistant  master  at 
Winchester  College,  where  he  remained  till  1938. 
Two  events  of  his  time  there  were  important  for 
him.  The  first  was  his  discovery,  in  1934,  among 
the  manuscripts  in  the  fellows'  library,  of  the 
unique  manuscript  of  Morte  d'Arthur  by  Sir 
Thomas  *Malory  (his  own  full  account  of  the 
find  is  given  in  Essays  on  Malory,  ed.  J.  A.  W. 
•Bennett,  1963).  The  second  was  the  invitation 
to  serve  with  the  inquiry  into  unemployment 
sponsored  by  the  Pilgrim  Trust,  for  which  he 
was  given  a  year's  leave  of  absence  from  the 
school  (1936-7).  He  took  a  major  part  in  writing 
up  the  findings  of  the  inquiry,  in  William  •Tem- 
ple's Men  Without  Work  (1938),  a  book  which 
made  a  powerful  impression  and  has  since  been 
twice  reprinted. 

In  1939  Oakeshott  became  high  master  of  St 
Paul's  School.  On  the  outbreak  of  war  he  had  to 
supervise  the  evacuation  of  the  school  from 
London  to  Crowthorne,  Berkshire;  the  evacua- 
tion, and  St  Paul's  adaptation  to  new  surround- 
ings and  unfamiliar  routines,  were  a  triumph  for 
his  charismatic  leadership.  Soon  after  he  had 
brought  the  school  back  to  London  in  1945  he 
was  appointed  headmaster  of  Winchester,  a  post 
which  he  held  from  1946  to  1954.  Apart  from  one 
dire  confrontation  at  the  very  end  of  his  time, 
when  his  request  to  a  housemaster  to  resign  was 
challenged  and  upheld  by  only  a  majority  on  the 
governing  body,  this  was  a  period  of  successful 
stewardship  in  a  highly  individual  style.  Though 
capable  in  administration  he  had  no  great  taste 
for  it,  and  where  he  shone  was  as  a  teacher  and 
inspirer  of  the  young,  especially  of  those  whom 
he  stirred  to  share  his  own  keen  appreciation  of 
artistic  beauty.  His  personal  rapport  with  boys  of 


329 


Oakeshott 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


all  ages  and  tastes  left  a  very  strong  impression, 
fondly  recalled  by  Wykehamists  who  were  in  the 
school  in  his  time. 

In  1954  Oakeshott  was  elected  rector  of  Lin- 
coln College,  Oxford,  where  he  presided  for  the 
next  eighteen  years.  His  was  a  period  of  remark- 
able expansion  for  the  college,  which  saw  its 
tutorial  fellowship  more  than  double  and  a  great 
increase  in  student  accommodation.  In  1962-4  he 
was  vice-chancellor  of  Oxford,  and  during  his 
term  a  commission  of  inquiry  into  Oxford  Uni- 
versity (1964-6)  was  initiated,  under  the  chair- 
manship of  Lord  Franks. 

Both  at  Winchester  and  at  Oxford  Oakeshott 
took  a  keen  interest  in  buildings  and  restoration. 
At  Winchester  he  was  instrumental  in  the  recov- 
ery of  surviving  panels  of  the  college  chapel's 
original  medieval  stained  glass,  dispersed  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  their  refitting  in  the 
windows  of  Thurbern's  chantry.  At  Lincoln  he 
was  the  moving  spirit  in  the  acquisition  by  the 
college  of  the  redundant  church  of  All  Saints,  for 
conversion  into  the  college  library.  In  Oxford  he 
played  a  leading  part  in  the  restoration  work 
made  possible  by  the  Oxford  Historic  Buildings 
Appeal,  in  particular  in  the  restoration  of  the 
stonework,  sculptures,  and  interior  of  the  Shel- 
donian  Theatre. 

Oakeshott  dedicated  the  interstices  of  his  busy 
life  to  scholarship,  where  his  interests  were 
many-sided.  He  wrote  on  Renaissance  cosmo- 
graphy and  early  exploration  (Founded  upon  the 
Seas,  1942,  and  several  learned  articles).  His 
purchase  and  subsequent  identification  of  a  note- 
book belonging  to  Sir  Walter  *Ralegh,  written 
when  he  was  collecting  materials  for  The  History 
of  the  World  (161 4),  prompted  research  into  the 
court  culture  of  Elizabethan  England  and  into 
Ralegh's  poetry  (The  Queen  and  the  Poet,  1962). 
His  most  abiding  interest  was  in  medieval  art 
history,  and  his  two  studies  of  the  Winchester 
Bible  (The  Artists  of  the  Winchester  Bible,  1945, 
and  The  Two  Winchester  Bibles,  1981)  were 
authoritative  and  influential,  especially  the  for- 
mer, a  pioneering  work  identifying  the  hands  and 
styles  of  the  painters  who  worked  on  the  Bible 
and  the  influences  that  shaped  their  work. 
Among  his  other  books  were  Mosaics  of  Rome 
(1967)  and  Sigena  Wall  Paintings  (1972). 

Oakeshott  held  honorary  doctorates  of  the 
universities  of  St  Andrews  and  East  Anglia,  and 
was  an  honorary  fellow  of  both  Balliol  (1974)  and 
Lincoln  (1972).  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1971  and  was  knighted  in 
1980.  He  was  master  of  the  Skinners'  Company 
(1960-1),  a  long-serving  trustee  of  the  Pilgrim 
Trust,  and  president  of  the  Bibliographical  Soci- 
ety (1966-8). 

He  was  a  tall  man,  of  gracious  bearing,  with  a 
high  forehead,  eyebrows  that  fluttered  in  ani- 
mation, and  a  characteristically  beaming  smile. 


His  manner  was  gentle  and  courteous;  he  had 
an  instinctive  personal  modesty,  a  delightfully 
whimsical  wit,  and  a  gift  for  friendship.  In 
teaching,  research,  and  life  he  strove  continually 
for  what  he  believed  could  inspire  and  elevate. 
He  married  in  1928  Noel  Rose,  daughter  of 
Robert  Oswald  Moon,  consultant  physician. 
They  had  twin  sons  and  two  daughters,  and  the 
family  was  a  close  and  affectionate  one.  His  wife 
predeceased  him  in  1976,  and  he  was  buried 
beside  her  after  he  died,  13  October  1987,  at  his 
home  in  Eynsham,  Oxfordshire. 

[Balliol  College  Register  igjo-80,  1983;  F.  R.  Salter,  St 
Paul's  School,  igog-igsg,  1959;  Lincoln  College  Record, 
1986-7;  The  Trusty  Servant  (Winchester  old  boys' 
periodical),  December  1987;  Jonathan  Alexander  and 
Maurice  Keen  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  lxxxiv,  1993;  information  from  J.  C.  Dancy  (pre- 
paring a  biography);  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  M.  H.  Keen 

ODELL,  Noel  Ewart  (1 890-1987),  geologist  and 
mountaineer,  was  born  25  December  1890  in  St 
Lawrence,  Isle  of  Wight,  the  third  child  in  the 
family  of  two  sons  and  three  daughters  of  the 
Revd  Robert  William  Odell,  rector  of  St  Law- 
rence, and  his  wife  Mary  Margaret,  daughter  of 
James  Bell  Ewart,  timber  merchant,  of  Dundas, 
Ontario,  Canada.  He  was  educated  at  Brighton 
College  and  at  the  Royal  School  of  Mines  at 
Imperial  College,  London,  where  he  studied 
geology  and  gained  the  ARSM.  During  World 
War  I  he  was  commissioned  as  a  lieutenant  in 
1 91 5  in  the  Royal  Engineers.  Wounded  three 
times,  he  returned  to  civilian  life  in  19 19. 

He  embarked  on  a  career  in  the  petroleum  and 
mining  industries,  first  as  a  geologist  with  the 
Anglo-Persian  Oil  Company  (1922-5)  and  then 
as  a  consultant  in  Canada  (1927-30).  In  his  late 
thirties  he  transferred  to  academic  geology,  first 
as  a  lecturer  in  geology  and  tutor  at  Harvard 
University  (1928-30),  then  as  a  research  student 
and  lecturer  at  Cambridge,  where  he  stayed  on  as 
a  fellow  commoner  and  supervisor  of  studies  at 
Clare  College  (1931-40).  His  Ph.D.,  awarded  in 
1940,  investigated  the  geology,  glaciology,  and 
geomorphology  of  north-east  Greenland  and 
northern  Labrador.  In  1940-2  he  served  as  a 
major  in  the  Bengal  Sappers  and  Miners. 

After  World  War  II  he  took  up  various 
appointments  at  universities  in  Canada,  New 
Zealand,  and  Pakistan.  He  lectured  at  McGill 
and  was  visiting  professor  at  the  University  of 
British  Columbia  (1948-9).  He  was  also  pro- 
fessor of  geology  at  the  University  of  Otago 
(1950-6)  and  at  Peshawar  University  (1960-2). 
On  finally  retiring,  he  returned  to  Clare  and  in 
1983,  at  the  age  of  ninety-two,  was  made  an 
honorary  fellow,  an  event  which  much  pleased 
him. 

Although  Odell  published  several  important 
papers  on  the  geology  of  the  Himalayas,  and 


33° 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ogdon 


other  mountain  regions,  and  was  a  fellow  or 
member  of  numerous  geological,  geographical, 
glaciological,  and  Arctic  institutions,  he  probably 
never  aspired  to  be  in  the  front  rank  of  academic 
research.  It  was  in  mountaineering  that  he  made 
his  name,  and  managed  with  singular  success  to 
combine  the  career  of  a  geologist  with  the  pleas- 
ures of  mountaineering.  Odell  made  his  first 
discover)-  of  the  hills  of  the  Lake  District  at  the 
age  of  thirteen  and  soon  acquired  wide  climbing 
experience  in  Britain  and  the  Alps.  Many  an 
aspiring  rock  climber  has  cut  his  teeth  on  OdelPs 
severe  tennis  shoe  climb  on  the  uncompromis- 
ingly smooth  slabs  of  Cwm  Idwal  in  north  Wales 
(iqiq).  He  participated  in  the  Oxford  University 
Spitsbergen  expedition  (1921)  and  led  the  Mer- 
ton  College  Arctic  expedition  (1923). 

Odell  was  picked  for  the  Everest  expedition  of 
1924  and  was  the  last  man  to  see  George  *Mal- 
lory  and  Andrew  Irvine  before  they  disappeared 
in  their  attempt  to  scale  the  final  slopes  of  the 
world's  highest  mountain.  Odell  was  in  close 
support.  In  a  period  of  four  days,  he  climbed 
mostly  without  oxygen,  first  alone  to  25,000  feet 
to  look  for  them,  and  then  twice  alone  beyond 
Camp  6  to  over  27,000  feet  and  back.  On 
returning  home  he  was  invited  to  a  private 
audience  by  King  *George  V. 

There  followed  several  visits  for  geological 
research,  mountaineering,  and  exploration  in  the 
Canadian  Rockies  (1927-47)  and  with  American 
friends  to  north  Labrador  (1931),  north-east 
Greenland  (1933),  and  the  St  Elias  mountains  in 
Yukon  and  Alaska  (1949  and  1977).  While  at 
Harvard  he  inspired  a  generation  of  under- 
graduates to  climb  steep  ice  and  to  organize 
expeditions  to  the  greater  ranges  of  the  world. 
An  ice  route  he  pioneered  in  the  White  Moun- 
tains bears  his  name,  Odell  Gully,  and  two 
mountains,  a  lake,  and  a  glacier  are  also  named 
after  him. 

Odell's  greatest  mountaineering  achievement 
was  the  first  ascent  of  Nanda  Devi  (25,695  feet) 
in  1936,  with  an  Anglo-American  party.  H.  W. 
*Tilman  and  Odell  reached  the  summit,  which 
for  fourteen  years  remained  the  highest  peak 
climbed.  Two  years  later  he  again  joined  Tilman 
in  the  1938  attempt  on  Everest,  but  deep  powder 
snow  made  the  last  1,500  feet  impossible  to 
climb.  Odell  continued  to  defy  the  normal  limita- 
tions of  old  age.  In  1984,  at  the  age  of  ninety- 
three,  he  strode  across  the  glacier  to  attend  the 
seventy-fifth  anniversary  of  the  Britannia  hut  in 
the  Alps,  and  recalled  that  as  a  young  climber  he 
had  also  been  present  at  its  opening.  He  was  a 
founder  member  of  the  Himalayan  Club  and  an 
honorary  member  of  the  Alpine  Club  and  of 
kindred  clubs  in  North  America,  Canada,  South 
Africa,  New  Zealand,  Switzerland,  and  Norway. 
He  received  the  Livingstone  gold  medal  (1944) 
of  the  Royal  Scottish  Geographical  Society  and, 


unusually,  a  star  in  the  constellation  Lyra  was 
named  after  him  (International  Star  Register, 
1925).  He  became  a  familiar  figure  at  the  Alpine 
Club  and  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  retain- 
ing in  old  age  his  earnest  enthusiasm  and  the  tall, 
spare  figure  and  purposeful  gait  which  had  car- 
ried him  to  record  heights  on  the  earth's  surface. 
His  genial  nature  and  patriarchal  figure  earned 
him  the  nickname  Noah,  which  he  relished. 

He  married  in  19 17  Gwladys  Mona  (died 
1977),  daughter  of  Robert  Jones,  rector  of  Gyf- 
fin,  north  Wales.  They  had  one  son.  Odell  died 
suddenly  21  February  1987  at  his  home  in 
Cambridge. 

[The  Times,  24  February  1987;  Alpine  Journal,  vol.  xciii, 
no.  337,  1988/9;  personal  knowledge.] 

George  Band 

OGDON,  John  Andrew  Howard  (1937-1989), 
pianist  and  composer,  was  born  27  January  1937 
in  Mansfield  Woodhouse,  Nottinghamshire,  the 
youngest  in  the  family  of  three  sons  and  two 
daughters  of  Howard  Ogdon,  teacher,  who  wrote 
about  music,  and  his  wife,  Dorothy  Mutton,  a 
former  secretary,  who  also  encouraged  her  child- 
ren's musicianship  by  ensuring  that  they  learned 
the  piano  from  an  early  age.  John  began  piano 
lessons  when  he  was  four  years  old.  His  gifts 
were  such  that  at  the  age  of  eight  he  went  to  the 
Royal  Manchester  (later  the  Royal  Northern) 
College  of  Music  as  a  pupil  of  Iso  Elinson.  After 
attending  Manchester  Grammar  School,  he 
returned  in  his  mid-teens  to  the  college,  where 
he  found  a  gifted  group  of  contemporaries — 
Alexander  Goehr,  (Sir)  Harrison  Birtwistle,  (Sir) 
Peter  Maxwell  Davies,  and  Elgar  Howarth — who 
were  later  known  as  the  'Manchester  School'. 
Ogdon  took  piano  with  Elinson,  Claude  Biggs, 
and  Gordon  Green,  and  composition  with 
Richard  Hall. 

Ogdon's  superlative  sight-reading  gifts  and  his 
phenomenal  musical  memory  enabled  him  to 
tackle  the  most  difficult  scores  virtually  at  sight, 
but  his  technical  mastery  was  allied  to  a  deep 
intellectual  grasp,  which  soon  marked  him  out  as 
a  recreative  musician  of  extraordinary  range  and 
depth.  When  he  was  still  a  child,  his  father  had 
suffered  a  schizophrenic  breakdown;  it  may  well 
have  been  that  this  experience  chastened 
Ogdon's  own  development:  musically,  he  was 
prodigiously  gifted,  and  physically  he  was  (so 
described  by  Alexander  Goehr)  'a  big,  clumsy, 
untidy,  roly-poly  boy'.  His  character  was  shy  and 
reserved,  his  speech  quiedy  withdrawn;  only  at 
the  piano,  it  seemed,  did  his  personality  publicly 
flower,  when  he  was  overwhelming. 

As  a  student  he  entered  the  Belgian  Queen 
Elisabeth  Competition  in  1956  but  was  unsuc- 
cessful. On  graduating  soon  afterwards  (with 
distinction  in  every  subject),  he  gave  Brahms's  D 


33i 


Ogdon 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Minor  Concerto,  conducted  by  Sir  John  *Barbi- 
rolli,  which  prompted  Ogdon's  Halle  Orchestra 
debut  at  the  age  of  twenty.  Postgraduate  work 
with  Denis  *Matthews  in  London  and  Egon 
Petri  (a  pupil  of  Ferruccio  Busoni)  in  Basle  led, 
in  1958,  to  Ogdon's  playing  Busoni's  vast  Piano 
Concerto  from  memory,  conducted  by  (Sir)  John 
*Pritchard  in  Liverpool.  The  Busoni  perform- 
ance was  much  praised  and  on  8  August  1959,  at 
less  than  forty-eight  hours'  notice,  Ogdon  made 
his  Promenade  Concert  debut  in  Franz  Liszt's  E 
Flat  Concerto,  after  coming  second  in  the  Liver- 
pool International  Piano  Competition,  and  a 
month  before  his  Wigmore  Hall  debut  in  Lon- 
don. 

Married  in  July  i960  to  Brenda  Lucas  (Peter 
Maxwell  Davies  was  best  man),  the  newly-weds 
made  a  notable  two-piano  team.  In  December 
Ogdon  began  his  record  career  with  a  Busoni- 
Liszt  album  for  EMI.  Although  he  later  recorded 
for  other  labels,  his  main  recorded  legacy  is  with 
EMI.  In  January  1961  he  took  first  prize  in  the 
Liszt  Competition  and  achieved  world  fame  as 
joint  winner  (with  Vladimir  Ashkenazy)  of  the 
first  prize  at  the  Tchaikovsky  Competition  in 
Moscow  in  1962. 

One  of  the  most  sought-after  artists  of  his  day, 
Ogdon  travelled  widely,  notably  to  the  USA  and 
Russia,  where  he  was  adored.  Unlike  other  vir- 
tuosos, he  championed  new  and  unusual  music, 
including  concertos  written  for  him  by  Alun 
Hoddinott  (with  whom  he  founded  the  Cardiff 
music  festival  in  1967),  Robert  Simpson,  and 
Gerard  Schurmann,  alongside  standard  reper- 
toire. He  also  found  time  to  compose,  among 
other  music,  a  piano  concerto,  a  symphony,  solo 
piano  works,  and  two  string  quartets.  His 
immense  energy  ensured  a  full  engagement  book, 
yet  his  chain-smoking  and  excessive  drinking,  his 
unkempt  appearance,  and  a  tendency  to  over- 
work meant  that  the  strains  thus  placed  upon 
him  took  their  toll. 

In  1973  Ogdon  began  to  exhibit  symptoms  of 
an  alarming  personality  change.  This  previously 
gentle  man  became  prone  to  degenerative  mental 
and  physical  violence,  eventually  attacking  his 
wife  with  such  ferocity  that  she  was  hospitalized: 
he  attempted  suicide  on  numerous  occasions.  His 
condition  at  first  eluded  diagnosis,  his  treatment 
ranging  from  drugs  and  electric  shock  to  psycho- 
therapy. Some  of  his  earlier  treatment  was 
experimental;  he  seemed  to  suffer  from  paranoid 
schizophrenic  psychosis.  Ogdon  spent  eighteen 
months  in  London's  Royal  Maudsley  Hospital; 
by  1977  he  had  improved  enough  to  take  his  first 
teaching  post,  at  Indiana  University  in  Bloom- 
ington,  where  he  stayed  until  1980.  Under  care, 
he  resumed  concert-giving,  which  he  had  never 
really  abandoned:  an  American  doctor  who  had 
observed  Ogdon  for  a  year  concluded  that  he  was 
not  schizophrenic  but  manic  depressive  and  pre- 


scribed lithium,  claiming  Ogdon  was  an  obses- 
sive genius  living  a  vital  inner  life  against  which 
the  'real'  world  can  appear  remote. 

The  treatment  was  a  success  and,  although 
never  'cured',  he  was  able  gradually  to  resume 
his  career.  His  history  meant  that  his  condition 
was  watched  constantly;  his  earlier  instability  led 
to  his  affairs  being  taken  over  by  the  Court  of 
Protection.  Symptomatic  of  a  new  confidence 
was  his  recital  of  the  legendary  three-and-a-half- 
hour  solo  piano  work  Opus  Clavicembaltsticum  by 
Kaikhosru  *Sorabji  in  1988,  which  he  also 
recorded.  Ogdon  was  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Manchester  College  of  Music  (1962)  and  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Music  (1974),  and  an  hon- 
orary fellow  of  the  Royal  Northern  College  of 
Music  (1986).  He  was  also  a  recipient  of  the 
Harriet  Cohen  international  award  (i960).  His 
publications  included  contributory  chapters  to 
Franz  Liszt:  the  Man  and  his  Music  (ed.  Alan 
Walker,  1976)  and  Keyboard  Music  (ed.  Denis 
Mathews,  1972). 

In  i960  Ogdon  had  married  Brenda  Mary, 
daughter  of  John  Gregory  Lucas,  civil  servant; 
they  had  a  son  and  a  daughter.  In  late  July  1989 
Ogdon  complained  of  feeling  unwell.  He  saw  a 
new  doctor,  who  asked  if  he  had  been  diagnosed 
as  diabetic,  and  who  arranged  for  him  to  be 
examined  by  several  specialists  some  days  later. 
But  his  condition  worsened,  and  his  wife  found 
him  unconscious  on  the  morning  of  3 1  July,  the 
day  of  his  first  specialist  visit.  Rushed  to  Charing 
Cross  Hospital,  he  was  found  to  be  in  a  diabetic 
coma.  He  had,  moreover,  contracted  bronchial 
pneumonia,  from  which  he  died  in  hospital  early 
the  following  day,  1  August  1989. 

[Brenda  Lucas  Ogdon  and  Michael  Kerr,  Virtuoso, 
1 981;  Independent,  3  August  1989;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]      Robert  Matthew-Walker 

OLIVIER,  Laurence  Kerr,  Baron  Olivier 
(1907- 1 989),  actor  and  director,  was  born  in 
Dorking  22  May  1907,  the  second  son  and 
youngest  of  three  children  of  the  Revd  Gerald 
Kerr  Olivier,  assistant  priest  at  St  Martin's 
church  there,  and  his  wife,  Agnes  Louise 
Crookenden.  Educated  at  St  Edward's  School, 
Oxford,  he  showed  precocious  acting  ability, 
which  was  recognized  even  by  his  clerically 
blinkered  father,  and  made  his  stage  debut  at  the 
age  of  fifteen  as  Kate  in  a  boys'  performance  of 
The  Taming  of  the  Shrew  at  the  Shakespeare 
festival  theatre,  Stratford-upon-Avon.  After 
leaving  school,  he  won  a  scholarship  to  the 
Central  School  of  Speech  Training  and  Dramatic 
Art,  founded  by  Elsie  *Fogerty,  and  went  on  to 
join  the  touring  company  run  by  Lena  *Ashwell 
and  then  (in  1927)  the  Birmingham  repertory 
theatre,  directed  by  (Sir)  Barry  *Jackson. 

His  first  years  on  the  stage  were  marked  by 
fierce  ambition  and  energy,  but  no  clear  sense  of 


332 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Olivier 


direction.  An  outstandingly  good-looking  young 
actor,  he  was  in  some  danger  of  falling  into  the 
matinee  idol  trap — as  when,  having  created  the 
role  of  Stanhope  in  the  try-out  of  Journey's  End, 
by  R.  C.  *Sherriff,  he  abandoned  that  fine  play 
for  the  option  of  a  short-lived  lead  in  Beau  Geste 
(1929).  At  the  invitation  of  (Sir)  Noel  *Coward 
(to  whom  he  remained  lastingly  in  thrall)  he  took 
the  tailor's  dummy  role  of  Victor  Prynne  in 
Private  Lives  (1930-1).  He  also  began  uncertainly 
in  Hollywood  as  a  Ronald  *Colman  look-alike;  he 
was  fired  from  the  cast  of  Queen  Christina  in  1933 
at  the  request  of  Greta  Garbo. 

After  the  failure  of  Beau  Geste  he  went  on  to 
play  five  leading  parts  in  under  two  years  without 
ever  achieving  a  decent  run;  an  ominous  experi- 
ence for  a  young  star  in  a  hum-,  though  it 
forecast  one  of  the  greatest  strengths  of  his 
maturity:  the  refusal  ever  to  please  the  public  by 
repeating  himself.  Late  in  his  career,  when  he 
played  James  Tyrone  in  Eugene  O'Neill's  Long 
Day's  Journey  into  Night  (1971),  there  was  a  sense 
of  personal  horror  in  his  portrait  of  a  once 
hopeful  young  talent  destroyed  by  years  of  prof- 
itable type-casting. 

In  Olivier's  own  view,  the  turning  point  in  his 
career  came  with  the  1934  production  of  Queen  of 
Scots,  by  Gordon  Daviot  (the  pseudonym  of 
Elizabeth  *Mackintosh):  a  long  forgotten  play 
which,  again,  met  with  small  success,  but  which 
marked  the  beginning  of  a  group  of  lifelong 
professional  friendships  with,  among  others, 
George  *Devine,  Glen  *Byam-Shaw,  Gwen 
Ffrangcon-Davies,  and,  supremely,  the  show's 
director,  (Sir)  John  Gielgud.  Olivier  the  fiery- 
egoist  had  discovered  his  need  for  a  family,  and 
with  it  his  future  course  as  a  company-based 
classical  actor.  The  first  fruits  of  this  discover) 
were  bitter  when — playing  Romeo  to  Gielgud 's 
Mercutio  (1935) — he  ran  into  opposition  from 
the  London  critics,  who  did  not  like  his  verse 
speaking.  The  fact  that  he  then  turned  a  flop  into 
a  triumph  by  switching  roles  with  Gielgud,  did 
not  really  heal  the  wound. 

Olivier  described  his  duel  with  Gielgud  as  one 
between  'earth  and  air'.  The  two  stars  were,  and 
remained,  opposites.  But  it  was  not  long  before 
the  public  learned  to  value  both;  to  relish  Oli- 
vier's animal  magnetism,  physical  daring,  and 
power  to  spring  surprises,  as  much  as  his  conver- 
sion of  speech  into  another  form  of  action.  He 
struggled  to  extract  even  ounce  of  dramatic 
meaning  from  the  text,  often  driven  into  harsh 
sardonic  resonance  and  shock  inflections,  and 
detonating  isolated  words.  Following  Gielgud 
(whose  theatrical  families  kept  breaking  up), 
Olivier's  other  main  partnership  was  with  his 
friend  from  the  Birmingham  rep,  (Sir)  Ralph 
•Richardson,  with  whom  he  played  in  two  Old 
Vic  seasons  in  the  late  193c* — consolidating  his 
Shakespearian  position  in  a  sequence  of  con- 


trasted leading  roles  (Toby  Belch,  Henry  V, 
Macbeth,  Hamlet,  Iago,  and  Coriolanus)  before 
their  reunion  (with  John  P.  Burrell)  as  directors 
of  the  postwar  Old  Vic  company. 

In  the  flush  of  his  pre-war  Shakespearian 
success,  Olivier  was  wary  of  another  summons 
from  Hollywood.  However,  in  1939  he  deigned 
to  accept  the  role  of  Heathcliff  in  Wuthering 
Heights,  and  suffered  a  baptism  of  fire  from  his 
director,  William  Wyler,  who  criticized  him 
unmercifully  for  his  theatrically  exaggerated 
style  and  patronizing  attitude  towards  the  art  of 
film.  Made  ill  by  this  treatment,  Olivier  endured 
it  and  emerged  from  the  experience  as  a  major 
star.  'Wyler,'  he  later  acknowledged,  'taught  me 
how  to  act  in  movies;  taught  me  respect  for  them; 
taught  me  how  to  be  real.'  It  was  another  victory 
for  naturalism;  and  an  apprenticeship  in  film- 
making which  swiftly  led  to  mastery  in  the  first 
and  best  of  his  own  films:  Henry  V  (1943-4), 
probably  the  first  successful  Shakespeare  film 
ever  made,  at  once  for  its  cunning  blend  of 
picturesque  artifice  and  point-blank  realism,  and 
for  Olivier's  outstanding  performance,  which 
long  oudived  its  patriotic  morale-boosting 
intentions. 

Olivier  had  entered  the  war  in  1041  with  the 
intention  of  putting  acting  away  for  the  duration, 
and  qualified  as  a  pilot  in  the  Fleet  Air  Arm.  An 
incompetent  aeronaut,  he  destroyed  five  aircraft 
in  seven  weeks.  He  was  seconded  into  propa- 
ganda entertainment  by  the  Ministry  of  Informa- 
tion and  saw  no  active  service.  On  completing 
Henry  V,  he  led  the  Old  Vic  company  in  1044 
from  their  bombed-out  Waterloo  Road  house 
into  temporary  West  End  premises  at  the  New 
theatre.  The  company  flowered  as  never  before. 
These  were  the  years  of  Olivier's  Richard  III, 
Hotspur,  and  Lear;  and  the  inspired  double  bill 
of  Oedipus,  and  The  Critic  by  R.  B.  *Sheridan,  in 
which  Olivier,  as  Puff,  was  whisked  off,  still 
talking,  up  to  the  flies.  Coupled  with  Richard- 
son's Falstaff  (to  Olivier's  Shallow)  and  Peer 
Gym  (to  which  Olivier,  in  a  supreme  stroke  of 
luxury  casting,  played  the  tiny  part  of  the  Button 
Moulder)  these  seasons  formed  a  glorious  chap- 
ter in  the  Old  Vic's  history.  But  neither  that,  nor 
the  knighthood  Olivier  received  in  1947,  inhib- 
ited the  theatre's  governors  (headed  by  Viscount 
Esher)  from  picking  a  moment  in  1948  when 
Olivier  was  leading  the  troupe  on  a  tour  of 
Australia,  to  inform  him  that  the  directors'  joint 
contract  would  not  be  renewed. 

Indignantly  repulsing  Esher's  subsequent 
offer  to  re-engage  him  as  sole  director,  Olivier  set 
up  his  own  management  at  the  St  James's  theatre 
for  a  mixed  classical  and  modern  repertory,  in 
which  he  directed  and  co-starred  with  his  wife, 
Vivien  *Leigh.  These  seasons  included  pre- 
mieres of  plays  by  (Sir)  Terence  *Rattigan  and 
Christopher    Fry,    new    work    from    Thornton 


333 


Olivier 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Wilder  and  Tennessee  Williams,  and  two  Cleo- 
patras  from  Vivien  Leigh,  with  Olivier  paying 
successive  court  to  her  as  *Shakespeare's  Antony 
and  G.  B.  *Shaw's  Caesar. 

By  this  time,  Olivier  had  reached  the  summit 
of  his  worldly  ambitions.  All  his  desires  had  been 
satisfied:  as  an  actor,  for  whom  audiences  would 
queue  all  night,  he  was  the  undisputed  monarch 
of  the  London  stage;  he  had  succeeded  as  a 
director  and  as  a  manager;  unlike  Gielgud  and 
Richardson,  he  also  had  an  international  film 
career,  known  to  a  vast  public  who  had  never  set 
foot  in  a  theatre.  He  had  made  a  fairy-tale 
marriage;  his  residence  was  a  twelfth-century 
abbey  including  a  home  farm.  But  under  the 
glittering  public  image  he  felt  he  had  come  to  a 
stop;  his  work  had  again  lost  its  sense  of  direc- 
tion, and  his  private  life  was  becoming  a  hostage 
to  Vivien  Leigh's  increasing  manic  depression. 

To  repair  the  'aching  void'  he  made  some 
random  career  changes:  embarking  on  an  uncon- 
vincing singing  debut  in  the  film  of  The  Beggar's 
Opera  (1952),  which  at  least  forged  an  alliance 
with  Peter  Brook,  with  whom  he  again  broke  new 
Shakespearian  ground  in  the  1955  Stratford  pro- 
duction of  Titus  Andronicus;  and  directing  and 
playing  the  title  role  in  the  film  of  Rattigan's  The 
Prince  and  the  Showgirl  (1957),  in  which  he  was 
outshone  by  Marilyn  Monroe.  By  that  time  he 
had  already  discovered  the  route  to  renewal  in 
the  English  Stage  Company's  new  play-writing 
revival  at  the  Royal  Court  theatre,  under  his  old 
friend  George  Devine.  Unlike  the  other  leading 
actors  of  his  generation,  Olivier  took  the  plunge 
into  the  new  wave  and,  to  the  dismay  of  some 
admirers,  appeared  as  Archie  Rice,  the  seedy 
bottom-line  comedian  in  John  Osborne's  The 
Entertainer  (1957),  which  became  one  of  his 
favourite  parts.  He  discarded  his  West  End 
wardrobe  with  zest,  swaggering  on  in  a  loud 
check  suit,  exchanging  all  the  obligations  of 
eminence  for  the  free  speech  of  the  dregs  of  the 
profession.  'Don't  clap  too  loud,  lady,'  he  leered 
out  to  the  house;  'it's  a  very  old  building.'  This 
was  the  time  of  the  Suez  crisis. 

At  the  Royal  Court  (where  he  also  played  in 
Eugene  Ionesco's  Rhinoceros,  i960)  he  met  the 
actress  Joan  Plowright,  whom  he  married  after 
divorcing  Vivien  Leigh.  His  attachment  to  the 
Court  became  crucial  in  1963  when,  after  run- 
ning the  first  seasons  of  the  Chichester  festival 
theatre,  he  achieved  his  ultimate  professional 
goal  as  first  director  of  the  newly  formed 
National  Theatre,  where  he  confirmed  his  alli- 
ance with  the  young  generation  by  engaging 
Devine's  proteges,  John  *Dexter  and  William 
Gaskill,  as  his  associate  directors,  and  appoint- 
ing the  Observer's  campaigning  critic  Kenneth 
•Tynan  (formerly  an  arch  foe)  as  his  literary 
manager.  Just  as  he  transformed  his  stage  phy- 
sique from   role  to  role,  Olivier  instinctively 


altered  his  public  identity  according  to  the  mood 
of  the  times;  and  as  head  of  the  National  Theatre 
he  put  off  West  End  glamour  and  re-emerged  in 
the  likeness  of  a  go-ahead  bank  manager,  thor- 
oughly at  home  in  the  new  world  of  state  subsidy 
and  permanent  companies.  He  was  uniquely 
qualified  for  the  job,  as  a  natural  leader  who 
commanded  the  loyalty  of  the  whole  profession, 
and  as  an  artist  who  had  nothing  more  to 
prove. 

There  remained  one  unsealed  Shakespearian 
peak,  Othello,  which  he  played  (directed  by 
Dexter)  in  1964  in  a  final  burst  of  incandescent 
sensuality.  Otherwise,  though  he  was  a  regular 
NT  player  in  roles  ranging  from  punishing  leads 
like  Edgar  in  August  Strindberg's  The  Dance  of 
Death  (1967)  to  walk-on  parts  like  the  Jewish 
divorce  lawyer  in  Home  and  Beauty  (1969)  by  W. 
Somerset  *Maugham,  his  main  energy  went  into 
creating  an  ensemble  that  could  tackle  any  play 
in  the  world.  The  opening  seasons  were  a  sur- 
prise: plays  by  Harold  Brighouse,  Noel  Coward, 
Henrik  Ibsen,  Georges  Feydeau — works  with 
nothing  in  common  beyond  the  fact  that  almost 
every  one  of  them  brought  the  theatre  another 
success  and  redefined  the  reputation  of  the 
playwright. 

One  criticism  of  the  National  Theatre — 
voiced,  among  others,  by  Olivier's  former  Old 
Vic  colleague,  Sir  W.  Tyrone  *Guthrie — was 
that  the  ensemble  was  failing  to  present  Britain's 
leading  actors.  With  the  exception  of  Sir  Michael 
•Redgrave,  no  actor  approaching  Olivier's  own 
rank  became  a  member  of  the  team;  and  Olivier 
unceremoniously  sacked  Redgrave  and  took  over 
his  role  in  Ibsen's  The  Master  Builder  (1965), 
mistaking  the  onset  of  Redgrave's  Parkinson's 
disease  for  drunkenness.  Possibly  the  criticism  he 
received  for  importing  Peter  O'Toole  over  the 
heads  of  the  regular  troupe  for  the  opening 
production  of  Hamlet  (1963-4)  made  him  shut 
his  door  against  visiting  stars.  What  he  did 
achieve  was  a  theatre  that  became  a  second  home 
to  its  actors  and  which  developed  its  own  stars — 
including  Colin  Blakely,  Derek  Jacobi,  Edward 
Petherbridge,  Geraldine  McEwan,  and  Joan 
Plowright. 

Olivier's  years  at  the  National  Theatre  were 
wracked  with  troubles  of  which  the  general 
public  knew  little  or  nothing.  His  artistic  asso- 
ciates' support  for  controversial  work  such  as 
Frank  Wedekind's  Spring  Awakening  and  Rolf 
Hochhuth's  Soldiers  brought  him  into  collision 
with  the  governors  and  completely  estranged  him 
from  their  chairman,  the  first  Viscount  *Chan- 
dos.  For  the  first  time  in  his  career,  Olivier  also 
became  plagued  with  stage  fright  and. memory 
loss.  He  suffered  five  major  illnesses — including 
thrombosis,  cancer,  and  muscular  dystrophy — 
and  came  through  them  by  sheer  force  of 
will.  But  after  appearing  in  Trevor  Griffiths's 


334 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


O'Neill 


The  Party  (1974) — delivering  a  twenty-minute 
speech  as  an  old  Glaswegian  Trotskyite — his 
stage  career  was  at  an  end.  In  the  previous  year, 
with  mixed  feelings,  he  handed  over  the  director- 
ship of  the  National  Theatre  to  (Sir)  Peter  Hall, 
who  led  the  company  from  the  Old  Vic  theatre 
into  its  new  South  Bank  premises. 

In  his  remaining  years  Olivier  had  a  busy  film 
and  television  life,  though  (with  a  few  exceptions, 
such  as  the  roles  of  Dr  Christian  Szell  in  Mara- 
thon Man,  1976,  and  Loren  Hardemann  in  The 
Betsy,  1978)  his  film  work  consisted  of  cameo 
parts  which  he  took  to  support  his  new  young 
family.  He  was  more  scrupulous  when  it  came  to 
television,  and  the  last  flowering  of  his  talent  can 
be  seen  in  his  performances  of  Lord  Marchmain 
in  the  Granada  adaptation  of  Evelyn  *Waugh's 
Brideshead  Revisited  (1981),  the  blind  protagonist 
of  John  Mortimer's  A  Voyage  Round  My  Father 
(1982),  and  a  valedictory  King  Lear  (1983).  In  his 
last  decade  he  also  published  two  books:  Confes- 
sions of  an  Actor  (1982)  and  On  Acting  (1986), 
both  absorbingly  informative  but  no  guide  to  the 
man  himself.  As  an  author,  as  on  stage,  he 
disappeared  into  a  role.  He  left  behind  a  Dick- 
ensian  gallery  of  characters,  each  one  composed 
with  the  copious  observation  and  imaginative 
investment  of  a  novelist.  Olivier  did  more  to 
advance  the  art  of  acting  than  anyone  since  Sir 
Henry  *Irving,  and  just  as  Irving  had  become  the 
English  theatre's  first  knight,  so  Olivier,  in  1970, 
became  its  first  life  peer.  In  198 1  he  was  admitted 
to  the  Order  of  Merit.  He  had  honorary  degrees 
from  Tufts,  Massachusetts  (1946),  Oxford 
(1957),  Edinburgh  (1964),  London  (1968),  Man- 
chester (1968),  and  Sussex  (1978).  He  had 
numerous  foreign  awards  and  in  1979  was  given 
an  honorary  Oscar. 

In  1930  he  married  an  actress,  Jill  Esmond 
(died  1990),  daughter  of  Henry  Vernon  Esmond, 
whose  original  surname  was  Jack,  actor  and 
playwright;  they  had  one  son.  The  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1940  and  in  the  same  year  he 
married  the  actress  Vivien  Leigh  (died  1967), 
daughter  of  Ernest  Richard  Hartley,  exchange 
broker  in  Calcutta,  and  former  wife  of  Herbert 
Leigh  Holman,  barrister.  There  were  no  children 
and  the  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1961.  In  the 
same  year  he  married  the  actress  Joan  Ann 
Plowright,  daughter  of  William  Ernest  Plow- 
right,  editor  of  the  local  newspaper  in  Brigg, 
Lincolnshire,  and  former  wife  of  Roger  Gage. 
They  had  one  son  and  two  daughters.  Olivier 
also  had  several  affairs,  with  both  women  and 
men.  He  died  11  July  1989  at  his  home  in 
Steyning,  West  Sussex. 

[Laurence  Olivier,  Confessions  of  an  Actor,  1982,  and  On 
Acting,  1986;  Felix  Barker,  Laurence  Olivier,  1984; 
Melvvn  Bragg,  Laurence  Olivier,  1984;  Donald  Spoto, 
Laurence  Olivier,  1991.]  Irving  Wardle 


O'NEILL,  S»  Con  Douglas  Walter  (1912- 
1988),  diplomat,  was  born  in  London  3  June 
1912,  the  second  of  three  surviving  sons  (there 
were  no  daughters)  of  (Sir)  (Robert  William) 
Hugh  O'Neill,  later  first  Baron  Rathcavan,  PC, 
politician,  and  his  wife  Sylvia  Irene,  daughter  of 
Walter  Albert  Sandeman,  of  Morden  House, 
Royston.  He  achieved  early  academic  distinction 
with  a  scholarship  from  Eton  to  Balliol  College, 
Oxford,  a  first  class  in  English  in  1934,  and  a  law 
fellowship  of  All  Souls  College,  Oxford,  the 
following  year  (held  until  1946).  In  1936  he  was 
called  to  the  bar  (Inner  Temple),  and  in  the  same 
year  he  entered  the  Diplomatic  Service. 

He  was  posted  to  Berlin  as  third  secretary  in 
1938;  he  resigned  in  1939  because  he  disagreed 
with  Neville  *Chamberlain's  policy  of  appease- 
ment. He  served  in  the  Army  Intelligence  Corps 
from  1940  to  1943  and  was  then  employed  in  the 
Foreign  Office.  In  1946  he  left  to  become  a 
leader-writer  on  The  Times  but  returned  to  the 
Foreign  Office  the  following  year.  From  then  on 
he  rose  steadily  in  the  hierarchy;  posts  in  Frank- 
furt and  Bonn  were  followed  by  a  period  as  head 
of  the  news  department  in  1954-5,  charge  d'af- 
faires in  Peking  (1955-7),  return  to  the  Foreign 
Office  as  assistant  under-secretary  in  1957,  and 
posts  as  ambassador  to  Finland  from  1961  to 
1963  and  ambassador  to  the  European  Commu- 
nities in  Brussels  from  1963  to  1965.  He  returned 
to  the  Foreign  Office  as  deputy  under-secretary, 
and  hoped  in  1968  to  go  to  Bonn  as  ambassador. 
Germany  had  been  his  first  post;  his  German  was 
impeccable  and  he  would  have  carried  consider- 
able weight.  But  the  foreign  secretary,  George 
•Brown  (later  Baron  George-Brown),  vetoed  this 
proposal;  it  was  a  question  of  temperamental 
incompatibility.  Con  O'Neill  did  not  dispute  his 
right  to  do  so  but  resigned  to  start  a  career  in  the 
City  with  Hill  Samuel. 

In  1969  he  was  recalled  to  the  Foreign  Office 
to  head  the  team  which  would  negotiate  Britain's 
entry  into  the  European  Community.  This  task 
successfully  accomplished,  he  left  the  Foreign 
Office  for  the  last  time  in  1972,  after  writing  the 
official  history  of  the  negotiations.  From  1972  to 
1974  he  was  chairman  of  the  Intervention  Board 
for  Agricultural  Produce.  He  was  a  director  of 
Unigate  from  1974  to  1983.  In  1974  and  1975, 
the  year  of  the  referendum,  he  performed  a  last 
service  to  the  European  cause  as  director  of  the 
Britain  in  Europe  campaign. 

O'Neill  was  one  of  the  outstanding  diplomats 
of  his  generation.  His  intellect  was  impressive, 
his  reasoning  always  a  masterpiece  of  logic,  his 
analysis  of  any  situation  penetrating  and  accu- 
rate. To  this  he  brought  a  lucidity  of  expression 
which  served  him  well  as  a  leader-writer  on  The 
Times;  some  felt  that  he  could  have  edited  that 
newspaper  with  distinction.  In  appearance  he 


335 


O'Neill 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


resembled  one  of  Anthony  *Trollope's  elders  of 
the  church,  bald,  bespectacled,  with  an  air  of 
measured  dignity  and  a  voice  distinctly  canoni- 
cal. His  manner  had  something  of  the  formality 
of  a  previous  generation,  but  those  who  dealt 
with  him  rapidly  found  that  underneath  there 
lurked  a  delightful  sense  of  humour  and  a  seem- 
ingly inexhaustible  fund  of  Irish  stories. 

He  was  also  a  man  of  unbending  principle.  If 
he  thought  a  policy  was  wrong  he  said  so  in  clear 
and  measured  terms  without  any  thought  of  the 
consequences  for  his  career.  It  was  most  unusual 
for  a  diplomat  to  leave  the  Foreign  Office  three 
times  before  retirement  and  yet  rise  to  posts  of 
the  highest  distinction. 

His  greatest  accomplishment  was  the  British 
entry  into  the  European  Community.  On  this  the 
country  was  bitterly  divided  and  the  complexities 
of  the  negotiation  vast.  In  addition  he  had  to 
carry  with  him  the  senior  officials  on  the  team 
who  vigorously  defended  the  interests  of  their 
departments.  Through  all  these  hazards  O'Neill 
steered  his  team  with  imperturbable  patience  and 
skill,  gaining  the  confidence  and  respect  of  all  he 
dealt  with,  whether  among  Britain's  European 
partners  or  in  Whitehall.  The  success  of  the 
negotiations  was  one  of  the  great  achievements  in 
the  history  of  British  diplomacy;  it  owed  much  to 
his  efforts. 

He  was  appointed  CMG  in  1953,  KCMG  in 
1962,  and  GCMG  in  1972.  He  married  three 
times,  first  in  1940  Rosemary  Margaret,  daughter 
of  the  late  Harold  Pritchard,  MD.  They  had  a 
son  and  a  daughter,  Onora,  who  became  princi- 
pal of  Newnham  College,  Cambridge.  The 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1954  (his  wife  subse- 
quently became  Lady  Garvey)  and  in  that  year  he 
married  Baroness  Carola  Hertha  Adolphine 
Emma  Harriet  Luise  ('Mady')  Marschall  von 
Bieberstein,  a  widow  and  daughter  of  Baron  Max 
Reinhard  August  von  Holzing-Berstett.  She  died 
in  i960  and  in  1961  he  married  Mrs  Anne-Marie 
Lindberg,  of  Helsinki,  daughter  of  Bertil  Jung- 
strom,  civil  engineer,  of  Stockholm.  Con  O'Neill 
died  11  January  1988  at  St  Stephen's  Hospital, 
London. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  Roy  Denman 

O'NEILL,  Terence  Marne,  Baron  O'Neill  of 
the  Maine  (1914-1990),  prime  minister  of 
Northern  Ireland,  was  born  10  September  1914 
at  29  Ennismore  Gardens,  Hyde  Park,  London, 
the  third  son  and  youngest  of  five  children  of 
Captain  Arthur  Edward  Bruce  O'Neill  (2nd  Life 
Guards),  of  Shane's  Castle,  Randalstown,  county 
Antrim,  MP  for  mid-Antrim  and  eldest  son 
of  the  second  Baron  O'Neill,  and  his  wife,  Lady 
Annabel  Hungerford  Crewe-Milnes,  eldest 
daughter  of  the  Marquess  of  *Crewe,  statesman. 
Terence  O'Neill's  father  became  the  first  MP  to 
die  at  the  front  (5  November  1914)  and  his 


mother  married  again  in  1922.  The  young 
O'Neill  was  educated  at  West  Downs  School  in 
Winchester,  and  at  Eton.  He  spent  much  time  in 
Abyssinia,  where  his  stepfather  was  consul,  and 
during  the  1930s  had  several  jobs,  ending  up  at 
the  Stock  Exchange.  After  being  commissioned 
at  Sandhurst  in  May  1940,  O'Neill  joined  the 
2nd  battalion  of  the  Irish  Guards,  serving  in 
Normandy  and  Holland.  Both  his  brothers  were 
killed  in  World  War  II. 

In  October  1946  O'Neill  was  returned  unop- 
posed as  the  Unionist  member  for  Bannside  in 
the  Stormont  parliament.  He  became  parliamen- 
tary secretary  to  the  minister  of  health  in  Feb- 
ruary 1948  and  to  the  minister  of  home  affairs  in 
1955.  In  1956  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
(Northern  Ireland)  and  became  minister  of  home 
affairs  and  then  of  finance,  forming  a  politically 
important  relationship  with  a  reform-minded 
private  secretary,  (Sir)  Kenneth  Bloomfieid. 
Another  important  member  of  O'Neill's  circle, 
Belfast  Telegraph  editor  Jack  Sayers,  was  'never 
able  to  satisfy  my  mind  about  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter's liberalism — it  is  far  more  intellectual  than 
emotional  and  even  then  much  of  it  emanates 
from  Ken  Bloomfieid'.  Nevertheless,  the  fact 
remains  that  when  in  1963  O'Neill  became  prime 
minister  of  Northern  Ireland — unlike  his  three 
Unionist  predecessors — there  was  no  trace  of 
anti-Catholic  bitterness  on  his  record.  Yet  he  was 
to  disappoint  some,  at  least,  of  his  liberal 
friends. 

The  subsequent  intensity  of  the  sectarian 
conflict  has  obscured  the  fact  that  in  his  early 
years  in  office  he  was  primarily  concerned  to  win 
back  Protestant  support  which  the  Unionist 
party  had  lost  to  the  Northern  Ireland  Labour 
party  in  the  period  since  1958.  'Stealing  Labour's 
thunder' — to  use  O'Neill's  own  term — rather 
than  allaying  Catholic  resentments,  was  his  main 
preoccupation. 

O'Neill  had  a  generous,  even  impulsive,  streak 
and  was  capable  of  the  occasional  conciliatory 
grand  gesture,  such  as  his  famous  visit  to  a 
Catholic  school.  In  the  main,  however,  he 
espoused  a  rhetoric  of  planning  and  moderniza- 
tion by  which  nationalist  grievances  would  be 
dissolved  by  shared  participation  in  the  benefits 
of  economic  growth.  He  saw  little  role  for  struc- 
tural reform.  His  speeches  in  this  early  period 
resonate  with  a  pious  little-Ulsterism  in  which 
devolution  emerges  not  just  as  an  inevitable  and 
reasonable  historical  compromise  but  as  a  respon- 
sive communal  form  of  government  superior  to 
that  of  the  class-based  party  system  in  the  rest  of 
the  United  Kingdom.  That  UK  system  was, 
however,  economically  sustaining  the  Stormont 
regime:  a  fact  of  which  O'Neill  was  more  aware 
than  the  Unionist  electorate. 

O'Neill's  early  lack  of  responsiveness  to  Cath- 
olic grievances  was  sharply  criticized  by  liberal 


336 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Owen 


unionist  groupings,  such  as  the  leadership  of  the 
Northern  Ireland  Labour  party  and  the  Belfast 
Telegraph,  but  in  the  short  term  O'Neillism 
was  quite  effective  politically.  The  O'Neillite 
manifesto  for  the  1965  election  crystallized  the 
ideology  of  modernization — 'Forward  Ulster  to 
Target  1970'.  The  result  showed  an  average 
swing  to  the  Unionist  party  of  7  per  cent  and  was 
a  major  defeat  for  Labour. 

Despite  this  electoral  success,  even  then 
O'Neill  was  widely  perceived  to  be  a  poor  party 
manager.  Normally  secretive  and  aloof,  at  times 
he  was  capable  of  indiscreet  and  hurtful  sarcasm 
at  the  expense  of  prickly  senior  colleagues.  And, 
ironically,  his  1965  triumph  played  a  key  role  in 
marginalizing  a  party  (Labour)  which  gave  radi- 
cals from  the  Catholic  community  an  outlet. 

The  emergence  in  1968  of  the  civil  rights 
movement,  which  included  many  such  radicals, 
presented  O'Neill  with  an  excruciating  dilemma: 
placating  the  reformers  was  likely  to  mean  the 
consolidation  of  the  internal  unionist  opposition. 
O'Neill  chose  the  path  of  moderate,  even  modest, 
reform — 'the  five-point  programme'  of  Novem- 
ber 1968.  For  a  brief  moment,  he  seemed  to  have 
a  real  chance  of  gaining  significant  Catholic 
support  whilst  retaining  that  of  a  majority  of 
Protestants.  But  the  tactics  of  the  radical  wing  of 
the  civil  rights  movement,  responding  more  to 
leftist  politics  than  nationalist  impulses,  were  to 
frustrate  him. 

The  civil  rights  march  led  by  the  People's 
Democracy  group  in  January  1969  was  of  deci- 
sive importance.  This  march  was  attacked  at 
Burntollet  bridge  by  Orange  partisans  and  the 
subsequent  deterioration  in  communal  relations 
made  O'Neill's  position  exceptionally  difficult. 
Caught  between  the  pressures  generated  by  loy- 
alist and  nationalist  militants,  and  having  almost 
lost  his  seat  in  a  snap  election  he  called  in 
February,  he  resigned  in  April  1969,  though  he 
retained  substantial  Protestant  support  even  at 
the  end.  He  accepted  a  life  barony  in  1970.  In 
1967  he  had  received  an  honorary  LL  D  from 
Queen's  University,  Belfast. 

O'Neill's  legacy  is  ambiguous.  Even  the  repu- 
tation of  his  path-breaking  talks  in  1965  with 
the  taoiseach,  Sean  *Lemass,  suffered,  amongst 
unionists  at  any  rate,  from  later  claims  by 
Lemass's  widow  (bitterly  repudiated  by  O'Neill) 
that  they  had  been  about  'Irish  unity'.  His 
famous  statement  on  resignation  continues  to 
haunt  his  reputation:  'It  is  frightfully  hard  to 
explain  to  Protestants  that  if  you  give  Roman 
Catholics  a  good  job  and  a  good  house,  they  will 
live  like  Protestants... they  will  refuse  to  have 
eighteen  children  on  National  Assistance.. .in 
spite  of  the  authoritative  nature  of  their  church.' 
He  was  a  patrician  figure  out  of  touch  with  large 
sections  of  the  population.  O'Neill's  political 
failure  is  made  all  the  more  tragic  by  the  fact  that 


he  was  essentially  a  man  of  decent  tolerant 
instincts. 

In  1944  O'Neill  married  (Katharine)  Jean, 
daughter  of  William  Ingham  Whitaker,  of  Pyle- 
well  Park,  Lymington.  They  had  a  daughter  and 
a  son.  O'Neill  died  12  June  1990  at  his  home  in 
Lymington,  Hampshire. 

[Ballymena  Observer,  13  November  1914;  Terence 
O'Neill,  The  Autobiography  of  Terence  O'Neill,  1972; 
Andrew  Gailey  (ed.),  John  Sayers,  a  Liberal  Editor, 
1993;  Paul  Bew  and  Henry  Patterson,  The  British  State 
and  the  Ulster  Crists,  1985.]  -Paul  Bew 

OWEN,  (Paul)  Robert  (1920- 1990),  engineer, 
was  born  24  January  1920  in  Dalston,  London, 
the  elder  son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  Joseph 
Owen,  estate  manager,  and  his  wife,  Deborah 
Grossmith.  His  secondary  education  was  at  the 
Central  Foundation  School  (1933-8),  a  grammar 
school  in  the  City  of  London.  He  then  entered 
Queen  Mary  College,  London  University,  to 
read  engineering,  specializing  in  aeronautics.  On 
the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939  the  college  was 
evacuated  to  Cambridge.  There  Owen  graduated 
in  1940  with  first-class  honours  and  won  the 
Allen  Low  prize  for  the  best  student  in  engin- 
eering. 

He  started  work  at  the  aircraft  firm  Boulton- 
Paul,  but  his  potential  for  research  soon  became 
evident  and  in  1941  he  joined  the  aerodynamics 
department  of  the  Royal  Aircraft  Establishment 
(RAE),  Farnborough.  The  work  there  was  varied 
and  challenging,  ranging  from  problems  of 
immediate  urgency  for  the  RAF  to  matters  of 
great  importance  for  future  aircraft  designs.  It 
was  evident  that  high  speeds,  extending  into 
supersonic  flight,  would  in  due  course  become  a 
reality,  calling  for  new  experimental  and  theoret- 
ical research  tools.  Owen's  progress  with  such 
problems  was  remarkable.  He  quickly  matured 
from  his  initial  junior  status  to  become  a  creative 
leader,  and  his  promotion  was  rapid.  Topics  he 
successfully  addressed  included  the  development 
of  low-drag  wings  and  bodies,  the  stability  and 
control  of  high-speed  aircraft,  the  aerodynamic 
problems  of  guided  weapons,  and  supersonic 
flight.  When  the  war  ended  in  1945  he  expanded 
his  interests  to  include  other  applications  of  fluid 
mechanics. 

In  1953  he  accepted  an  invitation  to  become 
reader  and  director  of  the  Manchester  University- 
fluid  motion  laboratory,  and  three  years  later  he 
was  appointed  professor  and  head  of  the  newly 
formed  mechanics  of  fluids  department.  In  spite 
of  his  heavy  administrative  load,  he  became 
interested  in  meteorology  and  was  also  involved 
with  local  industrial  problems — for  example, 
cotton  spinning,  ventilation,  and  the  dangers  of 
coal  dust  in  mines.  He  became  a  member  of  the 
Safety  in  Mines  advisory  board  in  1956.  This  led 


337 


Owen 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


him  to  investigate  the  transport  of  dust  particles 
by  air  flows,  including  saltation  (the  lifting  of 
particles  from  a  surface  and  their  subsequent 
trajectories).  This  became  a  major  activity,  with 
important  applications  to  soil  erosion  and 
desertification. 

In  1963  he  moved  to  the  Zaharoff  chair  of 
aviation  at  Imperial  College,  London.  He  there 
extended  his  interests  even  further,  to  the  aero- 
dynamics of  buildings,  heat  exchangers,  blood 
flow,  and  respiration.  In  1966  a  physiological 
flows  unit  was  founded  in  his  department.  Mean- 
while, however,  Owen  was  an  active  member  of 
the  Aeronautical  Research  Council  and  in  1971 
he  was  appointed  its  chairman,  a  position  he 
retained  for  a  record  eight  years.  Since  this  was  a 
time  of  major  new  developments  in  aeronautics, 
the  work  of  the  council  was  of  first  importance 
and  Owen  took  great  pride  in  it. 

In  1984  he  retired  early,  but  he  continued 
teaching  and  vigorously  pursued  his  research, 
particularly  in  saltation.  He  developed  fruitful 
contacts  with  workers  elsewhere  with  similar 
interests,  particularly  in  the  Middle  East,  Africa, 
USA,  Denmark,  and  France,  and  he  contributed 
key  papers  to  international  symposia.  In  1985  he 
developed  heart  trouble  and  had  a  bypass  opera- 


tion. Nevertheless,  he  soon  resumed  his  research, 
travelling  and  lecturing  extensively,  and  seemed 
to  recover  well. 

He  was  passionately  interested  in  music, 
drama,  and  the  arts.  His  good  looks  and  musical 
voice  made  him  a  natural  choice  in  his  youth  for 
leading  parts  in  the  RAE  dramatic  society  pro- 
ductions. He  wrote  and  spoke  with  grace,  wit, 
and  a  wry,  kindly,  self-deprecating  humour.  His 
sympathies  were  with  the  under-privileged  and 
he  constantly  sought  to  apply  himself  to  the 
problems  of  the  third  world.  He  was  accorded 
various  honours,  including  election  as  FRS  in 
1 97 1,  appointment  as  CBE  in  1974,  and  election 
as  F.Eng.  in  1976. 

In  1958  he  married  Margaret  Ann,  a  law 
graduate  of  Oxford,  daughter  of  Herbert  Baron, 
solicitor.  They  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters, 
in  whom  he  took  great  pride  and  pleasure.  In 
1988  he  fell  ill  again  with  what  was  thought  to  be 
a  viral  infection.  He  continued  writing  and  col- 
laborating with  his  international  colleagues,  but 
recovery  eluded  him.  He  died  of  cancer  in  St 
Mary's  Hospital,  London,  11  November  1990. 

[A.  D.  Young  and  Sir  James  Lighthill  in  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxviii, 
1992;  personal  knowledge.]  Alec  Young 


338 


p 


PACHT,  Otto  Ernst  (1902- 1988),  art  historian, 
was  born  in  Vienna  7  September  1002,  the  elder 
son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  David  Pacht,  a 
Jewish  businessman,  and  his  wife,  Josephine 
Freundlich.  He  attended  the  Volkschule  and 
Stadtgymnasium  in  Vienna  and  in  1920  pro- 
ceeded to  Vienna  University  where,  with  a  brief 
interlude  in  Berlin,  he  studied  art  history  and 
archaeology-.  He  achieved  his  doctorate  in  1925. 
His  first  book,  devoted  to  Austrian  Gothic  panel 
painting,  appeared  in  1929.  In  1933  he  was 
appointed  Privatdozent  at  the  University  of  Hei- 
delberg, but  the  Nazi  embargo  on  Jews  holding 
posts  in  Germany  prevented  him  from  taking  up 
the  position. 

Frustrated  and  alarmed  by  the  political  situa- 
tion, Pacht  paid  his  first  visit  to  London  at  the 
end  of  1935  and  settled  there  in  1938.  He  was 
invited  to  undertake  a  catalogue  of  illuminated 
manuscripts  (a  field  new  to  him)  at  the  British 
Museum,  liaising  with  Francis  Wormald,  then 
assistant  keeper  in  the  manuscripts  department, 
who  rapidly  became  a  close  personal  friend.  The 
evacuation  of  the  manuscripts  in  1939  ended  this 
scheme  and  in  1941  he  moved  to  Oxford  to  begin 
a  similar  project  at  the  Bodleian  Library.  The 
resulting  three-volume  catalogue,  completed  by 
his  pupil  Jonathan  Alexander,  appeared  between 
1966  and  1973.  Specialists  in  the  study  of  manu- 
script illumination  were  rare  and  the  scope  of 
this  undertaking  left  Pacht  with  a  virtually 
unrivalled  expertise.  During  his  two  decades  in 
Oxford  he  published  on  a  wide  variety  of  topics, 
paying  particular  attention  to  English  work  of  the 
twelfth  century,  which  he  viewed  within  its 
wider  European  context.  His  contribution  to  the 
collaborative  monograph  on  the  St  Albans  Psal- 
ter (i960)  is  especially  significant.  During  the 
same  period  he  turned  once  more  to  his  original 
fascination  with  northern  painting  of  the  fif- 
teenth century,  publishing  The  Master  of  Mary  of 
Burgundy  in  1948. 

In  March  1945  Pacht  had  been  made  fellow 
and  lecturer  in  the  history  of  medieval  art  at 
Oriel  College,  Oxford.  In  May  1947  he  took 
British  citizenship,  which  he  retained  for  the 
remainder  of  his  life.  He  became  senior  lecturer 
in  the  history  faculty  in  1952  and  was  advanced 
to  reader  in  1962.  His  subject  was  not,  however, 
part  of  the  formal  syllabus  and  opportunities  for 


direct  teaching  even  at  postgraduate  level  were 
disappointingly  meagre.  In  1963  he  decided  to 
accept  an  invitation  to  return  to  Vienna  to  fill  the 
chair  of  art  history  in  succession  to  K.  M. 
Swoboda,  thus  becoming  one  of  the  few  refugee 
scholars  from  Austria  to  return  to  his  roots  after 
the  war.  His  work  in  England  was  acknowledged 
by  election  to  the  fellowship  of  the  British 
Academy  in  1956  and  by  the  award  of  an 
honorary  D.Litt.  from  Oxford  in  1971. 

In  the  1960s  Pacht's  energies  were  directed 
almost  entirely  to  his  university  commitments. 
His  students  welcomed  him  as  an  outstanding 
teacher  and  lecturer  and  he,  in  turn,  was 
greatly  stimulated  by  their  enthusiasm.  For- 
tunately for  posterity,  his  carefully  prepared 
lectures  were  all  preserved  in  typescript  and  a 
series  of  publications,  including  Buchmalerei  des 
Mittelalters  in  1984,  made  their  content  and  his 
methodology  accessible  to  a  wider  audience. 
After  his  retirement  in  1972  he  returned  to  his 
own  research  and  published  extensively  up  to 
the  time  of  his  death,  paying  particular  atten- 
tion once  more  to  the  problems  of  northern 
painting  in  the  fifteenth  century.  At  the  same 
time  he  was  responsible,  in  collaboration  with 
Dagmar  Thoss  and  Ulrike  Jenni,  for  the 
appearance  of  four  volumes  in  the  ambitious 
catalogue  of  illuminated  manuscripts  in  the 
Vienna  National  Library,  French  in  1974  and 
1977,  Dutch  in  1975,  and  Flemish  in  1983  and 
1990.  A  fellow  of  the  Austrian  Academy  since 
1967,  he  was  awarded  the  Order  of  Merit  by- 
France  in  1982  and  became  a  commander  of 
the  Order  of  Arts  and  Letters  in  1984. 

Throughout  his  long  career  Pacht's  circle  of 
scholarly  acquaintance  was  very  wide.  His 
attachment  to  the  Bodleian  Library  brought  him 
readily  into  contact  with  the  international  frater- 
nity of  manuscript  specialists  drawn  there  by 
their  individual  work.  He  maintained  friendships 
with  other  members  of  the  academic  refugee 
community,  notably  colleagues  from  the  War- 
burg Institute  in  London.  Back  in  Vienna  his 
many  students  found  his  approach  inspiring. 
Pacht  was  stockily  built  and  bespectacled,  with 
thick  dark  eyebrows  recalling  the  original  colour 
of  his  sparse  hair.  Twenty  -five  years'  residence  in 
England  did  not  entirely  rob  his  speech  of  the 
evidence  of  his  German  origins. 


339 


Pacht 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Pacht  married,  on  n  January  1940,  Jeanne 
Thalia  (died  1971),  an  art  historical  researcher 
whom  he  met  when  she  was  working  as  assistant 
librarian  at  the  Courtauld  Institute,  the  daughter 
of  Constantine  A.  Michalopulo,  import-export 
merchant.  They  had  one  son.  Pacht  died  in 
hospital  in  Vienna,  17  April  1988. 

[J.  J.  G.  Alexander  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  lxxx,  1 991;  Otto  Demus,  'Otto  Pacht',  Almanach 
der  Osterreichischen  Akademie  der  rVissenschaften,  vol. 
cxxxviii.  1988;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Janet  Backhouse 

PAGET,  Reginald  Thomas  Guy  Des  Voeux, 

Baron  Paget  of  Northampton  (1908- 1990), 
politician,  barrister,  and  master  of  foxhounds, 
was  born  2  September  1908  at  Sulby  Hall, 
Northamptonshire,  the  younger  son  and  second 
of  three  children  of  Major  Thomas  Guy  Freder- 
ick Paget,  sometime  Independent  Tory  MP  for 
the  Bosworth  division  of  Leicestershire,  and  his 
wife  (Emma)  Bettine,  daughter  of  Sir  (George) 
William  *Des  Voeux,  colonial  governor.  He  was 
educated  at  Eton  and  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  read  law,  receiving  a  third  class 
in  part  i  of  the  tripos  in  1928.  He  then  decided  to 
read  for  an  ordinary  degree  and  passed  parts  i 
and  ii  of  military  studies,  which  would  have 
enabled  him  to  achieve  an  ordinary  BA,  for 
which,  however,  he  never  presented  himself.  It 
was  while  an  undergraduate  at  Cambridge  that 
he  joined  the  Labour  party,  a  decision  not 
unusual  in  the  political  climate  of  the  time  but 
made  perhaps  more  striking  in  his  case  by  the 
fact  that  the  previous  five  generations  of  his 
family  had  all  been  Tory  MPs.  During  the  1930s 
he  practised  as  a  barrister,  having  been  called  to 
the  bar  in  1934. 

Within  the  Labour  party,  for  which  he  fought 
his  first  (unsuccessful)  parliamentary  election  at 
Northampton  in  1935,  'Reggie'  Paget  was  always 
something  of  an  anomaly.  Once  he  reached 
Westminster  in  1945,  winning  Northampton  at 
his  second  attempt,  he  contrived  to  represent  the 
voice  of  the  squirearchy  far  more  convincingly 
than  anyone  on  the  Conservative  benches.  His 
socialism  was  essentially  paternalistic,  and  it  was 
typical  of  him  that  he  should  have  thought 
nothing  of  receiving  a  delegation  of  trade  union- 
ists while  still  dressed  in  his  full  hunting  kit.  He 
took  silk  in  1947. 

Before  becoming  a  life  peer  in  1974,  Paget  sat 
in  the  House  of  Commons  for  twenty-nine  years. 
In  all  that  time  he  was  only  briefly  the  recipient 
of  preferment  from  his  party.  From  i960  to  1964 
he  was  a  junior  opposition  spokesman  first  for 
the  Royal  Navy  (during  World  War  II  he  had 
served  in  the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve 
before  being  invalided  out  in  1943)  and  then  for 
the  army;  but  the  death  of  Hugh  *Gaitskell  in 
1963  put  paid  to  any  hopes  he  may  have  held  of 


progressing  to  government  office.  An  outspoken 
critic  of  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of 
Rievaulx)  during  the  leadership  election  which 
followed  Gaitskell's  death,  he  never  relented  in 
his  belief  that  Wilson  was  quite  the  wrong  man  to 
lead  the  Labour  party  or,  indeed,  to  be  prime 
minister. 

In  appearance  and  diction  more  like  a  Whig 
grandee  from  an  earlier  age,  Paget  was  never- 
theless a  man  of  parts.  Said  to  be  the  slowest 
speaker  in  the  House,  Paget  had  a  long  chin  and 
beetling  brows.  An  intrepid  yachtsman,  a  fearless 
rider  to  hounds  (he  must  have  been  the  only 
Labour  MP  ever  to  become  master  of  the  Pytch- 
ley,  a  position  he  held  from  1968  to  1971),  he  was 
also  a  competent  amateur  painter  (he  held  his 
first  exhibition  at  the  Fine  Arts  Gallery  at  Ebury 
Street,  London,  in  1988),  as  well  as  being  the 
author  of  three  books.  The  first,  Manstein,  His 
Campaigns  and  His  Trial  (1951),  commemorated 
his  spirited  defence  of  Field-Marshal  Fritz  Erich 
von  Manstein,  for  which  he  waived  his  normal 
barrister's  fees,  before  one  of  the  last  war  crimes 
tribunals  in  1949;  the  second,  co-authored  with 
his  fellow  Labour  MP,  Sydney  *Silverman,  arose 
in  part  out  of  the  Christopher  Craig  and  Derek 
Bentley  murder  case  of  1953  and  conveyed  its 
message  in  its  title  Hanged — and  Innocent? 
0953);  while  the  third,  and  far  the  most  ambi- 
tious, The  Human  Journey,  published  in  1979 
well  after  his  retirement  from  the  Commons, 
represented  an  attempt  to  tell  the  whole  story  of 
the  human  race. 

Courage,  sometimes  leading  to  recklessness, 
was  in  fact  the  hallmark  of  Paget's  career.  In 
1963,  after  a  row  in  the  Commons  over  the 
extradition  of  Chief  Enahoro  of  Nigeria  who,  he 
argued,  should  properly  have  been  regarded  as  a 
political  refugee,  he  insisted  on  reporting  the 
attorney-general  of  the  day,  Sir  John  *Hobson, 
to  the  inn  (the  Inner  Temple)  to  which  they  both 
belonged,  almost  certainly  the  first  time  a 
queen's  counsel  (and  fellow  bencher)  had  taken 
such  action  against  a  law  officer  of  the  Crown. 
But  then  no  one  was  ever  less  a  respecter  of  rank, 
station,  or  person,  and  it  was  this  total  lack  of 
deference  in  his  otherwise  patrician  character 
which  clinched  Paget's  claim  to  be  considered  a 
genuine  radical. 

In  193 1  Paget  married  Sybil  Helen  ('Nancy'), 
daughter  of  Sills  Clifford  Gibbons,  of  Scaynes 
Hill,  Sussex,  widow  of  Sir  John  Bridger  Shiffner, 
sixth  baronet,  and  former  wife  of  Sir  Victor  Basil 
John  Seely,  fourth  baronet.  They  had  no  chil- 
dren of  their  own.  In  London  Paget  tended  to 
lead  a  faintly  eighteenth-century  bachelor  life. 
But  his  roots  were  in  the  country  and  in  par- 
ticular at  his  family  home,  Lubenham  Lodge, 
Market  Harborough,  where  he  and  his  wife 
brought  up  four  adopted  children,  two  boys  and 
two  girls.  They  were  the  offspring  of  an  RAF" 


340 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Paish 


pilot,  whose  wife  died  when  the  children  were 
young.  Paget  adopted  them  because  the  father 
did  not  want  them  split  up,  and,  when  the  father 
retired  from  the  RAF,  gave  him  a  job  and  took 
him  into  the  household  too.  He  separated  from 
his  wife  before  his  death,  causing  some  embar- 
rassment to  his  country  friends.  He  died  2 
January  1900,  at  his  London  home,  9  Grosvenor 
Cottages,  SWi. 

[The  Times,  4  January  1990;  Independent,  6  January 
1990;  private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

Anthony  Howard 

PAISH,  Frank  Walter  (1898- 1988),  economist, 
was  born  in  Croydon  15  January  1898,  the  eld- 
est of  five  sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of 
(Sir)  George  Paish,  joint  editor  of  the  Statist 
(1900-16)  and  author  of  many  publications  on 
economic  and  social  problems,  and  his  wife 
Emily  Mary,  daughter  of  Thomas  Whitehead,  of 
Liverpool.  He  was  educated  at  Winchester  Col- 
lege before  being  commissioned  into  the  Royal 
Field  Artillery  in  19 16.  He  served  in  France  in 
1917-18  with  the  rank  of  lieutenant  and  was 
awarded  the  MC  (191 8)  during  the  German 
offensive  of  March  191 8,  when  he  was  wounded 
by  shrapnel.  In  1919-21  he  was  a  student  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  obtained  a 
second  class  (division  I)  in  both  part  i  of  the 
history  tripos  (1920)  and  part  ii  of  the  economics 
tripos  (1921). 

On  leaving  university  he  joined  the  Standard 
Bank  of  South  Africa,  first  in  London  in  1921 
and  then,  from  1922  to  1932,  in  South  Africa,  at 
Aliwal  North,  where  he  was  manager  of  a  coun- 
try branch,  and  finally  in  Cape  Town,  where  his 
responsibility  became  that  of  economic  intelli- 
gence and  analysis.  In  1932  he  left  the  bank  and 
was  appointed  a  lecturer  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics.  His  work  for  the  Standard  Bank  led 
him  to  throw  new  light  on  the  working  of  the 
gold  standard  and  he  was  one  of  the  first  econo- 
mists to  emphasize  the  role  of  changes  in  national 
income  and  expenditure,  in  addition  to  the  quan- 
tity of  money,  in  bringing  about  balance  of 
payments  adjustments.  He  was  made  a  reader  at 
the  University  of  London  in  1938  and  Sir  Ernest 
Cassel  professor  of  economics  (with  special  re- 
ference to  business  finance)  in  1949.  During 
this  period  his  publications  included  Insurance 
Funds  and  Their  Investment  (1934,  with  George 
•Schwartz)  and  a  study  of  the  cheap  money 
policy  of  1932.  In  194 1-5  he  was  deputy  director 
of  programmes  in  the  Ministry  of  Aircraft  Pro- 
duction. During  the  war  he  was  also  commis- 
sioned into  the  Home  Guard,  reaching  the  rank 
of  captain. 

He  was  elected  president  of  section  F  of  the 
British  Association  in  1953.  He  held  his  pro- 
fessorship until  retirement  in  1965,  when  he  was 
appointed  professor  emeritus;  and  in  1970  he  was 


made  an  honorary  fellow  of  LSE.  Between  1965 
and  1970  he  acted  as  consultant  to  Lloyds  Bank 
on  economic  affairs.  He  had  neither  the  training 
nor  the  taste  for  the  mathematical  theorizing  and 
complex  econometric  testing  which  became 
prevalent  in  his  profession.  Instead,  he  had  an 
unusually  shrewd  eye  for  applied  economic  prob- 
lems and  for  the  basic  statistics  needed  to  throw 
light  on  them.  He  always  saw  the  formulation  of 
economic  theory  as  an  art,  and  he  was  content  to 
make  contributions  to  the  solution  of  difficult 
questions  by  means  of  a  first  approximation; 
econometric  refinements  he  was  content  to  leave 
to  others.  He  had  a  rare  understanding  of  the 
cyclical  behaviour  of  the  British  economy  and 
had  a  better  forecasting  record  than  most.  He 
was  one  of  the  first  economists  to  emphasize  the 
need  for  a  margin  of  spare  capacity  ('unused 
productive  potential')  to  prevent  inflation  and 
the  dangers  of  an  ambitious  policy  of  stimulating 
demand  in  the  hope  of  stimulating  long-term 
economic  growth.  In  the  conditions  of  the  1960s 
he  argued  that  the  spare  capacity  needed  to 
prevent  inflation  would  involve  a  level  of  unem- 
ployment of  27  per  cent,  a  view  which  was  the 
subject  of  hostility  on  the  part  of  those  who 
believed  that  economic  policy  should  be  less 
restrained,  including  trade  unionists;  although  he 
held  policy-makers  rather  than  trade  unions 
responsible  for  inflation  and  did  not  believe  in 
the  efficacy  of  'incomes  policy'. 

Changes  in  the  characteristics  of  the  British 
economy  in  the  1970s  and  1980s,  like  those  in 
most  other  countries,  rendered  his  original  esti- 
mate of  the  level  of  unemployment  implied  by 
anti-inflationary  policy  much  too  low;  and  later 
all  economists  accepted  the  need  for  some  margin 
of  spare  capacity,  even  though  they  might  dis- 
agree on  its  precise  level  and  on  the  role  of 
different  instruments  of  economic  policy.  In  the 
1960s  Paish's  views  were  unpopular  in  White- 
hall, where  his  prescriptions  were  neither  sought 
nor  taken.  The  tension  between  the  supporters  of 
his  approach,  who  included  colleagues  at  LSE, 
and  advocates  of  more  ambitious  demand  poli- 
cies, broadly  identified  with  the  Keynesian 
school  in  general  and  with  economists  in  Cam- 
bridge in  particular,  made  difficult  his  task  as 
editor  of  the  London  and  Cambridge  Economic 
Service,  which  produced  regular  assessments  of 
economic  conditions  by  economists  from  LSE 
and  Cambridge.  He  was  its  secretary  in  1932-41 
and  again  in  1945-9,  an^  editor  in  1947-9. 

His  publications  included  The  Post-war  Finan- 
cial Problem,  and  Other  Essays  (1950),  Business 
Finance  (1953),  Studies  in  an  Inflationary  Eco- 
nomy (1962),  Long-term  and  Short-term  Interest 
Rates  in  the  United  Kingdom  (1966),  (ed.),  Ben- 
ham's  Economics,  5th-8th  edns.  (1962-7)  and, 
with  A.  J.  Culver,  9th  edn.  (1973),  Rise  and  Fall 


34i 


Paish 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


of  Incomes  Policy  (1969),  and  How  the  Economy 
Works,  and  Other  Essays  (1970). 

He  was  of  medium  height  and  fair-haired, 
with  strikingly  blue  eyes.  His  war  wound  left  him 
with  a  limited  degree  of  movement  in  his  right 
shoulder,  which  necessitated  some  unusual  but 
spectacular  shots  at  the  table  tennis  which  was  an 
off-duty  diversion  of  the  senior  common  room  at 
1  .SI..  His  writing  and  his  teaching  had  a  direct- 
ness, clarity,  and  lack  of  pretentiousness  which 
were  characteristic  of  the  man.  He  had  a  boyish 
sense  of  humour  and  would  reach  the  heart  of  a 
subject  by  means  of  brief  and  pithy  comment.  He 
was  always  ready  to  help  his  students  and  was  an 
amiable  colleague;  but  behind  his  friendliness 
and  humour  there  was  a  robustness  and  even  a 
hint  of  steel,  which  owed  something,  perhaps,  to 
his  experience  in  World  War  I. 

In  1927  he  married  Beatrice  Mary  (died  1992), 
sister  of  Rachel,  who  married  Sir  Bryan  •Mat- 
thews, and  daughter  of  Gustav  Conrad  Eckhard, 
shipping  agent,  of  Manchester.  They  had  two 
sons  and  a  daughter.  Paish  died  in  Kentchurch, 
Hereford,  23  May  1988. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Harold  Rose 

PARKES,  Sir  Alan  Sterling  (1900- 1990),  pro- 
fessor of  the  physiology  of  reproduction,  was 
born  10  September  1900  in  Bank  House,  Castle- 
ton,  near  Rochdale,  the  younger  son  and  third  of 
four  children  of  Ebenezer  Thomas  Parkes,  bank 
manager,  and  his  wife  Helena  Louisa,  daughter 
of  Jonas  Banks,  brass  founder,  of  Willenhall.  He 
was  educated  at  Hulme  Grammar  School  in 
Oldham  and  Willaston  School  in  Nantwich, 
Cheshire.  After  he  failed  his  School  Certificate, 
he  went  for  a  year  to  Harper  Adams  Agricultural 
College  in  Newport,  Shropshire.  He  was  called 
up  in  1 91 8  and  did  a  brief  period  of  military 
service  in  the  Manchester  Regiment.  After 
demobilization,  he  went  in  19 19  to  Christ's 
College,  Cambridge,  which  waived  entrance 
examinations  for  servicemen.  He  studied  agri- 
culture and  obtained  a  second-class  pass  degree 
in  1 92 1.  After  this  inauspicious  start,  the  oppor- 
tunity to  read  for  a  Ph.D.  degree  (1923)  in  the 
University  of  Manchester  on  the  mammalian  sex 
ratio  opened  new  doors  into  the  world  of  biology 
and  experimental  research.  Professor  A.  V.  *Hill, 
his  internal  examiner,  invited  him  to  University 
College  London  in  1923,  where  he  became  Shar- 
pey  scholar  in  the  department  of  physiology  and 
subsequently  Beit  memorial  research  fellow 
(1924-30)  and  Foulerton  student  of  the  Royal 
Society  (1930-4).  He  gained  his  Cambridge 
D.Sc.  in  193 1. 

He  had  a  clear  and  analytical  mind  and  excep- 
tional ingenuity  as  an  experimentalist,  and  was 
an  indefatigable  and  versatile  worker.  He  was 
appointed  in  1932  to  the  staff  of  the  Medical 


Research  Council,  National  Institute  for  Medical 
Research,  Mill  Hill.  There  his  adventures  in 
biology  ranged  from  experimental  endocrinology 
to  setting  up  international  standards  for  hormone 
preparations  on  the  initiative  of  the  director,  Sir 
Henry  *Dale.  Distinguished  in  appearance,  of 
average  height,  sturdy  in  build,  and  with  a  shock 
of  white  hair  from  an  early  age,  he  returned  to 
Cambridge  in  1961,  as  the  first  holder  of  the 
Mary  Marshall  and  Arthur  Walton  chair  of  the 
physiology  of  reproduction  (until  1967).  He  was 
a  fellow  of  Christ's  College  from  1961  to  1969 
and  an  honorary  fellow  from  1970. 

His  most  influential  research  concerned  the 
survival  of  cells,  tissues,  and  whole  animals  at 
low  temperature.  He  played  a  major  part  with 
Audrey  Smith  and  Christopher  Polge  in  develop- 
ing the  technique  of  storing  and  transporting  at 
very  low  temperatures  spermatozoa  for  artificial 
insemination,  and  in  discovering  that  certain 
small  rodents  could  survive  cooling  to  low  tem- 
peratures without  showing  apparent  physiolog- 
ical or  psychological  impairment.  Such  work  led 
to  the  formation  of  a  new  scientific  society  and 
the  establishment  of  the  journal  Cryobiology,  a 
name  he  and  his  colleagues  coined  'to  fill  an 
etymological  vacuum'. 

His  research  into  many  aspects  of  repro- 
ductive physiology  led  to  articles  describing  the 
patterns  of  reproduction  in  a  number  of  wild  and 
laboratory  mammals,  several  of  them  written 
with  his  wife  Ruth,  whom  he  married  in  1933. 
She  was  the  daughter  of  Edward  Deanesly, 
surgeon,  of  Cheltenham,  and  they  had  one  son 
and  two  daughters.  He  published  freely  on  the 
effects  of  X-rays  on  reproductive  functions,  the 
hormonal  control  of  secondary  sexual  character- 
istics of  birds,  and,  with  Hilda  Bruce,  the 
remarkable  capacity  of  certain  pheromones  to 
block  the  course  of  pregnancy.  After  his  retire- 
ment from  Cambridge  he  became  consultant  to 
the  world's  first  sea  turtle  farm  on  Grand  Cay- 
man island  (1973-80).  Always  retaining  a  very 
broad  interest  in  biology,  he  was  deeply  involved 
in  associated  social  and  ethical  questions, 
particularly  those  relating  to  human  populations. 
His  views  about  sensitive  issues  such  as  women's 
right  to  abortion,  costly  transplant  surgery  com- 
pared to  simpler  operations,  and  the  quality  of 
human  populations  are  reflected  in  Sex,  Science 
and  Society  (1966).  Other  important  publications 
are  his  The  Internal  Secretions  of  the  Ovary  (1929) 
and  Patterns  of  Sexuality  and  Reproduction 
(1976). 

He  gave  numerous  distinguished  named  lec- 
tures in  different  countries,  and  held  presi- 
dencies, chairmanships,  and  medals  of  various 
learned  societies.  He  was  editor  and  prime  mover 
of  new  journals  and  monumental  primary  vol- 
umes in  the  science  he  sought  to  foster.  His 
devastating  incisiveness  and  dynamism  took  him 


342 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Parkinson 


at  an  early  age  to  fellowship  of  the  Royal  Society 
(1933),  and  to  a  CBE  (1956)  and  a  knighthood 
(1968).  His  lively  sense  of  humour  is  displayed  in 
two  light-hearted  and  highly  entertaining  auto- 
biographies, Off-beat  Biologist  (1985)  and  Bio- 
logist at  Large  (1988).  One  of  the  founders  of 
modern  reproductive  biology,  he  died  17  July 
1990  in  Shepreth,  Cambridgeshire. 

[Alan  S.  Parkes,  Off-beat  Biologist,  1985,  and  Biologist 
at  Large,  1988;  R.  W.  J.  Keay  in  Biologist,  vol.  xxrvii, 
1900;  personal  knowledge.]  R.  B.  Heap 

PARKINSON,  Norman  (1913-1990),  photogra- 
pher, was  born  Ronald  William  Smith  in  Roe- 
hampton,  London,  21  April  1913,  the  second  of 
three  children  and  younger  son  of  William  James 
Parkinson  Smith,  barrister  and  councillor  of  the 
borough  of  Wandsworth,  and  his  wife,  Louise 
Emily  Cobley.  Evacuated  to  the  countryside 
during  World  War  I,  he  returned  to  live  in  the 
family  home  at  32  Landlord  Road,  Putney. 
Educated  at  Westminster  School  (1927-31),  he 
described  himself  as  'scholastically  abysmal',  but 
received  the  encouragement  of  the  art  master, 
Henry  S.  Williamson,  and  was  awarded  the 
school's  Henry  Luce  art  prize.  In  1931  he  was 
apprenticed  to  the  distinguished  Bond  Street 
court  photographers,  Speaight  &  Son.  With  a 
solid,  if  traditional,  grounding  in  his  craft  he  was 
able  to  set  up  in  1934  (initially  in  partnership 
with  Norman  Kibblewhite)  the  Norman  Parkin- 
son Portrait  Studio  at  1  Dover  Street,  London.  It 
was  after  this  that  he  adopted  the  name  Norman 
Parkinson. 

His  earliest  photographs,  many  of  which  were 
published  in  the  Bystander,  were  principally  of 
debutantes,  but  a  chance  meeting  in  1935  with 
P.  Joyce  Reynolds,  editor  of  Harper  s  Bazaar, 
changed  the  course  of  his  career.  Invited  to  try 
fashion  photography,  he  was  persuaded  by  the 
magazine's  art  director,  A.  Y.  McPeake,  to  photo- 
graph outdoors.  Parkinson  became  a  pioneer  in 
the  genre,  rejecting  the  static,  posed  artificiality 
of  the  studio  and  appropriating  the  naturalism 
and  immediacy  of  contemporary  news  photo- 
graphy. He  was  also  broadening  his  range,  and 
notable  early  portraits  include  those  of  (Sir)  Noel 
*Coward,  the  *Sitwells,  and  Edward  James,  a 
patron  of  the  arts.  His  regular  contributions  of 
current  affairs  photographs  to  the  Bystander 
included  a  report  on  unemployed  Welsh  miners 
and  a  weekly  series,  from  1937,  on  the  armed 
forces  preparing  for  war.  Parkinson  combined  a 
modern  style  with  traditional  content  in  col- 
laborating with  the  experimental  photographer, 
Francis  Bruguiere,  on  photo-murals  for  the  Brit- 
ish pavilion  at  the  1937  Paris  Exposition  Uni- 
verselle,  images  of  quintessential  'Britishness' 
anticipating  his  neo-Elizabethan  iconography  of 
the  postwar  years.  During  World  War  II  he 


combined  farming,  at  Bushley,  Worcestershire, 
with  photography. 

Parkinson's  long  association  with  Vogue  began 
in  1940.  Its  an  editor,  John  Parsons,  was  another 
catalyst  in  Parkinson's  career,  redirecting  him  to 
sources  within  the  history  of  English  painting 
and  architecture.  His  photographs  offered  the 
solace  of  the  English  rural  idyll  during  wartime 
deprivations,  and  served  as  a  reaffirmation  of 
enduring  values  in  the  years  of  postwar  austerity. 
War  damage  destroyed  most  of  his  pre-war 
negatives. 

From  1949  to  1955  Parkinson  spent  summer 
months  in  New  York,  working  for  American 
Vogue.  He  began  to  photograph  increasingly  in 
colour,  in  exotic  locations  throughout  the  world, 
a  development  which  became  a  cornerstone  of 
his  later  style.  His  contract  with  Vogue  having 
expired  in  1959,  he  became  photographer  and 
associate  editor  from  i960  to  1964  on  Queen 
magazine,  a  base  from  which  he  launched  his 
alternative  view  of  the  culture  of  the  1960s.  In 
1963  he  bought  a  house  in  Tobago,  subsequently 
dividing  his  time  between  there  and  Twicken- 
ham. It  was  in  Tobago  that  he  became  a  pig 
breeder  and  manufactured  his  well-known  sau- 
sage, the  Porkinson  banger.  In  1968  he  was 
elected  an  honorary  fellow  of  the  Royal  Photo- 
graphic Society. 

Parkinson  combined  hard  work  and  perfec- 
tionism with  a  keen  sense  of  humour.  Six  feet 
five  inches  tall,  slim  and  mustachioed,  he  was  an 
imposing  figure,  and  his  elegant  if  often  uncon- 
ventional mode  of  dress,  which  included  a  Kash- 
miri wedding  cap,  regularly  gained  him  a  place 
on  British  and  international  lists  of  best  dressed 
men.  He  returned  to  Vogue  from  1965  until  he 
severed  his  connection  with  the  Conde  Nast 
organization  following  a  dispute  in  1978.  His 
twenty-first  birthday  photographs  of  Princess 
Anne  in  1971,  and  his  coverage  of  her  engage- 
ment and  wedding  in  1973,  were  widely  con- 
sidered a  breakthrough  in  the  glamorous  and 
informal  portrayal  of  royalty.  Many  similarly 
acclaimed  commissions  followed,  including  the 
queen  mother's  seventy-fifth  birthday  photo- 
graphs, and  the  triple  portrait  with  her  daughters 
to  mark  her  eightieth  birthday. 

Now  recognized  as  a  doyen  of  British  photo- 
graphy, Parkinson  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Institute  of  Incorporated  Photographers  in  1975, 
and  in  1981  he  was  appointed  CBE.  His  first 
major  museum  retrospective  opened  in  London's 
National  Portrait  Gallery  later  in  the  same  year. 
In  1978  he  began  regular  assignments  photo- 
graphing the  wealthy  and  famous  for  Town  and 
Country  magazine,  which  again  brought  his  name 
to  prominence  in  the  USA.  In  1983  he  received 
the  American  Society  of  Magazine  Photogra- 
phers' 'lifetime  of  achievement'  award. 


343 


Parkinson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


In  November  1935  he  married  Margaret, 
daughter  of  Sir  Reginald  Mitchell  Banks,  county 
court  judge.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  and  in 
1942  he  married  Thelma  Woolley,  daughter  of 
George  Blay,  timber  merchant.  There  were  no 
children  from  either  marriage.  In  1947  Parkinson 
met  Wenda  (died  1987),  second  daughter  of 
William  Albert  Rogerson,  FRCP,  FRCS,  of  the 
Royal  Army  Medical  Corps,  and  she  became  for 
many  years  his  favourite  model  and  muse. 
Together  they  raised  her  son  by  a  previous 
marriage,  Simon  (born  1945),  as  Simon  Parkin- 
son. Parkinson  suffered  a  stroke  while  on  assign- 
ment in  Borneo,  and  died  two  weeks  later  in 
Singapore,  14  February  1090. 

[Norman  Parkinson,  Lifework,  1983;  private  informa- 
tion.] Martin  Harrison 

PART,  Sir  Antony  Alexander  (1916-1990), 
civil  servant,  was  born  28  June  19 16  in  Chelsea, 
London,  the  only  son  of  Alexander  Francis  Part, 
barrister  and  company  director,  from  a  Lanca- 
shire family,  and  his  second  wife,  Una  Margaret 
Reynolds  Snowdon,  from  Yorkshire.  He  had  a 
younger  sister,  an  older  half-brother  and  half- 
sister,  and  a  younger  half-brother.  His  early 
childhood  years  were  spent  in  happy  and  pros- 
perous family  surroundings  in  Chelsea,  but  his 
adolescence  was  overshadowed  by  his  parents' 
divorce.  After  a  good  grounding  in  classics  at  a 
preparatory  school  he  entered  Harrow  with  a 
scholarship  at  the  age  of  twelve  and  later  spe- 
cialized in  French  and  German.  He  won  a 
scholarship  to  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  achieved  first-class  honours  in  both 
parts  of  the  modern  and  medieval  languages 
tripos  (1935  and  1937). 

He  entered  the  Board  of  Education  in  1937 
through  the  competitive  examination  for  the 
administrative  class  of  the  Home  Civil  Service. 
Though  he  was  soon  lent  to  the  newly  created 
Ministry  of  Supply,  a  keen  interest  in  education 
and  training  motivated  the  greater  part  of  his 
Civil  Service  career. 

He  joined  the  Royal  Ulster  Rifles  in  1940,  but 
his  knowledge  of  German  quickly  led  to  a  com- 
mission in  the  Intelligence  Corps,  where  by  1943 
he  had  gained  rapid  promotion  to  lieutenant- 
colonel,  serving  in  the  Western  Desert  campaign 
and  later  in  the  21st  Army  Group  headquarters 
preparing  for  the  invasion  of  France.  His  person- 
ality was  changing.  At  school  he  had  been  shy 
and  retiring.  University  had  built  his  self-con- 
fidence. Finding  in  the  army  that  he  was  thought 
somewhat  over-assertive,  he  learned  an  import- 
ant lesson  about  leadership  which  he  never 
forgot. 

He  was  recalled  to  the  Ministry  of  Education 
at  the  end  of  1944  and  became  principal  private 
secretary  to  three  successive  ministers.  His  first 
major  opportunity  came  in  1946  when  he  and  the 


chief  architect  of  the  department  as  joint  heads 
set  up  a  new  branch  to  assist  education  author- 
ities to  build  the  new  schools  needed  to  meet  the 
demands  of  the  rising  birth  rate  and  the  raising  of 
the  school  leaving  age.  The  programme  they 
developed  was  so  effective  in  enabling  good 
schools  to  be  built  quickly  at  acceptable  cost  that 
it  earned  international  reputation.  As  a  Com- 
monwealth Fund  fellow  in  the  USA  in  1 950-1, 
Part  found  leading  American  experts  in  school 
building  eager  to  learn  from  him  about  these 
British  methods.  He  contracted  tuberculosis  in 
America  and  did  not  return  to  work  until  spring 

1953- 

Promoted  to  under-secretary  in  1954  as  head 
of  the  schools  branch  and  later  of  the  further 
education  branch,  he  was  active  in  the  initiatives 
to  improve  and  expand  technical  training  at  all 
levels  through  technical  colleges  and  colleges  of 
advanced  technology.  He  became  deputy  secre- 
tary in  i960,  covering  teacher  training  and  fur- 
ther education,  served  as  a  departmental  assessor 
on  the  committee  on  higher  education  (196 1-4) 
chaired  by  Baron  *Robbins,  and  seemed  well 
positioned  by  ability  and  experience  to  achieve 
his  growing  ambition  to  become  permanent  sec- 
retary of  the  Ministry  of  Education. 

There  were,  however,  other  plans  for  him.  In 
March  1963  he  was  moved  to  the  Ministry  of 
Works  to  organize  a  merger  of  departments  into 
the  Ministry  of  Public  Building  and  Works,  of 
which  he  became  permanent  secretary  in  1965.  It 
was  as  permanent  secretary  of  the  Board  of 
Trade  in  1968,  of  the  newly  created  Department 
of  Trade  and  Industry  in  1970,  and  of  the 
Department  of  Industry  from  1974  to  1976  that 
he  had  the  greatest  scope  for  the  exercise  of  his 
talents  and  experience.  He  worked  hard  to  estab- 
lish an  industrial  department  as  a  major  force  in 
Whitehall  and  was  greatly  upset  by  the  decision 
of  the  Labour  government  to  split  the  DTI  into 
three  in  1974. 

His  strengths  were  his  vision,  his  genuine 
interest  in  manufacturing  industry,  his  ability  to 
work  constructively  with  most  businessmen, 
trade  unionists,  and  politicians,  and  his  flair  for 
public  speaking.  He  exhibited  great  energy  and 
determination  in  everything  he  undertook, 
whether  in  the  fields  of  education  or  trade  and 
industry.  He  put  into  practice  his  strong  convic- 
tion that  public  administration  should  be  effi- 
cient and  financially  prudent. 

Retiring  from  the  Civil  Service  in  1976,  he 
took  up  a  new  career  as  a  non-executive  director 
of  a  number  of  firms,  including  chairmanship  of 
Orion  Insurance  Company.  He  continued  his 
active  interest  in  education  as  deputy  chairman 
of  the  court  of  governors  of  the  London  School 
of  Economics. 

Part  was  appointed  MBE  (1943),  CB  (1959), 
KCB  (1966),  and   GCB  (1974).   He  received 


344 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Pears 


honorary  degrees  from  Brunei  (1966),  Aston 
(1974),  and  Cranfield  (1976),  and  LSE  honorary 
fellowship  (1984).  In  his  prime  he  was  tall  and 
dark  with  a  confident  bearing.  However,  he  had 
poor  health  all  his  life  and  this  greatly  affected  his 
appearance  in  his  last  years  in  the  Gvil  Service 
and  thereafter,  major  heart  surgery  causing  him 
to  have  a  pronounced  stoop  and  to  move  very 
slowly.  He  enjoyed  the  performing  arts,  but  his 
main  interests  were  in  his  work  in  both  public 
and  private  sectors,  which  despite  his  ready  wit 
he  took  very  seriously.  In  1940  he  married  a 
ballet  dancer,  Isabella  ('Ella'),  daughter  of  Maur- 
ice Bennett,  businessman.  His  marriage  was 
happy  and  although  they  had  no  children,  he  and 
his  wife  maintained  a  close  relationship  with  his 
siblings  and  their  children.  Part  died  of  heart 
failure  in  Westminster  Hospital,  London,  11 
January  1990. 

[Sir  Antony  Part,  The  Making  of  a  Mandarin,  1990; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Douglas  Allen 

PEARCE,  Edward  Holroyd,  Baron  Pearce 
(1901-1990),  lord  of  appeal,  was  born  9  February 
190 1  in  Sidcup,  Kent,  the  elder  son  (there  were 
subsequently  three  daughters)  of  John  William 
Ernest  Pearce,  headmaster  of  a  preparatory 
school,  and  his  wife  Irene,  daughter  of  Holroyd 
Chaplin.  He  was  educated  at  Charterhouse  and 
Corpus  Chrisri  College,  Oxford,  of  which  he 
became  an  honorary  fellow  in  1950.  He  obtained 
a  first  in  classical  honour  moderations  (1921)  and 
a  third  class  in  literae  humaniores  (1923).  While  at 
Oxford  he  showed  great  prowess  on  the  games 
field.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  in  1925  by 
Lincoln's  Inn  and  the  Middle  Temple. 

In  the  decade  before  World  War  II  his  promis- 
ing career  as  a  junior  barrister  was  interrupted  by 
tuberculosis.  After  a  period  in  Switzerland  he 
was  sufficiently  cured  to  enable  him  to  resume 
his  practice,  but  ever  afterwards  he  had  to  be 
particularly  careful  about  his  health.  Exempt 
from  war  service,  he  continued  his  practice 
throughout  World  War  II.  Pearce  became  deputy 
chairman  of  East  Sussex  quarter-sessions  in  1947 
and  was  appointed  a  High  Court  judge  in  1948, 
with  the  customary  knighthood.  He  was  first 
assigned  to  the  Probate,  Divorce,  and  Admiralty- 
Division,  moving  to  the  Queen's  Bench  Division 
in  1954.  In  1957  he  was  made  a  lord  justice  of 
appeal  and  a  privy  councillor.  From  1962,  when 
he  was  created  a  life  peer,  to  1969  he  was  a  lord 
of  appeal  in  ordinary.  He  was  a  popular  and 
successful  judge,  with  a  clear  and  perceptive 
mind  and  friendly  manner. 

On  his  retirement  in  1969  Pearce  took  over  the 
chairmanship  of  the  Press  Council,  which  he 
held  until  1974.  He  constantly  emphasized  the 
link  between  the  freedom  of  the  press  and  its 
responsibility.    At   the   same   time   he   became 


chairman  of  the  appeals  committee  of  the  Take- 
over Panel  (until  1976).  He  had  also  served  on 
other  important  commissions  and  committees, 
notably  (as  chairman)  the  committee  on  ship- 
building costs  (1947-9)  and  the  royal  commission 
on  marriage  and  divorce  (195 1-5),  of  which  he 
was  an  influential  member.  He  was  a  leading 
figure  in  the  committee  of  the  four  inns  of  court 
which  set  up  a  senate  to  iron  out  their  differences 
(197 1-3).  He  became  a  bencher  of  Lincoln's  Inn 
in  1048  and  treasurer  in  1966.  As  past  master  and 
past  member  of  the  court  of  the  Company  of 
Skinners  he  was  a  governor  of  Charterhouse 
(1943-64),  Tonbridge  School  (1945-78),  and 
Sutton's  Hospital  in  Charterhouse. 

Pearce  became  a  household  name  in  1971 
when  he  became  chairman  of  a  commission  set 
up  to  determine  Rhodesia's  reaction  to  a  pro- 
posed constitutional  settlement.  The  Pearce 
commission  reported  in  May  1972  that  the  pro- 
posed terms  were  generally  unacceptable  and 
massively  rejected  by  the  Africans.  The  pro- 
posals were  shelved  and  the  status  quo  con- 
tinued. 

Pearce  was  exceptionally  hard-working,  cheer- 
ful, happy,  and  readily  approachable.  A  distinctly 
attractive  man,  Pearce  was  ever-smiling  and 
good-humoured.  About  five  feet  ten  inches  talL, 
he  kept  his  light  red  hair  to  the  end.  He  used 
plain  language  when  unravelling  problems  at  the 
bench  and  in  the  Law  Reports.  His  simplicity  of 
expression  and  manner  made  him  an  ideal  chair- 
man of  committees.  He  was  much  in  demand  as 
a  witty  after-dinner  speaker.  Both  he  and  his  wife 
were  talented  artists,  who  held  shows  together  or 
separately,  and  he  exhibited  regularly  at  the 
Royal  Academy.  He  was  also  an  ardent  collector 
of  pictures  and  sometimes  sculpture.  He  became 
president  of  the  Artists  League  of  Great  Britain 
(1950-74)  and  a  trustee  of  the  Chantrey  Bequest. 
At  their  home  in  Crowborough  he  and  his  wife 
made  a  lovely  garden.  In  later  years  Pearce 
suffered  with  trouble  to  both  his  hips. 

In  1927  he  married  Erica  (died  1985),  daugh- 
ter of  Bertram  Priestman,  RA,  artist.  It  was  an 
extremely  happy  marriage  and  she  did  much  to 
encourage  his  interest  in  an.  They  had  two  sons, 
both  of  whom  became  QCs,  the  elder  of  whom 
died  in  1987  and  the  younger  in  1985.  Pearce  was 
never  a  rich  man — until  the  very  end.  His  artistic 
eye  had  picked  up  a  sculpture  some  thirty  years 
beforehand,  for  about  £15.  Just  before  his  death 
this  'dancing  faun'  turned  out  to  be  the  work  of 
a  sixteenth-century  Italian  sculptor  and  was  sold 
for  £6.2  million  in  a  London  sale.  Pearce  died  26 
November  1990  in  Crowborough,  Sussex. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  James  Comyn 

PEARS,  Sir  Peter  Neville  Luard  (1910-1986), 
tenor,  was  born  22  June  19 10  at  Newark  House, 
Searle  Road,  Farnham,  Surrey,  the  youngest  in 


345 


Pears 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  family  of  four  daughters,  one  of  whom  died 
in  infancy,  and  three  sons  of  Arthur  Grant  Pears, 
civil  engineer  and  later  a  director  of  Burma 
Railways,  and  his  wife,  Jessie  Elizabeth  de  Visme 
Luard.  Pears's  parents  were  married  in  Bombay 
in  1893.  Much  of  his  father's  working  life  was 
spent  overseas,  which  meant  that  Peter  had  little 
contact  with  him  until  after  1923,  when  Arthur 
Pears  retired,  to  live  in  England.  Pears's  mother 
too  was  often  absent,  though  it  is  clear  from  his 
letters  that  his  relationship  with  her  was  a  fond 
one  and  sustained  throughout  his  young  man- 
hood. His  brothers  followed  naval  careers,  con- 
tinuing a  family  tradition  in  which  there  was  a 
strong  service  element:  his  mother's  father  had 
been  a  general.  But  there  was  also  another  and 
altogether  different  strand  in  Pears's  ancestry, 
that  of  the  Church  and,  more  particularly,  the 
influence  of  Pears's  great-great-grandmother, 
Elizabeth  *Fry,  the  Quaker  reformer.  A  bonding 
with  Quakerism  was  to  continue  throughout 
Pears's  life  and  was  reflected  in  his  pacifism,  his 
sense  of  values,  and  his  virtues.  There  was 
indeed  something  of  the  patrician  Quaker  in  his 
looks,  manners,  and  deeds.  His  habitual  charm 
and  courtesy  rarely  deserted  him. 

Pears's  childhood,  even  though  it  may  have 
lacked  the  continuity  of  a  settled  home,  seems  to 
have  been  a  happy  one,  as  indeed  were  his 
school-days  at  Lancing  College,  Sussex,  which 
he  entered  as  a  classical  scholar  in  1923.  At 
Lancing  he  became  aware  of  his  homosexual 
nature,  though  it  was  to  be  some  years  before  it 
found  fulfilment.  In  this  respect  he  was  to  live  at 
ease  with  himself  throughout  his  life.  It  was  at 
school,  too,  that  his  musical  and  theatrical  gifts 
and  inclinations  showed  themselves.  He  was  a 
capable  pianist,  took  part  in  operatic  and  dra- 
matic productions,  and  involved  himself  in  the 
school's  cultural  life.  He  was  an  accomplished 
cricketer.  As  his  school-days  ended,  his  love  of 
painting  seems  to  have  begun:  his  taste  and 
judgement  aided  him  in  the  acquisition  across 
the  years  of  a  notable  private  collection  which 
included  many  examples  of  the  work  of  the  best 
British  artists  of  the  period. 

In  1928  he  went  to  Keble  College,  Oxford,  to 
study  music,  but  again  without  a  very  clear 
musical  goal  in  mind.  For  a  while  he  had  a  post 
at  Hertford  College  as  temporary  organist.  But 
his  Oxford  career  was  short-lived.  He  failed 
his  pass  moderations,  left  Oxford,  and  never 
returned.  He  went  back  to  his  preparatory 
school,  The  Grange  (Crowborough),  in  1929,  but 
this  time  as  a  teacher,  and  resumed  his  interest  in 
cricket.  At  this  point  Pears's  instinct  for  music 
finally  located  itself  in  his  voice.  This  led  to  his 
undertaking,  for  the  first  time,  professional  vocal 
studies  at  the  Royal  College  of  Music  in  London, 
initially  on  a  part-time  basis  and  then,  in  1934,  as 
a  full-time  student  (he  was  an  operatic  exhibi- 


tioner). Again,  however,  he  never  completed  the 
course.  He  left  after  only  two  terms,  during 
which  he  participated  in  college  operatic  produc- 
tions, to  begin  his  professional  career  as  a  singer, 
with  the  BBC  Singers  (1934-7)  ar»d,  in  1936,  the 
New  English  Singers,  with  whom  he  made  his 
first  visit  to  the  USA.  In  finally  making  his 
commitment  specifically  to  a  singer's  life,  he  was 
helped  by  Nell  Burra.  She  was  the  twin  sister  of 
Peter  Burra,  a  close  friend  of  Pears  at  Lancing 
and  Oxford,  whose  life  Pears  was  briefly  to  share 
in  1936  and  1937.  It  was  a  friendship  which  was 
to  have  a  momentous  consequence  for  Pears  and 
indeed  for  the  history  of  British  music. 

Burra,  a  gifted  writer  on  the  arts,  had  met  the 
young  composer,  Benjamin  (later  Baron)  •Brit- 
ten, in  Barcelona  in  1936,  and  the  two  men 
became  friends.  This  was  before  Pears  and  Brit- 
ten themselves  had  met.  It  was  Burra's  untimely 
death  in  an  air  accident  in  1937  that  brought 
Pears  and  Britten  together.  Their  remarkable 
partnership  had  its  inception  in  April  of  that  year 
when,  as  Burra's  friends,  they  jointly  sorted  out 
his  personal  papers.  Thus  the  end  of  one  friend- 
ship was  the  beginning  of  another;  and  thereafter 
the  careers  of  Pears  and  Britten  were  inextricably 
interlinked,  as  were  their  lives  (they  began  to 
share  a  flat  in  1938),  though  it  was  not  in  fact 
until  1939  in  Canada  that  the  love  each  had  for 
the  other  finally  declared  itself.  It  was  to  be 
sustained  over  thirty-six  years.  Pears  had  left 
England  for  North  America  with  Britten  in  the 
same  year  and  they  were  not  to  return  until  1942, 
when  both  men,  convinced  pacifists  of  long 
standing,  sought  and  were  granted  exemption 
from  military  service,  provided  they  continued 
their  wartime  work  as  performing  musicians. 

Pears,  already  in  1938,  had  had  professional 
experience  of  opera  as  a  member  of  the  chorus  at 
Glyndebourne,  when  he  was  described  by  a 
fellow  artist  as  'tall,  fair-haired,  reserved  and 
poetic-looking',  most  of  which  characteristics 
were  to  remain  unchanged.  Britten's  phenomenal 
development  as  a  composer  for  the  opera  house, 
which  had  begun  in  the  USA,  inevitably  brought 
with  it  a  comparable  development  in  Pears,  for 
whom  Britten  wrote  an  extraordinary  number 
and  variety  of  leading  roles  in  almost  all  of  his 
principal  operas,  from  Peter  Grimes  (1945)  to 
Death  in  Venice  (1973).  It  was  in  that  last  opera, 
dedicated  to  Pears,  that  Pears  was  to  make  his 
debut  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera,  New  York,  in 
1974,  at  the  age  of  sixty-four.  But  while  it  is  true 
that  Britten's  operas  shaped  Pears's  destiny  as  an 
opera  singer,  it  must  be  remembered  that  Pears, 
on  his  return  to  England  from  America,  had 
established  himself  independently  as  a  notable 
member  of  the  Sadler's  Wells  company,  appear- 
ing in  such  roles  as  Alfredo  in  La  Traviata, 
Ferrando  in  Cost  fan  tutte,  the  Duke  in  Rigoletto, 


346 


D.N  B.  1986-1990 


Pears 


Almaviva  in  The  Barber  of  Seville,  and  Vasek  in 
The  Bartered  Bride.  His  performances  attracted 
critical  attention  for  their  exceptional  musicality 
and  intelligence  and  admiration  from  Britten, 
who  was  often  in  the  theatre  as  a  member  of  the 
audience.  It  was  his  growing  confidence  in 
Pears's  theatrical  and  vocal  skills  that  enabled 
Britten  to  write  the  title  role  of  Peter  Grimes  with 
Pears's  voice  in  mind  (he  had  at  one  time  thought 
of  Grimes  as  a  baritone).  The  famous  world 
premiere  of  the  opera  on  7  June  1945  placed  the 
composer  in  the  front  rank  of  musical  dramatists 
of  his  time  and  Pears  as  his  principal  inter- 
preter. 

It  was  not  only  as  a  singer  that  Pears  and  his 
unique  voice  had  an  influential  role  to  play  in 
Britten's  operas.  In  one  of  them,  A  Midsummer 
Sights  Dream  (i960),  he  collaborated  with  the 
composer  in  converting  Shakespeare's  text  into  a 
libretto.  He  was  also  the  inspiration  of  the  long 
series  of  song  sets  and  song  cycles  that  Britten 
composed  between  1940  (the  Seven  Sonnets  of 
Michelangelo)  and  1975  (A  Birthday  Hansel),  a 
legacy  of  song  perhaps  without  equal  in  the 
twentieth  century.  This  rich  fund  of  songs 
reflected  the  prowess  of  Pears  and  Britten  as 
performers.  They  were  to  establish  themselves  as 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  and  accomplished 
voice  and  piano  duos  of  the  postwar  period,  with 
an  extensive  repertory  that  included  much  of  the 
work  of  Henry  *Purcell  (when  his  songs  were  by 
no  means  the  staple  diet  of  recital  programmes) 
and  the  great  nineteenth-century  classic  song 
cycles — for  example,  Schubert's  Winterreise 
and  Schumann's  Dichterliebe — in  interpretations 
which  themselves  achieved  classic  status,  and 
have  been  preserved  on  gramophone  records.  His 
partnership  with  the  lute  virtuoso  Julian  Bream 
was  to  become  almost  as  celebrated,  perhaps 
especially  for  performances  of  the  Elizabethan 
master,  John  *Dowland,  of  incomparable  sensi- 
tivity and  skill  from  both  singer  and  accom- 
panist. Of  equal  note  was  Pears's  Evangelist  in 
the  Passions  of  Heinrich  Schiitz  and  J.  S.  Bach, 
roles  to  which  he  brought  not  only  a  predictable 
sensitivity  but  also  an  overwhelming  sense  of 
immediacy,  as  if  he  were  a  participant  in  the 
drama  that  was  being  unfolded.  This  was  musical 
'theatre'  of  an  unusually  exalted  order. 

The  pattern  of  Pears's  life,  inextricably  woven 
with  the  pattern  of  Britten's  (until  he  suffered  a 
slight  stroke  in  1973  as  a  result  of  his  heart 
operation  Britten  was  virtually  the  only  pianist  to 
accompany  Pears),  took  the  shape  of  strenuous 
recital  tours,  at  home  and  abroad,  recording  and 
broadcasting;  and  planning  the  policy  of  the 
English  Opera  Group  (of  which  he  was  a 
co-founder,  in  1947)  and  the  programmes  of  the 
annual  Aldeburgh  Festival  (of  which  too  he  was 
a  co-founder,  in  1948).  He  played  a  leading  role 


in  both  organizations  as  a  performer  and  a 
stimulating,  highly  individual  impresario. 

It  was  Britten's  name,  as  opera  and  song 
composer  and  pianist,  that  was  inevitably  most 
closely  associated  with  Pears's.  But  his  distinc- 
tive interpretations  of  roles  other  than  Britten 
roles  will  not  be  forgotten:  his  Tamino  in  The 
Magic  Flute,  Idomeneo  (in  Mozart's  opera), 
David  in  The  Mastersingers,  and  Pandarus  in 
Troilus  and  Cressida  by  (Sir)  William  'Walton, 
were  all  marked  by  the  exceptional  musicality 
and  intelligence  that  characterized  him  as  a 
singer  and,  above  all,  by  his  exceptional  response 
to,  and  articulation  of,  words.  He  was  as  sensitive 
to  the  sounds  of  words  as  he  was  to  pitches.  It 
was  a  gift  that  enabled  him  to  bring  even  a  'dead' 
classical  language  to  life,  as  in  his  masterly 
performance  as  Oedipus  in  Igor  Stravinsky's 
opera-oratorio,  in  which  he  collaborated  with  the 
composer.  He  was  an  enquiring  and  adventurous 
singer  too,  as  the  long  list  of  first  performances 
by  living  composers  other  than  Britten  amply 
demonstrates,  among  them  commissions  which 
he  himself  generously  funded.  His  commitment 
to  the  singer's  life  and  art,  which  had  begun  so 
tentatively  in  the  1930s,  found  further  reflection 
in  his  later  years  when  he  was  an  active  teacher  in 
the  Britten-Pears  School  for  Advanced  Musical 
Studies.  This  he  had  co-founded  with  Benjamin 
Britten  in  1972,  and,  after  the  incapacitating 
stroke  he  suffered  in  1980  which  brought  his 
career  as  a  performer  virtually  to  an  end,  he 
devoted  more  and  more  of  his  time  to  it.  It  was 
entirely  appropriate  that  he  should  die  at  home  at 
Aldeburgh,  the  focus  of  his  personal  and  musical 
life  for  so  many  years,  having  completed,  the  day 
before,  a  full  day's  teaching  at  the  School — a 
course,  as  it  happened,  on  Bach's  Passions — 
passing  on  to  future  generations  his  own  unique 
experience  of  music,  of  creative  partnership,  of 
the  spectrum  of  the  arts,  of  life  itself.  It  was  the 
totality  of  all  of  these  that  coloured  and  informed 
Pears's  voice  and  made  it  the  unique  instrument 
that  it  was.  There  were  some  who  found  it 
difficult  to  come  to  terms  with  its  peculiar 
timbre.  But  his  admirers,  who  were  worldwide, 
rightly  regarded  it  as  a  vehicle  of  civilization  and 
sensibility  without  equal  among  English  singers 
of  his  time. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1957  and  knighted 
in  1978.  He  received  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  York  (1969),  Sussex  (1971),  Cam- 
bridge (1972),  Edinburgh  (1976),  East  Anglia 
(1980),  Essex  (1981),  and  Oxford  (1981).  Keble 
College  made  him  an  honorary  fellow  in  1978. 
From  1957  he  and  Britten  lived  together  in  the 
Red  House  in  Aldeburgh,  Suffolk.  After  Brit- 
ten's death  in  1976  Pears  continued  to  live  in  the 
house  until  his  own  death  there  3  April  1986.  He 
was  buried  beside  Britten  in  the  churchvard  of 


347 


Pears 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  parish  church  of  St  Peter  and  St  Paul, 
Aldeburgh. 

[Christopher  Headington,  Peter  Pears:  a  Biography, 
1092;  Marion  Thorpe  (ed.),  Peter  Pears:  a  Tribute  on  his 
75th  Birthday,  1985;  Donald  Mitchell  and  Philip  Reed, 
Letters  from  a  Life:  the  Selected  Letters  and  Diaries  of 
Benjamin  Britten  igij-ig?6,  2  vols.,  1901;  personal 
knowledge.]  Donald  Mitchell 

PEART,  (Thomas)  Frederick,  Baron  Peart 
(1914-1988),  politician,  the  first  parliamentarian 
since  Benjamin  *Disraeli  to  become  leader  of 
both  houses  of  Parliament,  was  born  in  Durham 
30  April  191 4,  the  elder  son  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Emerson  Featherstone  Peart,  a 
Weardale  schoolmaster,  and  his  wife,  Florence 
Maud  Hopper.  The  harsh  realities  of  life  for  the 
families  whose  children  his  father  taught  gave 
Peart  a  lifelong  commitment  to  the  Labour 
movement.  Starting  his  education  at  Crook 
Council  School,  he  went  on  to  Wolsingham 
Grammar  and  Henry  Smith's  School  in  Hartle- 
pool. He  read  science  at  the  College  of  the 
Venerable  Bede  (Durham  University),  becoming 
president  of  the  Labour  Club  and  of  the  uni- 
versity union.  Excelling  at  boxing,  he  also  repre- 
sented his  university  at  rugby  and  football. 

Unusually  for  a  science  graduate,  he  began 
studying  at  the  Inner  Temple.  He  was  not  called 
to  the  bar,  opting  instead  to  return  to  his  roots  in 
Durham  as  a  schoolteacher  and  a  lecturer  in 
economics,  campaigning  with  characteristic  vig- 
our to  improve  educational  opportunities  in  its 
mining  communities.  After  serving  from  1937 
for  three  years  on  Easington  rural  district  coun- 
cil, he  enlisted  in  the  Royal  Artillery  as  a  gunner 
in  1940.  After  distinguished  war  service  in  North 
Africa  and  Italy,  he  returned  home  as  a  captain  in 
1945  and  was  elected  Labour  MP  for  Work- 
ington, which  he  served  for  thirty-one  years. 
From  1945  to  195 1  he  was  parliamentary  private 
secretary  to  Thomas  *Williams  (later  Baron  Wil- 
liams of  Barnburgh),  minister  of  agriculture  in 
the  newly  elected  Labour  government.  They 
worked  in  total  harmony;  indeed,  so  identified 
was  he  with  Tom  Williams  that  he  was  the 
natural  choice  for  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture 
after  Labour's  return  to  office  in  1964  under  the 
leadership  of  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson 
of  Rievaulx).  At  the  same  time  he  was  sworn  of 
the  Privy  Council. 

Cabinet  pressure  led  him  to  reduce  farm 
subsidies  in  his  first  (1965)  farm  price  review, 
which  provoked  farmers  to  civil  disobedience, 
but  he  emerged  from  this  baptism  of  fire  a  widely 
respected  minister.  His  reputation  was  further 
enhanced  by  courageous  and  decisive  handling  of 
Britain's  worst  ever  epidemic  of  foot  and  mouth 
disease.  In  the  countryside  he  was  ever  more 
warmly  received  by  farmers  and  farmworkers 
alike. 


His  reservations  at  that  time  about  European 
Economic  Community  membership  ran  deep, 
echoing  those  in  most  farming  communities.  He 
opposed  in  cabinet  the  Labour  government's 
1967  application  for  EEC  membership  because 
he  was  convinced  that  the  common  agricultural 
policy  (CAP)  would  deprive  British  farmers  of 
secure  incomes  and  make  consumers  worse  off  by 
excluding  cheap  food  imports  from  the  tradi- 
tional suppliers  and  was  concerned  also  about 
harmful  effects  of  the  CAP  on  the  Common- 
wealth's poorer  developing  countries. 

In  1968  he  became  leader  of  the  Commons, 
first  as  lord  privy  seal  (April-October)  and  then 
lord  president  of  the  Council.  His  courtesy, 
friendliness,  generosity,  and  good  humour  made 
him  as  popular  as  leader  of  the  House  as  he  had 
been  as  minister  of  agriculture.  With  Labour's 
defeat  in  1970,  he  became  opposition  spokesman 
on  parliamentary  affairs  (1 970-1),  agriculture 
(197 1-2),  and  defence  (1972-4).  He  also  served 
as  leader  of  Labour's  delegation  to  the  Council 
of  Europe,  of  which  he  was  vice-president  in 
1973-4.  In  February  1974,  with  Labour  back  in 
office,  he  became  minister  of  agriculture  again. 
By  then,  exploitation  by  Commonwealth  beef 
and  sugar  producers  of  rising  world  prices  for 
their  products  led  him  reluctantly  to  come  to 
terms  with  Britain's  EEC  membership,  to  which 
British  farmers  were  now  more  favourably 
inclined. 

In  1976,  with  James  Callaghan  (later  Baron 
Callaghan  of  Cardiff)  as  prime  minister,  Peart 
received  a  life  barony  and,  as  lord  privy  seal, 
became  leader  of  the  House  of  Lords.  Following 
Labour's  defeat  in  1979,  he  led  the  opposition 
peers  until  1982.  He  was  also  chairman  of  the 
advisory  council  for  applied  research  and  devel- 
opment (1976-80)  and  the  Retail  Consortium 
(1979-81).  He  was  an  honorary  D.Sc.  of  Cran- 
field  Institute  of  Technology  (1977),  honorary 
FRCVS  (1969),  and  a  freeman  of  the  City  of 
London  (1968). 

Peart  was  one  of  the  best-liked  parliamentar- 
ians of  his  generation.  Tall,  gentlemanly,  with 
patrician  good  looks  and  a  naturally  straightfor- 
ward manner,  he  was  always  enjoyable  company. 
In  1945  he  married  Sarah  Elizabeth  ('Bette'), 
daughter  of  Thomas  Lewis,  mining  engineer  in 
South  America.  They  had  one  son.  Welsh, 
articulate,  highly  principled,  a  history  graduate 
and  teacher,  Bette  shared  her  husband's  passion 
for  equality  of  educational  opportunity.  In  1984 
Peart  was  savagely  attacked  by  two  armed  rob- 
bers who  had  broken  into  his  home.  His  health 
was  shattered  and  he  never  fully  recovered.  He 
died  26  August  1988  in  hospital  in  Tooting, 
London. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alfred  Morris 


348 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Petersen 


PEDLEY,  Robin  (1914-1988),  educationist,  was 
born  Robert  Pedley  in  Grinton,  north  Yorkshire, 
11  August  19 14,  the  fourth  in  the  family  of  four 
sons  and  one  daughter  of  Edward  Pedley,  stone- 
mason, of  Grinton,  and  his  wife  Martha  Jane, 
postmistress,  daughter  of  William  Hird,  farmer 
of  a  smallholding,  also  of  Grinton.  All  the  family 
attended  Fremington  School  (the  local  Church  of 
England  elementary  school),  most  leaving  at 
fourteen,  though  Pedley 's  three  brothers  all  later 
achieved  distinction  in  their  careers  in  education, 
the  Civil  Service,  and  the  police  force.  Pedley 
was  articled  as  a  pupil  teacher,  but  north  York- 
shire abolished  the  system  at  that  time  ( 1928)  and 
he  went  to  Richmond  School  (north  Yorkshire) 
for  his  secondary  education  (1928-32).  He  won 
an  Ellerton  scholarship  to  Durham  University 
and  obtained  an  upper  second-class  degree  in 
history  and  economics  in  1935.  He  joined  the 
education  department  at  Durham  and  acquired 
his  teacher's  certificate  in  1936.  Elected  a  fellow 
of  Durham  University  (1936-8),  he  was  awarded 
the  Gladstone  memorial  prize  in  modern  history 
in  1937  and,  in  the  same  year,  the  Gibson  prize 
in  archaeology.  In  1939  Pedley  gained  his  doc- 
torate for  a  study  of  the  political  and  economic 
history  of  the  northern  Pennines.  In  addition  to 
these  scholarly  achievements,  Pedley  proved 
himself  an  accomplished  athlete  at  the  university, 
excelling  particularly  in  association  football  and 
cricket. 

In  1938  Pedley  was  appointed  to  the  Friends' 
School  at  Great  Avion.  From  1943  to  1946 
(Pedley  was  a  conscientious  objector)  he  was 
senior  history  master  at  the  Crossley  and  Porter 
schools,  Halifax,  moving  as  a  lecturer  in  educa- 
tion to  the  College  of  St  Mark  and  St  John, 
Chelsea,  in  1946.  In  1947  he  was  appointed  as 
one  of  the  founding  members  of  the  newly 
formed  department  of  education  at  University 
College,  Leicester. 

It  was  at  Leicester  that  Pedley  fully  developed 
his  own  outlook  on  educational  policy  and  prac- 
tice and  soon  made  a  national  impact  in  his 
campaign  for  a  comprehensive  system  of  secon- 
dary education,  based  on  what  became  known  as 
the  two-tier  system.  He  believed  in  small  schools 
as  intimate  communities  and  sought  for  a  solu- 
tion along  these  lines,  rather  than  through  the 
accepted  policy  of  building  large,  'all-through' 
schools  catering  for  the  entire  eleven  to  nineteen 
age  group. 

The  pattern  Pedley  favoured  involved  the 
division  of  secondary  schooling  at  the  age  of 
fifteen.  This  had  several  advantages.  First,  com- 
prehensive (or  non-selective)  education  could  be 
implemented  in  existing  buildings,  secondary- 
modern  schools  taking  in  all  local  children  at  the 
age  of  eleven,  and  grammar  schools  those  over 
fifteen.  Secondly,  both  types  of  school,  catering 
for   local   populations,   could   be   developed   as 


community  schools,  a  project  dear  to  Pedley's 
heart.  Thirdly,  both  sets  of  schools  could,  in 
theory  at  least,  be  of  reasonable  size.  Finally, 
senior  pupils  in  upper  schools  could  be  treated  as 
their  increasing  maturity  required. 

Pedley  had  already  begun  to  develop  his  think- 
ing along  these  lines  in  a  set  of  articles  published 
in  the  late  1940s.  But  the  first  breakthrough  came 
in  his  Comprehensive  Schools  Today  ( 1955).  where 
articles  on  Pedley's  proposed  solution  were  com- 
mented on  by  leading  educationists,  especially 
those  from  local  authorities.  In  1956  his  major 
book,  Comprehensive  Education,  a  New  Approach, 
received  wide  publicity  and  was  taken  very 
seriously.  At  a  meeting  in  that  year  with  Sir 
David  (later  first  Viscount)  Eccles,  minister  of 
education,  Pedley  was  left  in  no  doubt  about  the 
Ministry's  readiness  to  encourage  experiment 
along  the  lines  he  suggested,  and  the  county  of 
Leicestershire  announced  its  two-tier  plan  in 
1957.  In  1963  Pedley  published  what  was  to  be 
bis  most  influential  book,  the  Pelican  original 
entitled  The  Comprehensive  School.  This  was 
immensely  popular,  going  through  five  reprints 
or  new  editions  by  1969,  and  is  the  book  that 
brought  the  idea  most  closely  to  the  attention  of 
the  general  public  during  the  1960s  and  later. 

It  was  at  Leicester  that  Pedley  made  his  main 
contribution  to  the  movement  for  comprehensive 
education.  Tall,  handsome,  and  willowy  in  his 
prime,  with  an  open,  frank  countenance,  an 
accomplished  sportsman  and  delightful  col- 
league, he  developed  a  persuasive  style  as  a 
speaker  and  became  adept  in  the  presentation  of 
his  case  to  local  authority  representatives  and 
others  throughout  the  country. 

Pedley  remained  at  Leicester  until  1963,  when 
he  accepted  appointment  as  director  of  the 
Institute  of  Education  at  Exeter  University.  He 
was  awarded  a  chair  in  1970.  In  1971  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  education  and  head  of  the 
school  of  education  at  Southampton  University -. 
where  he  acted  as  dean  of  the  faculty  for  four 
years. 

In  1951  Pedley  married  Jeanne  Lesley,  daugh- 
ter of  William  Leslie  Hitching,  bank  manager. 
They  had  one  son  and  one  daughter.  Pedley  died 
in  Salisbury  20  November  1988,  officially  of 
pneumonia  but  in  reality  of  Alzheimer's  disease, 
from  which  he  had  suffered  for  some  years. 

[David  Crook,  'The  Disputed  Origins  of  the  Leicester- 
shire Two-tier  Comprehensi%e  Schools  Plan',  History 
of  Education  Society  Bulletin,  no.  50,  Autumn  1992; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.]     B.  Simon 

PEEL,  Lady  (1894- 1989),  actress  and  singer. 
[See  Lillie,  Beatrice  Gladys.] 

PETERSEN,  John  Charles  ('Jack')  (191 1- 
1900),  boxer,  was  born  in  Cardiff  2  September 
191 1,  the  only  son  (there  was  also  a  daughter)  of 


349 


Petersen 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


John  Thomas  Peterson,  massage  specialist,  and 
his  wife,  Melinda  Laura  Rossiter.  The  family's 
name  was  Peterson,  but  Jack  was  known  pro- 
fessionally as  Petersen.  It  was  a  sporting  family — 
his  father  (whom  the  press  called  'Pa')  had 
trained  south  Wales  boxers  who  were  near- 
British  champions.  The  younger  Petersen  was 
never  a  'mountain'  fighter  (a  bare-knuckle  boxer 
who  fought  illegally).  He  did  well  at  school  and 
was  an  enthusiastic  boy  scout.  Not  surprisingly, 
he  took  up  amateur  boxing,  and  by  the  age  of 
eighteen  had  reached  the  Welsh  Amateur  Boxing 
Association  finals  at  both  middle  and  light- 
heavyweight.  In  the  following  season  he  won 
Welsh  titles  at  light-heavy  and  heavyweight 
(193 1 ),  and  the  national  ABA  championships  at 
the  lighter  weight. 

Petersen  immediately  turned  professional, 
managed  by  his  father  and  backed  by  a  syndicate 
of  Welsh  sportsmen.  He  won  his  first  nine 
contests  within  the  space  of  ten  weeks  at  the 
stadium  in  Holborn,  London.  Cardiff  was  con- 
sidered by  professionals  not  to  be  a  boxing  city, 
though  the  Petersens  lived  in  Whitchurch  and 
Jack  trained  at  St  John  Square,  taking  the  train  to 
go  up  for  his  Monday  evening  matches.  Cardiff's 
Greyfriars  Hall  was  soon  used  to  display  this 
stylish,  hard-punching  boxing  prospect  to  his 
home  supporters,  and  they  became  vociferously 
excited  when  he  rescued  a  contest  by  a  knockout 
in  the  fifteenth  round. 

The  British  light-heavyweight  championship 
fell  to  Petersen  at  Holborn,  and  seven  weeks  later 
(July  1932),  at  Wimbledon  stadium,  he  knocked 
out  Reggie  Meen,  of  Leicester,  to  become  the 
British  heavyweight  champion,  in  his  eighteenth 
professional  contest,  aged  twenty.  He  was  the 
first  Welshman,  and  the  youngest  man,  ever  to 
win  that  title;  and  it  was  accomplished  in  ten 
months.  The  Cardiff  press  and  the  people  of 
Wales  glowed  with  pride.  The  light-heavyweight 
division  did  not  draw  crowds  to  boxing  matches, 
and  though  Petersen  could  still  weigh  twelve 
stones  and  seven  pounds  he  relinquished  this 
title.  As  the  champion  at  catchweights,  he 
became  extraordinarily  popular,  partly  because 
his  opponents  often  outweighed  him  by  one  or 
two  stones.  He  was  an  attacking  boxer,  a  dark- 
haired  good-looking  man,  and  the  adjective  'gal- 
lant' appeared  frequently  in  boxing  reporters' 
commentary.  On  cinema  newsreels,  his  modesty 
and  pride  in  his  own  locality  registered  with  the 
general  public.  Petersen  was  the  most  popular 
British  boxer  since  Bombardier  Billy  Wells. 

In  1933  an  even  younger  man  emerged  as  a 
contender.  Jack  Doyle,  from  county  Cork  via  the 
Irish  Guards,  had  won  his  ten  fights  by  knockouts 
within  two  rounds,  and  he  and  Petersen  were 
matched  at  the  White  City  stadium  in  July.  The 
largest  crowd  at  a  boxing  match  in  Britain  at  that 
time  (some  30,000)  assembled,  only  to  watch 


Doyle  repeatedly  punch  Petersen  below  the  belt 
and  be  disqualified  in  the  second  round.  Petersen 
ignored  the  fouls,  did  not  go  down,  and  hon- 
ourably matched  the  bigger  man  blow  for  blow. 
In  his  next  contest  Petersen  unexpectedly  lost  the 
British  title,  to  Len  Harvey  on  points  at  the  Royal 
Albert  Hall  (December  1933).  It  was  his  first 
defeat  in  twenty-five  professional  contests,  and  to 
a  smaller,  though  exceptionally  clever,  man. 

Six  months  later  (June  1934)  he  beat  Harvey 
to  regain  this  title  and  also  win  the  heavyweight 
championship  of  the  British  empire,  for  which 
black  men  were  allowed  to  box.  One  such  con- 
tender, Larry  Gains  from  Canada,  was  the  next 
boxer  that  Petersen  defeated.  The  man  from 
Cardiff  defended  both  championships  success- 
fully until  August  1936,  when  he  lost  heavily  to 
Ben  Foord,  a  Leicester-based  white  South  Afri- 
can, who  was  qualified  by  residence  for  both 
titles.  Whilst  champion  for  the  second  time, 
however,  Petersen  had  suffered  international 
reverses.  In  1935  he  boxed  only  twice,  and  was 
beaten  both  times  by  a  strong,  young,  fourteen- 
stone  heavyweight  from  Germany,  Walter  Neu- 
sel.  Petersen  retired  from  boxing  in  February 
1937,  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-five,  after  losing 
bruisingly  to  Neusel  for  a  third  time. 

During  World  War  II  he  was  a  physical 
training  instructor  in  the  Royal  Air  Force,  and 
subsequently  was  heavily  involved  in  Welsh 
affairs  of  the  British  Boxing  Board  of  Control.  In 
1986  he  became  president  of  the  BBBC  and  was 
appointed  OBE  for  his  services  to  sport.  He  was 
also  vice-chairman  of  the  Sports  Council  for 
Wales.  Petersen  lifted  the  low  prestige  of  British 
heavyweights  in  the  interwar  years,  and  retired 
from  boxing  gracefully. 

In  October  1935  Petersen  married  Annie  Eliz- 
abeth ('Betty'),  daughter  of  Thomas  Baker  Wil- 
liams, auctioneer,  of  Cardiff.  His  parents  did  not 
attend  the  long-planned  ceremony.  'Pa'  had  been 
in  his  son's  corner  throughout  his  career,  but  the 
boxer-manager  relationship  stopped  after  the 
second  contest  with  Neusel,  and  Petersen  man- 
aged himself  for  the  last  four  matches  of  his  six 
years'  career.  He  died  22  November  1990  at  the 
Princess  of  Wales  Hospital,  Bridgend,  of  cancer 
of  the  lung. 

[Western  Mail  and  South  Wales  Echo,  passim,  1930s; 
Boxing,  passim;  The  Times,  23  November  1990] 

Stan  Shipley 

PETERSON,  Alexander  Duncan  Campbell 

(1908-1988),  educational  reformer,  was  born  in 
Edinburgh  13  September  1908,  the  third  of  five 
sons,  but  the  second  to  survive  childhood  (there 
were  no  daughters),  of  John  Carlos  Kennedy 
Peterson,  of  the  Indian  Civil  Service,  under- 
secretary in  the  finance  department,  government 
of  Bengal,  and  his  wife,  Flora  Campbell.  He  and 
his  brothers  were  brought  up  largely  by  aunts 


350 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Philby 


and  uncles.  His  parents  had  no  home  leave 
between  191 5  and  1919,  and  when  his  mother 
eventually  arrived  at  his  preparatory  school  he 
failed  to  recognize  her.  He  won  scholarships  to 
Radley  College  and  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  lik- 
ing the  second  as  much  as  he  had  disliked  the 
first.  At  Oxford  he  showed  the  breadth  of  inter- 
est and  taste  for  experiment  which  marked  him 
throughout  life.  His  activities  as  an  undergrad- 
uate were  multifarious,  and  in  1930  he  missed  a 
first  in  literae  humaniores,  apparently  by  a  very 
narrow  margin.  He  had  received  a  second  class  in 
classical  honour  moderations  in  1928. 

Peterson's  flair  for  communication  did  not  stay 
hidden  for  long.  His  ascent  up  the  teacher's 
ladder  (as  assistant  master,  Shrewsbury  School, 
1932-40;  and  as  headmaster  of  Adams  Grammar 
School,  Newport,  1946-52,  and  of  Dover  Col- 
lege, 1954-7)  was  punctuated  by  two  periods  of 
'psychological  warfare'  in  the  Far  East.  The  first 
(1943-5),  under  Lord  Louis  *Mountbatten  (later 
first  Earl  Mountbatten  of  Burma),  earned  him  an 
OBE  (1946);  during  the  second  (1952-4),  under 
Sir  Gerald  *Templer  in  Malaya,  his  formidable 
chief  judged  him  'absolutely  first  class'. 

The  directorship  of  Oxford  University's 
department  of  education,  which  he  held  from 
1958  until  his  retirement  in  1973,  left  him  time 
for  writing  on  educational  problems  and  for 
outside  activities.  As  the  chairman  of  the  Farm- 
ington  Trust's  council  from  1964  to  197 1  he 
helped  to  found  the  Journal  of  Moral  Education. 
He  acted  for  a  time  as  the  Liberal  party's 
spokesman  on  education,  and  stood  without  any 
chance  of  success  for  Oxford  in  the  1966  election. 
He  served  from  1959  to  1966  as  chairman  of  the 
Army  Education  Advisory  Board.  It  was,  how- 
ever, as  the  advocate  of  broader  sixth  form 
studies  that  he  became  well  known.  He  opened 
the  campaign  with  a  broadcast  early  in  1956 
(Listener,  16  February),  continued  it  in  his  Estlin 
Carpenter  lectures  at  Oxford,  1957  (published  as 
Educating  Our  Rulers,  1957),  and  brought  it  to  a 
remarkable  climax  with  the  Oxford  department's 
report,  'Arts  and  Science  Sides  in  the  Sixth 
Form',  in  i960.  This  established  beyond  reason- 
able doubt  that  the  early  specialization  charac- 
terizing English  secondary  schools  not  merely 
precluded  sixth  form  courses  appropriate  to  a 
scientific  age,  but  reduced  the  flow  of  science 
graduates.  About  40  per  cent  of  the  English 
sixteen-year-olds  questioned  for  the  report 
would  have  liked  to  combine  arts  with  mathe- 
matics or  science:  under  6  per  cent  were  actually 
doing  so.  When  more  than  700  pupils  in  French 
lycees  and  German  Gymnasien  were  asked  what 
subjects  they  would  have  chosen  for  the  bacca- 
laureat  or  Abitur  had  there  been  no  restrictions 
on  choice,  only  five  chose  entirely  from  mathe- 
matics or  science.  Peterson  had  won  the  argu- 


ment; but,  like  many  others  in  the  decades  which 
followed,  he  found  that  this  did  not  open  the 
road  to  the  needed  reforms. 

Frustrated  in  England,  Peterson  turned 
abroad.  The  international  sixth  form  which  he 
had  started  at  Dover  brought  him  into  contact 
with  Kurt  *Hahn;  and  in  1962,  when  Atlantic 
College  was  founded,  he  helped  to  plan  its 
curriculum.  No  single  syllabus  could  be  made  to 
conform  to  university  entrance  requirements, 
which  varied  from  country  to  country;  and  in  the 
same  year  plans  for  an  'international  baccalaure- 
ate' were  being  discussed  in  Geneva.  The  Oxford 
department,  which  was  then  embarking  on  an 
investigation  for  the  Council  of  Europe,  was  soon 
involved  in  the  planning  for  this;  and  Peterson 
was  the  director  of  the  International  Baccalaure- 
ate Office  during  the  crucial  phase  of  growth, 
from  1966  to  1977.  In  the  year  of  his  death  an  IB, 
based  on  a  balanced  curriculum  of  six  subjects, 
was  in  use  in  fifty-six  countries  and  2,643  ® 
diplomas  were  awarded.  Five  years  later  this 
figure  had  grown  to  5,073,  and  the  entry  for  the 
full  diploma,  or  for  certificates  in  the  various 
subjects,  exceeded  18,000.  The  United  World 
Colleges,  headed  by  Atlantic  College,  needed  the 
IB  and  nourished  it.  Peterson,  who  was  chairman 
of  UWC  (1978-80),  helped  with  both  organiza- 
tions until  he  died.  In  Schools  Across  Frontiers 
(1987)  he  recorded  the  struggle  to  establish  them. 
He  was  made  an  honorary  doctor  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Trieste  (1985). 

Peterson  was  tall  and  good  looking.  A  portrait 
by  Henry  Lamb  hangs  in  Dover  College.  In 
December  1939  he  married  Ruth  Pauline,  daugh- 
ter of  William  Anderson  Armstrong,  solicitor. 
This  marriage  ended  in  divorce  in  1946,  and  in 
the  same  year  he  married  Corinna  May,  daughter 
of  Sir  Arthur  William  Steuart  Cochrane,  Clar- 
enceux  king  of  arms.  There  were  two  sons  and  a 
daughter  of  the  second  marriage.  Peterson  died 
of  a  heart  attack  in  St  Mary's  Hospital,  Padding- 
ton,  London,  17  October  1988. 

[Bickham  Sweet-Escort,  Baker  Street  Irregular,  1965; 
Robert  J.  Leach,  International  Schools  and  Their  Role  in 
the  Field  of  International  Education,  1969;  T.  James 
Leasor,  Boarding  Party,  1978;  John  Cloake,  Tempter, 
Tiger  of  Malaya,  1985;  Philip  Ziegler,  Mountbatten, 
1985;  Robert  Blackburn,  memorial  tribute,  Geneva 
(IBO  Council  of  Foundation,  1988);  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  Michael  Brock 

PHILBY,  Harold  Adrian  Russell  ('Kim') 
(1912-1988),  Soviet  agent,  was  born  1  January 
191 2  at  Ambala  in  the  Punjab,  the  only  son  and 
eldest  of  four  children  of  Harry  St  John  Bridger 
•Philby,  Indian  civil  servant,  explorer,  and  orien- 
talist, and  his  wife  Dora,  daughter  of  Adrian 
Hope  Johnston,  of  the  Indian  public  works 
department.  With  unconscious  prescience  they 


35i 


Philby 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


nicknamed  him  Kim.  He  was  educated  at  West- 
minster and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where 
he  joined  the  university  Socialist  Society  and 
became  a  convinced  communist.  He  obtained  a 
third  class  in  part  i  of  the  history  tripos  (1931) 
and  a  second  class  (division  I)  in  part  ii  of  the 
economics  tripos  (1933).  Philby  was  of  medium 
height  with  a  seductive  smile.  In  1933  he  went  on 
a  trip  to  Vienna,  where  he  met  Alice  ('Litzi') 
Friedman,  an  Austrian  communist,  whose  father 
was  Israel  Kohlman,  a  minor  government  official 
of  Hungarian  Jewish  origin.  They  witnessed  the 
street  fighting,  which  ended  with  the  defeat  of 
the  socialists  in  February  1934,  when  they  had  a 
hurried  marriage  and  left  for  England.  By  this 
time  she  had  persuaded  him  to  become  a  Soviet 
agent.  While  he  was  in  Vienna,  the  NKVD  (the 
Soviet  secret  service)  had  talent-spotted  Philby 
as  a  potential  recruit. 

In  June  1934,  at  a  secret  meeting  in  Regents 
Park,  Philby  was  approached  by  Arnold  Deutsch, 
a  Czech  undercover  Soviet  intelligence  officer 
operating  in  London.  Philby  welcomed  the  sug- 
gestion that  he  should  penetrate  'the  bourgeois 
institutions'.  Another  of  his  controllers  was  Teo- 
dor  Maly,  a  Hungarian  who  had  renounced  the 
priesthood  and  become  an  idealistic  convert  to 
Bolshevism.  Beginning  his  career  as  a  journalist, 
Philby  was  instructed  to  sever  all  links  with  his 
communist  past  and  swing  over  to  the  far  right. 
Hence  his  involvement  with  the  pro-Nazi  Anglo- 
German  Fellowship.  First  as  a  freelance  and  later 
for  The  Times,  he  went  to  Spain  in  February  1937 
to  cover  the  Spanish  civil  war  from  the  point  of 
view  of  General  Franco  (whose  planned  assassi- 
nation was  part  of  his  original  brief),  who 
awarded  him  the  red  cross  of  military  merit.  He 
left  Spain  in  August  1939  with  his  overt  right- 
wing  credentials  established,  while  his  covert 
faith  in  Joseph  Stalin  remained  untarnished  by 
the  Terror  of  the  mid- 1930s,  although  he  had  an 
ambivalent  attitude  to  the  Nazi-Soviet  pact  in 
August  1939.  His  luck  never  deserted  him, 
especially  permitting  him  to  survive  the  ups  and 
downs  of  an  alternating  relationship  with  the 
Moscow  centre. 

After  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  Philby 
went  to  France  as  a  war  correspondent.  Return- 
ing to  England  after  Dunkirk,  he  was  recruited, 
thanks  to  Guy  *Burgess,  his  friend  from  Cam- 
bridge and  a  fellow  NKVD  agent,  into  the  SIS 
(the  Secret  Intelligence  Service  or  MI6)  in  July 
1940  and  soon  joined  Section  Five  (counter- 
intelligence) in  1941.  A  base  in  London  eased 
his  domestic  problems  with  Aileen  Furse  (the 
daughter  of  Captain  George  Furse  of  the  Royal 
Horse  Artillery)  with  whom  he  had  been  living 
and  producing  children  since  1940,  but  whom  he 
did  not  marry  until  December  1946,  a  week  after 
his  divorce  from  Litzi.  By  then  he  was  a  rising 
star,  having  become  in   1944  head  of  Section 


Nine,  whose  remit  was  'to  collect  and  interpret 
information  concerning  communist  espionage 
and  subversion'.  When  Section  Nine  was  merged 
with  Section  Five  in  1945,  he  alerted  Moscow  to 
the  intended  defection  in  Istanbul  of  Konstantin 
Volkov,  who  could  have  unmasked  Philby.  He 
was  appointed  OBE  in  1946. 

In  1946  the  SIS  posted  him  to  Turkey  and  in 
1949  he  became  their  representative  in  Wash- 
ington, where  he  kept  Moscow  informed  of 
Anglo-American  intelligence  collaboration.  He 
also  saw  how  the  net  was  closing  in  on  Donald 
•Maclean.  In  1950  Guy  Burgess  was  posted  to 
Washington  and  lodged  with  Philby.  When 
Maclean  and  Burgess  fled  to  Moscow,  Philby  was 
summoned  back  to  London  and  interrogated  by 
MI5,  who  were  persuaded  of  his  guilt,  but  lacked 
the  evidence  of  a  confession  to  convict  him.  The 
SIS,  however,  in  return  for  Philby's  voluntary 
resignation,  gave  him  a  golden  handshake.  After 
his  name  had  been  cleared  by  Harold  *Macmil- 
lan  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Stockton)  in  1955,  the 
SIS  fixed  his  cover  as  a  correspondent  for  the 
Observer  and  the  Economist,  based  on  Beirut, 
where  he  arrived  in  August  1956. 

Aileen  died  in  1957.  There  were  three  sons 
and  two  daughters  of  the  marriage;  Philby  had  no 
other  children.  In  1959  he  married  Eleanor,  from 
Seattle,  who  was  formerly  married  to  Sam  Pope 
Brewer,  Middle  East  correspondent  of  the  New 
York  Times.  In  Beirut,  Philby  was  successfully 
reincarnated  as  a  journalist  until  Anatoli  Golit- 
syn's  defection  to  the  CIA  in  1962  filled  in  the 
gaps  in  the  case  against  him.  The  SIS  and  MI5 
then  confronted  Philby  with  a  prosecutor's  brief 
in  January  1963,  plus  an  offer  of  immunity  if  he 
returned  to  London  and  made  a  full  confession. 
Philby  admitted  he  had  been  a  Soviet  agent  but 
said  no  more.  He  quietly  arranged  his  escape  and 
arrived  in  Russia  at  the  end  of  January  1963.  Five 
months  later  he  was  granted  Soviet  citizenship. 

Eleanor  soon  joined  him,  but  she  so  disliked 
life  in  Moscow  that  she  left  for  good  in  1965;  she 
died  in  America  in  1968.  Meanwhile,  Philby  had 
been  awarded  in  1965  the  Order  of  Lenin  and  the 
Order  of  the  Red  Banner.  He  began  an  affair  with 
Melinda,  the  wife  of  Donald  Maclean,  who  had 
also  defected  to  Moscow,  but  this  did  not  last. 
Heavy  drinking  and  smoking  dominated  his  life 
until  1970,  when  George  Blake,  another  defector, 
introduced  him  to  Rufina  Ivanova,  half  Polish 
and  half  Russian,  whom  he  married  in  1971.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  an  expert  on  the  chemical 
treatment  of  furs.  In  1980  his  award  of  the  Order 
of  Friendship  of  Peoples  preceded  his  East 
German,  Hungarian,  Bulgarian,  and  Cuban  dec- 
orations. He  died  in  Moscow  n  May  1988, 
receiving  his  final  recognition  in  an  elaborate 
funeral  organized  by  the  KGB.  A  private  buyer 
purchased  the  lion's  share  of  Philby's  papers, 


352 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Phillips 


which  were  auctioned  at  Sotheby's  in  July 
1094. 

[Christopher  Andrew,  Secret  Service,  1985;  Christo- 
pher Andrew  and  David  Dilks  (ed.),  The  Missing 
Dimension,  1984;  Nicholas  Bethell,  The  Great  Betrayal, 
1984;  John  Costello,  Mask  of  Treachery,  1988;  John 
Costello  and  Oleg  Tsarev,  Deadly  Illusions,  1993;  Phil- 
lip Knighdey,  Philby,  the  Life  and  Views  of  the  KGB 
Masterspy,  1988;  Patrick  Seale  and  Maureen  McCon- 
ville,  Philby,  the  Long  Road  to  Moscow,  1973;  Hugh 
Trevor-Roper,  The  Philby  Affair,  1968;  Kim  Philby, 
My  Silent  War,  1968;  Eleanor  Philby,  The  Spy  I  Loved, 
1968;  Genrikh  Borovik,  The  Philby  Files,  1994;  Yuri 
Modin,  My  Five  Cambridge  Friends,  1994;  personal 
knowledge.]  Nigel  Clive 

PHILLIPS,  Owen  Hood  (1907-1986),  constitu- 
tional lawyer,  was  born  in  Portsmouth  30  Sep- 
tember 1907,  the  younger  son  and  youngest  of 
three  children  of  Surgeon-Captain  John  Elphin- 
stone  Hood  Phillips,  of  the  Royal  Navy  and 
Southsea,  and  his  wife,  Kathleen  Marian  Esther 
Way.  His  mother  died  when  he  was  two  and  his 
father  when  he  was  twenty.  He  was  educated  at 
Weymouth  College  and  Merton  College,  Oxford, 
where  he  took  a  second  class  in  both  the  honour 
school  of  jurisprudence  (1929)  and  the  BCL 
(1930).  He  always  prided  himself  on  being  a 
Merton  man.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  (Gray's 
Inn,  1930)  and  served  pupillages  in  both  Com- 
mon Law  and  Chancery  chambers. 

He  did  not  practise  but  took  his  first  academic 
appointment  as  an  assistant  lecturer  in  laws  at 
King's  College,  London  (193 1-5).  For  two  years 
after  1935  he  held  a  lectureship  in  Trinity 
College,  Dublin:  to  these  years  beside  the  river 
Liffey  he  attributed  his  liking  for  an  occasional 
lunch-hour  Guinness.  In  1937  he  returned  to 
King's  as  reader  in  English  law  and  vice-dean. 
During  the  1930-45  war  he  served  in  the  minis- 
tries of  Labour  and  Aircraft  Production.  His 
years  as  a  wartime  civil  servant  assisted,  he  felt, 
his  appreciation  of  the  delicate  constitutional 
relationship  between  a  minister  and  his  depart- 
ment. It  also  armed  him  with  useful  adminis- 
trative experience  when  he  was  appointed  in 
1946  to  the  Lady  Barber  chair  of  jurisprudence  at 
Birmingham  University  and  in  1949  unexpec- 
tedly called  upon  to  assume  the  deanship  of  the 
law  faculty. 

During  the  nineteen  years  which  he  served  as 
dean  (1949-68)  the  Birmingham  law  faculty- 
expanded  fourfold  in  staff  and  student  numbers. 
It  also  won  a  deserved  reputation  for  good 
teaching  and  sound  scholarship.  Phillips  guided 
his  team  with  a  light  rein,  ever  ready  to  let 
younger  colleagues  run  their  own  course  in 
teaching  and  research.  He  was  for  twelve  years 
(1950-62)  the  university's  public  orator;  his  ora- 
tions gave  full  scope  to  his  gift  for  carefully 
crafted  and  elegant  prose,  delivered  with  clarity 
and   grace.    He   was   elected   president  of  the 


Society  of  Public  Teachers  of  Law  (1963-4)  and 
in  this  capacity  played  a  prominent  part  in  the 
setting  up  of  the  committee  on  legal  education, 
chaired  by  Sir  Roger  Ormrod.  Its  report  (1971) 
exercised  a  seminal  influence  on  future  develop- 
ments in  this  field. 

Phillips  was  the  most  eminent  constitutional 
lawyer  of  his  generation.  His  treatise  on  Constitu- 
tional and  Administrative  Law  (1952),  which  was 
an  original  response  to  a  request  to  produce  a 
new  edition  of  a  far  less  valuable  text,  had 
reached  its  seventh  edition  by  the  time  of  his 
death  and  was  widely  regarded  as  the  fullest 
modern  exposition  of  the  law  on  this  subject. 
His  worldwide  reputation  in  the  Commonwealth 
brought  him  invitations  to  serve  as  adviser  to  the 
Singapore  constitutional  commission  (1953-4) 
and  delegate  to  the  Malta  constitutional  confer- 
ences in  1955  and  1958.  His  A  First  Book  on 
English  Lam  (1948)  had  much  success  as  an 
introduction  and  went  through  several  editions. 
He  was  a  regular  contributor  to  the  Lam  Quar- 
terly Reviem  and  Public  Lam:  in  his  articles  he 
anticipated  the  problem  of  trying  to  reconcile 
parliamentary  sovereignty  with  British  acces- 
sion to  the  European  Community.  His  later 
publications  ranged  more  widely:  Reform  of  the 
Constitution  (1970)  foreshadowed  much  of  the 
subsequent  debate,  and  in  Shakespeare  and  the 
Lamyers  (1972)  his  lifelong  passion  for  the  bard 
found  a  congenial  theme. 

He  was  understandably  proud  of  the  award  of 
silk  in  1970  and  his  Oxford  DCL  (1971).  After 
his  retirement  in  1974  he  kept  his  home  in 
Edgbaston  and  continued  to  serve  as  a  Birming- 
ham lay  magistrate.  He  also  maintained  his 
interest  in  the  Schools  of  King  Edward  VI  in 
Birmingham:  he  was  a  governor  (1951-76)  and, 
in  his  turn,  bailiff  (1958—9)  of  the  foundation. 
Mindful  of  his  years  in  Dublin,  he  encouraged 
the  formation  of  the  British  and  Irish  Association 
of  Law  Librarians  and  was  its  first  president 
(1972-6). 

He  liked  to  be  known  by  all  his  three  names: 
he  was  affectionately  referred  to  by  many  as 
'OHP'.  He  delighted  in  reading,  classical  music, 
gardening,  and  the  countryside.  Lean  in  stature 
and  of  above  average  height,  he  was  of  somewhat 
austere  appearance;  but  he  was  an  essentially 
kind  man.  He  had  a  dry  and  exquisite  wit  which 
could  enliven  a  lecture  or  debate  of  senate,  grace 
an  after-dinner  speech,  or  delight  a  few  friends. 
Reserved  by  nature,  his  personality  expanded 
after  his  marriage.  In  1949  he  married  Lucy 
Mary  Carden,  lecturer  in  physical  education  at 
Birmingham  university  and  daughter  of  Arnold 
Philip,  Admiralty  chemist  at  the  Portsmouth 
dockyard.  They  had  no  children.  The  quiet 
happiness  which  pervaded  their  home  in  Edgbas- 
ton or  their  cottage  on  the  Clee  Hills  communi- 
cated itself  to  their  extended  family  and  the 


353 


Phillips  D.N.B.  1986-1990 

friends,  colleagues,  and  students  to  whom  they 
were  ever  generous  in  hospitality.  For  Com- 
monwealth students,  attracted  to  Birmingham  by 
Phillips's  reputation,  he  had  a  special  solicitude. 
He  died  25  May  1986,  after  a  stroke,  in  the 
Queen  Elizabeth  Hospital,  Birmingham. 

[Birmingham  Post  Yearbooks;  archives  of  Birmingham 

University;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

L.  Neville  Brown 


PILCHER,  Sir  John  Arthur  (1912-1990),  diplo- 
mat, was  born  16  May  19 12  in  Quetta,  India,  the 
only  child  of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Arthur  John 
Pilcher  and  his  wife,  Edith  Blair.  Both  his 
parents  shared  a  tradition  of  service  in  the  Indian 
subcontinent  in  both  the  military  and  scholarly 
spheres,  dating  back  to  the  eighteenth  century. 
He  was  educated  at  Shrewsbury  and  Clare  Col- 
lege, Cambridge.  In  1932  he  gained  a  second 
class  (division  I)  in  part  i  of  the  modern  and 
medieval  languages  tripos  and  in  1935  a  third 
class  in  part  ii.  His  formal  studies  were  supple- 
mented by  travel  in  Europe. 

In  1936  he  was  accepted  as  a  student  inter- 
preter in  the  Japan  Consular  Service  and  sent  to 
Japan  to  learn  the  language.  After  one  year  in  the 
embassy  in  Tokyo  he  went  to  study  in  the  old 
capital  of  Kyoto,  a  city  which  he  grew  to  love.  He 
lived  for  two  years  in  the  temple  of  Sokokuji  and 
developed  an  appreciation  of  Japanese  Bud- 
dhism. He  also  learned  to  speak  the  Kyoto  dialect 
and  got  to  know  Kanjiro  Kawai  and  other  potters 
and  artists. 

In  1939  he  was  transferred  to  Tsingtao,  a 
consular  post  in  Japanese-occupied  China.  While 
there  he  was  received  into  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church.  He  returned  to  London  in  1941  and 
worked  mainly  on  Japanese  affairs  in  the  Minis- 
try of  Information  and  the  Foreign  Office. 

In  1948  Pilcher  was  appointed  first  secretary 
(information)  in  the  British  embassy  in  Rome. 
He  was  sorry  to  return  to  London  in  1951  on 
promotion  to  counsellor.  He  became  head  of  the 
Japan  and  Pacific  department  of  the  Foreign 
Office,  where  he  saw  through  the  ratification  of 
the  peace  treaty,  the  Korean  war,  and  the  rather 
difficult  period  in  Anglo-Japanese  relations 
which  followed  the  peace  treaty.  In  1954  he  was 
appointed  counsellor  in  Madrid  and  in  1959 
received  his  first  ambassadorial  appointment  in 
Manila,  in  the  Philippines. 

He  returned  to  London  in  1963  to  become 
assistant  under-secretary  in  charge  of  informa- 
tion and  cultural  work.  In  1965  he  was  appointed 
ambassador  to  Austria,  which  proved  to  be  a  very 
happy  posting.  In  addition  to  his  knowledge  and 
understanding  of  European  culture  he  was  an 
enthusiastic  student  of  the  Austro-German 
musical  tradition.  An  accomplished  pianist,  he 


delighted  in  chamber  music  and  accompanying 
singers  and  instrumentalists.  In  1966  he  was 
awarded  the  Austrian  Grand  Cross  (gold)  dec- 
oration of  honour. 

Pilcher  was  promoted  to  become  ambassador 
in  Tokyo  in  1967.  Having  kept  in  touch  with 
many  of  his  pre-war  Japanese  friends,  he  was 
able  to  entertain  widely  on  his  return  to  Tokyo. 
He  was  assiduous  in  his  contacts  with  the  Jap- 
anese imperial  family  and  accompanied  the 
Showa  emperor  on  the  first  Japanese  state  visit  to 
London  in  1971.  On  this  occasion  he  was 
awarded  the  first  class  of  the  Japanese  Order  of 
the  Rising  Sun.  His  period  in  Japan  coincided 
with  the  successful  British  week  in  Tokyo  in 
1969,  attended  by  Princess  Margaret,  and  the 
Expo  in  Osaka  in  1970,  visited  by  the  prince  of 
Wales.  Pilcher  retired  in  1972. 

He  had  been  brought  up  in  the  old  school  of 
diplomacy  where  the  first  priority  was  to  culti- 
vate influential  people  in  the  country  to  which  an 
ambassador  was  accredited.  He  did  this  very 
well.  He  was  also  a  knowledgeable  and  wise 
observer,  his  dispatches  being  well  written  and  to 
the  point.  He  disliked  having  to  be  a  tough 
negotiator  and  protector  of  narrow  British  inter- 
ests and  also  found  modern  commercial  diplo- 
macy rather  distasteful.  However,  he  invariably 
supported  fully  his  staff  in  their  endeavours  to 
promote  British  exports  and  threw  himself 
enthusiastically  into  the  task  of  educating  hard- 
headed  British  businessmen  about  the  realities  of 
modern  Japan,  recognizing  that  for  this  purpose 
they  needed  a  modicum  of  understanding  of 
Japanese  culture  and  history. 

Pilcher  was  an  accomplished  raconteur  and 
wit.  He  had  a  fund  of  stories,  many  with  a 
Rabelaisian  twist,  and  could  keep  an  audience 
enthralled  for  a  long  time.  He  was  a  short,  tubby 
man,  with  a  round,  partly  bald,  head  and  a 
twinkle  in  his  eyes. 

He  was  appointed  CMG  (1957),  KCMG 
(1966),  and  GCMG  (1973).  In  his  retirement  he 
became  a  director  of  the  Foreign  and  Colonial 
Investment  Trust  (1973-82),  chairman  of  the 
Brazil  Fund  (1975-82)  and  of  the  Fleming  Japan 
Fund  (1976-85),  and  adviser  on  Far  Eastern 
affairs  to  Robert  Fleming  &  Co.  (1973-85).  Of 
great  interest  to  him  personally  were  his  mem- 
bership of  the  Museums  and  Galleries  Commis- 
sion (1973-83)  and  of  the  committee  of  the 
Society  for  the  Protection  of  Ancient  Buildings 
(1974-82),  which  he  represented  on  the  council 
of  the  National  Trust.  He  was  also  president  of 
the  Institute  of  Linguists  (1982-4)  and  served 
twice  (a  total  of  six  years)  as  chairman  of  the 
council  of  the  Japan  Society  in  Britain. 

In  1942  he  married  Delia  Margaret,  daughter 
of  Patrick  Kirwan  Taylor,  a  retired  army  officer 
who  had  been  wounded  in  World  War  I.  They 


354 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Piper 


had  one  daughter.  Pilcher  died  10  February  1990 
in  Barnes,  London,  after  a  protracted  illness. 

[The  Times,  14  February  1990;  Independent,  15  Feb- 
ruary 1990;  information  from  widow;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Hugh  Cortazzi 

PIPER,  Sir  David  Towry  (1918-1990),  museum 
director  and  writer,  was  born  21  July  19 18  in 
Wimbledon,  London,  the  second  of  three  sons 
(the  oldest  of  whom  was  killed  in  action  in  1941) 
of  Stephen  Harvey  Piper,  later  professor  of 
physics  at  Bristol  University,  and  his  wife,  Mary 
Joyce  Casswell.  He  was  educated  at  Clifton 
College,  and  St  Catharine's  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  graduated  with  a  first  in  the  modern 
and  medieval  languages  tripos  in  1940,  having 
obtained  a  first  in  French  and  a  second  in 
German  in  part  i  in  1938.  He  then  joined  the 
Indian  Army  (9th  Jat  Regiment).  He  was  cap- 
tured in  the  Malay  peninsula  in  1942,  and 
endured  three  years  as  a  prisoner  of  war  in 
Formosa. 

Piper  then  moved  into  the  museum  world.  He 
was  given  his  first  job,  as  assistant  keeper  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery,  in  1946,  when  G.  M. 
*Young,  then  a  trustee,  said,  'we  must  keep  an 
eye  on  that  young  man;  he  will  go  far!1  They 
were  prescient  words.  He  became  its  director 
(1964-7),  director  of  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum 
and  fellow  of  Christ's  College,  Cambridge 
(1967-73),  and  director  of  the  Ashmolean 
Museum  and  fellow  of  Worcester  College, 
Oxford  (1973-85).  He  was  Slade  professor  of  fine 
art,  Oxford  (1966-7),  Clark  lecturer,  Cambridge 
(1977-8),  and  Rede  lecturer,  Cambridge  (1983). 
He  was  a  member  of  the  Royal  Fine  Art  Com- 
mission (1970-86),  trustee  of  the  Watts  Gallery 
(1966-88),  and  served  on  the  Paul  Mellon  Foun- 
dation for  British  Art  (1969-70),  the  Pilgrim 
Trust  (1973-90),  and  the  Leeds  Casde  Founda- 
tion (198 1-8).  This  is  a  formidable  list  for  any 
man,  especially  one  whose  physical  health  was 
blighted  by  three  years  as  a  prisoner  of  war.  He 
never  spoke  much  about  this,  but  survivors  have 
described  how  he  encouraged  the  camp  inmates 
with  his  civilized  acceptance  of  a  particularly 
horrendous  experience. 

Piper's  twenty-one  years  at  the  NPG  were 
marked  by  the  publication  of  a  pioneering  vol- 
ume in  the  Gallery's  series  of  catalogues,  Sev- 
enteenth-Century Portraits  (1963),  and  by  the 
initiation  of  the  Concise  Catalogue.  The  years 
were  also  remarkable  for  a  number  of  exhibitions 
(Oliver  Cromwell,  William  Shakespeare,  and 
Elizabeth  of  Bohemia,  the  Winter  Queen),  and 
for  some  outstanding  acquisitions,  including  por- 
traits of  John  *Milton  and  Edmund  *Halley, 
bought  for  £24.  and  £45.  As  a  result,  and  because 
of  his  numerous  broadcasts,  lectures,  and  arti- 
cles, the  attendance  figures  rose  to  pass  the 
quarter-million  mark  and  the  NPG  became  one 


of  the  attractions  of  London.  And  Piper  found 
time  to  write  two  outstanding  books:  The  English 
Face  (1957  and  twice  republished)  repays  fre- 
quent rereading;  The  Companion  Guide  to  London 
(1964  and  now  in  its  sixth  edition)  has  been 
judiciously  compared  to  Richard  *Ford's  Spain 
and  E.  M.  *Forster's  Alexandria. 

Piper  left  the  NPG  in  1967  to  become  director 
of  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum,  Cambridge,  where 
he  remained  for  six  years,  the  highlights  of  which 
were  the  gift  of  Sir  Hamilton  Kerr's  Mill  House 
at  Whittlesford,  later  to  become  the  Hamilton 
Kerr  Institute  of  Conservation  of  Works  of  Art, 
and  Sir  Robert  Adeane's  £100,000,  given  to 
launch  the  extension  appeal  fund.  Acquisitions 
included  pictures  by  George  *Stubbs,  John 
•Constable,  Paulus  Morelse,  Nicolas  Poussin, 
Jan  van  Goyen,  and  Meindert  Hobbema,  and  a 
remarkable  wooden  sculpture  of  a  Japanese  war- 
rior of  the  Kamakura  period.  Piper's  eye  for 
quality  helped  to  draw  the  public  towards  which- 
ever museum  he  served  at  the  time,  and  his 
reward  at  the  Fitzwilliam  was  to  see  the  atten- 
dance figures  increase  by  a  third  in  the  space  of 
three  years,  and  enough  money  raised  for  the 
new  extension. 

In  1973  Piper  became  the  first  director  of 
the  Ashmolean  Museum,  Oxford,  having  been 
appointed  to  bring  in  centralization  and  to  keep 
the  balance  among  the  four  departments.  The 
new  director's  professional  familiarity  with  the 
museum  world  gready  strengthened  the  Ashmo- 
lean, and  his  tactful  handling  of  the  many  inter- 
nal problems,  arising  in  a  difficult  transitional 
period,  endeared  him  to  the  museum  staff.  His 
departure  in  1985  was  marked  by  the  acquisition 
of  an  Etienne  Aubry  'Portrait  of  a  Man' — an 
unknown  Frenchman  of  the  1770s,  whose  genial 
smile  and  air  of  civilized  self-doubt  curiously 
enough  suggest  'Pete'  Piper  himself.  Striking  in 
appearance,  slim  and  elegant,  Piper  was  tall  and 
lolloping  as  a  young  man,  with  large  brown  eyes. 
Latterly  a  scholarly  stoop  disguised  his  height. 
At  all  rimes  his  rather  lugubrious  face  could 
suddenly  be  lit  by  an  enormous  and  friendly 
smile. 

Piper  was  a  prolific  writer  and  broadcaster. 
His  articles  in  the  Financial  Times  and  elsewhere 
drew  attention  to  current  exhibitions,  books,  and 
affairs  in  the  art  world.  His  own  books  include 
Enjoying  Paintings  (1964),  Shades:  an  Essay  on 
Portrait  Silhouettes  (1970),  London  (1971),  The 
Genius  of  British  Painting  (1975),  The  Treasures  of 
Oxford  (1977),  Artists'  London  (1982),  and  The 
Image  of  the  Poet  (1982).  Among  his  novels 
(written  as  Peter  Towry)  were  It's  Warm  Inside 
(x953)»  L°rd  Minimus  (1955),  a  surprising 
account  of  Henrietta  Maria's  dwarf  page,  and 
Trial  by  Battle  (1959). 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1969,  knighted  in 
1983,  and  made  an  honorary  D.Litt.  of  Bristol 


355 


Piper 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


University  in  1984  and  an  honorary  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Academy  in  1985.  In  1945  he  married 
Anne  Horatia,  daughter  of  Oliffe  Legh  Rich- 
mond, professor  of  humanity  in  Edinburgh  Uni- 
versity. They  had  three  daughters  and  a  son. 
Piper  died  at  home  in  Wytham,  near  Oxford,  29 
December  1990,  after  suffering  for  many  years 
from  severe  emphysema. 

[Richard  Walker  in  Burlington  Magazine,  vol.  cxxxiii, 
March  1991;  Annual  Reports  of  National  Portrait  Gal- 
lery 1966-7,  Fitzwilliam  Museum  1973,  Ashmolean 
Museum  1984-5;  Ashmolean,  no.  8,  autumn  1985; 
personal  knowledge.]  Richard  Walker 

PLANT,  Cyril  Thomas  Howe,  Baron  Plant 
(1910-1986),  trade-union  official,  was  born  27 
August  1 9 10  in  Leek,  Staffordshire,  the  only  son 
and  elder  child  of  Sidney  Plant,  manager  of  a 
Co-operative  Society  shop,  and  his  wife,  Rosina 
Edna  Thomas,  who  previously  ran  a  grocer's 
shop.  He  was  educated  at  Leek  High  School, 
where  he  was  head  boy  and  captain  of  the  cricket 
team.  In  1927  he  began  work  as  a  sorting  clerk  in 
the  Post  Office  in  Leek,  where  his  interest  in 
trade  unions  began.  In  these  early  years  he  was  a 
keen  local  amateur  association  football  player, 
and  later  became  a  referee,  developing  an  interest 
in  football  that  he  retained  throughout  his  life. 

In  1934  he  was  successful  in  the  limited 
competition  for  entry  to  the  Civil  Service  clerical 
class.  He  joined  the  Inland  Revenue  in  the 
collection  service  as  an  assistant  collector.  He 
quickly  became  a  delegate  to  the  newly  formed 
Inland  Revenue  Staff  Federation  (IRSF)  con- 
ference. He  was  elected  to  the  executive  commit- 
tee of  IRSF,  and  in  1937  became  honorary 
secretary  of  the  collection  section.  At  this  time 
the  IRSF  was  still  an  unsettled  alliance  of  former 
collection,  inspectorate,  and  valuation  divisions. 
Plant  developed,  and  later  finely  tuned,  his  skills 
as  a  mediator  and  conciliator,  helping  to  bind  the 
union  together.  Later  his  skills  as  a  'fixer'  were  to 
be  of  great  service  to  the  international  trade- 
union  movement.  He  was  appointed  in  1944 
to  a  full-time  IRSF  post  as  assistant  secretary 
and  then  deputy  general  secretary.  In  i960  he 
succeeded  Douglas  Houghton  (later  Baron 
Houghton  of  Sowerby)  as  general  secretary  of  the 
IRSF.  There  were  by  then  relatively  few  oppor- 
tunities for  the  IRSF,  through  Plant,  to  obtain 
improvements  significantly  in  advance  of  the  rest 
of  the  Civil  Service  and  he  directed  much  of  his 
energies  and  abilities  into  broader  areas  of  trade- 
union  and  related  activities. 

He  was  a  member  of  the  TUC  general  council 
from  1964  to  1976  and  served  on  the  economic 
and  international  committees.  His  expertise  on 
fiscal  and  economic  subjects  gave  him  far  greater 
authority  and  respect  than  usual  for  someone 
from  such  a  small  union,  and  this  was  buttressed 
by  his  willingness  to  offer  his  colleagues  good 


advice  on  income  tax  matters  and  frequent  tips, 
some  good  and  some  less  good,  on  horse-racing, 
which  was  a  passionate  interest  of  his.  He  was 
chairman  of  the  TUC  in  1975-6.  He  also  fulfilled 
many  TUC  duties,  including  membership  of 
public  bodies  such  as  the  Community  Relations 
Commission  (1974-7),  tne  Monopolies  and 
Mergers  Commission  (1975-8),  and  the  depart- 
mental committee  of  inquiry  into  police  pay 
chaired  by  Baron  Edmund-Davies  (1977-8). 
After  retirement  in  1977  he  became  parliamen- 
tary adviser  to  the  Police  Federation  and  assidu- 
ously defended  its  interests  in  the  House  of 
Lords.  A  police  band  played  at  his  funeral. 

He  was  active  at  International  Labour  Office 
conferences  from  1965  onwards,  and  the  ILO 
gave  him  a  major  platform  to  press  for  the 
development  of  trade-union  rights  and  improve- 
ments in  working  conditions,  particularly  of 
public  service  employees,  throughout  the  world. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  governing  body  of  the 
ILO  from  1969  to  1977.  He  played  a  powerful 
role  in  the  programme,  financial,  and  admin- 
istrative committee,  a  body  which  exerted  great 
authority  over  finance  and  allocation  of  resources 
during  the  difficult  period  when  the  USA  with- 
drew membership  and  subscriptions.  In  the 
international  context  Plant  displayed  the  many 
virtues  of  British  trade-union  leaders  in  inter- 
national settings.  He  grasped  the  importance  of 
obtaining  agreement  and  consensus  from  dele- 
gates, and  his  mastery  of  the  complexities  of 
procedural  provisions  allowed  him  to  produce 
solutions  that  were  acceptable  to  all.  He  spoke 
with  eloquence,  wit,  and  authority,  earning 
respect  from  employers  and  government  dele- 
gates alike. 

He  had  a  deep  commitment  to  further  educa- 
tion and  was  treasurer  of  the  Workers'  Educa- 
tional Association  from  1969  to  1981.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  governing  body  of  Ruskin  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  and  chairman  of  the  governors 
from  1967  to  1979,  helping  to  raise  funds  for  one 
of  the  new  buildings,  which  was  named  after 
him. 

His  interest  in  the  Post  Office  and  Civil 
Service  Sanatorium  Society  began  with  his  first 
job,  and  he  was  chairman  of  the  committee  of 
management  from  1950  to  1975.  ^  was  his 
initiative  which  led  to  the  queen  mother  becom- 
ing patron  of  the  society,  and  under  his  guidance 
it  developed  into  a  large  vocational  health  ser- 
vice, with  a  hospital  which  not  only  provides 
treatment  for  its  members  but  encourages 
research.  When  he  was  made  a  life  peer  in  1978 
he  attached  Benenden,  the  location  of  the  hos- 
pital, to  his  title.  This  was  the  greatest  of  Plant's 
non-professional  interests.  He  was  appointed 
OBE  in  1965  in  recognition  of  his  work  for  the 
Society  and  CBE  in  1975. 

Plant  was  a  firm  believer  in  the  virtues  of  the 


356 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Piatt 


British  Gvil  Service,  with  its  concepts  of  duty 
and  responsibilities,  combined  with  a  total  com- 
mitment to  the  benefits  of  strong  independent 
trade  unions  to  protect  the  rights  of  public 
service  employees.  At  the  ILO  he  spoke  in 
defence  of  the  interests  of  the  ILO  employees 
and  in  particular  sought  to  protect  their  pension 
rights. 

Plant  was  a  large,  well-built  man,  six  feet  one 
inch  tall,  and  broad-shouldered.  In  1931  he 
married  Gladys  Sampson,  daughter  of  Sampson 
Mayers,  textile  manufacturer.  They  had  two  sons 
and  one  daughter.  Plant  died  from  a  burst  aorta 
in  hospital  in  Tours  9  August  1986,  while  on 
holiday  with  his  wife  in  France. 

[Minutes  of  the  TUC,  Congress  House,  London; 
minutes  of  the  ILO,  International  Labour  Office,  Gen- 
eva; private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

Derek  Robinson 

PL  ATT,  Sir  Harry,  first  baronet  (1886- 1986), 
surgeon,  was  born  7  October  1886  at  317  Roch- 
dale Road,  Thornham,  Lancashire,  the  eldest  of 
five  sons,  one  of  whom  died  in  infancy,  of  Ernest 
Piatt,  master  fustian  cutter,  and  his  wife  Jessie 
Cameron,  daughter  of  George  Munro  Lindsay, 
of  Liverpool.  At  the  age  of  five  he  developed 
tuberculosis  of  the  knee.  Having  been  taught 
mainly  the  classics  and  languages  by  home  tutors, 
his  decision  to  enter  medicine  in  1904  was  a 
surprising  one,  especially  as  he  had  done  very 
little  science.  He  went  to  the  Victoria  University 
of  Manchester,  graduating  MB,  BS  (Lond.)  in 
1909,  with  distinction  in  medicine  and  the  gold 
medal  in  surgery.  He  obtained  his  FRCS  in  1912 
and  was  appointed  resident  surgical  officer  in  the 
Royal  National  Orthopaedic  Hospital,  London. 

In  191 3  he  spent  a  year  in  the  USA,  pursuing 
postgraduate  studies  at  the  Massachusetts  Gen- 
eral Hospital,  Boston.  This  American  experience 
finalized  Piatt's  decision  to  devote  his  life  to 
orthopaedics,  which  was  then  a  much  less  fash- 
ionable or  glamorous  branch  of  surgery.  He 
returned  to  Britain  just  before  the  outbreak  of 
World  War  I,  as  honorary  orthopaedic  surgeon 
(1914-32)  to  Ancoats  Hospital  in  Manchester, 
where  he  set  up  the  first  organized  segregated 
fracture  clinic  in  19 17.  Because  of  his  ankylosed 
knee  and  disability,  he  was  made  a  captain  in  the 
Royal  Army  Medical  Corps  Territorial  Forces, 
in  charge  of  the  Military  Orthopaedic  Centre  in 
Manchester.  In  1920  he  joined  the  staff  of  the 
Shropshire  Orthopaedic  Hospital  in  Oswestry. 

In  1 92 1  Piatt  received  the  gold  medal  for  his 
Manchester  MD  thesis,  on  peripheral  nerve 
injuries.  He  became  surgical  director  of  the  Ethel 
Hedley  Hospital  in  Windermere,  consultant  to 
the  Lancashire  county  council  for  education, 
public  health,  and  tuberculosis,  and  in  1926  a 
lecturer  in  orthopaedic  surgery  to  the  University 
of  Manchester.  In  1932  the  Manchester  Royal 


Infirmary  established  an  orthopaedic  department 
away  from  the  control  of  general  surgery  and 
Piatt  transferred  there.  Manchester  University 
recognized  his  outstanding  academic  contribu- 
tion to  orthopaedics  by  creating  a  personal  chair 
for  him  in  1939,  which  he  held  until  195 1. 

Having  helped  found  the  British  Orthopaedic 
Association  in  1917,  he  became  its  president 
(1934-5).  He  was  also  president  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Medicine  orthopaedics  section  in 
193 1-2  and  British  delegate  (1929-48)  and  later 
president  (1948-53)  of  the  international  commit- 
tee of  the  Societe  Internationale  de  Chirurgie 
Orthopedique  et  de  Traumatologic  He  served 
on  the  council  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons 
of  England  (1940-58)  and  was  its  president  in 
1954-7.  He  was  knighted  in  1948  because  of  this 
work.  He  was  consultant  adviser  in  orthopaedic 
surgery  to  the  Ministry  of  Health  (1940-63), 
organizing  general  orthopaedics,  and  special  frac- 
ture and  peripheral  nerve  injury  centres,  as  well 
as  being  honorary  civilian  consultant  to  the  Army 
Medical  Services  (1942-54).  Piatt  was  actively 
involved  in  setting  up  the  National  Health  Serv- 
ice before  and  after  1948. 

In  1958  he  was  made  a  baronet,  as  was 
customary  for  presidents  of  the  RCS.  He 
received  six  honorary  degrees  and  held  sixteen 
honorary  memberships  of  various  societies  and 
eight  honorary  fellowships  of  surgical  colleges. 
Up  to  1982  he  wrote  prolifically  on  orthopaedic 
subjects — their  history,  organization,  staffing, 
nursing,  and  education.  He  was  a  competent 
musician  and  a  member  of  council  of  the  Royal 
Manchester  College  of  Music  (1949-73),  ^  weU 
as  vice-president  of  the  Wagner  Society  of  Man- 
chester. He  had  a  fiery  temper  and  was  out- 
spoken and  intolerant  of  humbug.  As  a  younger 
man  he  was  intellectually  arrogant  and  in  the 
operating  room  he  expressed  his  displeasure  at 
delays  by  kicking  over  the  nearest  bucket. 

Even  when  very  old,  this  small,  stockily  built, 
vigorous  person  walked  briskly  despite  a  bad 
limp  due  to  an  ankylosed  knee.  His  piercing  deep 
blue  eyes  missed  nothing  around  him  and  his 
obvious  strength  of  character  w  as  reinforced  by  a 
strong  jaw  structure.  In  19 16  he  married  a  nurse, 
Gertrude  Sarah  (died  1980),  daughter  of  Richard 
Turney.  They  had  four  daughters  and  a  son. 
Piatt  achieved  his  goal,  to  reach  a  hundred  years 
of  age  with  his  mental  faculties  intact.  He  died  20 
December  1986  in  Manchester.  He  was  suc- 
ceeded in  the  baronetcy  by  his  son,  (Frank) 
Lindsey  Piatt  (born  1919),  barrister. 

[Harold  Riley  (artist),  Conversations  with  Harry  Piatt, 
1986  (privately  printed);  official  records  of  meetings  of 
the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons;  Modern  Mediant,  vol.  i, 
18  November  1068;  Lancet,  10  January  1087;  British 
Medical  Journal,  vol.  ccxciii,  4  October  1986,  and  vol. 
ccxciv,  10  January  1987;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  R.  B.  Dcthie 


357 


Pochin 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


POCHIN,  Sir  Edward  Eric  (1909- 1990),  physi- 
cian and  specialist  in  the  dangers  of  ionizing 
radiation,  was  born  22  September  1909  in  Sale, 
Cheshire,  the  only  child  of  Charles  Davenport 
Pochin,  mechanical  engineer,  and  his  wife,  Agnes 
Collier.  His  father  drowned  soon  after  he  was 
born  and  the  family  had  little  money,  but  he 
showed  early  determination  by  gaining  a  scholar- 
ship to  Repton.  He  later  went  to  St  John's 
College,  Cambridge,  where  he  took  first  classes 
in  both  parts  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos 
(1930  and  1 931),  stayed  for  some  physiological 
research,  and  then  went  to  University  College 
Hospital  (UCH)  for  his  clinical  training  in  1932. 
He  obtained  his  MRCS,  LRCP  in  1935,  MB, 
B.Chir.  in  1936,  and  MRCP  in  1937.  In  1941  he 
joined  the  Medical  Research  Council's  depart- 
ment of  clinical  research  at  UCH,  which  was  led 
by  Sir  Thomas  *Lewis.  After  secondment  to  an 
army  physiological  laboratory,  where  he  worked 
on  the  physiology  and  ergonomics  of  living  in  a 
tank,  he  returned  to  UCH  as  director  of  the 
department  of  clinical  research  in  1946  and 
remained  there  until  his  retirement  in  1974.  He 
became  FRCP  in  1946. 

Known  as  'Bill'  to  his  friends  from  his  student 
days,  he  determined  early  in  his  career  that,  to 
learn  more  about  human  physiology  and  disease, 
human  studies  needed  to  be  carried  out.  He  was 
a  founder  member  of  the  pioneering  UCH  ethics 
committee,  where  he  pursued  the  policy  of 
informed  consent.  The  clinical  trials  and  clinical 
measurements  that  were  later  taken  for  granted 
were  almost  unknown  then.  His  approach  was 
successful  and  before  long  he  was  a  world  expert 
on  endocrinology  (the  study  of  hormones  and 
hormonal  glands),  especially  the  thyroid  gland, 
which  concentrates  iodine  to  produce  thyroid 
hormones. 

With  the  development  of  nuclear  power  and 
the  potential  for  releases  of  radioactive  iodine, 
and  the  resulting  risk  to  the  thyroid  gland, 
Pochin  was  well  placed  to  advise  the  government 
on  radiation  protection.  This  led  to  his  appoint- 
ment to  the  MRC  committee  on  protection 
against  ionizing  radiation.  In  those  exciting  but 
daunting  years  of  the  middle  1950s,  when  the 
first  recognition  was  made  of  the  dangers  of  fall- 
out from  atmospheric  testing  of  nuclear  weapons, 
Pochin  was  appointed  the  first  UK  representa- 
tive to  the  new  United  Nations  Scientific  Com- 
mittee on  the  Effects  of  Atomic  Radiation 
(UNSCEAR),  a  post  he  held  for  over  twenty-five 
years  (1956-82).  At  about  the  same  time  he  also 
became  involved  with  the  work  of  the  Inter- 
national Commission  on  Radiological  Protection 
(IRCP),  joining  its  main  commission  in  1959  and 
being  chairman  from  1962  to  1969.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  National  Radiological  Protection 
Board  from  197 1  to  1982. 

He  was  deeply  involved  in  the  assessment  of 


health  consequences  of  the  1957  YVindscale  acci- 
dent, when  radioactive  iodine  was  released  into 
the  atmosphere  over  Cumbria.  He  subsequently 
established  with  colleagues  that  a  tablet  of  ordi- 
nary iodine  could  effectively  prevent  the  body 
from  taking  up  radioactive  iodine.  It  was  agreed 
throughout  the  world  that  this  preventive  meas- 
ure would  be  adopted  if  there  were  a  nuclear 
emergency.  Some  twenty  years  later  in  1977  he 
returned  to  Windscale  to  become  an  assessor  for 
the  major  planning  inquiry  into  the  expansion  of 
the  nuclear  fuel  reprocessing  plant.  In  1978  he 
conducted  a  government  inquiry  into  radio- 
logical health  and  safety  at  the  Atomic  Weapons 
Establishment,  Aldermaston.  His  report  (1978) 
was  highly  critical  of  the  poor  protection 
afforded  and  led  to  the  introduction  of  many 
improvements  in  health  and  safety. 

The  author  of  more  than  120  articles  or 
chapters  in  medical  and  scientific  journals  or 
textbooks,  he  was  the  first  in  the  world  to  move 
radiation  protection  standards  on  to  a  quantita- 
tive basis  and  in  1977  he  published  Problems 
Involved  in  Developing  an  Index  of  Harm  (IRCP 
publication  27).  In  1984  there  followed  Nuclear 
Radiation:  Risks  and  Benefits.  He  was  appointed 
CBE  in  1959  and  knighted  in  1975. 

Pochin  approached  six  feet  in  height  and  was 
of  average  build.  He  had  a  good  head  of  hair,  a 
healthy,  clear  complexion  that  went  with  his 
outdoor  pursuits,  and  a  rich,  deep  voice.  He  was 
kind  and  considerate,  modest  and  unassuming, 
never  pompous,  often  humorous.  He  had  little 
time  for  the  pretentious  or  devious,  but  managed 
to  conceal  this  at  important  meetings.  Those  who 
were  close  to  him  knew  when  he  was  tested 
beyond  endurance  because  of  his  habit  of  break- 
ing a  pencil  in  two  as  an  alternative  to  an 
outburst.  In  addition  to  his  scientific  achieve- 
ments, Pochin  was  an  enthusiastic  hill  walker  and 
an  able  painter.  He  was  in  the  habit  of  using  one 
of  his  sketches  of  a  hill  or  rock  face  to  produce 
his  own  personal  Christmas  card. 

In  1940  he  married  Constance  Margaret  Julia 
(died  1 971),  daughter  of  Tobias  Harry  Tilly, 
solicitor.  They  had  one  son  and  one  daughter. 
Pochin  died  29  January  1990  at  Hollington 
House,  Woolton  Hill,  Newbury. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  H.  Clarke 

POND,  Sir  Desmond  Arthur  (1919-1986),  psy- 
chiatrist, physician,  and  humanist,  was  born  2 
September  1919  in  Catford,  London,  the  only 
child  of  Thomas  Arthur  Pond,  electrical  engineer 
and  company  director,  and  his  wife,  Ada  Celia 
Clutten.  He  was  educated  at  John  Lyon  School 
in  Harrow,  St  Olave's  in  south-east  London,  and 
Clare  College,  Cambridge.  At  Cambridge  he 
obtained  a  first  class  in  both  part  i  of  the  natural 
sciences  tripos  (1940)  and  part  ii  of  the  moral 


358 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Pouncey 


sciences  tripos  (1941).  He  gained  a  Rockefeller 
studentship  to  Duke  University,  North  Carolina 
(1942-4).  He  followed  this  with  clinical  studies 
at  University  College  Hospital  Medical  School, 
London,  and  thus  qualified  in  medicine  in  both 
the  United  States  and  Britain  (MB,  B.Chir., 
1945,  DPM  Eng.  1947).  He  proceeded  to  a 
Cambridge  MD  in  1951  and  to  fellowship  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians  of  London  in  i960. 
By  then  he  had  trained  in  psychiatry  at  the 
Maudsley  Hospital,  specializing,  though  not 
exclusively,  in  child  psychiatry. 

British  psychiatry,  guided  by  (Sir)  Aubrey 
•Lewis,  flourished  during  the  postwar  years. 
Psychiatrists  began  to  occupy  important  posi- 
tions in  medical  affairs  and  councils.  Others 
besides  Pond  contributed  to  this,  but  his  personal 
effectiveness  and  standing  placed  him  at  the 
forefront.  Psychiatrists  respected  him  as  a  lead- 
ing psychiatrist  and  physicians  recognized  him  as 
a  physician.  He  was  helped  by  his  particular 
speciality  of  epilepsy  in  children  and  its  cerebral, 
psychiatric,  and  psychological  causes  and  seque- 
lae. In  the  eyes  of  the  medical  profession  epilepsy 
was  'real  medicine'.  In  1961  he  gave  the  Goul- 
stonian  lecture  to  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians 
of  London,  a  rare  honour  for  a  psychiatrist,  upon 
'the  psychiatric  aspects  of  epileptic  and  brain 
damaged  children'.  His  comprehensive  approach 
to  the  epilepsies  of  childhood  carefully  balanced 
the  respective  importance  of  social,  clinical,  epi- 
demiological, and  electroencephalographic  find- 
ings. Psychiatry  was  securing  a  larger  place  in 
medical  education,  and  as  a  consultant  at  Uni- 
versity College  Hospital  from  1952  to  1966,  and 
later  when  occupying  the  Foundation  chair  of 
psychiatry  at  the  London  Hospital  Medical  Col- 
lege (1966-82),  Pond  raised  both  the  clinical  and 
academic  status  of  the  subject. 

From  1978  to  1981  he  was  president  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Psychiatrists,  of  which  he  had 
become  a  founder  fellow  in  197 1.  Previously  he 
had  served  on  its  important  committees  and 
particularly  furthered  training  in  psychiatry  for 
general  practitioners.  During  his  presidency  he 
was  chosen  by  fellow  medical  presidents  to  chair 
the  Conference  of  Royal  Medical  Colleges,  the 
first  psychiatrist  to  do  so.  He  thus  became  the 
spokesman  on  general  matters  for  all  the  colleges. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  Medical  Research 
Council  (1968-72  and  1982-5)  and  from  1982  to 
1985  chief  scientist  at  the  Department  of  Health, 
where  he  helped  to  develop  the  relationship 
between  the  Department  of  Health  and  the 
Medical  Research  Council  to  the  benefit  of 
medical  science  generally.. 

A  deeply  religious  man,  more  humanitarian 
than  pietistic,  he  was  a  founder  member  of  the 
Institute  of  Religion  and  Medicine  (1964).  He 
served  on  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury's  group 
on  divorce  law  reform  from  1964  to  1966,  which 


published  Putting  Asunder,  and  he  helped  set 
up  the  Richmond  Fellowship,  which  provided 
residential  homes  with  a  marked  but  skilfully 
concealed  spiritual  background  for  psychiatric 
patients,  wherein  a  long  period  of  caring  stability 
assisted  in  rehabilitating  mentally  disturbed 
young  people. 

He  was  a  visiting  professor  to  the  Australian 
and  New  Zealand  College  of  Psychiatrists  in 
1968  and  at  Western  Reserve  Institute,  Pittsburg, 
in  1 97 1.  He  served  on  a  number  of  committees 
concerned  with  epilepsy,  including  the  welfare 
and  rehabilitation  of  epileptic  subjects.  These 
included  committees  of  the  World  Health 
Organization,  which  adopted  his  classification  of 
childhood  epilepsies.  He  lectured  widely  and 
published  upon  his  own  subject  and  own 
research,  and  upon  medical  matters  generally. 
Counselling  in  Religion  and  Psychiatry  (1973)  was 
based  on  his  Riddell  memorial  lecture  delivered 
in  Newcasde  upon  Tyne  in  1971.  He  was  an 
honorary  fellow  of  the  British  Psychological 
Society  (1980)  and  the  Royal  College  of  General 
Practitioners  (1981).  He  was  knighted  in  1981. 

Personable,  popular,  and  kind,  with  his  ideas 
always  well  organized,  Pond  never  seemed  in  a 
hurry.  His  build  was  slight,  but  there  was  an 
underlying  firmness  which  ensured  that  others 
usually  agreed  with  his  proposals.  He  chiefly- 
acted  by  encouragement,  especially  as  a  teacher. 
With  colleagues,  juniors,  and  students  his 
emphasis  was  always  on  bringing  out  rather  than 
stuffing  in:  'I  don't  mind  spoon-feeding  students 
but  I  draw  the  line  at  moving  their  jaws  up  and 
down  as  well.'  He  had  a  great  love  of  music  and 
was  a  gifted  pianist.  In  1945  he  married  (Mar- 
garet) Helen,  herself  a  physician,  daughter  of 
Louis  Arnold  Jordan,  research  scientist.  It  was  a 
long  and  happy  marriage  and  they  had  three 
daughters,  two  of  whom  became  professional 
musicians.  He  and  his  wife  retired  to  the  Teign 
Valley  in  Devon.  Pond  died  from  cancer,  after  a 
long  and  painful  illness,  29  June  1986  in  Torquay 
Hospital. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Neil  Kessel 

PORTLAND,  ninth  Duke  of  (1 897-1 990), 
diplomat  and  international  businessman.  [See 
Bentinck,  Victor  Frederick  William  Caven- 
dish-.] 

POUNCEY,  Philip  Michael  Rivers  (1910- 
1990),  connoisseur  of  Italian  an,  was  born  in 
Oxford  15  February  19 10,  the  second  of  the 
three  sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  (the 
Revd)  George  Ernest  Pouncey,  a  bank  manager 
who  had  decided  to  take  holy  orders,  and  his 
second  wife  Madeline  Mary,  daughter  of  Albin 
Roberts,  cloth-maker.  He  was  educated  at  Marl- 
borough and  Queens'  College,  Cambridge,  where 


359 


Pouncey 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


he  obtained  a  third  class  in  part  i  (1930)  and  a 
second  (division  II)  in  part  ii  (1931)  of  the 
English  tripos.  He  then  worked  as  a  volunteer  in 
the  Fitzwilliam  Museum,  Cambridge,  until  1934, 
when  he  was  appointed  assistant  keeper  in  the 
National  Gallery,  London.  He  began  by  working 
on  the  catalogue  of  fourteenth-century  Italian 
paintings,  but  as  successive  volumes  of  the  cata- 
logue (all  published  after  he  left  the  Gallery) 
show,  his  interests  extended  over  the  entire 
Italian  school. 

In  the  later  part  of  the  war  of  1930-45  he  was 
seconded  to  the  Government  Code  and  Cipher 
School  at  Bletchley  Park,  but  for  the  first  two 
years  he  was  in  charge  of  that  part  of  the  National 
Gallery  collection  moved  for  safety  to  the 
National  Library  of  Wales  at  Aberystwyth.  The 
drawings  from  the  British  Museum  Printroom 
and  the  Royal  Library  at  Windsor  were  also  there 
under  the  care  of  A.  E.  *Popham,  then  deputy 
keeper  of  the  Printroom,  who  took  the  opportu- 
nity of  starting  work  on  the  catalogues  of  the 
Italian  drawings  in  both  collections.  As  problems 
arose  Popham  discussed  them  with  two  eminent 
art  historians,  Johannes  *Wilde  and  Frederick 
*Antal,  then  also  in  Aberystwyth.  Pouncey  natu- 
rally took  part  in  these  discussions  and  realized 
that  drawings,  surviving  as  they  have  in  far  larger 
numbers  than  paintings  and  posing  more  diffi- 
cult problems  of  attribution,  offered  greater 
scope  for  his  particular  gift  for  connoisseur- 
ship. 

After  the  war  he  accordingly  transferred  to  the 
British  Museum  and  continued,  now  on  an 
official  basis,  to  collaborate  with  Popham  on  the 
catalogue  of  Italian  drawings.  The  first  volume, 
of  fourteenth-  and  fifteenth-century  drawings  of 
all  schools,  appeared  in  1950.  Two  later  volumes, 
both  in  collaboration  with  J.  A.  Gere,  were 
devoted  to  Raphael  and  His  Circle  (1962)  and 
Artists  Working  in  Rome  0.1550-0.1640  (1983).  In 
1954  he  became  deputy  keeper,  but  succession  to 
the  keepership  was  blocked  and  he  would  have 
had  to  retire  at  sixty.  The  prospect  of  freedom 
from  official  routine  and  of  again  working  with 
paintings  led  him  in  1966  to  join  Sotheby's  as  a 
director,  but  he  kept  in  close  touch  with  his  old 
department  and  continued  to  work  there  regu- 
larly on  the  third  volume  of  the  catalogue. 

While  still  at  Marlborough  he  had  studied  the 
classic  history  of  Italian  Renaissance  painting 
(1864-71)  by  Sir  Joseph  *Crowe  and  G.  B. 
Cavalcaselle.  This  pioneer  work  was  the  first  to 
survey  the  field  in  a  spirit  of  rigorous  scientific 
enquiry,  taking  into  account  all  available  evi- 
dence, both  documentary  and  stylistic.  Poun- 
cey's  approach  was  similarly  untheoretical  and 
matter-of-fact.  He  saw  the  subject  in  terms  of  the 
complex  interaction  of  a  host  of  individual  artis- 
tic personalities  whose  identification  was  the 
primary  duty  of  the  historian.  His  approach  was 


that  of  connoisseurship;  he  held  that  no  critical 
generalization  about  an  artist  can  be  valid  until 
his  (euvre  is  correctly  defined. 

In  the  drawing-cabinets  of  Europe  and  the 
USA  perplexed  students  see  with  relief  inscrip- 
tions in  his  familiar  neat  handwriting.  (It  is 
estimated  that  in  the  Louvre  alone  he  restored 
some  500  Italian  drawings  to  their  proper 
authors.)  These  annotations  and  his  carefully 
indexed  notes  constitute  the  principal  record  of 
his  life's  work.  Apart  from  the  three  British 
Museum  catalogues,  his  publications  were  lim- 
ited to  short  articles  dealing  with  specific  points, 
usually  of  attribution,  and  an  occasional  review 
(including  a  tour  de  force,  of  the  1964  Italian 
edition  of  Bernhard  Berenson's  The  Drawings  of 
the  Florentine  Painters).  His  one  monograph,  on 
the  drawings  of  Lorenzo  Lotto  (1965),  is  an  essay 
of  only  fifteen  pages,  but  in  them  the  essential 
facts  are  stated  with  concise  clarity.  His  reluc- 
tance to  publish  was  more  than  offset  by  the 
number  and  importance  of  his  discoveries  and  by 
the  encouraging  generosity  with  which  he  always 
shared  them  with  fellow  students.  A  French 
friend  described  'son  allure  juvenile  et  son  air 
latin'.  In  spite  of  his  solidly  English  descent, 
there  was  something  meridional  about  his  dark 
hair  and  pale  lively  features,  his  rapid  speech, 
and  flashing  brown  eyes — an  effect  in  no  way 
diminished  by  his  invariable  London  uniform  of 
dark  suit,  bowler  hat,  and  high  stiff  collar. 

In  1937  he  married  Myril,  daughter  of  Colonel 
Albert  Gros,  a  staff  officer  in  the  French  army. 
She  shared  all  his  interests,  and  was  felicitously 
described  in  an  obituary  notice  as  'wife  and 
colleague'.  They  had  twin  daughters,  one  of 
whom  married  Dr  Marco  Chiarini,  director  of 
the  Galleria  Palatina  (Palazzo  Pitti)  in  Florence. 
In  1975  Pouncey  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  and  in  1987  was  appointed 
CBE.  His  seventy-fifth  birthday  was  celebrated 
at  the  Fitzwilliam  Museum  (where  he  was  hon- 
orary keeper  of  Italian  drawings  from  1975)  by  a 
loan  exhibition  of  his  reattributions;  and  after  his 
death,  which  took  place  at  his  house  in  Kensing- 
ton 12  November  1990,  he  received  the  unique 
distinction  of  being  similarly  honoured  by  the 
Louvre  (1992),  the  Uffizi  (1992),  and  the  British 
Museum  (1994). 

[).  A.  Gere  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol. 
lxxvi,  1990;  Independent,  16  November  1990;  The 
Times,  20  November  1990;  Art  Newspaper,  December 
1990;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  A.  Gere 

POWELL,  Michael  Latham  (1905-1990),  film 
director,  was  born  30  September  1905  in  Bekes- 
bourne,  near  Canterbury,  Kent,  the  second  son 
and  younger  child  of  Thomas  William  Powell, 
farmer,  and  his  wife  Mabel,  daughter  of  Freder- 
ick Corbett,  of  Worcester.  He  was  educated  at 


360 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Powell 


King's  School,  Canterbury,  where  he  was  a 
King's  scholar,  and  at  Dulwich  College.  After 
joining  the  National  Provincial  Bank  in  1922, 
Powell  entered  the  film  business  in  1925  by 
joining  Rex  Ingram,  a  Hollywood  director  who 
was  working  at  a  studio  in  Nice,  and  Harry 
Lachman,  a  Chicago-born  painter  who  secured 
employment  for  Powell  with  British  Inter- 
national Pictures.  In  193 1  Powell  formed  Film 
Engineering  with  Jem  Jackson,  an  American 
lawyer,  to  produce  "quota  quickies',  British  films 
given  a  market  by  the  Cinematograph  Act  of 
1927. 

After  a  successful  contract  with  Gaumont- 
British,  Powell  directed  a  personal  project  set  on 
the  island  of  Foula  in  the  Shetlands,  Edge  of  the 
World  (1937),  produced  by  the  American  Joe 
Rock.  The  film  received  good  reviews  and  a  cup 
for  the  best  direction  of  a  foreign  film  at  the 
Venice  film  festival  (1938).  This  led  to  a  contract 
with  (Sir)  Alexander  *Korda,  who  facilitated 
Powell's  first  collaboration  with  screenwriter 
Emeric  *Pressburger  on  The  Spy  in  Black  ( 1939). 
the  first  of  twenty-one  films  they  made  together, 
adopting  a  joint  tide  in  1943,  the  'Archers'.  But 
before  their  partnership  was  more  permanently 
forged  Powell  directed  The  Lion  Has  Wings 
(1939)  and  co-directed  Korda's  Technicolor  The 
Thief  of  Baghdad  (1940). 

During  World  War  II  Powell  and  Pressburger 
produced  some  of  their  finest  work,  including 
Forty  Ninth  Parallel  (1941),  One  of  Our  Aircraft 
Is  Missing  (1941),  and  The  Life  and  Death  of 
Colonel  Blimp  (1943),  a  film  which  was  criticized 
by  (Sir)  Winston  *Churchill  and  the  Ministry  of 
Information  for  its  satirical  portrayal  of  the 
military.  The  films  were  imaginative,  creative, 
cinematic,  and  rather  unconventional.  Whereas 
most  British  films  were  made  with  an  intense 
style  of  realism,  Powell  and  Pressburger  used 
fantastical  situations,  dream  sequences,  bold 
colour,  and  disjointed  narratives.  The  Archers 
broke  new  ground  with  A  Canterbury  Tale 
(1944),  a  lyrical  meditation  for  the  postwar  world 
which  suffered  from  studio  cuts  to  render  it  more 
conventional.  At  the  time  Powell's  films  were 
considered  to  stray  beyond  the  critical  bound- 
aries of  British  films  usually  associated  with 
'quality''  and  realism.  Nevertheless,  the  Rank 
Organization  gave  the  Archers  a  firm  production 
base  and  considerable  freedom  in  the  develop- 
ment of  their  projects.  Powell  excelled  at  location 
shooting  and  had  a  particularly  poetic  response 
to  landscape.  At  the  end  of  the  war  he  directed  / 
Know  Where  I'm  Going  (1045)  and  his  favourite 
film,  the  spectacular  A  Matter  of  Life  and  Death 
(1946),  starring  David  *Niven  as  a  British  pilot 
on  the  verge  of  death.  It  was  an  aesthetic  experi- 
ment involving  imaginative  sets  and  innovative 
film  techniques  to  represent  the  pilot's  hallucina- 
tions. Powell's  passion  for  experiment,  risk  tak- 


ing, and  creative  use  of  colour  influenced  many 
film  directors. 

In  a  spirit  of  resourceful  creativity  Black 
Narcissus  (1946)  reproduced  south  India  in  a 
studio  and  The  Red  Shoes  (1948)  was  an  extrava- 
gant gamble.  Rank  allowed  the  Archers  to  pro- 
duce a  high  budget  film  about  ballet  at  a  rime 
when  the  British  film  industry  was  enjoying  a 
brief  period  of  protection  against  American  film 
imports.  Its  excess  stretched  the  limits  of  the 
relationship  with  Rank  and  ended  the  Archers' 
partnership  with  the  studio  until  The  Battle  of  the 
River  Plate  in  1956.  From  1048  to  1955  Powell 
worked  with  Alexander  Korda  again  on  The 
Small  Back  Room  (1049)  and  The  Tales  of  Hoff- 
man (1953),  an  experimental  adaptation  of  Jac- 
ques Offenbach's  opera.  Powell's  last  film  with 
Pressburger  was  ///  Met  by  Moonlight  (1956). 
The  Archers'  partnership  ended  after  a  mutual 
distancing  and  several  unsuccessful  attempts  to 
raise  finance  for  film  projects. 

In  1959  Powell  directed  the  controversial 
Peeping  Tom,  later  widely  regarded  as  a  classic 
but  at  the  time  considered  to  be  sadistic  cheap 
horror.  Its  reception  was  so  bad  that  Powell 
could  get  no  further  funding  for  his  work  and 
had  to  go  to  Australia  in  1966  to  make  two  films: 
They're  a  Weird  Mob  (1966)  and  Age  of  Consent 
(1969),  the  last  feature  film  he  was  to  direct.  In 
the  1970s  Powell's  talent  was  fully  recognized  by 
critics  and  film-makers,  especially  Martin  Scors- 
ese and  David  Thomson,  who  encouraged  him  to 
move  to  America  in  1980  to  teach  at  Dartmouth 
College,  New  Hampshire.  In  1981  he  became 
director  in  residence  at  Francis  Ford  Coppola's 
Zoetrope  Hollywood  studio,  where  he  also 
worked  on  his  boastful  and  vengeful  autobio- 
graphies, A  Life  in  Movies  (1986)  and  Million- 
Dollar  Movie  (1992).  Powell  was  remarkable  for 
his  liveliness,  enthusiasm,  and  passion  for  both 
cinema  and  Rudyard  *Kipling.  His  physical 
appearance  was  distinctive:  he  had  clear  blue 
eyes,  ruddy  cheeks,  and  a  moustache,  and  was 
bald  from  an  early  age.  He  loved  the  outdoors 
and  always  shot  on  location  when  possible. 

In  recognition  of  his  work  Powell  received  a 
number  of  awards,  among  them  fellowship  of  the 
Royal  Geographic  Society;  honorary  doctorates 
from  the  universities  of  East  Anglia  (1978)  and 
Kent  (1984),  and  the  Royal  College  of  Art  (1987); 
and  the  British  Film  Institute's  special  award  in 
1978  and  a  fellowship  in  1983. 

Powell  was  married  three  times.  His  first 
marriage  was  to  an  American  dancer,  1927-36 
(they  were  married  in  France  and  stayed  together 
for  three  weeks  only).  In  1043  he  married  Fran- 
ces, daughter  of  Dr  Jeremiah  Reidy  JP,  medical 
practitioner  and  mayor  of  Stepney  in  1917-18. 
They  had  two  sons.  His  wife  died  in  1983  and  in 
1984  Powell  married  film  editor  Thelma  Schoon- 
maker,   daughter  of  Bertram   Schoonmaker,  a 


361 


Powell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


clerical  worker  in  the  Standard  Oil  Company. 
Powell  died  of  cancer  19  February  1990  in 
Avening,  Gloucestershire. 

[Ian  Christie,  Arrows  of  Desire,  1985;  Michael  Powell,  A 
Life  in  Movies,  1986,  and  Million-Dollar  Movie,  1992; 
private  information.]  Sarah  Street 

PRE,  Jacqueline  Mary  du  (1945-1987),  cellist. 
[See  Du  Pre,  Jacqueline  Mary.] 

PRESSBURGER,  Emeric  (1902- 1988),  author 
and  screenwriter,  was  born  Imre  Josef  Press- 
burger  at  3  St  Peter's  Street,  Miskolc,  Hungary, 
5  December  1902,  the  only  son  (he  had  one  elder 
half-sister  from  his  father's  previous  marriage)  of 
Kalman  Pressburger,  estate  manager,  and  his 
second  wife,  Katherina  Wichs.  He  went  to  a 
boarding  school  in  Temesvar.  He  then  studied 
mathematics  and  engineering  at  the  universities 
of  Prague  and  Stuttgart  before  his  father's  death 
forced  him  to  abandon  his  studies.  He  moved  to 
Berlin  in  1926  to  work  as  a  journalist  and  writer 
of  short  stories  and  film  scripts.  Ufa,  the  major 
European  film  studio,  employed  Pressburger  as  a 
contract  writer  and  his  first  screen  credit  was  for 
Abschied  (1930),  co-written  with  Erich  Kastner, 
novelist,  and  directed  by  Robert  Siodmak.  Press- 
burger was  not  listed  on  the  credits  for  a  screen 
adaptation  of  Kastner's  Emil  and  the  Detectives 
(193 1 ),  which  was  signed  by  Billy  Wilder.  One 
Pressburger  script,  Monsieur  Sans-Gene  (1935) 
was  remade  in  Hollywood  as  One  Rainy  After- 
noon. He  also  worked  with  Max  Ophuls  and 
Reinhold  Schunzel. 

After  collaborating  on  many  scripts  in  Ger- 
many (where  he  changed  his  name  to  Emmerich) 
and  France,  Pressburger  went  to  Britain  in  1935, 
on  a  stateless  passport,  to  work  for  fellow  Hun- 
garian (Sir)  Alexander  *Korda,  of  London  Film 
Productions.  In  England  his  name  became 
Emeric.  His  first  British  assignment  was  The 
Challenge  in  1938,  the  year  he  met  Michael 
*Powell,  his  director  and  collaborator  for  the 
next  eighteen  years.  Their  first  joint  projects 
were  The  Spy  in  Black  (1939),  an  espionage 
thriller  filmed  at  Denham  Studios,  starring  Con- 
rad Veidt  and  Valerie  Hobson,  and  Contraband 
(1940).  Pressburger's  most  successful  work  was 
with  Michael  Powell  as  the  'Archers'  production 
company,  which  they  formed  in  1943,  with  its 
distinctive  trademark  of  nine  arrows  thrusting 
into  a  target. 

During  World  War  II  Pressburger's  screen- 
plays provided  excellent  scope  for  Powell's  dis- 
tinctive visual  style,  which  employed  colour  in  an 
imaginary  way,  fantasy  and  unreal  spectacle, 
complex  and  challenging  narrative  structures, 
and  flamboyant  visual  and  camera  devices.  The 
films  involved  were  Forty  Ninth  Parallel  (1941), 
One  of  Our  Aircraft  Is  Missing  (1941),  The  Silver 
Fleet  (1943),  The  Life  and  Death  of  Colonel  Blimp 


(1943),  based  on  the  cartoon  character  created  by 
David  *Low,  A  Canterbury  Tale  (1944),  and  / 
Know  Where  Vm  Going  (1945).  Pressburger's 
ability  to  see  Britain  from  the  point  of  view  of  a 
fascinated  outsider  suited  the  films'  quizzical 
perspective  on  British  society  and  history.  Now 
regarded  as  a  classic  in  a  mystical  tradition,  A 
Canterbury  Tale  was  misunderstood  at  the  time 
of  release,  initiating  the  Archers'  reputation  as 
film-makers  who  were  ahead  of  their  time,  and 
whose  work  was  characterized  by  wit,  fantasy, 
ambition,  and  originality.  The  film  celebrated 
British  heritage  and  freedom,  two  themes  that 
were  extremely  important  to  Pressburger. 

After  the  war  Pressburger  (who  was  natural- 
ized in  1946)  experimented  with  time  in  A 
Matter  of  Life  and  Death  (1946)  and  with  a  clash 
of  communities  and  values  in  Black  Narcissus 
(1946),  about  a  group  of  nuns  in  the  Himalayas. 
The  Red  Shoes  (1948,  based  on  a  Hans  Christian 
Andersen  story),  showed  how  Powell's  visual 
sense  of  colour  could  be  assisted  by  Pressburger's 
ambitious  screenplay.  This  was  followed  by 
adaptations  of  challenging  material  for  The  Tales 
of  Hoffman  (1953,  adapted  from  a  Jacques  Offen- 
bach opera  at  the  suggestion  of  Sir  Thomas 
*Beecham)  and  Oh  Rosalinda!  (1955,  based  on 
Johann  Strauss's  operetta  Die  Fledermaus).  These 
films  separated  the  Archers  from  the  conven- 
tional canon  of  British  film  production,  often  to 
their  cost,  for  puzzled  critics  dismissed  their 
work  as  pretentious,  extravagant,  and  confusing. 
In  1952  Pressburger  directed  for  the  only  time, 
the  film  being  Twice  Upon  a  Time.  The  Battle  of 
the  River  Plate  (1956)  was  chosen  for  the  Royal 
film  performance  in  1956.  After  their  last  Archer 
collaboration,  ///  Met  by  Moonlight  (1956), 
Powell  and  Pressburger  parted.  Their  work  was 
beginning  to  lose  its  experimental  edge  and  both 
agreed  to  separate  as  their  interests  began  to 
diverge. 

Pressburger  wrote  and  produced  Miracle  in 
Soho  (1957)  and  published  two  novels,  Killing  a 
Mouse  on  Sunday  (1961),  on  which  was  based 
Fred  Zinnemann's  film  Behold  a  Pale  Horse 
(1964),  and  The  Glass  Pearls  (1966).  He  worked 
again  with  Powell  in  1972  when  they  collaborated 
on  a  film  for  the  Children's  Film  Foundation, 
The  Boy  Who  Turned  Yellow,  and  on  a  novel  of 
The  Red  Shoes  (1978).  Pressburger  more  or  less 
retired  after  this,  but  enjoyed  the  critical  appre- 
ciation of  his  work  encouraged  by  Martin  Scors- 
ese and  Francis  Ford  Coppola.  A  key  event  in  the 
reappraisal  of  the  Archers'  work  was  the  showing 
of  a  restored  print  of  The  Life  and  Death  of 
Colonel  Blimp  at  the  National  Film  Theatre  in 
1978.  Michael  Powell  was  always  keen  to  stress 
that  his  skill  as  a  director  was  stretched  to  the 
best  advantage  when  Pressburger  had  written  the 
screenplay.  There  was  a  mutual  sense  of  trust 
between  them  and  a  joint  desire  to  explore  the 


362 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Pritchard 


boundaries  of  word  and  image.  A  keen  gastro- 
nome, Pressburger  loved  French  food.  He  had  a 
great  sense  of  humour  and  his  physical  appear- 
ance contrasted  with  that  of  Michael  Powell. 
Pressburger  was  short,  wore  glasses,  and  had  a 
sagacious,  bird-like  facial  expression.  He  was  a 
keen  supporter  of  Arsenal  football  team. 

Pressburger  received  the  British  Film  Institute 
special  award  (with  Powell)  in  1978  and  fellow- 
ships from  BAFTA  in  198 1  and  the  BFI  in  1983. 
Forty  Ninth  Parallel  earned  an  Oscar  (1942)  for 
Pressburger  for  best  original  story.  In  1938 
Pressburger  married  Agnes,  daughter  of  Andrew 
Anderson,  factory  owner.  This  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1941  and  in  1947  he  married  Gwyn- 
neth  May  Zillah  ('Wendy'),  former  wife  of  Abra- 
ham Jacob  Greenbaum  ('Jack  Green'),  gambler, 
and  daughter  of  Edward  Orme,  professional 
soldier.  They  had  two  daughters,  one  of  whom 
died  as  a  baby  in  1948.  The  marriage  was 
dissolved  at  Reno,  Nevada,  in  1953  and  in  Britain 
in  1 97 1.  Pressburger  died  of  bronchial  pneumo- 
nia 5  February  1988  in  Saxstead,  Suffolk. 

[Ian  Christie,  Arrows  of  Desire,  1985;  Michael  Powell,  A 
Life  in  Movies,  1086,  and  Million-Dollar  Movie,  1992; 
Kevin  Macdonald,  Emeric  Pressburger,  1904;  private 
information.]  Sarah  Street 

PRITCHARD,  Sir  John  Michael  (1921-1989), 
operatic  and  orchestral  conductor,  was  born  5 
February  1921  at  17  Cromwell  Road,  Waltham- 
stow,  London,  the  younger  son  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Albert  Edward  Pritchard,  violinist, 
and  his  wife,  Amy  Edith  Shaylor.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Sir  George  Monoux  School  in  London, 
and  he  studied  privately  with  his  father  and  other 
music  teachers.  In  his  teenage  years  he  visited 
Italy  to  listen  to  opera.  When  World  War  II 
broke  out  Pritchard  registered  as  a  conscientious 
objector,  to  his  father's  dismay.  He  therefore 
underwent  an  army  medical  examination,  but, 
because  of  an  earlier  attack  of  pleurisy,  was 
registered  unfit  to  serve.  In  1943  he  took  over  the 
Derby  String  Orchestra  and  was  its  principal 
conductor  till  1951.  Meanwhile  he  joined  the 
music  staff  of  Glyndebourne  Opera  (1947)  and 
was  appointed  chorus  master  there  (1049).  He 
succeeded  Reginald  Jacques  as  conductor  of  the 
Jacques  Orchestra  (1950-2).  By  195 1  he  was 
sharing  with  Fritz  Busch  major  Mozart  produc- 
tions at  Glyndebourne  and  at  the  Edinburgh 
Festival. 

Important  opportunities  came  his  way  in  1952. 
At  Edinburgh  he  appeared  with  the  Royal  Phil- 
harmonic Orchestra,  replacing  Ernest  Ansermet, 
who  was  ill;  and  he  made  his  debuts  at  the  Royal 
Opera  House  in  Covent  Garden,  and  at  the 
Vienna  State  Opera.  He  appeared  regularly  with 
the  Vienna  Symphony  Orchestra  (1953-5).  He 
continued  to  work  at  Glyndebourne,  conducting 
their   productions   of  Mozart's    Idomeneo   and 


Richard  Strauss's  Ariadne  aufSaxos  at  the  Edin- 
burgh festivals  of  1953  and  1954.  After  the  latter 
he  conducted  the  Glyndebourne  production  of 
Rossini's  La  Cenerentola  at  the  Berlin  Festival. 
The  performance  was  a  triumph. 

At  home,  he  was  appointed  principal  con- 
ductor of  the  (Royal)  Liverpool  Philharmonic 
Orchestra  (1957-63)  and  within  a  year  had 
launched  the  Musica  Viva  series  at  which  con- 
temporary music  was  introduced,  illustrated, 
performed,  and  then  discussed.  During  five  sea- 
sons, unfamiliar  music  by  many  living  composers 
was  heard  for  the  first  time  in  Britain.  Pritchard's 
success  in  Liverpool  led  to  his  appointment  as 
musical  director  of  the  London  Philharmonic 
Orchestra  (1962-6).  At  Glyndebourne  he  became 
music  counsellor  (1963),  principal  conductor 
(1968),  and  musical  director  (1969-77).  In  1969 
he  took  the  London  Philharmonic  to  the  Far  East 
and  made  his  .American  debut,  at  the  Chicago 
Lyric  Opera.  Appearances  at  the  San  Francisco 
Opera  (1970)  and  the  Metropolitan  Opera  (1971) 
followed.  In  1973  he  conducted  the  London 
Philharmonic  in  China — the  first  visit  by  a  west- 
ern orchestra. 

By  1980  Pritchard  had  conducted  many  of  the 
world's  greatest  orchestras,  including  the  Berlin 
Philharmonic,  the  Leipzig  Gewandhaus,  the 
Dresden  Staatskapelle,  and  the  Philadelphia 
Orchestra;  he  had  appeared  at  the  Salzburg 
festival,  the  Maggio  Musicale  in  Florence,  and 
the  Munich  State  Opera.  He  was  a  regular  guest 
at  the  Royal  Opera  House,  Covent  Garden,  at  the 
Proms,  and  with  the  BBC  Symphony  Orchestra, 
whose  chief  conductor  he  became  in  1982.  Over- 
lapping posts  included  at  that  time  the  musical 
directorships  of  the  Cologne  Opera  (1978),  the 
Theatre  de  la  Monnaie,  Brussels  (1981),  and  the 
San  Francisco  Opera  (1986). 

Pritchard's  innate  musicality,  his  quick  grasp, 
his  range  of  sympathies,  and  his  gift  for  getting 
the  best  out  of  the  musicians  (with  whom  he  was 
very  popular)  combined  to  bring  him  a  career  of 
astonishing  concentration  and  variety.  No  con- 
ductor can  have  had  a  fuller  diary.  Although  this 
sometimes  led  to  a  perfunctoriness  bordering 
upon  indolence,  he  was,  at  his  best,  an  inter- 
preter of  lasting  distinction.  His  Mozart  and 
Strauss  were  superbly  idiomatic,  but  he  also 
excelled  in  nineteenth-century  Italian  opera.  And 
he  could  surprise  his  public  with,  for  example, 
some  tough  Shostakovich.  He  was  not,  however, 
a  great  star;  he  did  not  make  enough  recordings 
to  achieve  that  status.  But  he  was  appointed  CBE 
in  1962  and  was  knighted  in  1983.  The  coveted 
Shakespeare  prize  (Hamburg)  was  awarded  him 
in  1975- 

Pritchard's  much  imitated  manner  of  speech — 
bland,  almost  epicene — was  an  outward  sign  of 
his   unabashed    homosexuality,   but  there   was 


363 


Pritchard  d.n.b.  1986-1990 

nothing  effeminate  about  his  music-making.  He  a  blood  clot,  he  conducted  the  last  night  of  the 
had  friends  in  every  walk  and  style  of  life  and  was  Proms  on  16  September  1989  and  made  a  touch- 
loyal  and  generous  to  them.  Witty  and  well-  ingly  prescient  and  self-deprecating  speech.  He 
informed,  he  lived  in  some  style  (in  a  number  of  died  5  December  1989  in  San  Francisco,  where  he 
homes,  including  an  elegant  house  near  Glynde-  was  musical  director  of  the  San  Francisco  Opera, 
bourne  and  a  villa  in  the  Alpes-Maritimes  above  He  left  a  large  part  of  his  estate  to  Terry 
Nice).  Indeed  his  enjoyment  of  good  food  and  Maclnnes,  his  partner. 

wine  became  a  problem  when  he  needed  to  lose  [Spike  Hughes,  Glyndebourne,  1965;  Nicholas  Kenyon, 

weight  for  a  hip  replacement  operation  not  long  Tne  BBq  Symphony  Orchestra,  1081;  John  Higgins 

before  his  death.  It  was  a  problem  he  observed  (ed.),    Glyndebourne,    a    Celebration,    1984;    personal 

with  rueful  detachment.  Though  already  ill,  with  knowledge.]                                Robert  Ponsonby 


364 


a 


QUAYLE,  Sir  (John)  Anthony  (1913-1089), 
actor  and  stage  director,  was  born  7  September 
191 3  at  2  Delamere  Road,  Ainsdale,  Southport, 
Lancashire,  the  only  child  of  Arthur  Quayle, 
solicitor,  and  his  wife,  Esther  Kate  Overton.  The 
Quayle  family  had  Manx  roots.  During  a  rather 
lonely  youth  Anthony's  interest  in  the  theatre 
was  encouraged  by  his  lively  and  imaginative 
mother.  He  was  educated  at  Rugby  and  the  Royal 
Academy  of  Dramatic  Art,  where  he  stayed  only 
a  year.  His  first  appearance  on  the  professional 
stage,  unpaid,  was  in  The  Ghost  Train  at  the  Q_ 
theatre  while  on  holiday  from  RADA.  He  began 
his  career  in  earnest  playing  both  Richard  Cceur 
de  Lion  and  Will  Scarlett  in  Robin  Hood  at  the 
same  theatre  in  1931. 

The  following  year,  after  touring  as  feed  to  a 
music-hall  comic,  he  found  his  feet  in  classical 
theatre  and  met  two  men  whose  influence  was  to 
be  an  important  factor  in  his  career,  (Sir)  Tyrone 
*Guthrie  and  (Sir)  John  Gielgud.  By  1939  he 
had  appeared  in  many  supporting  roles,  with  Old 
Vic  seasons  in  1932  and  1937-8,  had  appeared  in 
New  York,  and  had  played  Laertes  in  the  famous 
Guthrie  production  of  Hamlet  at  Elsinore. 
Strongly  drawn  to  the  classics  and  especially  to 
Shakespeare,  he  took  over  the  lead  from  Laur- 
ence (later  Baron)  *Olivier  in  Henry  V  during  an 
Old  Vic  tour  of  Europe  and  Egypt  just  before 
World  War  II.  Though  not  yet  at  the  top  of  his 
profession,  he  was  known  and  liked  by  many  who 
were. 

He  spent  the  war  in  the  Royal  Artillery, 
reaching  the  rank  of  major.  Characteristically,  he 
gave  up  an  administrative  job  in  Gibraltar, 
learned  to  parachute,  and  joined  Albanian  parti- 
sans behind  German  lines.  He  later  wrote  two 
slight  novels  suggested  by  his  wartime  experi- 
ences. 

After  the  war  he  returned  to  the  stage  and  as 
Enobarbus  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra  (1946)  was  a 
great  success  in  the  first  of  the  many  supporting 
roles  he  was  to  make  his  own.  He  also  turned  to 
directing,  and  in  1946  his  Crime  and  Punishment, 
starring  John  Gielgud,  was  considered  out- 
standing. 

In  1948,  through  Guthrie,  he  joined  the 
Shakespeare  memorial  theatre  in  Stratford- 
upon-Avon  as  actor  and  stage  director.  He  was 
soon    promoted    to    run    the    whole    memorial 


theatre.  In  eight  years  he  transformed  it  from  an 
unfashionable  provincial  theatre  to  a  world- 
famous  centre  of  classical  drama.  Because  of  his 
many  contacts,  he  was  able  to  attract  illustrious 
players  and  directors  to  Stratford,  as  well  as 
encourage  such  major  new  talents  as  Richard 
•Burton  and  (Sir)  Peter  Hall.  He  took  companies 
on  tours  of  Australasia  in  1949  and  1953  and 
tried,  although  without  success,  to  secure  the 
kind  of  London  shop  window  for  the  company 
which  was  later  obtained  by  the  Royal  Shake- 
speare Company.  With  his  'Cycle  of  the  Histo- 
ries' for  the  Festival  of  Britain  in  195 1  he 
foreshadowed  the  later  practice  of  staging  Shake- 
speare's historical  plays  in  chronological  order. 
Among  his  own  parts  during  these  strenuous 
years  were  Henry  VIII,  Falstaff,  and  Othello.  His 
work  was  not  entirely  confined  to  Stratford,  but 
his  enthusiastic  leadership  and  hard  work  at  the 
memorial  theatre,  proudly  unsubsidized,  put  it 
on  the  map.  He  paved  the  way  for  the  subsequent 
achievements  of  Peter  Hall,  Trevor  Nunn,  and 
the  Royal  Shakespeare  Company. 

In  1956  he  resigned  from  Stratford  and 
returned  to  mainstream  theatre.  For  over  twenty 
more  years  he  continued  to  act  and  direct  in  the 
West  End,  having  a  steady  if  unspectacular 
career,  occasionally  taking  the  lead,  as  in  Tam- 
burlaine  in  1956,  but  more  often  in  highly  praised 
supporting  parts.  He  also  appeared  in  over  thirty 
films,  most  of  them  British,  again  in  strong 
supporting  roles.  His  portrayal  of  stiff-upper-lip 
Englishmen  was  much  admired  in  films,  espe- 
cially in  The  Battle  of  the  River  Plate  (1956),  The 
Guns  ofNavarone  (1961),  and  Laurence  of  Arabia 
(1962).  The  first  of  his  many  television  appear- 
ances was  in  1961. 

In  1978,  at  sixty-five,  his  career  took  a  differ- 
ent course  and  he  toured  with  the  Prospect 
Theatre  Company,  playing  leading  roles  in  The 
Rivals  and  King  Lear.  The  company  closed, 
however,  when  its  Arts  Council  subsidy  was 
withdrawn.  Several  years  later,  in  1983,  he 
formed  his  own  Compass  Theatre,  which  bravely 
stumped  the  country  without  subsidy,  dedicated 
to  bringing  major  plays  to  people  who  could 
otherwise  never  see  them. 

Quayle  had  a  big  physique,  a  vigorous  person- 
ality, and  a  steadfast — even  romantic — devotion 
to  great  plays  and  classical  traditions.  Despite  his 


365 


Quayle 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


fine  technique  he  had  neither  the  personality  nor 
the  face  for  a  great  actor.  As  he  grew  older  his 
face  became  more  rugged  but  there  was  some- 
thing about  his  amiable  blue  eyes  which  sug- 
gested a  warm  and  pleasant  person  and  deprived 
his  acting  of  some  of  its  emotional  impact. 
However,  as  a  man  of  great  courage  and  integrity 
he  was  a  natural  leader  and  a  major  influence  on 
the  theatre  in  Britain. 

He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1952  and  knighted 
in  1985.  He  had  honorary  D.Litt.  degrees  from 
Hull  (1987)  and  St  Andrews  (1989).  He  was 
guest  professor  of  drama  at  the  University  of 
Tennessee  in  1974,  and  was  nominated  for  an 
Oscar  as  best  supporting  player  for  his  perform- 


ance as  Cardinal  Wolsey  in  the  1969  him  about 
Anne  Boleyn,  Anne  of  the  Thousand  Days. 

In  1935  he  married  Hermione  (died  1983), 
actress  daughter  of  actor  Nicholas  James  Han- 
nen,  but  the  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1943.  In 
1947  he  married  another  actress,  Dorothy  War- 
dell,  divorced  wife  of  Robert  Douglas  Finlayson 
and  daughter  of  another  actress,  Dorothy  Dick- 
son, and  Carl  Hyson,  of  independent  means. 
They  had  a  son  and  two  daughters.  He  was  still 
touring  until  two  months  before  his  death  from 
cancer  at  his  Chelsea  home,  20  October  1989. 

[Daily  Telegraph,  The  Times,  and  Independent,  21  Octo- 
ber 1989;  Anthony  Quayle,  A  Time  to  Speak  (autobio- 
graphy), 1990.]  Rachael  Low 


366 


R 


RAMSEY,  (Arthur)  Michael,  Baron  Ramsey 
of  Canterbury  (1904- 1988),  archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, was  born  in  Cambridge  14  November 
1904,  the  younger  son  in  the  family  of  two  sons 
and  two  daughters  of  Arthur  Stanley  Ramsey,  a 
Cambridge  mathematics  don  and  Congregation- 
alist  elder,  and  his  wife  (Mary)  Agnes,  daughter 
of  Plumpton  Stravenson  Wilson,  vicar  of  Hor- 
bling,  Lincolnshire.  His  elder  brother  Frank 
•Ramsey  (died  1930)  became  the  well-known 
Cambridge  philosopher.  Educated  at  Repton  and 
then  as  a  classical  scholar  at  his  father's  college, 
Magdalene,  he  became  a  leading  debater  and 
president  of  the  Cambridge  Union  (1926).  He 
was  committed  to  the  Liberal  party  and  was 
adopted  as  the  Liberal  candidate  for  Cambridge- 
shire. But  during  his  third  year  at  university  he 
became  convinced,  to  the  surprise  of  his  friends, 
that  he  should  take  holy  orders.  He  gained  a 
second  class  in  part  i  of  the  classical  tripos  (1925) 
and  a  first  class  in  part  i  of  the  theology  tripos 
(1927).  He  then  went  to  Cuddesdon  College, 
near  Oxford,  to  be  trained  for  the  priesthood. 
This  training  was  almost  wrecked,  first  by  the 
death  of  his  mother  in  a  car  accident  in  1927,  and 
then  by  the  need  for  psychiatric  treatment. 

He  was  ordained  to  the  curacy  of  St  Nicholas, 
Liverpool,  in  September  1928  but  stayed  in  the 
parish  only  eighteen  months.  He  then  became 
sub-warden  of  the  theological  college  at  Lincoln. 
Here  he  published  in  1936  his  best-known  book, 
The  Gospel  and  the  Catholic  Church.  It  was  at  once 
a  persuasive  to  Protestants  to  take  seriously  the 
Catholic  tradition  of  ministry  and  devotion,  and 
a  persuasive  to  Catholics  to  take  seriously  the 
Protestant  conviction  of  the  central  biblical 
truths.  The  book  was  original  in  form  and  range 
of  ideas  and  made  him  well  known  to  the 
thinking  and  reading  members  of  the  church. 
After  another  curacy  at  Boston  (Lincolnshire, 
1936-8)  and  a  year  as  vicar  of  St  Bene'ts  in 
Cambridge  (1939-40),  he  was  chosen  in  1940  to 
be  professor  of  divinity  at  Durham  University. 
The  post  carried  with  it  a  canonry  at  the 
cathedral. 

At  Durham  (1940-50)  he  was  soon  valued  as 
the  leader  of  sane  Catholic  thought  and  devotion 
in  the  Church  of  England,  and  after  the  war  as  an 
Anglican  leader  prominent  in  the  ecumenical 
movement  and  the  World  Council  of  Churches. 


After  a  brief  spell  as  regius  professor  of  divinity 
at  Cambridge,  with  a  fellowship  at  Magdalene 
College  (1950-2),  during  which  he  was  also 
canon  and  prebendary  of  Lincoln  Cathedral 
(195 1-2),  he  was  chosen  successively  as  bishop 
of  Durham  (1952-6),  archbishop  of  York 
(1956-61),  and  archbishop  of  Canterbury 
(1961-74).  As  bishop  of  Durham  he  had  the 
historic  duty  of  standing  at  the  queen's  right 
hand  during  her  coronation;  his  vast  bald  dome 
and  mobile  eyebrows  attracted  comment  when 
the  event  was  televised  and  introduced  his  col- 
ourful personality  to  the  nation.  His  shining  face, 
which  looked  old  from  the  age  of  thirty-five,  was 
attractive,  though  not  at  all  handsome,  with  its 
abundant,  beaming  smiles. 

His  term  at  Canterbury  coincided  with  the 
introduction  of  reforming  legislation,  in  which  he 
took  a  prominent  part.  He  was  weighty  in  the 
abolition  of  capital  punishment,  in  changes  in  the 
laws  on  abortion,  divorce,  and  homosexuality, 
and,  especially,  on  the  subject  of  race  relations. 
As  prime  minister,  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron 
Wilson  of  Rievaulx)  made  him  the  chairman  of 
the  national  committee  for  Commonwealth 
immigrants,  and  as  such  he  was  in  public  dispute 
with  Enoch  Powell  over  immigration.  His  term 
also  coincided  with  a  prising  apart  of  church  and 
state.  He  was  determined  that  Parliament  should 
no  longer  have  the  final  say  in  the  doctrine  and 
worship  of  the  Church  of  England.  To  that  end 
he  helped  with  the  creation  of  the  general  synod 
to  secure  a  representative  government  for  the 
church,  with  legislation  to  allow  modern  experi- 
ments in  worship,  with  the  abolition  of  the. 
historic  subscription  by  clergy  to  the  Thirty-nine 
Articles  of  1571,  and  with  the  transfer  of  the 
power  over  forms  of  prayer  and  doctrine  to  the 
authorities  of  the  church  instead  of  the  state. 
This  involved  the  repeal  of  the  Act  of  Uni- 
formity and  was  the  biggest  change  in  English 
church  government  since  the  restoration  of 
Charles  II. 

What  made  Ramsey  world-famous  was  his 
visit  in  March  1966  to  Pope  Paul  VI,  who 
received  him  with  all  honour  and  gave  him  his 
own  bishop's  ring.  He  had  undertaken  the  mis- 
sion with  a  certain  reluctance,  but  once  it  was 
decided  threw  himself  into  its  spirit  of  affection 
and  charity.  In  public  opinion  the  visit  became  an 


367 


Ramsey 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


important  symbol  of  the  happier  relations 
between  churches  in  the  modern  age  and  the  new 
attitudes  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  after  the 
second  Vatican  Council.  Afterwards,  as  Ramsey 
travelled  the  world  on  his  visits  to  the  Anglican 
provinces,  he  was  much  in  demand  as  a  speaker 
on  the  unity  of  the  churches.  He  had  long  had  an 
understanding  of  the  eastern  Orthodox  tradition 
of  spirituality  and  valued  much  that  was  best  in 
the  western  Catholic  inheritance.  He  stated  his 
views  in  numerous  books,  of  which  the  last  was 
Be  Still  and  Know  (1982).  His  essays  and 
addresses  he  gathered  into  three  volumes. 

His  part  in  the  movement  for  Christian  re- 
union made  him,  despite  his  Anglo-Catholic 
convictions,  an  eloquent  advocate  of  the  pro- 
posed plan  for  union  between  Anglicans  and 
Methodists.  He  just  failed  (1969  and  1971)  to 
persuade  a  sufficient  majority  of  his  church  to 
accept  the  plan.  This  was  a  blow  to  his  con- 
fidence in  the.  wisdom  and  charity  of  the  repre- 
sentatives, to  whom  he  was  engaged  in 
transferring  authority  from  Parliament. 

One  strength  of  the  Church  of  England  had 
lain  historically  in  its  links,  unconfessed,  with  the 
more  tolerant  sides  of  the  Conservative  party. 
Ramsey,  however,  swung  away  and  became  a 
Liberal  advocate  in  the  House  of  Lords,  causing 
much  criticism.  He  was  accused  of  sanctioning 
modern  services  which  lost  the  beauties  of  a 
beloved  Prayer  Book;  of  being  kind  to  homo- 
sexuals; of  being  friendly  to  an  open  policy  of 
immigration;  of  not  denouncing  the  bishop  of 
Hong  Kong  when  he  ordained  two  women  as 
priests;  and,  above  all,  of  sanctioning  in  1965 
military  action  by  Britain  to  stop  Ian  Smith  from 
making  a  racialist  state  in  Rhodesia.  This  last 
matter  incurred  the  strong  displeasure  of  the  far 
right,  and  Ramsey  did  not  bear  their  abuse 
without  suffering. 

The  attribute  which  commanded  a  vast  dis- 
cipleship  and  affection  was  Ramsey's  obvious 
devotion.  Despite  an  enchanting  sense  of 
humour,  he  was  not  good  on  television  and  was 
accused  of  sounding  like  a  bumbling  old  par- 
son. But  his  faith,  and  experience  of  God,  and 
prayerfulness,  came  over  unmistakably  to  nearly 
everyone  who  met  him.  He  was  an  incompetent 
administrator  if  he  was  bored  by  the  subject — 
such  subjects  included  finance,  the  structure  of  a 
parish  system,  and  constitution-mongering.  Yet, 
where  the  subject  interested  him,  where  it  con- 
cerned religion  or  religious  thought,  or  some- 
thing he  otherwise  cared  about,  he  was  a  very 
good  administrator.  At  conducting  a  retreat  he 
was  inspiring  and  lovable,  at  hearing  confessions 
he  was  wise,  and  when  he  celebrated  a  quiet  little 
sacrament  it  lifted  the  souls  of  the  people  heav- 
enward. He  distrusted  his  pastoral  colleagues 
when  they  needed  distrust,  but  occasionally  he 
trusted  too  much  someone  who  had  won  his 


confidence.  His  conversation  was  fascinating 
when  he  was  interested;  his  silences  were  pro- 
found when  he  was  not  or  when  he  wanted  to 
think  about  God.  Some  who  sat  next  to  him  at 
dinner,  especially  women,  despaired  of  mak- 
ing him  say  anything.  His  hobby  was  brass- 
rubbing. 

Ramsey  was  an  honorary  master  of  the  bench 
(Inner  Temple,  1962),  president  of  the  World 
Council  of  Churches  (196 1-8),  a  trustee  of  the 
British  Museum  (1963-9),  and  an  honorary  FBA 
(1983).  As  well  as  a  number  from  overseas 
universities,  he  held  ten  honorary  degrees  from 
universities  in  Britain,  including  Cambridge 
(1957)  and  Oxford  (i960).  He  was  an  honorary 
fellow  of  several  Oxford  and  Cambridge  colleges, 
was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council  (1956),  and 
became  a  life  peer  in  1974. 

In  1942  he  married  Joan  Alice  Chetwode 
Hamilton  and  the  marriage,  though  childless, 
was  happy.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Lieutenant- 
Colonel  Francis  Alexander  Chetwode  Hamilton. 
She  shared  her  husband's  vocation  and  helped 
him  through  the  worst  of  the  silences,  especially 
when  he  was  a  host. 

In  1974  he  retired  first  to  Cuddesdon,  where 
he  hoped  to  teach  at  his  old  college,  and  then  in 
1977  to  Durham,  where  he  loved  to  renew  his 
association  with  the  cathedral.  He  still  paid  many 
visits  abroad  to  lecture.  Nashotah  House,  Wis- 
consin, a  college  for  training  priests,  became 
almost  a  second  home,  for  he  felt  there  a  spirit  in 
devotion  and  theology  that  he  valued  highly.  In 
1986  Ramsey  and  his  wife  began  to  age  and 
moved  to  a  ground-floor  flat  in  the  archbishop's 
house  at  Bishopthorpe  outside  York,  and  then  to 
St  John's  Home  in  Oxford,  where  Ramsey  died, 
23  April  1988. 

[Owen  Chadwick,  Michael  Ramsey,  1990;  J.  B.  Simp- 
son, The  Hundredth  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  1962; 
Michael  De-la-Noy,  A  Day  in  the  Life  of  God,  1971,  and 
Michael  Ramsey,  a  Portrait,  1990;  D.  L.  Edwards, 
Leaders  of  the  Church  of  England,  2nd  edn.,  1978; 
Adrian  Hastings,  A  History  of  English  Christianity 
ig20~ig8s,  1986;  personal  knowledge.] 

Owen  Chadwick 

RAMSEY,      (Mary)      Dorothea      (Whiting) 

(1904- 1 989),  social  worker,  was  born  10  January 
1904  in  Kensington,  London,  the  only  child  of 
Robert  William  Ramsey,  solicitor,  and  his  wife, 
Anna  Whiting  Brown,  of  Clarendon  Road,  in  the 
Notting  Hill  area  of  London.  Of  well-to-do 
parents,  she  was  educated  at  St  Paul's  Girls' 
School,  London,  and  at  Newnham  College, 
Cambridge,  where  she  obtained  third  classes  in 
both  parts  of  the  classical  tripos  (1926  and  1928). 
She  then  taught  Greek  and  Latin  in  London 
until  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  in  1939.  It 
was  as  a  voluntary  worker  with  the  Bristol 
Council  of  Social  Service  in  the  War  Emergency 
Bureau  that  she  became  alerted  to  the  social 


368 


D.N.B. 1986-1990 


Ratcliffe 


problems  of  elderly  people,  and,  henceforward, 
her  career  concentrated  on  that  area. 

In  i  Q4 1  she  helped  to  form  the  Bristol  old 
people's  welfare  committee  and  became  its  secre- 
tary. Just  as  wartime  threw  into  vivid  perspective 
the  needs  of  deprived  children  when  they  were 
evacuated,  so  was  the  distress  of  many  old  people 
made  more  apparent.  Dorothea  Ramsey  was  one 
of  the  first  to  stress  the  value  of  residential  care 
for  older  people,  especially  compared  with  the 
isolation  of  living,  often  in  a  feeble  condition,  at 
home  or  floundering  in  the  large  dormitories  of 
the  workhouse  or  the  chronic  sick  wards  of  the 
former  poor  law  and  other  hospitals.  She  was  to 
the  fore  in  establishing,  in  1942,  the  West  Town 
House  residential  care  home  in  Bristol,  a  small, 
model  facility,  only  the  second  of  its  kind  in  the 
country. 

Returning  to  London,  in  1943  she  became  a 
member  of  the  advisory  case  sub-committee  of 
social  service,  a  body  dealing  with  old  people  in 
distress  and  the  mobilization  of  people  likely  to 
care  for  them.  This  had  been  set  up  not  least  as 
a  consequence  of  the  bombing,  involving  both 
injury  and  homelessness.  This  small-scale  agency 
received  2,000  requests  for  help  each  year,  and 
was  much  pressed  to  find  adequate  residential 
and  allied  amenities  for  its  needy  elderly  clients. 
As  early  as  1940  the  National  Council  of  Social 
Service,  aware  of  the  manifest  difficulties  of 
many  older  people,  had  convened  a  group  of 
representatives  of  the  major  voluntary  and  statu- 
tory providers.  Out  of  this  initiative  grew  the 
National  Old  People's  Welfare  Committee,  its 
remit  the  campaigning  for  and  provision  of 
decent  social  services  for  impoverished  and  sick 
old  people.  Soon  it  was  to  abandon  its  lengthy 
tide,  redolent  of  1940s  officialdom,  in  favour  of 
the  more  user-friendly  Age  Concern. 

Dorothea  Ramsey  became  secretary  of  this 
new  charity  in  1945,  and  she  fought  hard  and 
vigorously  to  improve  conditions  for  its  elderly 
clientele.  During  her  seven-year  secretary  ship — 
she  resigned  in  1952 — the  number  of  groups 
grew  rapidly  from  eight  regional  or  county  and 
eighty  local  committees  to  sixty-two  regional  or 
county  and  831  local  committees.  Given  her 
experience,  it  is  not  surprising  that  she  concen- 
trated on  residential  care,  persuading  both  local 
old  people's  welfare  groups  and  local  authorities 
to  build  and  sustain  homes.  She  urged  the  value 
of  professional  training,  successfully  pressed  for 
chiropody  services,  and  sought  for  older  people  a 
reasonable  degree  of  dignity  and  independence. 
Because  of  the  work  of  men  and  women  like 
Dorothea  Ramsey  during  the  postwar  decades,  a 
less  negative  attitude  towards  ageing  began  to 
develop.  She  was  one  of  the  first  to  take  a  more 
personal  and  less  paternalist  stand  on  social 
provision,  insisting — at  a  time  when  welfare  was 
granted  grudgingly  in  rather  chilling  vein — that 


the  criterion  should  be  "what  you  would  like  in 
similar  circumstances'.  Her  pioneering  work  led 
to  recognition  overseas,  particularly  in  the  USA, 
which  she  toured  with  a  Smith-Mundt  scholar- 
ship in  1952. 

On  retirement  to  the  Lake  District,  she 
devoted  herself  to  what  had  been  a  lifelong 
affection  for  music — she  had  studied  the  flute 
under  Gustav  *Holst  as  a  girl — and  she  applied 
her  considerable  administrative  skills  to  the  fur- 
therance of  orchestral  and  choral  activity  in 
Cumbria.  She  also  played  in  and  became  chair- 
man of  the  Cumberland  Symphony  Orchestra. 
Severe  eye  problems,  arthritis,  and  diabetes  con- 
strained her  life  over  thirty  years,  but  she  bore 
these  handicaps  with  admirable  fortitude.  She 
was  dark,  of  medium  height,  with  intelligent, 
bright  looks,  and  penetrating  eyes.  A  woman  of 
committed  conscience,  if  somewhat  shy,  she 
never  married.  In  retirement  she  lived  with  a 
friend,  Frances  M.  Birkett.  She  died  in  Keswick, 
Cumbria,  27  September  1989. 

[Nesta  Roberts,  Our  Future  Selves  (a  history  of  Age 
Concern),  1970;  Independent,  5  October  1989;  inter- 
views with  colleagues.]  Eric  Midwinter 

RATCLIFFE,  John  Ashworth  (1902-1987), 
physicist,  was  born  12  December  1902  in  Bacup, 
Lancashire,  the  elder  son  (there  were  no  daugh- 
ters) of  Harry  Heys  Ratcliffe,  partner  in  the 
stone-quarrying  firm  of  Henry  Heys  &  Co.,  and 
his  wife  Beatrice  Alice,  daughter  of  Richard 
Ashworth,  founder  of  the  firm  of  Mitchell, 
Ashworth,  Stansfield  &  Co.,  felt  manufacturers. 
He  attended  Giggleswick  School,  where  he 
acquired  a  real  interest  in  mathematics  and 
science,  and  particularly  physics.  In  192 1  he 
went  to  Sidney  Sussex  College,  Cambridge,  on  a 
scholarship  and  obtained  first  classes  in  both 
parts  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  (1923  and 
1924). 

In  June  1924  he  started  research  on  radio  wave 
propagation  under  (Sir)  Edward  *Appleton.  His 
interest  in  this  subject  came  through  hearing 
Appleton's  lecture  course  on  'Electrical  Oscilla- 
tions and  Radio  Telegraphy'.  In  1927  he  was 
elected  a  fellow  of  Sidney  Sussex  College  (hon- 
orary fellow,  1962)  and  appointed  a  university 
demonstrator  in  the  Cavendish  Laboratory.  He 
was  promoted  to  lecturer  (1933)  and  to  reader  in 
physics  (1947).  He  played  a  major  part  in  the 
organization  of  the  teaching  in  the  Cavendish. 
He  enjoyed  lecturing  and  had  the  highest  reputa- 
tion for  clarity  of  presentation.  His  books — such 
as  Sun,  Earth  and  Radio  (1970)  and  An  Introduc- 
tion to  the  Ionosphere  and  Magnetosphere  (1972) — 
and  papers  are  models  of  clear  exposition  and 
many  of  his  students  would  say  that  in  the  use  of 
English  for  scientific  explanations  he  surpassed 
all  others. 


369 


Ratcliffe 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


He  became  head  of  a  group  in  the  Cavendish 
Laboratory  known  as  the  radio  ionosphere 
research  group.  Upgoing  radio  waves  can  be 
reflected  back  to  earth  by  ionized  regions  of  the 
upper  atmosphere,  once  known  as  the  'Heaviside 
layer'  but  later  called  the  'ionosphere'.  Ratcliffe 
had  helped  with  experiments  by  Appleton  and 
M.  A.  F.  Barnett  that  established  the  existence  of 
the  reflecting  layers  and  his  research  group  was 
now  concerned  with  studying  how  the  radio 
waves  were  reflected,  and  how  the  ionized  layers 
were  formed.  This  work  continued  until  1939. 

During  World  War  II  Ratcliffe  was  a  member 
of  the  Air  Ministry  Research  Establishment, 
which  was  later  known  as  the  TRE  (Tele- 
communications Research  Establishment).  At 
first  he  was  head  of  a  group  concerned  with  a 
new  type  of  ground  radar  equipment,  called 
CHL,  for  detecting  low-flying  aircraft  that  could 
be  missed  by  the  existing  chain  of  radar  stations. 
In  September  1940  he  moved  to  Petersham, 
Surrey,  and  there  organized  the  AA  Radio 
School,  whose  object  was  to  train  scientists  to 
keep  the  anti-aircraft  radars  working  on  the  gun 
sites,  particularly  those  round  London.  In 
August  1 94 1  he  returned  to  TRE  to  become  head 
of  a  new  organization,  later  known  as  TRE 
Development  Services,  which  tackled  the  prob- 
lem of  taking  radar  equipment  that  was  new  and 
untried  and  making  it  work  in  the  field. 

In  1945  he  returned  to  the  Cavendish  Labo- 
ratory, where  there  were  now  better  facilities. 
The  work  of  the  radio  ionosphere  group  was 
resumed  and  expanded.  (Sir)  Martin  *Ryle  and 
some  others  from  TRE  joined  the  group  and 
decided  to  follow  up  the  discovery  of  radio 
emission  from  the  sun,  using  techniques  and 
skills  derived  from  their  work  on  radar.  Thus  the 
radio  group  divided  into  two  sections,  radio 
ionosphere  under  Ratcliffe  and  radio  astronomy 
under  Ryle,  with  Ratcliffe  in  overall  charge.  Both 
sections  flourished  and  became  internationally 
famous.  Ratcliffe  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society  in  195 1.  It  was  through  him,  more 
than  any  other  person,  that  the  new  subject 
ionospheric  physics  was  launched  as  a  major 
branch  of  science. 

In  i960  he  left  Cambridge  to  take  up  the  posts 
of  director  of  radio  research  in  the  Department 
of  Scientific  and  Industrial  Research,  and  direc- 
tor of  the  Radio  Research  Station  at  Slough.  The 
move  gave  him  enlarged  opportunities.  Artificial 
satellites  were  then  coming  into  use  for  studying 
the  upper  atmosphere  and  beyond  it.  This  was 
part  of  the  new  subject  of  'space  physics'.  In 
April  1965  the  name  of  the  station  at  Slough  was 
changed  to  the  Radio  and  Space  Research  Sta- 
tion. 

Ratcliffe  always  carried  a  heavy  load  of  admin- 
istration. In  Cambridge  he  served  on  numerous 
boards  and  committees.   In   1954-5  ne  was  a 


member  of  the  council  of  the  Royal  Society  and 
he  served  on  several  Royal  Society  committees. 
He  was  deeply  interested  in  the  advance  of  radio 
science  as  part  of  electrical  engineering,  and 
served  on  many  committees  of  the  Institution  of 
Electrical  Engineers,  of  which  he  became  presi- 
dent in  1966-7.  He  accepted  numerous  other 
similar  tasks.  He  retired  in  1966  but  remained 
active  in  many  fields  for  another  ten  years.  He 
was  appointed  OBE  in  1947,  CBE  in  1959,  and 
CB  in  1965. 

In  1930  he  married  Nora,  daughter  of  Walter 
Disley,  mill  owner  and  manufacturer  of  blankets, 
of  Waterfoot,  Lancashire.  They  had  two  daugh- 
ters, the  younger  of  whom  died  in  1965.  In  1937 
they  moved  to  a  newly  built  house  in  Cambridge, 
which  remained  their  home  for  most  of  the  rest 
of  his  life.  Nora's  health  declined  and  from  about 
1967  onwards  Ratcliffe  cared  for  her  devotedly  at 
home.  She  was  moved  to  hospital  in  1975  and 
died  in  1977. 

Ratcliffe  was  about  six  feet  tall,  with  an 
upright  stance  and  somewhat  athletic  appear- 
ance. He  walked  briskly  and  his  speech,  in 
conversation  and  in  lecturing,  was  very  clear, 
with  a  trace  of  a  Lancashire  accent.  He  had  done 
some  cross-country  running  and  played  fives  and 
squash.  From  the  age  of  seventy  onwards  he 
often  joined  groups  of  old  school  friends  for 
walking  in  the  hills.  He  suffered  from  asthma, 
which  curtailed  his  activities  in  later  years,  and 
died  at  home  in  Cambridge  25  October  1987. 

[K.  G.  Budden  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiv,  1988;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge.]  K.  G.  Budden 

REED,  Henry  (19 14-1986),  poet  and  playwright, 
was  born  in  Birmingham  22  February  19 14,  the 
elder  child  and  only  son  of  Henry  Reed,  master 
bricklayer  and  foreman  in  charge  of  forcing  at 
Nocks  Brickworks,  and  his  wife,  Mary  Ann  Ball. 
He  was  educated  at  King  Edward  VI  Grammar 
School,  Birmingham,  where  he  specialized  in 
classics.  Since  Greek  was  not  taught,  he  taught 
himself,  and  went  on  to  win  the  Temperley  Latin 
prize  and  a  scholarship  to  Birmingham  Uni- 
versity, gaining  a  first-class  degree  (1934)  and  an 
MA  for  a  thesis  on  the  novels  of  Thomas  *Hardy 

(1936). 

Like  many  other  writers  of  the  1930s,  he  tried 
teaching  and,  again  like  most  of  them,  hated  it 
and  left  to  make  his  way  as  a  freelance  writer  and 
critic.  In  1941  he  was  conscripted  into  the  Royal 
Army  Ordnance  Corps,  in  which  he  served — 'or 
rather  studied1,  as  he  preferred  to  put  it — until 
1942  when,  following  a  serious  bout  of  pneumo- 
nia and  a  prolonged  convalescence,  he  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Government  Code  and  Cipher 
School  at  Bletchley.  At  first  employed  as  a 
cryptographer  in  the  Italian  section,  he  was 
subsequently  moved   to   the  Japanese   section, 


370 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Reilly 


where  he  learned  the  language  and  worked  as  a 
translator.  In  the  evenings,  he  wrote  much  of  his 
first  radio  play,  Moby  Dick  (1047),  and  many  of 
the  poems  later  to  be  published  in  A  Map  of 
Verona  (1946). 

The  most  famous  of  these — indeed,  the  most 
famous  English  poem  to  emerge  from  World 
War  II — derived  from  Reed's  experience  of  basic 
training  in  the  RAOC.  A  brilliant  mimic,  he 
would  entertain  his  friends  with  a  comic  imita- 
tion of  a  sergeant  instructing  his  recruits.  After  a 
few  performances,  he  noticed  that  the  words  of 
the  weapon-training  instructor,  couched  in  the 
style  of  the  military  manual,  fell  into  certain 
rhythmic  patterns  which  fascinated  him  and 
eventually  provided  the  structure  of  'Naming  of 
Parts'.  In  this  and  two  subsequent  'Lessons  of 
the  War',  the  military  voice  is  wittily  counter- 
pointed  by  the  inner  voice — more  civilized  and 
still  civilian — of  a  listening  recruit  with  his  mind 
on  other  matters.  At  approximately  the  same 
point  in  each  of  the  first  four  stanzas,  the 
recruit's  attention  wanders  from  the  instructor's 
lesson  in  the  unnatural  art  of  handling  a  lethal 
weapon,  back  to  the  natural  world:  branches, 
blossom,  Edenic  life  as  opposed  to  death.  The 
dialectical  opposition  of  two  voices,  two  views  of 
a  landscape  associated  with  sexual  desire,  is  a 
strategy  refined  in  two  remarkable  poems  of 
Reed's  middle  years:  'The  Changeling',  a  bril- 
liantly condensed  (and  disguised)  autobiography, 
and  'The  Auction  Sale',  a  Forsterian  or  Hardy- 
esque  short  story.  Both  deal  with  the  loss  of 
Eden,  for  which  Reed,  an  unmarried,  unhappy 
homosexual,  would  continue  to  search  in  vain. 
He  came  to  associate  the  Great  Good  Place  with 
Italy,  the  setting  of  some  of  his  later  poems,  such 
of  his  radio  plays  as  'Return  to  Naples'  and  The 
Streets  of  Pompeii  (1971),  and  two  fine  verse  plays 
about  another  poet  whose  work  he  was  translat- 
ing and  with  whom  he  identified  strongly,  Gia- 
como  Leopardi. 

In  the  mid-1950s  Reed  made  a  major  liberat- 
ing decision:  he  abandoned  a  projected  biography 
of  Hardy,  which  for  years  had  burdened  him 
with  guilt  like  the  Ancient  Mariner's  albatross. 
That  failed  quest,  perhaps  related  to  the  failure 
of  his  earlier  quest  for  lasting  love,  played  out  a 
dominant  theme  of  his  radio  plays:  from  failure 
as  a  biographer,  he  turned  to  triumphant  success 
in  a  radio  play  about  a  nervous  young  biographer, 
Herbert  Reeve,  engaged  on  just  such  a  quest  as 
he  had  himself  abandoned.  Reed's  hero  (whose 
name  owes  something  to  that  of  Herbert  Read, 
the  poet  and  critic,  with  whom  he  was  tired  of 
being  confused)  assembles  a  mass  of  conflicting 
testimony  about  his  author,  the  novelist  Richard 
Shewin.  His  witnesses  include  a  waspish  brother, 
his  wife,  two  spinsters  of  uncertain  virtue,  and 
(the  finest  comic  role  he  was  to  create  for  radio) 
the  twelve-tone  female  composer  Hilda  Tablet. 


The  success  of  'A  Very  Great  Man  Indeed' 
(1953)  prompted  six  sequels,  the  best  of  them 
'The  Private  Life  of  Hilda  Tablet'  (1954),  in 
which  Reeve  is  browbeaten  into  switching  the 
subject  of  his  biography  from  the  dumb  dead  to 
the  exuberantly  vocal  living  female  composer. 

The  modest  income  that  Reed's  work  for  radio 
brought  him  he  supplemented  with  the  still  more 
modest  rewards  of  book  reviewing  and  transla- 
tion. The  reviewing  was  to  result  in  a  British 
Council  booklet,  The  Novel  since  igjg  (1946), 
and  his  published  translations  include  Ugo  Bet- 
ti's  Three  Plays  (1956)  and  Crime  on  Goat  Island 
(i960),  Honore  de  Balzac's  Le  Pere  Goriot  (1962) 
and  Eugenie  Grande t  (1964),  and  Natalia  Ginz- 
burg's  The  Advertisement  (1969).  Several  of  bis 
translations  found  their  way  into  the  theatre,  and 
in  the  autumn  of  1955  there  were  London 
premieres  of  no  fewer  than  three. 

Reed's  greatest  imaginative  investment,  how- 
ever, was  in  his  poems,  but  as  a  perfectionist  he 
could  not  bring  himself  to  release  what  he  must 
have  recognized  would  be  his  last  book  until  it 
was  as  good  as  he  could  make  it,  and  it  never  was. 
Only  with  the  posthumous  publication  of  his 
Collected  Poems  (1991)  would  he  take  his  rightful 
place  'among  the  English  poets'.  In  his  last  years 
he  became  increasingly  incapacitated  and  reclu- 
sive, but  devoted  friends  never  ceased  to  visit 
him  in  the  London  flat  he  continued  to  occupy  in 
Upper  Montagu  Street,  thanks  to  the  generosity 
of  a  long-suffering  landlady,  until,  removed  to  St 
Charles  Hospital,  Kensington,  he  died  there  8 
December  1986. 

[Henry  Reed,  Lessons  of  the  War,  1970,  The  Streets  of 
Pompeii  and  Other  Plays  for  Radio,  197 1,  Hilda  Tablet 
and  Others,  Four  Pieces  for  Radio,  1971,  Collected  Poems, 
ed.  Jon  Stallworthy,  ioqi.]  Jon  Stallworthy 

REILLY,  Paul,  Baron  Reilly  (1912-1990),  pro- 
moter of  British  modern  design  and  director  of 
the  Design  Council  (formerly  the  Council  of 
Industrial  Design),  was  born  29  May  1912  in 
Dingle  Bank,  Toxteth,  Liverpool,  the  third  child 
and  elder  son  of  the  family  of  four  children,  of 
which  only  one  son  and  one  daughter  survived 
childhood,  of  (Sir)  Charles  Herbert  *Reilly,  pro- 
fessor of  architecture  at  Liverpool  University, 
and  his  wife,  Dorothy  Gladys,  daughter  of  James 
Jerram  Pratt,  city  merchant,  of  Highgate.  His 
mother  was  a  pupil  of  Henry  *Tonks  at  the  Slade 
School,  but  her  career  as  a  painter  was  cut  short 
when  she  developed  turberculosis  soon  after  her 
marriage  in  1904.  Reilly  was  educated  at  Win- 
chester College.  He  won  an  exhibition  to  Hert- 
ford College,  Oxford,  where  he  made  lasting 
friendships,  dabbled  in  left-wing  politics,  and  left 
with  a  second  class  in  philosophy,  politics,  and 
economics  (1933).  Although  not  really  athletic, 
he  was  nimble  and  at  Oxford  gained  a  fencing 
half  blue.  He  then  spent  the  year  1933-4  at  the 


37i 


Reilly 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


London  School  of  Economics  on  a  business 
administration  course.  He  was  always  adept  at 
making  the  best  of  unpropitious  circumstances 
and  his  appointment,  at  a  time  of  poor  employ- 
ment prospects,  as  a  door-to-door  salesman  for 
the  plywood  firm  Venesta  (1934-6),  brought  him 
into  contact  with  leading  Modernist  architects 
and  clients. 

With  his  innate  verbal  fluency  and  buoyant 
curiosity  he  was  a  born  journalist.  In  1936  he 
became  assistant  to  the  leader  page  editor  of  the 
News  Chronicle.  (Sir)  Gerald  *Barry,  then  editor, 
encouraged  him  to  travel  around  Britain,  with 
the  photographer  Barnett  Saidman,  reporting  on 
buildings  and  design.  He  was  promoted  to  fea- 
tures editor  in  1940.  After  a  mouvemente  war, 
spent  mainly  in  naval  intelligence  (he  joined  the 
Royal  Armoured  Corps  in  1940  and  was  in  the 
Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve  from  1941  to 
1946),  he  worked  in  New  York  on  Modem 
Plastics  magazine  (1946).  A  chance  meeting  on 
the  Queen  Elizabeth  returning  home  to  England 
in  1948  with  (Sir  S.)  Gordon  *Russell,  newly 
appointed  director  of  the  Council  of  Industrial 
Design,  led  to  the  offer  of  a  job  (1948)  as  public 
relations  officer  at  the  COID.  The  COID  had 
been  set  up  in  wartime  to  'promote  by  all 
practicable  means  the  improvement  of  design  in 
the  products  of  British  industry'.  Reilly's  aim 
was  to  raise  consciousness  of  design  standards  in 
a  public  starved  of  visual  stimulus  in  the  years  of 
austerity  and  rationing.  He  organized  a  series  of 
design  weeks  in  the  provinces  and  drew  on  his 
journalistic  experience  to  launch  the  COID's 
Design  magazine.  In  the  early  1950s  his  energies 
were  focused  on  the  Festival  of  Britain,  an  event 
to  which  his  modernist  proselytizing  fervour  and 
his  liberal  left  attitudes  were  perfectly  attuned. 

The  twelve  years  of  double  act  between  Rus- 
sell, the  craftsman-designer  of  integrity  and 
vision,  and  the  highly  political,  sophisticated 
Reilly  were  enormously  successful  for  the  COID. 
In  1956  the  Design  Centre  in  Haymarket,  a 
selective  exhibition  through  which  the  public 
could  locate  well  designed  products,  was  opened 
by  the  Duke  of  Edinburgh.  Reilly  was  much 
involved  in  the  setting  up  of  annual  Design 
Centre  awards  the  next  year,  and  was  responsible 
for  the  introduction  of  what  became  the  familiar 
triangular  black-and-white  label  affixed  to  chosen 
products,  the  symbol  of  government  approved 
design.  His  wily  charm  was  useful  in  the  COID's 
struggle  to  persuade  corporate  buyers,  govern- 
ment and  private,  to  make  visually  enterprising 
choices.  He  was  the  natural  successor  as  director 
in  i960,  Russell  having  retired  in  1959. 

Reilly  faced  serious  underlying  problems  in 
the  1960s.  In  a  sense  the  COID  had  done  its  job 
too  thoroughly  and  commercial  outlets  began 
selecting  products  with  more  flair  and  catholicity 


than  the  design  committees  at  the  COID.  More- 
over Reilly's  own  visual  aesthetic,  based  on 
principles  of  functional  fitness  and  truth  to 
materials,  was,  in  the  more  morally  mobile  1960s, 
coming  under  threat.  He  identified  the  problem 
in  an  important  article  in  the  Architectural  Review 
in  1967,  'The  Challenge  of  Pop'.  He  subse- 
quently shifted  the  COID  sideways,  concentrat- 
ing on  developing  design  in  engineering  at  the 
expense  of  consumer  education. 

As  an  ambassador  for  British  visual  culture 
Reilly  travelled  widely  on  behalf  of  the  Design 
Council  (as  the  COID  became  in  1973)  and  the 
international  crafts  organizations:  unlike  many  of 
his  Modernist  contemporaries  he  had  great  sym- 
pathy with  the  handmade  product,  and  it  was 
under  his  aegis  that  the  craft  advisory  committee 
was  set  up  in  1971.  This  committee  burgeoned  to 
become  the  Crafts  Council.  Although  he  played 
the  power  game  with  great  skill  and  much 
enjoyment,  he  also  delighted  in  the  personal 
encounter  and  many  young  craftsmen  and 
designers  were  spurred  on  by  the  warmth  of  his 
encouragement. 

When  he  retired  in  1977  he  became  a  director 
of  Conran  Associates  and  chairman  of  the  Con- 
ran  Foundation  Boilerhouse,  precursor  of  the 
Design  Museum.  He  received  many  awards,  and 
honorary  degrees  from  Loughborough  (1977), 
Aston  (1981),  and  Cranfield  (1983).  He  became 
an  honorary  FRIBA  in  1965,  was  knighted  in 
1967,  and  became  an  honorary  doctor  of  the 
RCA  in  1978.  He  was  made  a  commander  of  the 
Royal  Order  of  Vasa  (Sweden)  in  1961.  He  was 
delighted  by  his  life  peerage  in  1978,  regarding 
the  House  of  Lords,  where  he  sat  on  the  cross- 
benches,  until  prevented  by  encroaching  heart 
disease,  as  a  glorified  version  of  his  old  news- 
paper office:  a  place  in  which  he  would  never  feel 
unwanted  or  bored. 

Reilly  was  small,  twinkling,  and  benign 
enough  to  be  mistaken  for  the  archbishop  of 
Canterbury',  Michael  *Ramsey,  whom  he  much 
resembled.  He  was  a  great  gossip  and  as  eclectic 
a  connoisseur  of  people  as  of  things.  His  first 
marriage,  in  1939,  to  the  classical  ballet  dancer 
Pamela  Wentworth  Foster  (daughter  of  Major 
Edward  Bayntun  Grove  Foster,  landowner,  of 
Warmwell  in  Dorset  and  Clewer  Manor  in  Berk- 
shire), ended  in  divorce  in  1952;  their  only  child 
Victoria,  a  journalist,  married  the  Czech  artist- 
designer  Daniel  Spicka.  In  1952  Reilly  married 
his  second  wife,  Annette  Rose,  daughter  of 
Brigadier-General  Clifton  Inglis  Stockwell;  she 
had  trained  as  a  sculptor  and  became  a  fashion 
and  design  journalist  and  cookery  correspondent 
on  The  Times.  They  had  no  children  and  lived 
and  ate  convivially  in  a  South  Kensington  stuc- 
coed terrace  house,  designed  by  George  *Basevi, 
surrounded  by  the  paintings,  books,  and  objects 


372 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Revie 


of  a  lifetime's  collecting.  Reilly  died  1 1  October 
1990  in  Kensington,  London. 

[Paul  Reilly,  An  Eye  on  Design  (autobiography),  1987; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Fiona  MacCarthy 

REVIE,  Donald  (1927- 1089),  footballer  and 
football  manager,  was  born  10  July  1927  in 
Middlesbrough,  the  youngest  in  the  family  of 
one  son  and  twin  daughters  of  Donald  Revie, 
journeyman  joiner,  of  Middlesbrough,  and  his 
wife,  Margaret  Emily  Haston.  His  mother  died 
when  Revie  was  twelve.  He  was  educated  at 
Archibald  Secondary  Modern  School,  Middles- 
brough, and  left  school  at  fourteen  to  become  an 
apprentice  bricklayer,  before  joining  Leicester 
City  Football  Club  in  1943.  Hull  City  bought 
him  for  £20,000  in  1950. 

Transferring  to  Manchester  City  in  1953, 
Revie  reached  his  peak  as  a  footballer  in  the  mid- 
1950s,  winning  six  England  caps  and  being  voted 
Footballer  of  the  Year  in  1955.  Manchester  City 
won  the  FA  cup  in  1956,  using  what  became 
known  as  the  'Revie  plan',  with  Revie,  as  centre 
forward,  lying  deep  while  feeding  the  ball  to  the 
other  forwards  and  then  moving  through  in  the 
final  stage,  a  tactic  copied  from  the  successful 
Hungarian  team  by  the  Manchester  Gty  man- 
ager. 

Revie  moved  to  Leeds  United  in  1958,  after 
two  years  with  Sunderland.  At  Leeds  he  was 
appointed  manager  in  1961,  at  a  time  when  the 
club  was  struggling  to  avoid  relegation  to  the 
third  division.  Revie  not  only  avoided  this,  but 
brought  Leeds  to  the  top  of  the  second  division 
in  1964,  and  second  to  Manchester  United  in  the 
first  division  in  1965,  winning  the  League  cham- 
pionship in  1969  with  67  points,  the  highest  total 
in  the  history  of  the  championship,  and  the  FA 
cup  in  1 97 1.  His  ambitions  for  the  club  were  not 
confined  to  the  domestic  scene,  and  in  1968 
Leeds  won  the  European  Fairs  cup,  beating 
Ferencvaros  1-0,  the  first  British  club  to  win  the 
cup.  Despite  these  successes,  Leeds  had  the 
reputation  of  being  perpetual  runners-up:  they 
lost  to  Liverpool  in  the  1965  FA  Cup  Final,  came 
second  in  the  League  championship  in  1965, 
1966,  and  1967,  lost  to  Chelsea  in  the  FA  Cup 
Final  in  1967,  were  runners-up  to  Arsenal  in  the 
League  championship  in  1971,  and  lost  to  sec- 
ond-division Sunderland  in  the  1972  FA  Cup 
Final.  Revie  never  achieved  his  ambition  for 
Leeds  to  win  the  European  cup. 

However,  encouraged  by  the  British  media, 
which  declared  Leeds  to  have  the  best  side  in  the 
world  at  the  beginning  of  the  1969-70  season, 
Revie  was  confident  of  a  treble  victory:  the 
European  cup,  the  FA  cup,  and  the  League 
championship.  In  the  end  all  three  eluded  Leeds, 
partly  as  a  result  of  a  pile-up  of  fixtures,  com- 


pounded by  injuries.  In  1974,  after  Leeds  United 
had  won  the  League  championship,  remaining 
undefeated  for  the  first  29  games  of  the  season, 
Revie  resigned  to  take  up  the  position  of  England 
team  manager,  following  the  sacking  of  Sir  Alf 
•Ramsey  after  England  had  failed  to  qualify  for 
the  1974  World  Cup  Finals. 

After  a  successful  first  season  as  the  England 
manager,  with  the  team  undefeated  after  nine 
internationals,  Revie  encountered  a  set-back 
when  England  was  eliminated  from  the  European 
championship  early  in  the  1975-6  season.  He  was 
faced  with  the  task  of  building  an  international 
side  with  players  from  many  different  clubs,  and 
it  was  hard  to  achieve  the  family  atmosphere  that 
had  been  so  successful  at  Leeds.  Moreover,  his 
difficult  relationship  with  Alan  Hardaker,  secre- 
tary of  the  Football  League,  made  his  task 
harder.  While  Revie  was  manager,  England  won 
14  out  of  29  matches,  with  7  defeats  and  8  draws. 
The  poor  results  were  attributed  to  the  uncer- 
tainty and  lack  of  continuity  caused  by  frequent 
team  changes  rather  than  to  the  lack  of  out- 
standing players.  He  used  52  players  in  the  29 
games,  awarding  29  new  caps,  and  he  only  once 
fielded  an  unchanged  side.  Morale  sagged  when 
England  lost  2-0  to  Italy  in  a  World  cup  qualify- 
ing match  in  November  1976,  and  the  press 
began  to  forecast  England's  elimination  from  the 
competition  and  Revie's  dismissal. 

In  July  1977  the  Daily  Mail,  to  which  Revie 
had  sold  his  story,  revealed  that  he  had  been  in 
secret  negotiations  with  the  United  Arab  Emir- 
ates while  the  England  team  had  been  playing 
World  cup  qualifying  matches  in  South  America, 
had  accepted  the  post  of  team  manager  to  the 
UAE  for  four  years  at  £60,000  a  year,  and  had 
resigned  from  his  England  job.  This  led  the 
Football  Association  to  ban  him  from  English 
football  for  ten  years.  Revie  successfully  appealed 
against  the  ban  in  the  High  Court  in  November 

1979,  on  the  grounds  that  the  head  of  the 
tribunal,  Sir  Harold  *Thompson,  chairman  of 
the  Football  Association,  was  biased.  But  the 
judge  made  it  clear  that  it  was  still  felt  that 
Revie's  conduct  in  leaving  England  so  abrupdy 
had  brought  English  football  into  disrepute.  He 
became  manager  of  Al  Nasr  Football  Club  in 

1980,  and  moved  to  the  National  Football  Club, 
Cairo,  in  1984. 

At  Leeds,  Revie  had  aimed  to  make  the  club  as 
famous  as  Real  Madrid.  By  the  time  he  left  in 
1974  some  argued  that  Leeds  was  the  greatest 
club  side  of  all  time,  and  that  his  achievements 
lay  there,  and  not  in  his  spell  as  England  man- 
ager. He  transformed  Leeds  from  a  club  in 
danger  of  relegation  into  a  club  aiming  at,  and 
achieving,  major  honours  at  home  and  abroad. 

Revie  was  appointed  OBE  in  1970,  and  was 
voted  Manager  of  the  Year  in  1969,  1970,  and 


373 


Revie 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


1972.  Always  well  dressed,  he  had  the  pugna- 
cious features  of  a  boxer.  He  was  very  super- 
stitious, and  had  a  lucky  blue  suit,  which  he 
always  wore  on  match  days.  In  1949  he  married 
Elsie  May  Leonard,  primary-school  teacher, 
daughter  of  Thomas  Grosett  Duncan,  profes- 
sional footballer,  and  niece  of  the  Leicester  City 
manager,  John  Duncan.  They  had  one  son  and 
one  daughter.  Revie  died  26  May  1989  in  Mur- 
rayfield  Private  Hospital,  Edinburgh,  of  motor 
neurone  disease. 

[Donald  Revie,  Soccer's  Happy  Wanderer,  1955;  Eric 
Thornton,  Leeds  United  and  Don  Revie,  1970;  Andrew 
Mourant,  Don  Revie,  Portrait  of  a  Footballing  Enigma, 
1990;  Johnny  Rogan,  The  Football  Managers,  1989; 
Independent,  27  May  1989.]      Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

RICHARDS,  Sir  Gordon  (1904- 1986),  jockey 
and  racehorse  trainer,  was  born  5  May  1904  in 
Ivy  Row  at  Donnington  Wood,  a  district  of 
Oakengates,  Shropshire,  the  fourth  child  and 
third  son  of  the  eight  surviving  children  (four 
died)  of  Nathan  Richards,  coalminer,  and  his 
wife  Elizabeth,  a  former  dressmaker,  daughter  of 
William  Dean,  miner  and  lay  preacher.  He  was 
given  a  strict  Methodist  upbringing,  and  edu- 
cated at  the  Infant  School  at  Donnington  Wood. 
In  19 1 7  he  became  a  junior  clerk  in  the  ware- 
house of  the  Lilleshall  engineering  works, 
Oakengates.  Finding  the  work  monotonous,  he 
answered  a  newspaper  advertisement  for  an 
apprentice  to  Martin  Hartigan,  who  had  the 
Foxhill  stable  near  Swindon,  Wiltshire,  and  on 
New  Year's  day  1920  left  home  for  the  first  time 
to  go  to  Foxhill. 

Short,  stocky,  and  very  strong  for  his  weight, 
he  had  the  ideal  physique  for  a  jockey.  He  had 
dark  brown  eyes  and  a  thick  shock  of  black  hair, 
which  gave  him  the  nickname  of  'Moppy'.  He 
weighed  out  at  six  stone  nine  pounds  for  his  first 
mount  in  public  on  Clock- Work  at  Lingfield  on 
16  October  1920,  and  rode  his  first  winner  on 
Gay  Lord  at  Leicester  on  13  March  1921,  but  it 
was  not  until  he  had  ridden  forty-nine  winners, 
and  lost  his  apprentice  allowance,  in  1923,  that 
his  career  got  under  way. 

After  coming  out  of  his  apprenticeship  in 
1924,  he  was  first  jockey  to  Captain  Thomas 
Hogg's  stable  at  Russley  Park,  Wiltshire,  in  1925, 
and  became  champion  jockey  by  winning  118 
races.  By  the  outset  of  1926  his  career  was  put  in 
jeopardy  by  the  diagnosis  of  a  tubercular  lung 
after  he  had  ridden  just  five  more  winners,  and 
he  spent  the  rest  of  the  year  in  a  sanatorium.  In 
the  1927  season  he  regained  the  championship 
with  164  winners.  The  first  claim  on  his  services 
in  1928  was  held  by  the  shipping  magnate  the 
first  Baron  Glanely,  to  whom  Captain  Hogg  had 
become  private  trainer  at  Newmarket.  Richards 
obtained  his  first  classic  successes  in  1930  by 
winning  the  Oaks  on  Rose  of  England  and  the  St 


Leger  on  Singapore  for  Lord  Glanely,  but  he 
narrowly  lost  the  championship.  After  landing 
the  Manchester  November  handicap  on  Lord 
Glanely's  Glorious  Devon,  on  the  final  day  he 
had  ridden  one  more  winner  than  Freddie  Fox, 
but  Fox  won  the  fourth  and  fifth  races  to  be 
champion  with  129  successes. 

Richards  was  champion  again  with  141  win- 
ners in  1 93 1,  during  which  the  Beckhampton 
trainer  Fred  Darling  offered  a  substantial  sum  for 
first  claim  on  him.  With  typical  loyalty,  he  first 
asked  Lord  Glanely  to  match  the  offer,  but  on 
Glanely  pleading  poverty,  he  became  first  jockey 
to  the  Beckhampton  stable.  Always  immensely 
popular  with  the  public,  Richards  was  a  national 
hero  in  1933,  as  he  bid  to  break  the  seasonal 
record  of  246  winners  established  by  Frederick 
*Archer  in  1885.  After  eleven  consecutive  suc- 
cesses at  Chepstow  in  October,  he  rode  his  247th 
winner  on  Golden  King  at  Liverpool  on  8 
November,  and  finished  the  season  with  259 
winners.  In  1934  he  rode  Easton  to  be  second  in 
the  Derby,  a  race  he  was  yet  to  win,  and  in  1936 
may  have  been  unlucky  not  to  win  it  on  the  Aga 
Khan's  Taj  Akbar,  who  was  badly  hampered 
before  being  runner-up  to  the  Aga  Khan's  sec- 
ond string  Mahmoud.  By  1938  his  bad  luck  in 
the  Derby  was  proverbial.  That  year  Darling  ran 
both  Pasch,  on  whom  Richards  had  won  the  Two 
Thousand  Guineas,  and  the  recent  French 
importation  Bois  Roussel.  Richards  elected  to 
ride  Pasch,  and  was  third  to  Bois  Roussel. 

As  his  tubercular  record  made  him  ineligible 
to  serve  in  the  armed  forces,  Richards  continued 
to  ride  during  World  War  II,  but,  after  breaking 
a  leg  at  Salisbury  in  May  1941,  he  missed  the 
remainder  of  that  season  and  lost  the  champion- 
ship for  the  third  time.  In  1942  he  wore  the 
colours  of  King  *George  VI  when  winning 
substitute  races  for  the  One  Thousand  Guineas, 
Oaks,  and  St  Leger  on  Sun  Chariot.  He  also  won 
a  substitute  Two  Thousand  Guineas  for  the  king 
on  Big  Game,  and  was  champion  again.  In  1943 
he  surpassed  Archer's  career  total  of  2,748  win- 
ners on  Scotch  Mist  at  Windsor,  and  was  cham- 
pion for  the  sixteenth  time.  After  winning  the 
Two  Thousand  Guineas  by  an  extraordinarily 
easy  eight  lengths  on  that  great  miler  Tudor 
Minstrel  in  1947,  Richards  seemed  certain  to  win 
the  Derby  at  last.  Heavily  backed  by  the  public, 
Tudor  Minstrel  started  hot  favourite,  but  failed 
to  stay  the  course  and  finished  only  fourth. 
Champion  for  the  twentieth  time  in  1947, 
Richard  broke  his  own  record  of  1933  by  riding 
269  winners.  After  the  retirement  of  Fred  Dar- 
ling at  the  end  of  that  season,  the  Beckhampton 
stable  continued  to  hold  first  claim  on  him  when 
it  was  taken  over  by  (Sir)  Noel  *Murless.  The 
best  horse  he  rode  for  Murless  was  the  brilliant 
grey  sprinter  Abernant,  on  whom  he  won  the 
Nunthorpe  Stakes  at  York  in  1949  and  1950. 


374 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Riches 


The  knighthood  that  Richards  received  in  the 
coronation  honours  in  1953  was  as  much  in 
recognition  of  his  exemplar)'  integrity  as  of  his 
professional  achievement.  A  few  days  after  the 
queen  had  conferred  it  upon  him,  he  won  the 
Derby  at  his  twenty -eighth  and  final  attempt  by 
riding  Sir  Victor  Sassoon's  Pinza  to  beat  the 
queen's  colt  Aureole.  A  little  over  a  year  later, 
Richards  had  to  retire  from  riding  after  breaking 
his  pelvis  and  four  ribs  when  he  was  thrown  by 
Abergeldie  in  the  paddock  at  Sandown  Park  on 
10  July  1954. 

With  his  body  slewed  round  to  the  left,  so  that 
his  weight  was  unevenly  distributed  as  he  rode 
his  powerful  finish,  Richards  had  a  most  unor- 
thodox style.  All  the  same,  horses  ran  as  straight 
as  a  die  for  him.  From  21,843  mounts,  he  rode 
4,870  winners  and  was  champion  jockey  twenty- 
six  times. 

Subsequently  he  trained  at  Beckhampton, 
Ogbourne  Maisey,  and  finally  Whitsbury, 
Hampshire.  Although  his  success  was  not  com- 
parable to  that  which  he  had  enjoyed  as  a  jockey, 
he  won  a  number  of  valuable  races,  notably  the 
Middle  Park  Stakes  with  Pipe  of  Peace,  who  was 
to  be  third  in  the  Derby  in  1956,  and  the 
Champion  stakes  with  Reform  in  1967.  Richards 
also  managed  the  horses  of  Lady  Beaverbrook 
and  (Sir)  Michael  Sobell.  He  closed  his  stable  in 
1970.  He  was  elected  an  honorary  member  of  the 
Jockey  Club  the  same  year. 

On  1  March  1928  Richards  married  Margery 
Gladys  (died  1982),  daughter  of  Thomas  David 
Winckle,  railway  carriage  fitter.  They  had  two 
sons  and  a  daughter.  A  third  son,  the  daughter's 
twin,  lived  only  a  few  hours.  Richards  died  of  a 
heart  attack  at  his  home  at  Kintbury,  Berkshire, 
10  November  1986. 

[Sir  Gordon  Richards,  My  Story,  1955;  Michael  Seth- 
Smith,  Knight  of  the  Turf,  1980;  Sporting  Life,  11 
November  1986;  personal  knowledge.] 

Richard  Onslow 

RICHES,  Sir  Eric  William  (1 897-1987),  uro- 
logical  surgeon,  was  born  29  July  1897  in  Alford, 
Lincolnshire,  the  second  of  three  children  and 
elder  son  of  William  Riches,  schoolmaster,  and 
his  wife,  Kate  Rowbotham.  He  was  educated  at 
St  Dunstan's  School,  Alford,  and  Queen  Eliz- 
abeth Grammar  School,  Alford,  before  securing 
an  entrance  scholarship  to  Christ's  Hospital, 
Horsham,  where  he  won  a  number  of  prizes. 
After  a  further  entrance  scholarship  to  the  Mid- 
dlesex Hospital  in  191 5,  he  deferred  his  admis- 
sion to  join  the  army,  serving  first  in  the  10th 
Lincoln  and  then  the  nth  Suffolk  regiments,  in 
France  and  Flanders.  Awarded  the  MC  in  1917, 
he  was  demobilized  in  1919  with  the  rank  of 
captain  and  entered  medical  school,  where  he 
won  a  second-year  exhibition,  the  Lyell  gold 
medal  in  surgery,  and  the  senior  Broderip  schol- 


arship. He  also  played  golf  and  rugby  for  the 
Middlesex  Hospital.  He  obtained  his  MB,  BS 
and  MRCS,  LRCP  (both  1925),  and  his  MS  and 
FRCS  (both  1927). 

In  1925  he  became  surgical  registrar  to  A.  S. 
Blundell  Bankart  and  Alfred  (later  Baron) 
*Webb-Johnson,  before  his  appointment  to  the 
surgical  staff  of  the  Middlesex  in  1930.  He  began 
primarily  as  a  general  surgeon,  with  a  special 
interest  in  urology,  and  was  also  appointed  to  the 
Hospital  of  St  John  and  St  Elizabeth  (before 
1930)  and  to  St  Andrew's,  Dollis  Hill.  He  was 
consultant  urologist  to  the  army  and  to  the  Royal 
Masonic  Hospital,  and  consulting  surgeon  to  the 
Ministry  of  Pensions  Spinal  Injuries  Centre. 

Riches  was  a  Hunterian  professor  at  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  in  1938,  and  both  Hunterian 
professor  and  Jacksonian  prizeman  in  1942.  He 
served  six  years  on  its  court  of  examiners 
(1940-6)  and  sixteen  years  on  the  council,  being 
vice-president  in  1961-2.  He  was  successively 
Bradshaw  lecturer,  Arnott  demonstrator,  and 
Gordon-Taylor  lecturer.  He  developed  a  number 
of  his  own  specialist  surgical  instruments  and  for 
many  years  acted  as  curator  of  historic  surgical 
instruments  at  the  RCS. 

Riches  was  a  superb  surgical  technician  and 
innovator.  He  was  a  most  energetic  man  who 
took  an  enthusiastic  interest  in  teaching  his 
students  and  training  young  surgeons.  He  pub- 
lished many  urological  papers  and  wrote  or 
contributed  to  several  books,  including  Modern 
Trends  in  Urology  (1953,  i960,  and  1969)  and 
Tumours  of  the  Kidney  and  Ureter  (1964).  He  was 
also  a  lively  and  effective  speaker  at  the  many 
societies  he  supported,  being  a  founder  member 
of  council  of  the  British  Association  of  Urological 
Surgeons,  its  president  in  195 1,  and  St  Peter's 
medallist  (1964),  president  and  Lettsomian  lec- 
turer (1958)  of  the  Medical  Society  of  London, 
and  president  and  orator  (1967)  of  the  Hunterian 
Society.  At  the  Royal  Society  of  Medicine,  of 
which  he  became  an  honorary  fellow  in  1966,  he 
was  a  vice-president  and  honorary  librarian,  and 
had  been  president  of  its  urological,  surgical,  and 
clinical  sections.  He  was  chairman  of  the  editorial 
committee  and  treasurer  of  the  British  Journal  of 
Urology.  His  reputation  was  also  international, 
for  he  was  elected  to  the  American  Association  of 
Genito-L  rinary  Surgeons  in  1953,  was  vice- 
president  of  the  International  Society  of  Urology 
in  1961,  and  was  president  at  that  society's 
thirteenth  congress  in  London  in  1964.  Riches 
retained  a  great  love  for  his  old  school,  Christ's 
Hospital,  of  which  he  became  a  governor  in  1958 
and  a  member  of  the  council  of  almoners  in  i960. 
He  was  knighted  in  1958. 

Riches,  who  went  bald  early,  was  a  modest 
man  of  average  height,  with  a  friendly  smile.  He 
built  up  a  large  and  highly  successful  private 
practice,  which  he  continued  for  too  many  years 


375 


Riches 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


after  his  retirement  in  1962:  indeed,  he  even- 
tually had  to  be  given  very  firm  encouragement 
to  stop  operating.  He  included  among  his  hob- 
bies photography,  golf,  and  music.  In  sad  con- 
trast to  his  lively  character  and  exuberance  in 
earlier  times,  he  survived  for  the  last  few  years  of 
his  life  in  poor  and  deteriorating  health. 

In  1928  he  married  Annie  Margaret  Sylvia,  a 
doctor  in  general  practice,  daughter  of  Alexander 
Theodore  Brand,  medical  practitioner,  of  Drif- 
field, Yorkshire.  They  had  two  daughters,  one  of 
whom,  Anne  Riches,  entered  general  medical 
practice.  After  the  death  of  his  first  wife  in  1952 
he  married  in  1954  (Susan  Elizabeth)  Ann,  a 
nurse  at  the  Middlesex  Hospital,  daughter  of 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Leslie  Holdsworth  Kitton, 
regular  army  officer,  of  Wye,  near  Ashford, 
Kent.  They  had  one  daughter.  Riches  died  8 
November  1987  at  Thames  Bank  Nursing  Home, 
Goring,  Oxfordshire. 

[Records  of  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  London;  British 
Medical  Journal,  vol.  ccxcv,  1987,  p.  1492;  Lancet,  vol. 
ii,  1987,  p.  1347;  The  Times,  10  November  1987; 
personal  knowledge.]  Reginald  Murley 

ROBERTHALL,  Baron  (1901-1988),  econom- 
ist. [See  Hall,  Robert  Lowe.] 

ROBERTS,  Colin  Henderson  (1909- 1990), 
classical  scholar  and  publisher,  was  born  8  June 
1909  in  Queen  Elizabeth  Walk,  Stoke  New- 
ington,  the  second  son  and  second  of  five  chil- 
dren (four  sons  and  one  daughter)  of  Robert 
Lewis  Roberts,  the  head  of  a  family  building  firm 
founded  in  the  previous  generation,  and  his  wife, 
Muriel  Grace  Henderson.  The  family  had  strong 
literary  and  clerical  connections.  Colin's  elder 
brother,  Brian  (1906-1988),  had  a  distinguished 
career  in  journalism,  and  was  editor  of  the 
Sunday  Telegraph  (1961-76);  like  Colin,  he 
ended  his  days  as  an  honorary  fellow  of  St  John's 
College,  Oxford.  Colin  followed  Brian  to  Mer- 
chant Taylors'  School  and  to  St  John's.  At  school 
he  distinguished  himself  as  a  scholar  (and  some- 
times on  the  stage,  notably  as  Cassandra  in 
Aeschylus'  Agamemnon),  and  his  university 
career  followed  its  expected  course,  with  first 
classes  in  both  classical  honour  moderations  and 
liter ae  humaniores  (1931),  and  a  Craven  fellow- 
ship (1932-4).  His  classics  tutors,  J.  U.  Powell 
and  F.  W.  Hall,  had  both  been  interested  in  the 
discoveries  of  papyrology  and  in  the  history  of 
the  book  in  ancient  times.  This  was  the  subject  to 
which  Roberts  devoted  himself.  He  took  part  in 
excavations  in  Egypt  (Karanis)  under  the  aus- 
pices of  the  University  of  Michigan  in  1932-3 
and  1933-4;  he  studied  also  with  W.  Schubart  in 
Berlin;  and  in  1935-6  published  important  bib- 
lical papyri  from  the  John  Rylands  Library. 
During  all  this  period  he  was  first  a  junior,  then 
a  senior  research  fellow  of  St  John's. 

World  War  II  interrupted  his  studies,  and,  like 


many  scholars  of  that  time,  he  spent  five  years  in 
intelligence  work  in  London  and  at  Bletchley.  He 
returned  to  St  John's  in  1946  as  fellow  and  tutor 
in  classics.  In  1947  he  became  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy,  and  he  played  an  active  part  in 
the  Academy's  affairs,  serving  as  foreign  secre- 
tary (1960-9),  until  1979,  when  its  failure  to 
expel  Anthony  *Blunt  led  him,  with  others,  to 
resign  his  fellowship.  In  1948  he  became  reader 
in  documentary  papyrology  at  Oxford,  and  in 
195 1-2  he  spent  a  year  at  the  Institute  of 
Advanced  Study  at  Princeton.  His  research  in 
these  years  centred  round  the  publication  of  the 
Antinoopolis  papyri;  but  in  1955  he  published  a 
long  essay,  'The  Codex'  (Proceedings  of  the  British 
Academy,  vol.  xl),  which  gave  a  pioneering 
account  of  the  most  important  development  in 
book  production  before  the  invention  of  printing, 
namely  the  replacement  of  the  papyrus  roll  by  'a 
collection  of  sheets,  folded  or  fastened  together  at 
the  back  or  spine,  and  usually  protected  by 
covers',  in  other  words  the  book  as  we  know  it. 
With  his  close  friend,  T.  C.  Skeat,  he  revised  and 
enlarged  this  essay  in  1983. 

Having  rejected  an  opportunity  to  become 
professor  of  Greek  at  Edinburgh,  in  1954  he  gave 
up,  as  it  seemed,  his  scholarly  career  to  succeed 
(Sir)  A.  L.  P.  *Norrington  as  secretary  to  the 
delegates  of  the  Oxford  University  Press  (he  had 
been  a  delegate  since  1946).  He  thus  had  charge 
of  a  great  publishing  house  for  twenty  years,  in  a 
time  of  much  change  and  some  difficulty.  It  was 
natural  that  he  should  have  felt  most  deeply 
involved  in  the  great  enterprises  in  classical 
studies  and  theology  which  were  a  special  excel- 
lence of  the  Press:  the  completion  of  A  Patristic 
Greek  Lexicon  by  Professor  G.  W.  H.  *Lampe, 
the  continuation  of  E.  A.  Lowe's  Codices  Latini 
Antiquiores,  the  Oxford  Latin  Dictionary  under 
Peter  Glare,  and  above  all  the  New  English  Bible. 
But  his  remarkable  capacity  for  detail  and  rapid 
analysis  enabled  him  to  exercise  his  great  admin- 
istrative ability  over  a  wide  range  of  the  Press's 
affairs,  although  they  may  have  also  led  him  to  be 
less  interested  in  systematic  delegation  than  cir- 
cumstances came  to  require.  In  the  latter  years  of 
his  tenure,  the  organization  of  the  Press  became 
seriously  inappropriate  to  the  increased  scale  of 
its  operations.  It  comprised  two  separate  busi- 
nesses, one  in  Oxford,  which  undertook  the 
learned  publishing,  and  the  other  in  London, 
which  had  responsibility  for  all  distribution  and 
marketing  and  for  overseas  operations  other  than 
those  in  New  York.  As  the  financial  situation 
deteriorated,  radical  reform  became  necessary. 
Roberts  was  energetically  engaged  in  his  later 
years  with  the  planning,  which  was  to  involve  the 
transfer  of  the  whole  business  to  the  Oxford 
site. 

On  his  retirement  in  1974,  he  once  again 
became  a  senior  research  fellow  of  St  John's, 


370 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Robertson 


proposing  to  the  college  to  work  on  "Manuscript, 
Society,  and  Belief  in  Early  Christian  Egypt'. 
The  book,  given  as  the  British  Academy 
Schweich  lectures,  appeared  in  1979.  It  demon- 
strates in  its  close  argument  Roberts's  command 
of  verbal  scholarship,  his  historical  insight  (he 
viewed  scholarship  as  a  means  to  the  under- 
standing of  the  past,  not  as  an  end  in  itself),  and 
his  profound  concern,  grounded  in  his  own 
spirituality,  with  the  Christian  tradition.  After  a 
time,  he  and  his  wife  retired  to  Broadwindsor  in 
west  Dorset,  where  they  enjoyed  country  life, 
animals,  the  village,  and  the  church.  As  a  lay 
reader  (1982-5),  he  acquired  a  reputation  for  the 
excellence  of  his  sermons. 

Roberts  was  a  notably  handsome  young  man — 
to  a  famous  refugee  scholar  in  the  1930s  he 
seemed  the  very  type  of  Oxford  youth — and  he 
retained  his  slim  and  elegant  physique  until  a  car 
accident  not  long  before  he  died  left  him  bent 
and  shrunken.  He  was  a  man  whose  gentle 
manners,  immaculate  courtesy,  and  great  kind- 
ness (especially  to  the  disadvantaged  or  insecure) 
sometimes  concealed,  but  could  never  diminish, 
the  sharpness  of  vision,  strong  sense  of  duty,  and 
tireless  energy  with  which  he  pursued  his  aims, 
whether  in  scholarship  or  in  the  wide  world.  He 
was  appointed  CBE  in  1973. 

In  1947  he  married  Alison  Muriel,  daughter  of 
Reginald  Haynes  Barrow,  classical  scholar  and 
inspector  of  schools.  They  had  one  daughter. 
Roberts  died  in  Broadwindsor  11  February 
1990. 

[Merchant  Taylors'  School  and  St  John's  College 
records;  D.  A.  F.  M.  Russell  and  P.  J.  Parsons  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  lxxxiv,  1993; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

D.  A.  Russell 

ROBERTSON,  Alan  (1920-1989),  geneticist, 
was  born  21  February  1920  in  Preston,  the  only 
surviving  child  (he  had  one  sister  who  died  of 
tuberculosis  before  he  was  born)  of  John  Mouat 
Robertson,  Post  Office  signals  engineer,  of  Liver- 
pool, and  his  first  wife  Annie,  daughter  of 
William  Grace,  farmer,  of  Halewood,  near  Liver- 
pool. His  mother  died  soon  after  his  birth,  and  he 
was  brought  up  by  his  aunt,  Bessie  Grace,  on  the 
family  farm.  He  obtained  a  scholarship  to  the 
Liverpool  Institute,  where  he  shone  at  all  sub- 
jects, including  languages  and  mathematics. 
From  there  he  won  a  major  entrance  scholarship 
in  natural  sciences  to  Gonville  and  Caius  Col- 
lege, Cambridge,  and  read  chemistry.  He  was 
captain  of  the  college  soccer  team  and  a  keen 
tennis  player,  as  he  was  to  remain  throughout  his 
life.  He  obtained  a  second  class  (division  I)  in 
part  ii  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos  in  1940  (he 
did  not  take  part  i). 

He  became  a  research  student  in  physical 
chemistry   under  (Sir)  E.  K.  *Rideal,  working 


and  publishing  on  combustion  of  hydrocarbons; 
but  he  did  not  complete  his  Ph.D.,  for  in  1943  he 
moved  into  operational  research  on  anti-shipping 
strikes  with  Coastal  Command.  His  unit  was  led 
by  C.  H.  *Waddington,  who  recognized  Robert- 
son's talents  and,  after  the  war,  invited  him  in 
1946  to  join  the  new  National  Animal  Breeding 
and  Genetics  Research  Organization  (NAB- 
GRO),  initially  in  Hendon,  and  apply  operational 
research  methods  to  animal  breeding.  Thus 
Robertson  became  an  animal  geneticist  without 
formal  training,  although  with  a  farming  back- 
ground and  mathematical  talent.  To  gain  experi- 
ence he  spent  nine  months  with  S.  Wright  and 
J.  L.  Lush  in  the  USA. 

Before  this  visit,  he  had  married  in  1947 
Margaret  Sidney  ('Meg'),  daughter  of  Maurice 
Bernheim,  gem  merchant.  On  their  return  they 
went  to  Edinburgh,  where  NABGRO  had  trans- 
ferred. The  Robertsons  had  two  sons  and  a 
daughter  and,  at  47  Braid  Road,  were  excellent 
hosts  to  colleagues,  students,  and  visiting  scien- 
tists. Robertson  was  a  happy  family  man,  with 
sport,  gardening,  and  reading  his  main  diver- 
sions. 

He  transferred  to  the  Agricultural  Research 
Council  unit  of  animal  genetics,  based  with  the 
university  department  under  Waddington  in  the 
Institute  of  Animal  Genetics  at  King's  Buildings, 
in  which  Robertson  spent  the  rest  of  his  career. 
The  group  there  was  the  largest  and  strongest 
group  of  British  geneticists  and  included  eight  in 
the  1950s  who  became  fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society.  Robertson  started  work  on  dairy  cattle 
improvement,  initially  with  J.  M.  Rendel,  and 
saw  the  potential  role  of  artificial  insemination 
in  genetic  improvement  programmes.  He  made 
major  contributions  to  predictions  of  rates  of 
genetic  progress  and  to  statistical  methods 
needed  to  evaluate  the  genetic  merit  of  individual 
sires  for  milk  production  from  records  of  daugh- 
ters spread  unequally  over  many  herds,  his 
contemporary  comparison  method  being  used 
worldwide.  With  students  and  colleagues  he 
obtained  estimates  of  the  parameters  and  devised 
methods  for  optimizing  breeding  programmes. 
He  obtained  his  D.Sc.  (Edinburgh)  in  195 1. 

Although  his  research  on  dairy  cattle  breeding 
established  Robertson  on  the  international  stage, 
it  was  only  pan  of  his  work.  He  was  interested 
and  effective  over  a  broad  range  of  quantitative 
genetics  (the  inheritance  and  evolution  of  con- 
tinuous characters)  and  was  unique  in  having  the 
highest  standing  both  in  animal  breeding  and  in 
evolutionary  biology.  Much  of  the  research  was 
mathematical,  but  he  always  had  his  own  Droso- 
phila  experiments  in  progress  and  supervised  the 
work  of  many  students. 

Among  questions  which  concerned  him  was 
how  variation  was  maintained  in  populations, 
and  he  studied  particularly  the  roles  of  mutation 


377 


Robertson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


and  of  stabilizing  selection.  He  made  original 
contributions  to  the  theory  of  genetic  change  in 
small  populations  and  introduced  a  theory  of 
limits  to  artificial  selection,  which  was  a  combi- 
nation of  mathematical  insight,  quantitative 
genetic  principles,  and  practical  context,  of 
which  only  he  was  capable.  In  a  paper  on  dairy 
cattle  breeding  he  derived  what  has  become 
known  as  the  secondary  theorem  of  natural 
selection.  For  many  years,  with  the  major  results 
published  near  the  time  of  his  death,  he  worked 
on  estimating  the  number  and  size  of  effects  of 
genes  influencing  quantitative  traits,  which  soon 
afterwards  became  a  major  research  topic.  He 
was  far-sighted,  appreciating  the  importance  of 
molecular  genetics  to  his  field  and  writing  with 
insight  on  the  problems  of  exploiting  transgenic 
methods  in  animal  improvement. 

Throughout  he  worked  with  a  small  group, 
took  on  no  administrative  position  or  trappings 
of  power,  and  remained  informal,  approachable, 
and  'Alan'  to  all.  His  influence  was  through  his 
papers,  as  a  scientific  referee,  by  personal  con- 
tact (particularly  in  his  famous  morning  coffee 
group),  as  a  conference  speaker  and  organizer, 
and  as  an  example  of  efficient  (if  not  organized) 
hard  work.  Although  on  the  research  staff,  he 
lectured  to  generations  of  students  for  the 
diploma  in  animal  genetics  (breeding).  He  never 
wrote  a  book,  but  greatly  influenced  those  of 
others  who  did.  His  achievements  were  recog- 
nized by  an  OBE  (1965),  election  as  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society  (1964)  and  the  US  National 
Academy  of  Sciences  (1979),  an  honorary  pro- 
fessorship at  Edinburgh  University  (1967),  and 
four  honorary  degrees  (Stuttgart-Hohenheim 
1968,  Agricultural  University  of  Norway  1984, 
Danish  Agricultural  University  1986,  and  Liege 
1986). 

Robertson  was  of  above  average  height  and  of 
slim  build,  with  a  round  face,  dark  brown  hair, 
and  a  deep  brow.  He  was  very  approachable,  but 
had  little  small  talk;  he  would  enter  an  argument 
only  with  significant  comments.  He  retired  in 
1985,  but  retained  an  office,  although  his  facul- 
ties diminished  from  around  that  time.  He  died 
in  the  Royal  Edinburgh  Hospital  25  April 
1989. 

[ W.  G.  Hill  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvi,  1990;  personal  knowledge.] 

William  G.  Hill 

ROBERTSON,  Sir  Alexander  (1908- 1990), 
veterinary  academic  and  administrator,  was  born 
in  Aberdeen  3  February  1908,  the  youngest  of 
three  children  and  second  son  of  Alexander 
Robertson,  private  chauffeur,  and  his  wife,  Bar- 
bara Minty  Strath.  His  two  older  siblings  died  in 
early  infancy.  His  early  childhood  was  spent  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  Stonehaven.  He  went  to 
school   in   the   village  of  Netherby   and   then 


attended  Mackie  Academy,  Stonehaven.  In  1926 
he  entered  Aberdeen  University,  where  he  took 
an  MA  in  1929  and  B.Sc.  in  1930,  majoring  in 
chemistry.  He  won  the  Robbie  scholarship  for 
distinction  in  chemistry  in  1928  and  1929.  An 
indication  of  his  fortitude  and  energy,  so  charac- 
teristic of  his  adult  life,  was  the  daily  cycle  ride  of 
twenty  miles  to  classes  in  Aberdeen. 

In  1930  he  entered  the  Royal  (Dick)  Veteri- 
nary College  in  Edinburgh,  with  a  colonial  office 
veterinary  scholarship.  He  gained  distinctions 
and  prizes,  and  was  admitted  to  membership  of 
the  Royal  College  of  Veterinary  Surgeons  in  1934 
with  a  Fitzwygram  prize.  As  a  veterinarian  of 
great  promise,  he  began  an  academic  career  as  a 
demonstrator  in  anatomy  at  the  Royal  Dick,  but 
within  two  months  he  joined  the  Ministry  of 
Agriculture  and  Fisheries  as  a  field  inspector 
(1935-7).  He  moved  to  the  veterinary  research 
laboratories  at  Weybridge,  where  he  worked  on 
tuberculin  testing  and  the  development  of  a 
vaccine  for  bovine  tuberculosis.  In  1937  he 
returned  to  the  Royal  Dick  as  a  lecturer  in 
physiology,  and  was  promoted  to  senior  lecturer 
the  following  year.  During  the  war  years  the 
teaching  load  was  doubled  by  the  inclusion  of 
medical  and  dental  students  from  the  Royal 
College  of  Surgeons  (Edinburgh).  One  account 
of  this  period  describes  Robertson  providing 
blackboard  illustrations  to  an  overflow  part  of  the 
class,  while  the  rest  were  lectured  in  the  adjoin- 
ing theatre,  the  lecture  being  relayed  to  Robert- 
son's group. 

His  interests  proved  wider  than  could  be 
satisfied  in  physiology  and  in  1944  he  secured  the 
vacant  chair  of  hygiene,  dietetics,  and  animal 
husbandry,  which  became  the  William  Dick 
chair  in  1951,  when  the  veterinary  college  was 
incorporated  into  the  University  of  Edinburgh. 
In  1957  he  was  appointed  director  of  the  uni- 
versity's veterinary  school,  a  post  he  held  until 
the  school  became  a  faculty  of  the  university  and 
he  was  elected  dean  (1964-70).  His  conviction 
that  veterinary  preventive  medicine,  both  at 
home  and  abroad,  was  a  neglected  but  important 
field  was  evinced  by  the  way  he  reorganized 
classes  to  reflect  his  views,  and  also  by  his  revival 
of  postgraduate  diplomas  in  veterinary  state 
medicine  and  some  years  later  in  tropical  veteri- 
nary medicine.  His  overseas  interests  now  began 
to  proliferate,  and  he  toured  British  African 
colonies  and  the  dominions. 

At  the  same  time  he  was  active  in  veterinary 
professional  affairs,  serving  as  president  of  the 
British  Veterinary  Association  in  1954-5,  and  as 
councillor  (1957-78),  representing  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh,  and  later  treasurer  (1964-7) 
and  then  president  (1968-9)  of  the  Royal  College 
of  Veterinary  Surgeons.  These  non-curricular 
activities  made  Robertson  a  well-known  figure  in 
veterinary  and  related  public  fields  and  he  was 


378 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Robertson 


called  on  to  serve  on  numerous  government 
bodies  and  to  undertake  state-supported  activ- 
ities. These  included  being  on  the  governing 
bodies  of  the  Animal  Virus  Research  Institute  at 
Pirbright  (1954-62)  and  of  the  Rowett  Research 
Institute  (1962-77),  and  membership  of  the 
research  advisory  committee  of  the  Meat  and 
Livestock  Commission  (1969-73)  and  of  the  East 
African  Natural  Resources  Research  Council 
(1963-78).  He  also  found  time  to  edit  the  Inter- 
national Encyclopaedia  of  Veterinary  Medicine 
(1966). 

His  intellect  and  capacity  for  hard  work 
underlay  the  many  and  varied  contributions  he 
made  to  the  veterinary  profession,  but  it  did  not 
make  him  an  easy  colleague  for  those  of  his 
contemporaries  who  crossed  him.  At  the  same 
time  he  could  be  generous  with  help  and  advice 
to  subordinates,  while  still  expecting  them  to 
make  good  use  of  the  opportunities  he  could 
provide.  His  lasting  academic  memorial  is  the 
University  of  Edinburgh  Centre  for  Tropical 
Veterinary  Medicine,  which  he  persuaded  the 
Ministry  of  Overseas  Development  to  fund,  and 
where  he  held  the  foundation  chair  from  1971 
until  his  retirement  in  1978.  The  CTVM  pro- 
vided both  postgraduate  teaching  and  research 
for  hundreds  of  overseas  veterinarians  as  well  as 
on-site  advice  to  fledgling  overseas  veterinary 
institutes  in  tropical  countries.  Robertson  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1963  and  knighted  in  1970.  He 
had  honorary  degrees  from  Aberdeen  (LL  D, 
197 1 )  and  Melbourne  (DVSc.,  1973).  Among  his 
fellowships  was  that  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Edinburgh  (1945).  He  was  honorary  FRCVS 
(1970)  and  an  honorary  member  of  the  World 
Veterinary  Association  (1975). 

In  1936  he  married  Janet  (died  1988),  daugh- 
ter of  John  McKinlay,  master  butcher;  they  had 
two  daughters.  Robertson  died  5  September  1990 
at  his  home  in  Edinburgh. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

AlNSLEY  IGGO 

ROBERTSON,  (Florence)  Marjorie  (1904- 
1986),  stage  and  film  actress,  and  film  producer. 
[See  Neagle,  Dame  Anna.] 

ROBERTSON,  John  Monteath  (1900-1089), 
chemical  crystallographer,  was  born  24  July  1900 
at  Nether  Fordun,  Auchterarder,  Perthshire,  the 
younger  son  and  youngest  of  three  children  of 
William  Robertson,  farmer,  and  his  second  wife, 
Jane  Monteath.  He  was  educated  in  Auchter- 
arder and  at  Perth  Academy.  Before  he  went  to 
the  Academy  he  was  disturbed  by  the  death  of 
his  mother,  to  whom  he  was  much  attached,  and 
by  his  father's  increasing  blindness;  in  1917  he 
was  obliged  to  leave  school  in  order  to  manage 
the  farm.  He  liked  the  work,  but  he  had  always 


been  deeply  interested  in  science,  and  when  his 
brother  returned  from  the  war  to  take  charge  he 
turned  to  private  study  to  qualify  for  entry  to 
the  University  of  Glasgow.  In  his  first  year 
(1919-20)  he  studied  a  miscellany  of  subjects 
which  gained  him  a  scholarship  and  also  helped 
towards  his  later  MA  degree  (1925).  He  then 
concentrated  on  pure  science,  obtaining  his 
B.Sc,  with  special  distinction  in  chemistry,  in 
1923.  Under  the  supervision  of  G.  G.  •Hender- 
son he  went  on  to  study  structural  relationships 
in  sesquiterpenes,  obtaining  his  Ph.D.  in  1926. 

In  Henderson's  laboratory  Robertson  acquired 
an  enthusiasm  for  the  study  of  molecular  struc- 
ture, but  he  foresaw  that  the  methods  then  used 
by  organic  chemists  would  be  largely  supplanted 
by  X-ray  crystallography.  With  a  £250  Carnegie 
post-doctoral  fellowship,  he  therefore  went  to  the 
Royal  Institution  to  study  with  Sir  W.  H. 
*Bragg,  the  director,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  life  he 
devoted  himself  to  X-ray  crystallography .  With  a 
break  (1928-30),  during  which  he  held  a  Com- 
monwealth fellowship  at  the  University  of  Mich- 
igan, Ann  Arbor,  sharing  a  flat  with  (Sir)  Dick 
White,  the  future  head  of  MI5,  he  remained  at 
the  Royal  Institution  until  1939,  when  he  went  to 
the  University  of  Sheffield  as  a  senior  lecturer  in 
physical  chemistry.  In  1941  he  became  scientific 
adviser  (chemical)  to  Bomber  Command  and  in 
1042  honorary  scientific  adviser  to  the  Royal  Air 
Force.  He  returned  to  the  University  of  Glasgow 
in  1042  as  Gardiner  professor  of  chemistry"  and 
(from  1955)  director  of  the  chemical  laboratories. 
He  retired  with  the  tide  of  emeritus  professor  in 
1970. 

At  the  Royal  Institution  in  1926  Robertson 
found  himself  in  a  group  of  able  young  people 
devoted  to  one  broad  objective,  the  elucidation  of 
the  structures  of  organic  molecules  by  the  new 
methods.  The  teachers  from  whom  he  learned 
his  craft,  W.  T.  *Astbury,  J.  D.  *Bernal,  and 
(Dame)  Kathleen  *Lonsdale,  were  about  his  own 
age;  the  whole  atmosphere  was  one  of  youthful 
optimism,  shared  indeed  by  W.  H.  Bragg,  who  at 
that  time  was  in  his  sixties.  By  the  early  1930s 
Robertson's  studies,  together  with  those  of  Lons- 
dale and  others,  had  shown  that  aromatic  com- 
pounds were  indeed,  as  the  organic  chemists  had 
deduced  earlier,  based  on  the  flat  symmetrical  G> 
hexagon,  but  the  methodology  was  not  yet  ade- 
quate to  enable  crystallographers  to  deal  success- 
fully with  molecules  of  unknown  structure 
containing  many  atoms.  The  major  obstacle  (the 
'phase  problem')  was  that  the  experiments  meas- 
ure the  intensities  of  the  X-ray  reflections, 
whereas  the  calculation  of  the  atomic  positions 
requires  their  amplitudes,  the  derivation  of  which 
from  the  intensities  involves  an  ambiguity  similar 
to,  but  more  complex  than,  the  extraction  of  a 
square  root,  which  may  be  positive  or  negative. 


379 


Robertson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Robertson's  great  achievement  was  to  discover 
a  method,  very  widely  applicable,  for  circum- 
venting the  phase  problem.  In  1934  (Sir)  R.  P. 
*Linstead  synthesized  a  new  class  of  crystalline 
compounds,  the  phthalocyanines,  of  unknown 
structure.  Robertson  examined  them  and  was  at 
first  discouraged  by  their  complexity,  but  he  then 
noticed  that  some  of  the  compounds  were  iso- 
morphous;  he  realized  that,  by  comparing  the 
reflections  from  two  isomorphous  substances 
differing  only  in  having  (say)  a  platinum  atom 
instead  of  a  copper  atom,  he  could  ascertain  the 
phases  of  a  sufficient  number  of  reflections  to 
determine  the  structure.  Thus,  for  the  first  time, 
a  previously  unknown  structure  was  elucidated 
completely  and  isomorphous  substitution  and 
heavy  atom  insertion  entered  the  chemical  crys- 
tallographer's  armoury — immensely  powerful 
methods,  which  in  due  course  led  to  the  unravel- 
ling of  protein  structures  of  the  greatest  com- 
plexity. 

Robertson's  heart  was  in  his  research  labor- 
atory, and  he  conscientiously  organized  the  train- 
ing of  research  students.  The  result  was  over  200 
papers  on  the  structures  of  a  vast  range  of  organic 
substances,  one  of  the  most  impressive  contribu- 
tions to  knowledge  to  come  from  any  chemical 
laboratory  in  the  middle  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury. Robertson  was  an  efficient  departmental 
head,  but  he  left  most  of  the  management  to 
competent  and  loyal  colleagues.  He  did  not  seek 
prominence  in  public  affairs,  but  did  not  shun 
assignments  that  came  his  way.  He  served  on  the 
councils  of  the  Royal  Societies  of  Edinburgh 
(1953-6)  and  London  (1954-6);  he  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  University  Grants  Committee 
(1960-4)  and  the  Ramsay  Trust  (1970-8),  and  he 
was  president  of  the  Chemical  Society  (1962-4). 
His  honours  included  FRSE  (1943),  FRS  (1945), 
the  Tilden  lectureship  (1945),  the  Davy  medal  of 
the  Royal  Society  (i960),  appointment  as  CBE 
(1962),  honorary  degrees  from  Aberdeen  (1963) 
and  Strathclyde  (1970),  and  the  Longstaff  medal 
of  the  Chemical  Society  (1966). 

Robertson  was  of  middle  height  and  solidly 
built.  He  was  a  gentle  and  courteous  man, 
somewhat  old-fashioned,  with  a  quiet  sense  of 
humour  and  an  attractive  smile,  all  of  which 
conveyed  a  true  impression  of  his  kindness  and 
reliability,  but  did  not  so  readily  disclose  his 
underlying  strength  of  character.  He  hated  to 
censure  or  criticize,  but  was  nevertheless  a  good 
leader.  In  1930  he  married  Stella  Kennard, 
daughter  of  the  Revd  James  Nairn,  of  Hasling- 
den;  it  was,  as  he  wrote  later,  'the  most  important 
event  in  my  life'.  They  had  two  sons  and  a 
daughter.  He  is  commemorated  by  a  tablet 
(unveiled  by  his  wife  a  few  weeks  before  he  died) 
in  the  J.  M.  Robertson  protein  crystallography 
laboratory  of  the  chemistry  department  of  the 


University  of  Glasgow.  Robertson  died  27 
December  1989  in  Inverness. 

[J.  M.  Robertson,  personal  reminiscences,  in  Fifty 
Years  of  X-ray  Diffraction,  ed.  P.  P.  Ewald,  Utrecht, 
1962;  S.  Arnott  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxix,  1994;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  G.  Cox 

ROBINSON,  Sir  David  (1904-1987),  entrepre- 
neur, college  founder,  and  philanthropist,  was 
born  13  April  1904  in  Cambridge,  the  third  of  six 
sons  and  third  of  nine  children  of  Herbert 
Robinson,  cycle  shop  and  later  garage  owner,  and 
his  wife,  Rosie  Emily  Tricker.  He  was  educated 
at  the  Cambridgeshire  High  School  for  Boys, 
which  he  left  at  the  age  of  fifteen  in  order  to  work 
in  his  father's  bicycle  shop  in  Cambridge.  In 
1930  he  moved  to  Bedford,  where  he  took  over  a 
garage  and  developed  it  into  a  large  and  prosper- 
ous firm. 

His  fortune,  however,  was  made  in  the  radio 
and  television  rental  business.  In  the  late  1930s 
he  opened  a  radio  and  electrical  shop  in  the  High 
Street,  Bedford,  and  in  the  late  1940s  opened 
similar  shops  in  Northampton,  Kettering,  Luton, 
Peterborough,  Stamford,  and  Hitchin.  Having 
observed  the  impact  of  the  queen's  coronation  as 
a  television  spectacle  in  1953,  he  set  up  his  own 
television  and  rental  business  based  at  first  on  his 
chain  of  shops.  By  1962  the  Bedford  firm  of 
Robinson  Rentals  was  making  a  profit  of  £17 
million  a  year  and  in  1968  he  sold  it  to  Granada 
for  £%  million  and  turned  his  attention  else- 
where. 

The  turf  had  interested  him  for  a  long  time. 
Although  his  racing  colours  of  green,  red  sleeves, 
and  light  blue  cap  were  registered  as  early  as 
1946,  and  although  in  1955  his  Our  Babu  won 
the  Two  Thousand  Guineas,  it  was  not  until 
1968  that  he  seriously  turned  his  mind  to  horse- 
racing  as  a  business.  He  set  out  to  prove  his 
theory  that,  given  efficient  and  businesslike  man- 
agement, organization,  and  accounting,  racehorse 
ownership  could  be  made  to  pay.  The  results 
spoke  for  themselves.  For  eight  seasons  between 
1968  and  1975  Robinson  consistently  headed  the 
owners'  list  of  individual  winners  and  races. 
Although  leading  owner  in  terms  of  prize  money 
only  once  (in  1969),  he  eventually  won  a  total  of 
997  races.  In  the  ten  years  from  1968  Robinson 
made  a  great  contribution  to  British  racing,  at  his 
peak  having  120  horses  in  training. 

He  continued  to  apply  and  expect  the  same 
high  standards  of  business  efficiency  even  when 
it  came  to  giving  his  money  away.  If  potential 
recipients  of  his  munificence  did  not  come  up  to 
his  own  ideas  of  management  efficiency,  they 
went  away  disappointed  and  empty  handed.  He 
set  up  the  Robinson  Charitable  Trust.  Its  bene- 
ficiaries included  Bedford — a  swimming  pool; 
his  old  school — an  arts  centre;  Addenbrooke's 


380 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Rose 


Hospital — a  large  maternity  unit  ('Rosie')  named 
after  his  mother;  the  Evelyn  Nursing  Home — a 
new  wing;  and  Papworth  Hospital — a  large  sum 
for  heart  transplants.  When  the  Penlee  lifeboat 
foundered  with  the  loss  of  the  entire  crew  in 
1 98 1,  he  provided  £400,000  to  purchase  a  new- 
lifeboat  named  after  his  wife,  Mabel  Alice,  and  he 
went  on  to  provide  three  more,  including  the 
Davtd  Robinson  at  the  Lizard. 

In  the  late  1960s  it  became  known  that  he  was 
considering  a  large  academic  benefaction,  and 
eventually  Cambridge  University  accepted  his 
offer  of  £18  million  to  endow  a  large  new  college. 
Planning  began  in  1973.  The  design  was  pre- 
pared by  the  Glasgow  firm  of  architects,  Gil- 
lespie, Kidd  &  Coia;  the  building  was  started  in 
1977  and  was  virtually  completed  by  October 
1980,  when  the  first  sizeable  number  of  under- 
graduates entered  the  college.  By  1983  the  col- 
lege had  grown  to  thirty-five  fellows  and  370 
junior  members  and  by  1993  had  reached  a 
steady  state  of  fifty-six  fellows  and  485  junior 
members. 

Robinson  College  was  formally  opened  by  the 
queen  on  29  May  1981.  Typically,  Robinson 
avoided  the  opening  ceremony,  tendering  his 
apologies  to  the  queen  on  the  grounds  that  he 
had  become  increasingly  immobile  and  his  wife 
had  for  some  time  been  incapacitated.  He  was 
knighted  in  1985. 

Robinson's  life  was  centred  on  his  enterprises 
and  his  benefactions.  He  worked  hard,  with  little 
relaxation  and  few  social  contacts;  and  he 
expected  others  to  work  hard.  He  kept  up 
appearances,  being  tall,  bald-headed  and  bespec- 
tacled, and  always  smartly  dressed,  but  he  was 
very  reticent  and  shunned  publicity  to  the  end. 
He  was  not  only  a  great  entrepreneur,  but  also  a 
self-effacing  philanthropist  who  gave  all  his 
money  away  and,  in  spite  of  his  disenchantment 
with  academics,  whom  he  regarded  as  vacillating 
and  insufficiently  businesslike,  founded  a  college 
in  his  home  town  with  a  record  benefaction  in 
record  time. 

In  1922  he  married  Mabel  Alice,  daughter  of 
Fred  Baccus,  stonemason,  when  they  were  both 
eighteen  years  old.  A  devoted  couple,  they  had  a 
daughter  and  a  son,  who  died  in  1981.  Robinson 
died  in  Newmarket  10  January  1987  and  was 
buried  at  sea  off  Great  Yarmouth  by  the  Royal 
National  Lifeboat  Institution. 

{Cambridge  Review,  no.  2298,  October  1087;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]       George  Colpe 

ROSE,  Francis  Leslie  (1900- 1988),  industrial 
research  chemist,  was  born  in  Lincoln  27  June 
1909,  the  second  son  in  the  family  of  two  sons 
and  one  daughter  of  Frederick  William  Rose, 
solicitor's  clerk,  and  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Ann 
Watts.  Frank,  as  he  was  invariably  known  to  his 
colleagues,  was  educated  at  St  Faith's  Primary 


School,  Christ's  Hospital  Continuation  School, 
and  the  City  School  in  Lincoln.  From  the  age  of 
eight  he  was  fascinated  by  science  and  developed 
a  consuming  passion  for  experimental  chemistry, 
which  he  retained  all  his  life.  He  entered  Not- 
tingham University  College  at  the  age  of  seven- 
teen, won  first-class  honours  in  chemistry 
(London,  1930),  and  remained  there  with  Pro- 
fessor F.  S.  *Kipping  to  cam-  out  research  on 
camphor  and  fluorene  derivatives.  This  work  had 
been  partly  supported  by  Imperial  Chemical 
Industries  Ltd.  and,  although  very  few  people 
were  being  taken  on  at  that  period,  he  was 
recruited  by  ICI  in  1932.  He  obtained  his  Ph.D. 
in  1934  and  remained  with  ICI  as  a  chemist, 
research  manager,  and  finally  consultant  for 
fifty-six  years.  He  was  active  scientifically  until 
his  death  and  was  one  of  the  best  known  and 
most  innovative  contributors  to  pharmaceutical 
research  of  his  period. 

His  initial  research  concerned  light-stable  dye- 
stuffs  and  the  ways  in  which  dyes  bind  to  fibres. 
No  doubt  had  he  continued  in  this  field  he  would 
have  become  eminent,  but  in  1936,  just  before 
World  War  II,  ICI  followed  some  of  the  other 
large  chemical  companies  in  setting  up  within  its 
dyesfuffs  research  group  a  small  team  to  initiate 
pharmaceutical  research.  Rose  was  picked  as  one 
of  the  six  chemists  involved* — a  fortunate  choice 
both  for  himself  and  for  ICI. 

The  antibacterial  sulphonamides  had  just  been 
introduced  to  medicine  and  Rose  soon  devised  a 
new  route  to  one  of  the  most  widely  used, 
Sulphamezathine.  Unlike  many  of  his  chemical 
colleagues  he  became  keenly  interested  in  both 
the  mode  of  action  and  the  distribution  of  these 
agents.  As  a  result  he  became  and  remained  one 
of  the  leading  exponents  of  antimetabolite  theory 
and  of  pharmacodynamics. 

The  priorities  of  wartime  soon  required  the 
ICI  group  to  seek  new  anti-malarial  drugs.  The 
known  synthetic  agents  came  from  Germany  and 
the  war  in  the  Far  East  denied  the  Allies  access  to 
the  quinine  plantations.  Rose  led  the  chemical 
research  team  and  over  the  next  five  years  about 
1,700  compounds  were  made  and  tested,  result- 
ing eventually  in  the  discover)-  of  Paludrine. 
Although  Rose  made  many  other  therapeutic 
discoveries  in  areas  as  diverse  as  anti-bacterials, 
cancer,  and  bronchodilatation,  it  is  for  this  war- 
time research  that  he  is  best  remembered. 

After  the  war  the  pharmaceutical  work  with- 
in ICI  prospered  and  gave  rise  to  a  consider- 
able business.  Rose  became  research  manager 
(1954-71)  and  at  times  was  in  charge  of  over  200 
scientists,  but  until  1974  he  still  worked  at  the 
laboratory  bench  even-  day.  He  maintained  a  link 
between  the  ICI  laboratories  in  Cheshire  and 
Manchester  University.  From  1959  to  1972  he 
was  honorary  reader  in  organic  chemistry  at 
UMIST  and  he  was  a  member  of  the  courts  of 


38i 


Rose 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


governors  of  the  university  and  of  UMIST  and 
an  honorary  fellow  of  Manchester  Polytechnic. 
He  never  retired.  After  relinquishing  his  research 
managership  in  1971  he  worked  as  a  research 
fellow  (1971-4)  in  his  old  department  before 
joining  a  small  team  studying  the  potential  carci- 
nogenicity of  compounds  handled  within  ICI.  He 
then  remained  an  active  consultant  and  was 
usually  to  be  found  every  day  in  the  laboratories 
which  he  helped  to  found  at  Alderley  Park. 

Rose  retained  a  boyish  enthusiasm  for  science. 
His  knowledge  of  the  interactions  between  chem- 
icals and  biological  systems  was  immense  and 
he  was  continually  seeking  new  arguments  to 
explain  these  interactions.  His  arguments  were 
imaginative,  sometimes  wildly  so,  but  they  were 
given  in  such  a  hopeful  and  informed  way  as  to 
be  a  great  stimulus  to  the  many  who  worked  with 
him.  He  played  an  active  part  in  the  wider 
scientific  community  of  learned  societies  and  was 
also  for  many  years  a  scientific  adviser  to  the 
Home  Office  Forensic  Science  Committee 
(1965-78).  He  was  elected  FRS  in  1957, 
appointed  OBE  in  1949  and  CBE  in  1978,  and,  to 
his  especial  delight,  awarded  a  D.Sc.  by  his  old 
university,  Nottingham,  in  1950.  He  had  an 
honorary  D.Sc.  from  Loughborough  (1982)  and 
several  medals. 

Rose  was  a  lively,  friendly  man  of  medium 
height.  He  had  blue  eyes,  fair  and  in  later  life 
grey  hair,  wore  spectacles,  and  mostly  moved 
with  a  quick  purposeful  step.  The  well-known 
scientist  was  also  a  very  private  person  with 
deeply  held  Christian  beliefs  and  a  love  of  church 
music  and  sailing,  totally  devoted  to  his  wife 
Ailsa  (the  daughter  of  Christopher  Buckley,  an 
ICI  engineer),  whom  he  married  in  1935,  and  to 
their  only  child  Peter,  a  schoolteacher  who 
shared  his  father's  love  of  church  music.  Frank 
Rose  died  of  renal  cancer  in  St  Ann's  Hospice, 
Heald  Green,  3  March  1988. 

[C.  W.  Suckling  and  B.  W.  Langley  in  Biographical 
Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvi, 
1990;  personal  knowledge.]  Bernard  Langley 

ROSS,  (John)  Carl  (1901-1986),  magnate  in  the 
fisheries  industry,  was  born  in  Cleethorpes  29 
July  1 90 1,  the  second  of  three  sons  and  fourth  of 
six  children  of  Thomas  Ross,  Grimsby  fish 
merchant,  and  his  wife  Marie,  daughter  of  Her- 
bert Bannister,  trawler  owner.  He  was  educated 
at  the  East  Anglian  School  at  Culford  and  served 
for  a  short  time  in  the  Royal  Navy,  which  he  had 
joined  shortly  before  armistice  day  in  191 8. 
Upon  demobilization,  he  entered  the  family  fish 
merchanting  firm  of  Thomas  Ross  Ltd.,  from 
which  his  father  retired  early,  through  illness,  in 
1928.  From  that  year  he  initiated  a  steady  decade 
of  expansion,  which  included  the  import  of 
frozen  halibut  and  salmon  from  North  America, 
a  very  innovative  activity,  which  was  to  continue 


well  into  the  years  following  the  end  of  World 
War  II  in  1945. 

Whilst  Carl  Ross  was  developing  his  fish 
merchanting  activities,  he  had  the  foresight  to 
recognize  that  the  future  of  the  fishing  industry 
might  lie  in  integrating  fish  catching,  processing, 
and  merchanting,  and  he  built  the  first  diesel 
trawlers  in  the  mid- 1930s.  However,  his  first 
major  incursion  into  trawler-owning  was  when 
he  purchased  the  nine  vessels  of  the  late  Sir  Alec 
Black,  first  baronet,  in  1943.  In  1944  he  acquired 
a  majority  shareholding  in  Trawlers  Grimsby 
Ltd.,  a  publicly  quoted  company  into  which 
Thomas  Ross  Ltd.  was  injected.  This  was  the 
foundation  stone  of  what  became  the  Ross 
Group. 

It  was  at  this  stage  that  Ross  demonstrated  a 
remarkable  ability  to  deal  with  financial  and 
accountancy  matters,  although  he  had  no  formal 
training.  He  had  a  formidable  talent  for  reading 
and  understanding  figures  and  gained  great 
respect  in  City  financial  circles.  This  ability 
triggered  off  an  extensive  series  of  take-overs  of 
companies  engaged  in  all  aspects  of  the  fishing 
industry,  including  major  catching  and  process- 
ing companies  in  Hull,  which  gave  the  Ross 
Group  a  dominant  situation  on  the  Humber.  In 
1956  the  Ross  Group  acquired  G.  F.  Sleight 
Ltd.,  owners  of  a  substantial  but  ageing  fleet,  and 
thus,  in  one  swoop,  Carl  Ross  secured  the 
services  of  twenty  of  the  best  North  Sea  skippers. 
It  was  a  move  that  allowed  him  to  announce  a 
major  North  Sea  and  Middle  Water  trawler- 
building  programme  to  accommodate  these  skip- 
pers. The  programme  was  a  resounding  success 
and  the  subsequent  profitable  record  of  the  Bird 
and  Cat  class  of  Ross  vessels  became  a  legend. 
The  Ross  Group  built  many  more  vessels, 
including  deep-sea  freezer  trawlers,  most  of 
which  were  constructed  at  the  Cochrane  yards  at 
Selby,  which  it  acquired.  At  its  peak,  the  Ross 
Group  owned  the  largest  fishing  fleet  in 
Europe. 

In  the  very  rapid  growth  of  the  Ross  Group, 
the  only  set-back  Carl  Ross  encountered  was  in 
1966,  when  the  Monopolies  Commission  refused 
to  allow  the  Ross  bid  for  Associated  Fisheries 
Ltd.,  the  other  major  publicly  quoted  company 
in  the  fishing  industry,  although  the  financial  and 
business  logic  was  irrefutable.  Ironically,  only 
two  years  later,  the  government  itself  was  instru- 
mental in  bringing  the  fleets  of  the  Ross  group 
and  Associated  Fisheries  together  to  form  British 
United  Trawlers.  In  the  early  1950s,  when  Carl 
Ross  recognized  that  the  fish  industry  was  but 
part  of  the  food  industry,  he  extended  the  Ross 
frozen  fish  business  to  become  Ross  Foods.  An 
added  dimension  to  the  Ross  Foods  business  was 
the  acquisition  of  the  Youngs  shellfish  company. 
Carl  Ross  established  Ross  Poultry  (1961),  which 
played  a  major  role  in  the  integration  and  ration- 


382 


D.N.B   1986-1990 


Ross 


alization  of  the  British  poultry-  industry-;  created 
Ross  Vegetable  (i960),  the  biggest  single  UK 
potato  distributor;  and  developed  a  series  of 
peripheral  activities  including  the  chain  of  Ross 
Motorway  Services  (1965). 

Girl  Ross  parted  company  with  the  Ross 
Group  after  a  somewhat  acrimonious  boardroom 
struggle  in  the  late  1960s,  which  culminated  in 
the  take-over  of  the  company  by  Imperial  Group 
Ltd.  in  1970.  Although  almost  seventy,  he  then 
played  a  major  role  as  chairman  in  developing 
Cosalt  pic.  He  maintained  an  active  interest  in 
the  affairs  of  that  company  until  he  died. 

In  his  youth  he  was  a  distinguished  county 
hockey  player.  Almost  until  his  death  he  also 
enjoyed  golf  and  shooting  and  for  a  period  owned 
several  racehorses.  He  obtained  a  pilot's  licence 
in  1930  and  played  an  active  role  in  the  Royal  Air 
Force  Volunteer  Reserve  cadet  force  during  the 
1939-45  war.  He  was  a  high  steward  of  Grimsby 
(1970-86)  and  a  member  of  the  Companies  of 
Poulterers  and  Fruiterers.  He  was  a  past  presi- 
dent and  leading  member  of  the  Fishing  Industry 
Sports  Association  and  a  generous  contributor  to 
many  charities.  He  was  president  of  the  Grimsby 
Conservative  Association  for  some  twenty-five 
years  from  1954. 

Ross  was  five  feet  nine  inches  tall,  of  medium 
build,  with  a  strong  face  and  distinguished 
appearance.  In  1928  he  married  Elsie,  daughter 
of  Samuel  Hartley,  a  cotton  salesman  based  in 
Blackburn.  They  had  two  sons  and  two  daugh- 
ters. Ross  died  in  Grimsby  9  January  1986. 

[Archives  of  the  Grimsby  Evening  Telegraph;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]  W.  P.  Appleyard 

ROSS,  William,  Baron  Ross  of  Marnock 
(1911-1988),  educationist  and  politician,  was 
born  in  Ayr  7  April  191 1,  the  third  of  four 
children  and  only  son  of  William  Henry  Ross, 
locomotive  driver,  of  7  Kirkholm  Avenue,  Ayr, 
who  became  senior  bailie  of  Ayr  town  council. 
For  the  whole  of  his  life  his  home  was  in  Ayr, 
where  his  school-days  were  at  Ayr  Academy. 
From  there  he  went  on  to  Glasgow  University  on 
a  Carnegie  scholarship  and  graduated  MA 
(1932).  He  then  became  a  primary  schoolteacher 
in  Glasgow.  The  general  strike  of  1926,  when  his 
father  was  unemployed,  and  the  depression  of 
the  1930s  intensified  the  political  ideas  he 
imbibed  from  his  parents. 

In  1936  he  was  selected  as  Labour  candidate 
for  Ayr  constituency.  He  continued  teaching 
until  1940,  when  he  enlisted  in  the  Highland 
Light  Infantry,  training  in  the  Shetlands  and 
Wales.  He  served  in  the  North-West  Frontier  of 
India  until  seconded  to  Signals  GHQ.  India  in 
Delhi.  In  1944  he  became  cipher  officer  to  Lord 
Louis  *Mountbatten  (later  first  Earl  Mountbat- 
ten  of  Burma),  supreme  commander,  South-East 
Asia,  in  Ceylon  and  accompanied  him  on  flights 


to  Burma  and  Singapore  for  the  signing  of  the 
peace  treaty  with  the  Japanese.  He  was  appointed 
MBE  (military)  in  1945  and  demobilized  in  the 
rank  of  major. 

At  the  1945  election  he  unsuccessfully  con- 
tested the  Ayr  Burgh  constituency,  but  at  a 
by-election  in  1946  he  was  elected  Labour  mem- 
ber for  Kilmarnock,  Ayr,  and  Bute,  which  he 
continued  to  represent  until  he  retired  in  1979. 
His  first  government  appointment  was  as  parlia- 
mentary private  secretary  to  Hector  *McNeil, 
secretary-  of  state  for  Scotland,  a  post  he  held 
until  the  defeat  of  the  Labour  government  in 
195 1.  From  the  back  benches  he  worked  as 
an  aide  to  Douglas  Houghton  (later  Baron 
Houghton  of  Sowerby)  on  pensions,  insurance, 
and  health.  In  1962  he  became  shadow  secretary 
of  state  for  Scotland,  and  his  energies  were 
directed  to  changing  public  policy  and  narrowing 
the  gap  between  the  Scottish  economy  and  that 
of  the  south  of  England. 

In  1964  he  became  secretary  of  state  for 
Scotland,  the  office  he  most  desired.  Carrying  as 
it  did  responsibility  for  functions  which  in  Eng- 
land are  exercised  by  ministers  for  the  home 
department,  education,  health,  agriculture,  elec- 
tricity, and  local  government,  it  gave  great  scope 
to  his  boundless  energy  and  gave  him  the  oppor- 
tunity- to  put  into  practice  the  policies  for  which 
he  had  fought  with  such  zeal  in  opposition. 
Openly  at  Westminster  and  in  Scodand,  but  also 
behind  the  scenes,  he  campaigned  vigorously  to 
achieve  his  aim  of  shifting  industry  from  the 
south  to  Scotland  and,  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Scottish  Development  Department,  he  had 
much  success  in  this.  His  creation  of  the  High- 
lands and  Islands  Development  Board  changed 
for  the  better  many  aspects  of  life  and  work  in 
the  Highlands.  He  gave  full  support  to  the 
activities  of  the  Scottish  new  towns,  which  were 
particularly  successful  in  attracting  new  enter- 
prises both  from  England  and  the  USA.  Relin- 
quishing his  position  at  the  fall  of  the  Labour 
government  in  1970,  Ross  resumed  as  secretary 
of  state  for  Scodand  in  the  following  Labour 
government  elected  in  1974.  However,  when 
Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx) 
resigned  in  1976,  Ross  lost  the  Scottish  Office 
because  he  was  not  in  favour  of  devolution, 
which  was  then  in  vogue.  He  accepted  a  life 
barony  in  1979. 

In  1978—80  he  was  lord  high  commissioner  to 
the  general  assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scotland, 
an  appointment  for  which  his  strong  religious 
beliefs  and  lifelong  membership  of  the  Church 
made  him  highly  suitable.  He  was  fiercely  loyal 
to  everything  he  loved  and  believed  in — family, 
friends,  the  Labour  party,  the  Church,  and 
Scodand.  He  was  of  medium  height,  with  light 
red  hair,  strong  features,  cleft  chin,  and  piercing 
grey  eyes.  He  was  unsympathetic  to  the  ideals  of 


383 


Ross 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  'permissive  society'.  He  was  passionately 
fond  of  the  works  of  Robert  *Burns,  of  which  he 
had  an  extensive  knowledge.  His  rich  Ayrshire 
voice  made  him  a  welcome  speaker  at  numerous 
Burns  suppers,  where  his  proposal  of  the 
immortal  Memory'  was  unforgettable.  In  his 
speeches,  both  in  Parliament  and  elsewhere,  he 
made  some  of  his  most  telling  points  by  an  apt 
quotation  from  Burns.  His  main  leisure  interest 
was  watching  Association  Football,  and  he  was 
very  proud  when  the  Scottish  Football  Associa- 
tion made  him  honorary  president  (1978). 

He  became  an  honorary  LL  D  of  the  uni- 
versities of  St  Andrews  (1967),  Strathclyde 
(1969),  and  Glasgow  (1978),  and  a  fellow  of  the 
Educational  Institute  of  Scotland  (1971).  In  1948 
he  married  Elizabeth  Jane  Elma,  daughter  of 
John  Aitkenhead,  marine  engineer  and  hotel 
owner.  They  had  two  daughters.  Ross  had  a 
happy  marriage  and  family  life,  and  was  a  kind 
and  loving  husband  and  father.  He  died  at  home 
in  Ayr,  of  cancer,  10  June  1988. 

[Information  from  relatives  and  friends;  personal 
knowledge.]  William  Hughes 

ROTHSCHILD,  Sir  (Nathaniel  Mayer)  Vic- 
tor, fourth  baronet  and  third  Baron  Rothschild 
(1910-1990),  zoologist  and  public  servant,  was 
born  31  October  1910  in  Palace  Green,  Kensing- 
ton, the  only  son  and  second  of  the  four  children 
of  (Nathaniel)  Charles  Rothschild,  banker  and 
naturalist,  and  his  wife  Rozsika,  daughter  of 
Captain  Alfred  von  Wertheimstein,  of  Csehtelek, 
a  part  of  Hungary  since  annexed  by  Romania. 
Charles,  younger  son  of  Nathan  Meyer  •Roths- 
child, first  Baron  Rothschild,  took  his  life  in  1923 
while  suffering  from  the  effects  of  encephalitis 
(inflammation  of  the  brain).  During  his  school- 
days at  Harrow,  Victor  shone  only  as  a  cricketer. 
It  was  as  an  undergraduate  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  that  he  first  revealed  an  ingenious 
mind.  The  university  department  of  zoology  was 
impressed  enough  to  excuse  him  the  long  grind 
of  the  natural  history  tripos  so  that  he  could  at 
once  embark  on  research.  A  change  of  regulation 
required  him  nevertheless  to  sit  for  a  pass  degree. 
In  1935  he  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  at  Trinity 
for  work  of  high  promise  on  the  fertilization  of 
frogs'  eggs.  He  obtained  a  Ph.D.  in  1937  and  an 
Sc.D.  in  1950. 

Much  was  to  be  made  in  later  years  of  his 
membership  of  the  Apostles  at  Cambridge. 
Rothschild,  like  most  of  his  Cambridge  contem- 
poraries, was  mildly  left-wing  but  never  a  Marx- 
ist. Nor  did  he  share  the  belief  of  such  Apostles 
and  close  friends  as  Anthony  *Blunt  and  Guy 
•Burgess  that  the  rise  of  Nazi  Germany 
demanded  uncritical  adulation  of  the  Soviet 
Union.  And  although  he  regarded  homosexuals 
with  amused  tolerance  at  a  time  when  their 
practices  infringed  the  criminal  law,  he  was  not 


one  himself.  He  excelled  at  tennis,  golf,  and 
cricket,  as  a  driver  of  fast  cars  and  a  jazz  pianist. 
Like  most  Rothschilds  he  was  an  obsessive  col- 
lector. He  began  even  as  an  undergraduate  to 
assemble  the  finest  library  in  private  hands  of 
English  eighteenth-century  first  editions,  manu- 
scripts, and  book  bindings,  some  3,000  items 
which  he  later  presented  to  Trinity.  He  also 
pursued  silver  of  the  same  period  and  Impres- 
sionist paintings. 

He  married  in  1933  Barbara,  only  daughter  of 
St  John  Hutchinson,  barrister.  Although  Roths- 
child never  subscribed  to  the  beliefs  and  prac- 
tices of  Judaism,  he  thought  it  seemly  that  his 
wife  should  be  converted  to  the  Jewish  faith. 
They  had  one  son  and  two  daughters. 

Succession  to  the  peerage  of  his  bachelor  uncle 
(Lionel)  Walter  in  1937  did  not  alter  the  rhythm 
of  his  laboratory  life.  Refusing  to  be  burdened  by 
possessions  or  a  role  in  national  affairs,  he  sold 
the  family  mansion,  no.  148  Piccadilly,  together 
with  its  plethoric  contents,  and  most  of  the 
country  estate  at  Tring.  Rothschild  spent  much 
of  the  war  of  1939-45  >n  charge  of  the  tiny  but 
effective  counter-sabotage  section  of  MI5.  The 
precision  with  which  he  had  learned  to  dissect 
frogs'  eggs  served  him  well  in  the  defusing  of 
explosive  devices.  For  dismantling  a  new  type  of 
bomb  placed  by  German  agents  in  a  cargo  of 
Spanish  onions  bound  for  Britain,  he  was 
awarded  the  George  medal  (1944)  after  the 
personal  intervention  of  (Sir)  Winston  •Church- 
ill. Colonel  Rothschild  was  also  responsible  for 
analysing  anonymous  gifts  to  the  prime  minister 
of  food,  wine,  and  cigars  in  case  they  concealed 
poison  or  explosives.  The  USA  awarded  him  the 
Legion  of  Merit  and  the  bronze  star. 

His  marriage,  exhilarating  but  precarious, 
ended  in  divorce  in  1945.  He  married  in  1946  his 
assistant  in  MI5,  Teresa  Georgina  ('Tess') 
Mayor,  MBE,  daughter  of  Robert  John  Grote 
Mayor,  civil  servant.  They  had  two  sons,  one  of 
whom  died  at  birth,  and  two  daughters.  Resum- 
ing his  experiments  at  Cambridge  on  fertiliza- 
tion, Rothschild  produced  much  original  work 
on  the  speed  and  heat  of  spermatozoa,  and  with 
Michael  (later  Baron)  *Swann  discovered  how  a 
single  sperm,  on  penetrating  the  egg  of  a  sea 
urchin,  was  able  to  exclude  all  others.  In  1953  he 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society.  He 
published,  as  well  as  many  papers,  Fertilization 
(1956)  and  A  Classification  of  Living  Animals 
(1961). 

Only  weeks  after  Labour's  sweeping  victory  in 
the  general  election  of  1945  he  formally  joined 
the  Labour  party:  a  mistimed  gesture  by  a  rich 
young  patrician  that  invited  cynical  comment. 
He  was  appointed  to  several  official  bodies.  As 
chairman  of  the  Agricultural  Research  Council 
from  1948  to  1958  he  increased  both  its  budget 
and  its  standing.  From   1961   to  1970  he  was 


384 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Rous 


employed  by  Royal  Dutch  Shell,  rising  to  be 
co-ordinator  of  research  for  the  entire  group 
worldwide.  Shell  accustomed  him  to  a  customer- 
contractor  relationship,  which  he  believed  should 
also  be  imposed  on  government  research  estab- 
lishments (even  though  he  had  opposed  it  at  the 
ARC).  A  Framework  for  Government  Research  and 
Development  (1971)  was  ill  received  by  his  col- 
leagues in  Cambridge  laboratories  and  at  the 
Royal  Society,  who  felt  betrayed  at  the  applica- 
tion of  payment  by  results  to  their  work. 

The  report  was  the  first  fruit  of  the  Central 
Policy  Review  Staff,  popularly  known  as  the 
Think  Tank,  set  up  by  (Sir)  Edward  Heath  in 
1 97 1  with  Rothschild  as  its  first  director-general, 
to  offer  the  cabinet  independent  advice  on 
important  issues,  such  as  race  relations,  nuclear 
reactor  policy,  Concorde,  and  coal.  Even  under 
the  influence  of  Rothschild's  office  hospitality — 
smoked  salmon  sandwiches  and  cider  cup  con- 
sisting almost  entirely  of  brandy — permanent 
under-secretaries  could  see  little  merit  in  a  band 
of  intellectual  condottien  sabotaging  the  estab- 
lished procedures  of  the  Civil  Service  as  they 
roamed  the  corridors  of  Whitehall.  He  was 
appointed  GBE  in  1975. 

Retiring  from  the  CPRS  in  1974,  Rothschild 
presided  over  the  royal  commission  on  gambling 
(1976-8)  and  published  in  1978  an  exhaustive 
report.  He  was  consulted  by  Margaret  (later 
Baroness)  Thatcher  on  the  reform  of  local  gov- 
ernment finance,  but  bore  no  responsibility  for 
the  rigidity  of  the  subsequent  poll  tax  introduced 
by  her  government.  In  spite  of  an  aversion  to  the 
practice  of  banking,  he  was  persuaded  in  1975  to 
become  chairman  of  N.  M.  Rothschild  &  Sons, 
and  from  1976  to  1988  chairman  of  Rothschilds 
Continuation  Ltd.;  he  could  not,  however,  heal 
its  internal  dissensions  or  prevent  the  departure 
of  his  son,  Jacob  Rothschild,  to  found  his  own 
more  adventurous  merchant  bank — an  episode 
that  strained  beyond  repair  an  already  uneasy 
relationship  between  father  and  son.  Rothschild 
himself  continued  as  a  director  and  brought  both 
scientific  experience  and  flair  to  the  chairman- 
ship of  its  successful  subsidiary.  Biotechnology 
Investments  Ltd.  He  had  ten  honorary  degrees. 

Byronically  handsome  in  youth,  he  acquired  a 
senatorial  countenance  in  middle  age.  He  was  an 
accomplished  host,  but  a  guest  only  on  his  own 
terms:  no  formal  clothes,  a  very  small  company, 
and  an  early  night.  He  gave  generously  to  chari- 
ties and  to  individuals,  often  by  stealth,  and 
administered  family  trusts  for  the  support  of  the 
Weizmann  Institute  in  Rehovot  and  other  Israeli 
causes.  He  preferred  the  pen  to  the  telephone. 
The  terseness  of  his  epigrammatic  style  delighted 
his  friends  but  was  feared  in  controversy.  He 
wrote,  with  professional  help,  two  monographs 
on  family  history:  one  on  N.  M.  Rothschild, 
founder  of  the  English  line,  the  other  on  Baron 


Lionel's  role  in  acquiring  the  Suez  canal  shares 
in  1875. 

The  carefree  friendships  of  his  early  Cam- 
bridge years  that  had  continued  throughout  the 
war  cast  a  shadow  over  the  last  decade  of  his  life. 
The  defection  of  Burgess  to  Russia  and  the 
uncovering  of  Blunt  as  a  Soviet  agent  exposed 
Rothschild  to  innuendo  and  vilification  in  press 
and  Parliament.  Rather  than  let  his  name,  his 
courage,  and  his  record  of  public  service  speak 
for  themselves,  he  sought  unwisely  to  clear 
himself  though  the  testimony  of  Peter  Wright, 
who  as  an  investigator  employed  by  MI5  had 
even  reason  to  know  of  his  innocence.  Clan- 
destine association  with  so  volatile  a  character 
aroused  further  suspicions  that  Rothschild  had 
broken  the  Official  Secrets  Act.  Only  after  volun- 
tarily submitting  himself  to  a  long  interrogation 
by  Scotland  Yard  did  he  emerge  with  honour  and 
patriotism  intact.  But  the  ordeal  took  a  toll  on 
both  his  pride  and  his  health.  He  died  of  a  heart 
attack  at  St  James's  Place,  London,  20  March 
1990  and  at  his  express  wish  was  buried  near  the 
tomb  of  N.  M.  Rothschild  in  a  long-disused 
cemetery  in  Stepney.  He  was  succeeded  in  the 
barony  by  his  elder  son,  (Nathaniel  Charles) 
Jacob  Rothschild  (born  1936). 

[Lord  Rothschild,  Meditations  of  a  Broomstick,  1977, 
and  (with  N.  Logothetis)  Random  Variables,  1984; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Kenneth  Rose 

ROUS,  Sir  Stanley  Ford  (1 895-1986),  secretary 
of  the  Football  Association,  was  born  25  April 
1895  in  Mutferd,  Suffolk,  the  eldest  son  and 
third  child  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  five 
daughters  of  Samuel  George  Rous,  provision 
merchant,  and  his  wife,  Alice  Coldham.  He  was 
educated  at  the  Sir  John  Leman  School,  Beccles, 
and,  after  opting  for  a  teaching  career,  at  the 
town's  teacher  training  centre.  His  passion  for 
football  was  early  apparent  w hen,  aged  fifteen,  he 
organized  a  village  team.  Tall  and  strongly  built, 
he  was  an  imposing  figure  in  goal  and  showed 
considerable  ability  in  local  leagues.  Watching 
Norwich  play  League  football  he  also  developed 
an  interest  in  refereeing. 

Then  World  War  I  intervened  to  take  him  to 
France,  Palestine,  Egypt,  and  Lebanon,  as  a  non- 
commissioned officer  in  the  272nd  brigade  of  the 
Royal  Field  Artillery  (East  Anglian).  He  acted  as 
a  referee  in  wartime  Egypt,  after  a  wrist  broken 
by  a  shell  impaired  his  playing  ability.  When 
demobilized  he  was  attending  an  officer  training 
centre. 

After  the  war  Rous  returned  to  complete  his 
education,  going  to  St  Luke's  College,  Exeter. 
His  football  and  sporting  interests  were  fur- 
thered by  his  appointment  in  1921  as  an  assistant 
master  at  Watford  Grammar  School,  where  he 
was  in  charge  of  all  sport.  During  his  thirteen 


385 


Rous 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


years  at  Watford  he  also  became  a  leading  foot- 
ball referee.  In  1927  he  was  appointed  a  Football 
League  referee.  On  13  March  that  year  he 
officiated  at  an  international  match  in  Antwerp, 
the  first  of  thirty-four  such  games  he  refereed.  In 
the  week  in  which  he  submitted  his  application  to 
succeed  Sir  Frederick  Wall  as  Football  Associa- 
tion secretary  he  refereed  the  Welsh  Cup  Final 
on  Thursday,  the  Football  Association  Cup 
Final,  in  which  he  used  the  diagonal  refereeing 
system  he  had  invented,  on  Saturday,  and  an 
international  in  Antwerp  on  Sunday. 

As  secretary  of  the  Football  Association 
(1934-61)  he  made  an  immediate  impact  with  his 
emphasis  on  training,  coaching,  and  youth  foot- 
ball. Firm  but  charismatic,  he  was  a  forceful 
character,  who  got  his  way  more  by  humour  and 
persuasion  than  reliance  on  authority.  During 
World  War  II  he  was  released  as  a  lieutenant  in 
the  Royal  Artillery  from  an  anti-aircraft  battery 
to  organize  sport  and  raise  funds  for  the  Red 
Cross.  He  proved  an  outstanding  Football  Asso- 
ciation secretary,  methodical,  clear,  and  well 
reasoned  in  his  judgements.  Always  open- 
minded  and  progressive,  he  was  conservative 
only  in  preserving  the  essential  simplicity  of  the 
game  and  its  laws,  which  he  believed  to  be  its 
main  attraction.  Indeed,  he  wrote  A  History  of  the 
Laws  of  Association  Football  (1974).  He  was 
responsible  for  the  codification  of  the  laws  of  the 
game,  redrafting  the  red  and  yellow  card  system 
for  cautions  and  the  linesman's  signals.  Other- 
wise he  encouraged  innovations  and  improve- 
ments, particularly  in  coaching  and  refereeing,  in 
a  variety  of  national  courses,  and  in  the  intro- 
duction of  floodlighting  and  of  televised  football. 
His  close  co-operation  with  the  England  team 
manager  and  director  of  coaching,  (Sir)  Walter 
Winterbottom,  gave  both  men  a  worldwide 
reputation. 

His  international  interest  was  much  in  contrast 
to  previous  officials'  insular  outlook.  He  played  a 
constructive  part  in  England's  entry  into  World 
Cup  football  in  1950  and  in  the  formation  of  the 
European  football  confederation  (UEFA),  of 
which  he  became  a  vice-president.  He  also 
helped  Germany  back  into  international  football 
after  the  war.  His  international  outlook  led  to  his 
election  in  1961  as  president  of  the  Federation 
Internationale  de  Football  Associations  (FIFA). 
Travelling  the  world  and  working  tirelessly  for 
the  game,  he  made  a  particular  impact  on  the 
technical  and  educational  side,  which  repre- 
sented his  special  interest.  He  wrote  a  football 
coaching  manual  and  a  book  of  physical  exercises 
(both  1942).  His  popularity  also  played  a  part  in 
the  World  cup  being  awarded  to  England  in 
1966.  He  retired  from  FIFA  in  1974. 

His  many  other  contributions  to  sport  in 
general  include  being  a  founder  member  in  1935 
of  the  Central  Council  of  Physical  Recreation, 


of  which  he  was  chairman  of  the  executive 
committee  from  1945  to  1973.  Work  for  the 
King  George's  Jubilee  Trust,  the  1948  Olympic 
Games,  the  1951  Festival  of  Britain,  and  the 
Duke  of  Edinburgh's  Award  Scheme  typified  his 
dedication  to  his  prime  concept  of  'work  that 
others  may  play'.  From  1943  to  1947  he  was  a 
member  of  Paddington  borough  council  and  he 
was  a  JP  (1950).  He  held  many  foreign  awards, 
was  appointed  CBE  in  1943,  and  was  knighted  in 
1949. 

Rous  was  six  feet  three  inches  tall,  with  a 
straight  back  and  distinguished  presence  that 
commanded  respect,  although  his  clear  eyes  and 
husky  voice  showed  a  warm-hearted  and  jovial 
personality.  In  1924  he  married  Adrienne  (died 
1950),  daughter  of  Victor  Louis  Gacon,  silk 
merchant,  originally  of  Lyons,  France,  who  had  a 
small  silk-weaving  factory  in  Hemel  Hempstead. 
She  was  half  German  and  half  French.  There 
were  no  children  of  the  marriage.  Rous  died  18 
July  1986  in  St  Mary's  Hospital,  Paddington, 
London,  of  chronic  myelomonocyclic  leuk- 
aemia. 

[Stanley  Rous,  Football  World  (autobiography),  1978; 
private  information.]  A.  Pawson 

RUBBRA,     (Charles)     Edmund     (Duncan) 

(1901-1986),  composer,  pianist,  and  symphonist, 
was  born  23  May  1901  at  57  Cambridge  Street, 
Northampton,  the  elder  son  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Edmund  James  Rubbra,  journey- 
man, shoe-last  maker,  clock  and  watch  repairer, 
and,  later,  jeweller,  and  his  wife,  Mary  Jane 
Bailey.  The  name  Duncan  was  not  on  his  birth 
certificate;  it  was  the  surname  of  his  first  wife  and 
he  used  it  after  his  first  marriage.  According  to 
family  tradition,  the  Rubbras  originated  from 
Bologna  in  Italy.  He  left  school  at  fourteen  and 
worked  briefly  as  an  errand  boy  and  then  a 
railway  clerk.  In  his  home  there  was  a  deep  love 
of  music  and  as  a  youngster  he  was  much  drawn 
to  the  music  of  Cyril  *Scott  and  Claude 
Debussy.  Eventually  he  took  lessons  with  Scott, 
and  then  went  on  to  study  composition  at  Read- 
ing University,  where  Gustav  *Holst  taught,  and 
counterpoint  at  the  Royal  College  of  Music  with 
one  of  the  great  theorists  of  the  day,  R.  O. 
Morris. 

After  leaving  the  RCM  in  1925,  he  pursued  a 
freelance  career  as  a  pianist,  taking  whatever 
teaching,  performing,  and  journalistic  work  came 
to  hand.  His  repertoire  included  both  Arnold 
Schoenberg  and  Alexander  Scriabin,  and  he  was 
a  perceptive  exponent  of  J.  S.  Bach.  During  the 
1930s  he  attracted  increasing  attention  with  such 
works  as  the  Sinfonia  Concertante  for  piano  and 
orchestra    (1934)    and     his    First    Symphony 

(1937)- 

During  World  War  II  he  served  in  the  army, 
as  an  anti-aircraft  gunner  in  the  Royal  Artillery 


386 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Rubbra 


and  then  in  the  army  music  unit,  and  made  an 
appearance  in  battledress  at  London's  Henry 
Wood  Promenade  Concerts  to  conduct  the  first 
performance  of  his  Fourth  Symphony  (1942). 
Rubbra  spent  much  of  his  army  service  enter- 
taining the  troops  with  the  trio  he  had  formed 
with  Erich  Gruenberg  and  William  Pleeth  (and 
was  very  fond  of  telling  how  the  three  were  once 
introduced  as  being  'at  the  top  of  the  tree  in  their 
various  string  combinations').  The  Rubbra- 
Gruenberg-Pleeth  trio  continued  for  some  years 
after  the  war  until  the  combined  pressures  of 
Rubbra's  creative  work  and  teaching  led  to  its 
demise.  In  1947  he  was  appointed  lecturer  in 
music  at  Oxford  University,  becoming  a  fellow  of 
Worcester  College  in  1963.  He  remained  at 
Oxford  until  1968.  In  1961  he  also  joined  the 
staff  of  the  Guildhall  School  of  Music,  where  he 
taught  composition  until  1974. 

Rubbra  belonged  to  the  same  generation  as  Sir 
William  *Walton,  Sir  Lennox  'Berkeley,  and  Sir 
Michael  Tippett  but  had  little  in  common  with 
them  and  even  less  with  such  European  contem- 
poraries as  Karl  Amadeus  Hartmann,  Luigi  Dal- 
lapiccola,  and  Dmitri  Shostakovich.  It  has  been 
said  that  his  music  was  not  of  his  time,  yet  could 
have  been  composed  at  no  other.  It  is  rooted  in 
place — England — and,  more  specifically,  Eng- 
land's musical  heritage  lies  at  its  heart.  There  is 
little  of  the  pastoral  school  in  it,  though  Rubbra 
revered  Ralph  *Vaughan  Williams  and  also  pos- 
sessed a  keen  sense  of  nature's  power,  which  is 
clearly  evident  in  the  Fourth  (1941-2)  and  Sev- 
enth symphonies  (1957).  Rubbra's  outlook  was 
far  from  insular:  he  set  to  music  poetry  ranging 
from  the  time  of  the  Chinese  T'ang  dynasty  and 
of  Icelandic  ballads  to  medieval  Latin  and 
French  verse,  and  his  interest  in  eastern  culture, 
which  arose  in  childhood,  remained  lifelong.  In 
his  book,  Counterpoint  (i960),  Rubbra  argued 
that  western  music  had  grown  out  of  melody  and 
in  particular  the  interaction  of  independent 
melodic  lines;  this  was  certainly  a  dominant 
principle  in  his  own  music.  Such  was  the  elo- 
quence and  quality  of  his  vocal  music  that  some 
critics  spoke  of  his  symphonies  as  'motets  for 
orchestra'.  His  choral  music  was  finely  fashioned 
and  elevated  in  feeling,  and  his  svmphonies 
likewise  were  touched  by  a  preoccupation  with 
linear  growth.  Matter,  not  manner,  was  his 
central  concern. 

His  early  symphonies  are  difficult,  though  not 
in  the  way  that  some  contemporary  music  is,  for 
the  musical  language  itself  is  quite  straightfor- 
ward. There  is  nothing  abstruse  about  the  sym- 
phonies' tonality  and  harmony,  which  is  basically 
diatonic,  but  they  are  difficult  because  the  conti- 
nuity of  their  melodic  and  polyphonic  growth  is 
logical  and  unremitting.  The  first  two  sympho- 
nies were  composed  in  quick  succession  (both 
were  finished  in  1937)  and  it  was  obvious  that, 


whatever  their  failings,  Rubbra  was  a  symphonist 
to  be  reckoned  with.  The  Third,  which  he 
finished  in  1939,  was  a  positive  reaction  to  the 
experience  of  the  Second,  and  is  outwardly  the 
most  genial  and  relaxed  of  the  early  symphonies. 
The  orchestration  is  much  cleaner  and  the  first 
movement  much  closer  to  sonata  form.  The 
opening  of  the  Fourth  Symphony  is  beautiful 
and  free  from  any  kind  of  artifice,  having  serenity 
and  quietude.  This  symphony,  like  the  Third,  is 
not  so  dense  contrapuntally  as  the  first  two,  and 
though  practically  every  idea  evolves  in  some 
way  or  another  out  of  the  opening  figure,  its  first 
movement  is  a  sonata  design.  Nothing  could  be 
further  removed  from  the  grim  years  of  World 
War  II  than  this  symphony.  In  1948  came  the 
Fifth  and  most  often  played  of  the  Rubbra 
symphonies;  it  enjoyed  something  of  a  vogue  in 
the  1950s.  Sir  Adrian  *Boult  premiered  it,  Sir 
John  *Barbirolli  recorded  it,  and  Leopold  Sto- 
kowski  briefly  included  it  in  his  repertoire. 

After  the  Seventh  Symphony  (1957),  Rubbra's 
music  fell  on  hard  times  and  enjoyed  relatively 
little  exposure.  His  Eighth  Symphony  (1968)  had 
to  wait  three  years  for  a  performance  and  the 
Ninth  (Sinfonia  Sacra,  1971-2),  for  soloists, 
chorus,  and  orchestra,  possibly  his  masterpiece, 
also  suffered  relative  neglect.  It  tells  the  story  of 
the  resurrection,  and  with  its  soloists  and  chorus 
would  closely  resemble  a  passion  were  it  not  for 
its  symphonic  cohesion.  Like  most  of  Rubbra's 
finest  music,  it  unfolds  with  a  seeming  inevit- 
ability and  naturalness,  and  a  powerful  sense 
of  purpose  that  justify  its  inclusion  in  the 
symphonic  canon.  His  scoring  has  been  criti- 
cized, but  conductors  such  as  Arturo  Toscanini, 
Eugene  Ormandy,  and  Neeme  Jarvi  recorded  his 
orchestration  of  Brahms's  Variations  and  Fugue 
on  a  Theme  of  Handel. 

Rubbra  was  of  medium  height  and  was  for 
most  of  his  adult  life  bearded.  He  possessed  a 
beatific  smile  and  exercised  great  personal  charm. 
Always  courteous,  a  supportive  and  illuminating 
teacher,  he  radiated  warmth  and  spirituality.  His 
deeply  religious  nature  shines  through  much  of 
his  music:  the  Canto  movement  of  the  Sixth 
Symphony  (1954),  for  example,  and  the  Eighth, 
subtitled  Hommage  a  TeUhard  de  Ckardm. 
(Although  he  was  much  influenced  by  Buddhist 
teachings,  Rubbra  was  received  into  the  Catholic 
faith  in  1947.)  He  never  lost  this  feeling  for 
organic  growth  essential  to  the  symphony:  his 
Tenth  (1974)  and  Eleventh  (1979)  are  highly 
concentrated  one-movement  affairs  of  much 
substance. 

His  output  was  extensive  and  ran  to  over  160 
works.  Apart  from  the  symphonies,  his  most 
important  works  included  a  Viola  Concerto  in  A 
Major,  op.  75  (1952);  a  Piano  Concerto  in  G 
Major,  op.  85  (1956);  a  Violin  Concerto,  op.  103 


387 


Rubbra 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


('959);  *"  Improvisation  for  Violin  and  Orches- 
tra, op.  89;  four  string  quartets:  F  Minor,  op.  35 
(1933,  revised  1946),  E  flat,  op.  55  (1952),  op. 
112  (1962-3),  and  op.  150  (1976-7);  two  piano 
trios:  op.  68  (1950)  and  op.  138  (1973);  two  violin 
sonatas:  op.  31  (1931)  and  op.  133  (1967);  and 
a  Cello  Sonata  in  G  Minor,  op.  60  (1946). 
Eight  of  his  symphonies  have  been  commercially 
recorded,  and  there  is  an  extensive  discography 
which  includes  his  two  masses.  His  last  work  was 
the  Sinfonietta  for  large  string  orchestra,  op.  163, 
which  he  completed  in  1980,  in  his  late  seventies, 
shortly  before  suffering  a  stroke,  from  which  he 
eventually  died. 

Rubbra  was  appointed  CBE  in  i960.  He 
became  MRAM  (1970)  and  FGSM  (1968).  He 
had  honorary  degrees  from  Leicester  (LL  D, 
1959),  Durham  (D.Mus.,  1949),  and  Reading 
(D.Litt.,  1978).  His  music  does  not  possess  the 
dramatic  power  which  characterizes  that  of 
Vaughan  Williams  and  Walton  but  has  a  sense  of 
organic  continuity  that  is  both  highly  developed 
and  immediately  evident  to  the  listener.  Perhaps 
the  most  distinctive  and  individual  quality  that 
shines  through  his  most  inspired  music,  such  as 
the  opening  of  the  Seventh  Symphony  or  the 
Missa  in  Honorem  Sancti  Dominici  (op.  66,  1948), 
is  breadth  and  serenity. 

Rubbra's  first  marriage,  which  lasted  only  a 
few  months,  was  to  Lilian  Annie  Duncan.  There 
were  no  children.  In  1933  he  married  the  violin- 
ist Antoinette  Chaplin,  from  France,  daughter  of 
William  Chaplin,  engineer;  they  had  two  sons. 
He  separated  from  his  second  wife  during  the 
1950s  and  in  1975,  following  her  death,  he 
married  Colette  Muriel  Marian  Yardley,  daugh- 
ter of  Harold  Evans,  a  Sunbeam  Motors  sales- 
man. They  had  one  son.  Rubbra  died  14 
February  1986  in  Gerrards  Cross. 

[(Ronald)  Lewis  Foreman  (ed.),  Edmund  Rubbra:  Com- 
poser, 1977;  Ralph  Scott  Grover,  The  Music  of  Edmund 
Rubbra,  1993;  personal  knowledge.]  Robert  Layton 

RUNCIMAN,   (Walter)   Leslie,   second   Vis- 
count   RUNCIMAN    OF    DOXFORD    (19OO-1989), 

shipowner,  was  born  in  Newcastle  upon  Tyne  26 
August  1900,  the  eldest  of  five  children  and  elder 
son  of  Walter  *Runciman,  first  Viscount  Runci- 
man  of  Doxford,  shipowner,  Liberal  MP,  and 
president  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  and  his  wife 
Hilda,  later  an  MP,  daughter  of  James  Coch- 
ran Stevenson,  MP  for  South  Shields,  and  a 
kinswoman  of  Robert  Louis  *Stevenson.  The 
younger  son,  (Sir)  Steven  Runciman,  became  a 
well-known  scholar  of  the  Byzantine  period. 
Leslie  Runciman  grew  up  at  Doxford  and  was 
educated  at  Eton,  where  he  was  a  King's  scholar, 
and  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  also  as  a 
scholar.  He  once  remarked,  however,  that  he 
learned  good  manners  from  a  gamekeeper.  At 
Cambridge  he  took  part  i  in  classics  (1920)  and 


achieved  a  second  class  (division  II)  in  part  ii  of 
the  economics  tripos  (1922). 

After  a  year  with  the  Blue  Funnel  Line  in 
Liverpool  he  went  into  the  family  firm  of  Walter 
Runciman  &  Company,  shipowners.  Here  he 
learned  the  basics  of  shipping  affairs  from  his 
formidable  grandfather,  Sir  Walter  (later  Baron) 
*Runciman,  who  had  begun  life  as  a  boy  in  small 
merchant  sailing  vessels.  In  due  course  Leslie 
Runciman  became  chairman  of  the  company  and 
six  other  shipping  and  banking  concerns.  He  was 
for  fifty  years  a  member  of  the  Chamber  of 
Shipping  and  a  very  successful  president  in  1952. 
He  was  also  for  many  years  a  UK  delegate  to  the 
International  Chamber  of  Shipping.  He  was 
president  of  the  Royal  Institution  of  Naval 
Architects  (1951-61)  and  chairman  of  the  trus- 
tees of  the  National  Maritime  Museum  from 
1962  to  1972,  a  role  for  which  his  interests  fitted 
him  exactly,  and  of  the  government  advisory- 
committee  on  historic  wreck  sites  from  1973  to 
1986.  He  was  an  honorary  elder  brother  of 
Trinity  House.  Like  his  grandfather,  he  was  also 
a  very  practical  seaman,  cruising  far  and  wide, 
first  in  the  family's  three-masted  schooner  Sun- 
beam and  later  in  his  motor  ketch  Bondicar.  He 
succeeded  Prince  Philip,  Duke  of  Edinburgh, 
as  commodore  of  the  Royal  Yacht  Squadron 
(1968-74).  He  was  also  a  keen  shot  and  an 
enthusiastic  skier. 

As  a  young  man  in  the  1920s  Runciman 
became  interested  in  aviation.  He  qualified  as  a 
pilot,  had  some  success  in  the  King's  Cup  air 
races  of  the  period,  and  founded  his  own  aviation 
company.  He  raised  and  commanded  the  Dur- 
ham Squadron  of  the  Auxiliary  Air  Force  and  in 
1937  was  awarded  the  Air  Force  Cross.  He 
joined  the  boards  of  both  Imperial  Airways  and 
British  Airways  in  1938  and  played  a  prominent 
part  in  their  amalgamation  into  the  British  Over- 
seas Airways  Corporation.  In  1939  he  became  its 
first  director-general,  but  he  resigned  in  1943  in 
protest  at  the  government's  somewhat  negative 
attitude  to  civil  aviation.  From  1943  to  1946  he 
was  air  attache  at  the  British  embassy  in  Tehran, 
with  the  rank  of  air  commodore,  and  he  was  a 
member  (later  vice-chairman)  of  the  Air  Trans- 
port Advisory  Council  from  1946  to  1954.  His 
family  shipping  interests  supplanted  those  of 
aviation  when  his  father  died  in  1949  and  he 
succeeded  as  second  Viscount  and  third  baronet. 
He  became  increasingly  involved  in  the  affairs  of 
the  Moor  Line,  Walter  Runciman  &  Co.,  Runci- 
man (London)  Ltd.,  the  Doxford  Co.  Ltd.,  and 
the  Anchor  Line. 

Runciman's  other  interests  included  forty 
years  of  service  on  the  board  of  Lloyds  Bank,  of 
which  he  was  a  deputy  chairman  from  1962  to 
1 97 1.  He  was  among  other  things  chairman  of 
the  committee  on  horticultural  marketing  (which 
determined  the  future  location  of  Covent  Garden 


388 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Rupp 


market)  in  1955-6,  prime  warden  of  the  Gold- 
smiths' Company,  and  chairman  of  the  British 
Hallmarking  Council  (1974-82). 

Runciman  was  a  tall  and  very  handsome  man 
with  great  personal  charm.  He  carried  natural 
authority  which,  however,  he  never  used  to 
overawe  or  dominate  his  colleagues  and  sub- 
ordinates, and  which,  surprisingly,  masked  a 
certain  diffidence.  He  was  a  natural  chairman  and 
finder  of  the  middle  way  who  gained  the  immedi- 
ate respect  of  those  with  whom  he  worked.  He 
was  a  doer,  who  became  deeply  involved  in  all  his 
commitments.  He  was  also  an  intellectual,  an 
omnivorous  reader,  and  chairman  of  the  Hora- 
tian  Society  (1970-88),  whose  conversation  was 
constantly  illuminated  with  quotation.  He  greatly 
enjoyed  Glyndebourne.  Unfailingly  courteous  to 
all  with  whom  he  came  into  contact,  he  was  very 
attractive  to  women.  His  attitude  to  them  was 
that  of  his  generation  and  background  and  he  did 
not  see  them  as  members  of  the  board.  To  work 
closely  with  him  engendered  not  only  respect, 
but  also  affection — and  occasional  mild  exaspera- 
tion with  his  insistence  on  the  detached  view. 
He  was  appointed  OBE  in  1946  and  deputy 
lieutenant  of  Northumberland  in  1961,  and  was 
awarded  an  honorary  DCL  by  Durham  Uni- 
versity in  1937. 

In  1923  Runciman  married  Rosamund  Nina 
*Lehmann,  novelist,  daughter  of  Rudolph 
Chambers  *Lehmann,  journalist  and  MP.  The 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1928  and  in  1932  he 
married  Katherine  Schuyler,  younger  daughter 
of  William  R.  Garrison,  of  New  York,  and 
Constance  Clementine  Schuyler,  nee  Coudert. 
They  had  one  son.  Runciman  died,  following 
serious  injury  in  an  accident  three  years  before, 
from  which  he  never  fully  recovered,  in  King 
Edward  VII  Hospital  in  London,  1  September 
1989.  He  was  succeeded  in  the  viscountcy  by  his 
son,  Walter  Garrison  Runciman  (born  1934). 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Basil  Greenhill 

RUPP,  (Ernest)  Gordon  (19 10-1986),  church 
historian,  was  born  7  January  1910  in  Islington, 
the  only  son  and  elder  child  of  John  Henry 
Rupp,  counting-house  clerk,  and  his  wife,  Sarah 
Thomas,  nurse.  He  learned  to  read  at  the  Meth- 
odist Sunday  school  in  Islington  and,  after  an 
elementary  education  at  Owen's  School,  became 
a  messenger  boy  to  a  furniture  dealer  and  then  a 
bank  clerk.  At  the  bank  he  used  his  wage  to  buy 
one  Everyman  volume  a  week  and  so  read  many- 
great  novels  and  fell  in  love  with  the  English 
language.  He  went  out  to  Finsbury  Park  to 
preach  on  a  box  and  became  a  Methodist  local 
preacher.  He  decided  to  be  a  teacher,  and  the 
Methodist  community  gave  him  the  money  to 
spend  a  year  at  the  London  Institute  of  Educa- 


tion, and  then  a  further  year,  studying  history  at 
King's  College,  London.  The  Methodist  Church 
then  wanted  him  as  a  minister  and  sent  him  to 
Wesley  House  at  Cambridge  (1933-6),  where  he 
gained  a  first  class  in  both  parts  of  the  theology- 
tripos  (1935  and  1936).  He  was  afterwards  sent 
for  a  year  to  the  universities  of  Strasburg  and 
Basle.  From  1938  to  1946  he  was  a  Methodist 
minister  at  Chislehurst,  and  from  1947  to  1952  a 
tutor  at  the  Methodist  College  in  Richmond.  He 
gained  a  Cambridge  BD  in  1946  and  DD  in 

1955 

He  was  a  born  pamphleteer  and  was  threat- 
ened with  prosecution  by  Hilaire  *Belloc  for  a 
wartime  article  in  the  Record.  In  1944,  replying  to 
a  pamphlet  which  accused  Martin  Luther  of 
causing  the  rise  of  Hider,  because  Luther  was 
responsible  for  the  German  cult  of  the  state, 
he  published  Martin  Luther,  Hitler's  Cause — or 
Cure?  This  counter-pamphlet  was  persuasive  and 
funny  and  its  author  was  not  afraid  to  pillory-  the 
revered  Archbishop  William  *Temple;  he  also 
disclosed  a  rare  knowledge  of  Luther's  original 
texts,  thereby  showing  Rupp  to  be  a  potential 
academic  historian.  As  a  result  of  his  pamphlet, 
Rupp  was  invited  to  give  the  Birkbeck  lectures  in 
Cambridge  (1047),  which  drew  large  audiences. 
In  the  same  year  he  wrote  Studies  in  the  Making 
of  the  English  Protestant  Tradition.  In  1952  Nor- 
man Sykes,  who  had  taught  him  at  London, 
found  him  a  lectureship  in  Reformation  history 
at  Cambridge  (1952-6).  He  subsequently  became 
the  first  professor  of  ecclesiastical  history  at 
Manchester  (1956-67).  In  1968  he  was  appointed 
Dixie  professor  at  Cambridge,  with  a  fellowship 
at  Emmanuel  College  (until  1977).  But  the  pro- 
fessor at  Manchester  was  also  the  deputy  pianist 
at  the  Sunday  school  in  Chorlton-cum-Hardy,  as 
well  as  an  observer  at  the  second  Vatican  Coun- 
cil, and  the  professor  at  Cambridge  was  also  the 
principal  of  Wesley  House  (1967-74)  and  for  the 
year  1968-9  the  president  of  the  Methodist 
conference  and  a  frustrated  leader  in  the  plan  to 
unite  the  Methodists  and  the  Anglicans.  His 
university  colleagues  occasionally  grumbled  that, 
when  they  needed  him  for  a  meeting,  he  was 
speaking  in  a  little  chapel  300  miles  away. 

As  a  historian  he  reintroduced  the  British 
to  Luther's  thought  with  the  publication  of 
his  Birkbeck  lectures,  The  Righteousness  of  God 
(1953).  He  did  not  overstress  the  importance  of 
Luther  in  the  Reformation  (he  also  studied  other 
leading  radicals  in  Patterns  of  Reformation,  1969) 
and  he  thought  that  social  causes  were  given  too 
much  emphasis,  to  the  detriment  of  the  religious 
and  theological  ideas  which  lay  at  the  heart  of  the 
Reformation.  He  was  the  first  Briton  to  read  the 
complete  critical  texts  of  Luther's  works,  and  to 
understand  the  different  interpretations  in  the 
two  Germanies,  whether  Marxist  or  not.  He  also 


389 


Rupp 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


made  himself  familiar  with  Swedish  Lutheran 
scholarship. 

John  *Wesley  was  almost  as  consuming  an 
interest.  Rupp  was  among  the  editors  of  the 
History  of  the  Methodist  Churches  in  Great  Britain 
(4  vols.,  1965-88)  and  his  last  book  centred 
on  the  age  of  Wesley — Religion  in  England 
1688-1  jqi  (1986).  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the 
British  Academy  in  1970.  An  honorary  fellow  of 
King's  College,  London  (1969),  Fitzwilliam  and 
Emmanuel  colleges,  Cambridge  (1969  and  1983), 
Rupp  had  honorary  degrees  from  Aberdeen, 
Manchester,  and  Paris. 

Rupp  never  lost  his  simple  tastes,  retaining  a 
liking  for  fish  and  chips  and  ginger  beer.  In  an 
age  when  sermons  had  become  much  shorter,  he 
was  the  supreme  master  of  that  art  form.  He  had 
a  husky  voice  and  was  small  and  impish,  with  a 
delightful  command  of  satire  and  barbed  wit.  He 
was  no  man  for  tidy  structures  but  looked  to  the 
heavens  to  probe  the  mystery  of  religion.  He  lit 
up  with  humour,  historical  example,  and  humane 
insight  all  that  he  encountered.  In  1938  he 
married  Marjorie,  daughter  of  Frank  Hibbard, 
toolmaker.  They  had  one  son.  Rupp  died  in 
Cambridge  19  December  1986. 

[The  Times,  22  December  1986;  P.  N.  Brooks  in 
Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  lxxx,  1991; 
David  Thompson  in  Cambridge  Review,  June  1987,  pp. 
91  ff.;  P.  N.  Brooks  (ed.),  Christian  Spirituality,  Essays 
in  Honour  of  Gordon  Rupp,  1975,  with  a  list  of  Rupp's 
writings  to  1973;  J.  M.  Turner,  'Gordon  Rupp.. .as 
Historian',  Epworth  Review,  January  1991,  pp.  70-82; 
personal  knowledge.]  Owen  Chadwick 

RUSSELL,  Charles  Ritchie,  Baron  Russell  of 
Killowen  (1908- 1 986),  lord  of  appeal,  was  born 
12  January  1908  at  68  Elm  Park  Gardens,  Chel- 
sea, London,  the  youngest  in  the  family  of  one 
son  and  two  daughters  (a  third  daughter  died  in 
infancy)  of  Francis  Xavier  Joseph  *Russell, 
Baron  Russell  of  Killowen,  lord  of  appeal,  and 
his  wife,  Mary  Emily  Ritchie.  On  his  father's 
side  Russell's  family  were  Ulster  Catholics  who 
settled  in  Ireland  in  about  1300.  His  grandfather, 
Charles  *Russell,  Baron  Russell  of  Killowen, 
became  lord  chief  justice.  Russell's  father  was  a 
Chancery  judge  and  a  member  of  the  Court  of 
Appeal  before  being  appointed  to  the  House 
of  Lords.  On  his  mother's  side  Russell  was 
descended  from  a  Scottish  family;  his  maternal 
grandfather  was  Charles  Thomson  *Ritchie,  first 
Baron  Ritchie  of  Dundee,  chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer.  Russell  followed  his  father  to  Beau- 
mont College  and  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  was  awarded  a  half  blue  in  golf  and  a  third 
class  in  jurisprudence  (1929).  He  claimed  to 
prefer  the  cinema  to  study  and  golf  to  both. 

After  being  called  to  the  bar  in  1931  by 
Lincoln's  Inn  he  worked  hard  in  Old  Buildings, 
where  he  quickly  repaired  any  deficiencies  in 


legal  learning.  During  World  War  II  he  became  a 
major  in  the  Royal  Artillery,  was  attached  to  the 
6th  Airborne  division,  and  on  D-Day  flew  into 
the  Orne  valley  by  glider.  He  subsequently  took 
part  in  another  glider  drop  over  the  Rhine  and 
suffered  abdominal  wounds  from  shell  fire.  For 
his  exploits  on  active  service  Russell  was  men- 
tioned in  dispatches  and  awarded  the  croix  de 
guerre  with  star. 

After  the  war  Russell  returned  to  the  bar  and 
took  silk  in  1948.  He  quickly  became  one  of  a 
triumvirate  of  distinguished  Chancery  counsel: 
(Sir)  Andrew  Clark  pulverized  witnesses  and 
some  judges,  (Sir)  E.  Milner  "Holland  was 
successful  with  sweet  reason,  and  Russell  was  the 
most  formidable  advocate.  Russell  was  hand- 
some, tall,  slim,  and  elegant;  he  was  dark  with 
expressive  eyes  and  a  sensitive,  sometimes  sar- 
donic expression.  He  was  possessed  of  a  warm 
melodious  voice  which  made  his  well  structured 
arguments  almost  irresistible.  In  i960  he  was 
appointed  a  judge  of  the  Chancery  Division  and 
was  knighted;  two  years  later  he  went  up  to  the 
Court  of  Appeal  and  was  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  As  a  judge  Russell  was  urbane,  courte- 
ous, and  aloof;  his  flashing  wit  disconcerted  some 
who  were  not  suffered  gladly.  His  judgments 
were  models  of  analysis  and  lucidity,  well  suited 
to  the  complicated  commercial  and  property 
disputes  with  which  he  was  mainly  concerned. 
Out  of  court  he  was  kind  and  amusing  to  people 
of  all  ages  and  backgrounds.  He  was  not  very 
interested  in  the  arts  and  his  light  reading  was 
confined  to  Jane  *Austen,  and  the  novels  and 
biographies  of  the  nineteenth  century,  especially 
the  works  of  Anthony  *Trollope.  He  enjoyed 
claret,  partridge,  and  a  good  cigar,  but  was  not  a 
gourmet.  He  was  a  sound  bat  and  subtle  bowler 
for  Wisborough  Green  in  village  cricket  as  late  as 
his  forties.  He  played  golf  to  a  handicap  of  eight 
until  he  became  lame  in  his  seventies.  He  much 
enjoyed  the  Bar  Golfing  Society  meetings  at 
Sandwich,  Rye,  and  Deal.  He  was  tolerant 
towards  his  weaker  partners  and  enjoyed  the 
company  of  the  young;  he  was  a  sparkling 
member  of  the  Garrick  Club. 

Lincoln's  Inn  appealed  to  Russell's  sense  of 
history  and  he  became  treasurer  in  1972.  In  his 
approach  to  the  law,  Russell  was  a  firm  believer 
in  certainty  and  a  follower  of  precedent;  he  did 
not  approve  of  the  purposive  construction  of 
statutes  and  did  not  admire  the  intellectual 
flexibility  which  enabled  Lord  Denning  to  his 
own  satisfaction  to  temper  the  wind  to  the  shorn 
lamb.  Russell  took  refuge  sometimes  in  a  cold 
reserve  and  patrician  arrogance,  fortified  on  occa- 
sions by  alcohol,  which  led  to  his  suffering  a  great 
humiliation.  In  i960  he  pleaded  guilty  in  a 
magistrate's  court  to  driving  with  an  unlawful 
level  of  alcohol.  He  was  fined  £25  and  costs  and 


390 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Russell 


his  licence  was  suspended  for  a  year.  The  inci- 
dent was  a  severe  blow  to  Russell.  He  was  passed 
over  in  1971  when  a  vacancy  occurred  in  the 
House  of  Lords;  he  behaved  with  dignity  and  his 
work  in  the  Court  of  Appeal  did  not  suffer. 
When  he  had  completed  thirteen  years'  hard 
labour  in  that  court  the  authorities  relented  and 
in  1975  he  was  appointed  lord  of  appeal,  to  his 
surprise  and  to  the  relief  of  his  friends.  Russell 
took  the  same  tide  as  his  father  and  grandfather. 
His  work  in  the  House  of  Lords  followed  the 
pattern  of  his  earlier  judicial  career.  The  appel- 
late committee  was  in  1975  dominated  by  lords 
Wilberforce  and  *Diplock.  Russell  was  prepared 
to  follow  their  lead,  but  he  was  not  slow  to 
dissent  when  he  concluded  that  precedent  was 
threatened. 

In  1933  Russell  married  Joan  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  James  Aubrey  Torrens,  consulting 
physician;  she  was  a  graduate  of  Somerville 
College,  Oxford,  keenly  interested  in  literature 
and  poetry,  and  was  a  help  and  companion  to 
Russell  when  he  was  at  the  bar  and  on  the  bench. 
There  were  two  sons  and  one  daughter  of  the 
marriage.  Another  daughter  died  at  the  age  of 
eight  months.  Joan  died  in  1976  and  in  1979 
Russell  married  Elizabeth  Cecilia,  the  young 
widow  of  Edward  Hey  Laughton-Scott,  circuit 
judge,  and  daughter  of  William  Foster  Mac- 
Neece  Foster,  air  vice-marshal.  She  introduced 
her  own  children  and  her  family  and  a  wide  circle 
of  friends,  and  Russell  perceptibly  mellowed.  He 
died  in  Southampton  Hospital  23  June  1986, 
after  a  fall  at  home  in  which  he  struck  his  head  on 
the  fireplace. 

[The  Times,  24  June  1986;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Templeman 

RUSSELL,  Dora  Winifred  (1 894-1986),  femi- 
nist writer  and  campaigner,  was  born  3  April 
1894  at  1  Mount  Villas,  Luna  Road,  Thornton 
Heath,  Croydon,  the  second  of  three  daughters 
and  second  of  four  children  of  (Sir)  Frederick 
William  Black,  clerk  in  the  Admiralty  and  later 
senior  civil  servant,  and  his  wife,  Sarah  Isabella 
Davisson.  She  was  educated  at  Sutton  High 
School  and  Girton  College,  Cambridge,  where 
she  was  awarded  a  first  class  in  the  medieval  and 
modern  languages  tripos  in  19 15.  She  began 
research  on  eighteenth-century  French  philoso- 
phers at  University  College  London,  but  in  1 917 
went  to  the  United  States  as  personal  assistant  to 
her  father,  who  was  head  of  a  special  government 
mission  to  persuade  the  American  government  to 
re-route  some  of  its  oil  tankers  to  Britain.  She 
was  appointed  MBE  for  this  (1918).  Shortly  after 
her  return  she  was  elected  to  a  fellowship  by 
Girton,  and  returned  to  Cambridge  in  1918. 
In    19 1 6    she    had    met    Bertrand    *Russell, 


already  famous  as  a  mathematician  and  philoso- 
pher, and  notorious  as  a  pacifist.  Bertrand  Arthur 
William  Russell  was  the  grandson  of  Lord  John 
•Russell,  first  Earl  Russell,  prime  minister  in 
1846-52  and  1865-6,  and  the  son  of  John  Rus- 
sell, Viscount  Amberley,  MP  for  Nottingham. 
He  became  third  Earl  Russell  in  1931.  They 
began  an  affair  in  1919.  She  visited  Russia  in 
1920,  and  on  her  return  took  to  wearing  peasant- 
style  clothes.  She  remained  an  enthusiastic  sup- 
porter of  the  Soviet  Union  all  her  life.  In  1921 
she  wrote  'The  Soul  of  Russia  and  the  Body  of 
America',  which  was  finally  incorporated  in  The 
Religion  of  the  Machine  Age  (1983).  She  resigned 
her  Girton  fellowship  in  1920  in  order  to  accom- 
pany Russell  to  Russia  and  China. 

Russell  was  married,  although  separated,  and 
had  no  children.  Although  Dora  disapproved  of 
marriage  she  agreed  to  marry  him  when  she 
became  pregnant,  as  he  was  anxious  to  produce  a 
legitimate  heir.  On  their  return  from  China  he 
divorced  his  wife  and  married  Dora  in  the  same 
month,  September  1921,  two  months  before 
their  son  John,  later  fourth  Earl  Russell,  was 
born. 

They  bought  a  house  in  Chelsea,  and  Dora 
soon  became  aware  of  the  difficulties  involved  in 
being  married  to  a  much  older,  famous  man. 
Although  Russell  supported  women's  suffrage, 
he  believed  that  women  were  less  intelligent  than 
men,  and  that  their  main  function  was  to  be 
wives  and  mothers.  His  friends  adopted  a  patron- 
izing attitude  towards  Dora,  assuming  that  any 
ideas  she  might  express  came  from  him.  She  was 
determined  to  have  an  identity  separate  from  that 
of  her  husband,  and  to  escape  from  the  shadow  of 
his  reputation.  She  joined  the  Labour  party,  and 
stood  unsuccessfully  as  Labour  candidate  for 
Chelsea  in  the  autumn  of  1924.  She  helped  to 
form  the  Workers'  Birth  Control  Group  in  1924, 
and  threw  herself  into  the  campaign  for  birth- 
control  advice  to  be  given  to  all  women.  In  1925 
she  published  Hypatia,  or.  Women  and  Know- 
ledge, followed  by  The  Right  to  Be  Happy  in 
1927. 

In  1927  Dora  and  Bertrand  Russell  started 
Beacon  Hill  School  at  Telegraph  House,  on  the 
South  Downs,  in  order  to  educate  their  own 
children  in  the  company  of  others,  because  no 
existing  school  seemed  satisfactory.  The  plan  was 
to  do  away  with  excessive  discipline,  religious 
instruction,  and  the  tyranny  of  adults.  It  was  a 
joint  venture,  although  Dora  was  responsible  for 
the  day-to-day  organization,  while  Bertrand 
financed  it  through  writing  popular  books  and 
lecture  tours  in  the  United  States.  The  school 
was  ridiculed  in  the  press,  and  Bertrand  Russell 
later  claimed  it  was  a  failure,  but  it  embodied 
many  progressive  ideas.  Dora  published  In 
Defence  of  Children  in  1932. 


39i 


Russell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Betrand  Russell  left  Dora,  and  the  school,  in 
1932,  after  she  had  had  two  children  by  Griffin 
Barry,  an  American  journalist.  Although  they 
had  always  insisted  on  their  freedom  to  have 
affairs  with  other  people,  Russell  could  not 
accept  her  extending  this  to  the  freedom  to  have 
another  man's  child.  They  were  divorced  in 
1935.  She  managed  to  carry  on  the  school  alone, 
moving  several  times  after  leaving  Telegraph 
House  in  1934.  She  had  a  brief  affair  with  a 
communist,  Paul  Gillard,  before  he  was  mur- 
dered, and  in  1940  married  his  friend,  Gordon 
Grace  ('Pat'),  a  working-class  Irish  communist 
who  was  helping  her  to  run  the  school.  He  was 
the  son  of  Patrick  Grace,  clothier,  and  he  died  in 
1949. 

She  closed  the  school  in  1943,  and  went  to 
London  to  work  at  the  Ministry  of  Information, 
moving  to  the  Soviet  relations  division  in  1944  to 
work  on  British  Ally,  a  weekly  paper  published 
by  the  British  government  in  Moscow.  When  the 
paper  was  closed  down  in  1950  she  lost  her  job. 
Unable  to  find  another,  she  devoted  herself  to 
feminist  causes  and  the  women's  peace  move- 
ment. She  was  a  member  of  the  Six  Point  Group 
(a  discussion  and  political  pressure  organization) 
and  the  Married  Women's  Association.  She 
attended  peace  conferences,  and  went  to  New 
York  in  1954  to  the  United  Nations  Commission 
of  Women,  on  behalf  of  the  Women's  Inter- 
national Democratic  Federation.  In  1958  she 
organized  the  Women's  Caravan  of  Peace,  a 
group  of  women  who  travelled  across  Europe  to 
Moscow  and  back,  protesting  against  nuclear 
weapons  and  calling  for  total  disarmament,  with 
the  banner  'women  of  all  lands  want  peace'. 

In  1962  she  returned  to  Cornwall,  to  Cam 
Voel,  Porthcurno,  the  house  she  and  Russell  had 
bought  in  1922.  She  devoted  most  of  her  time  to 
writing,  and  to  the  care  of  her  son  John,  who  had 
had  a  mental  breakdown  in  1954.  She  continued 
to  campaign  for  peace,  leading  a  London  CND 
rally  in  a  wheelchair  at  the  age  of  eighty-nine, 
and  just  before  her  death  she  took  part  in  an  anti- 
nuclear  demonstration  at  the  RAF  base  at  St 
Mawgan,  Cornwall.  Dora  Russell  died  31  May 
1986  at  home  in  Porthcurno.  She  had  four 
children,  one  son  and  one  daughter  from  her  first 
marriage,  and  one  son  and  one  daughter  with 
Griffin  Barry.  The  younger  son  was  crippled  in  a 
mining  accident  in  1952  and  was  an  invalid  until 
his  death  in  1983. 

She  loved  campaigning,  enjoying  public 
speaking— she  had  always  wanted  to  be  an 
actress — and  writing  letters  to  the  press.  A 
chain-smoker,  she  was  small,  red-haired,  and 
untidy,  and  claimed  to  have  been  one  of  the  first 
women  in  England  to  wear  shorts,  in  the  1920s. 
Throughout  her  life  she  campaigned  for  sexual 
freedom  for  women.  She  believed  passionately 
that  hope  for  the  future  lay  in  women.  Many  of 


her  ideas  anticipated  those  of  the  feminist  move- 
ment of  the  1970s  and  1980s. 

[Dora  Russell,  The  Tamarisk  Tree,  3  vols.,  1975,  1980, 
and  1985  (with  portrait);  Dora  Russell,  The  Dora 
Russell  Reader:  57  Years  of  Writing  and  Journalism, 
1925-1982,  1083;  Dale  Spender,  There's  Always  Been  a 
Women's  Movement  This  Century,  1983;  Bertrand  Rus- 
sell, The  Autobiography  of  Bertrand  Russell,  vol.  ii,  1968; 
Caroline  Moorehead,  Bertrand  Russell,  1992.] 

Anne  Pimi.ott  Baker 

RUSSELL,  (Muriel)  Audrey  (1906- 1989),  radio 
broadcaster,  was  born  29  June  1906  in  Dublin, 
Ireland,  the  only  child  of  John  Strangman  Rus- 
sell, director  of  the  family  woollen  mill,  of 
Dublin,  and  his  wife  Muriel  Metcalfe,  sister  of  E. 
Dudley  ('Fruity')  Metcalfe,  the  closest  friend  of 
the  prince  of  Wales  (later  King  *Edward  VIII 
and  duke  of  Windsor).  From  an  Anglo-Irish 
Protestant  background,  her  parents  were  part  of 
Dublin  society,  and  her  father  led  the  life  of  a 
country  gentleman.  She  was  educated  at  home  by 
governesses,  and  later  at  Southlands,  a  private 
boarding-school  in  Harrow,  before  going  to  a 
finishing  school  at  the  Villa  St  Georges  in  Neu- 
illy,  Paris. 

Back  in  London,  she  trained  as  an  actress  for 
six  months  at  the  Central  School  of  Speech  and 
Drama,  and  then  worked  for  several  years  as  a 
theatre  dogsbody,  preparing  stage  meals,  under- 
studying, and  taking  walk-on  parts.  She  was 
assistant  stage-manager  for  Rodney  Ackland's 
play  After  October,  which  ran  for  a  year  in  1936, 
and  then  became  stage-manager  for  the  Group 
Theatre,  an  avant-garde  theatre  club  at  the 
Westminster  Theatre. 

With  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  imminent, 
Audrey  Russell  joined  the  London  Fire  Brigade 
(later  the  London  Auxiliary  Fire  Service).  She 
fought  fires  throughout  the  blitz.  Stationed  in 
Manchester  Square,  she  was  close  to  the  BBC, 
and  after  she  had  been  interviewed  on  the  effects 
of  the  air  raids  she  was  asked  to  do  a  series  of 
broadcasts  on  the  work  of  the  Auxiliary  Fire 
Service,  which  included  a  description  of  the 
worst  night  of  the  blitz,  10  May  1941,  when  the 
House  of  Commons  was  bombed.  This  led  to  a 
secondment  to  the  Air  Ministry  for  six  weeks,  to 
do  a  series  of  talks  on  the  work  of  the  Women's 
Auxiliary  Air  Force. 

In  1942  the  BBC  asked  to  have  her  released 
from  national  service  in  order  to  join  the  maga- 
zine programme  Radio  Newsreel.  For  two  years 
she  travelled  all  over  the  country,  broadcasting 
from  army  camps,  bomb  sites,  and  rescue  sta- 
tions, interviewing  those  whose  homes  had  been 
destroyed,  and  reporting  on  the  damage  done  by 
flying  bombs  and  rockets.  On  D-Day  she  was  in 
Trafalgar  Square  interviewing  people  on  their 
reactions  to  the  Normandy  landings.  In  1944  she 
was  accredited  as  a  British  war  correspondent  by 
the  War  Office,  and  went  with  the  war  reporting 


392 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Russell 


unit  to  Europe  to  send  back  dispatches  from 
Belgium,  Holland,  Germany,  and  Norway.  Suf- 
fering from  influenza,  she  returned  home  in 
March  1945,  and  spent  the  rest  of  the  war  in 
London. 

Determined  to  make  a  career  in  broadcasting 
rather  than  go  back  to  the  theatre,  she  accepted  a 
post  as  a  reporter  in  the  new  Home  Service 
reporting  unit,  but  she  really  wanted  to  be  a 
commentator  rather  than  a  reporter.  She  was 
attracted  by  the  tightrope  quality  of  doing  a  live 
commentary,  describing  the  action  as  it  happens, 
which  was  very  different  from  the  work  of  a 
reporter,  who  could  read  from  a  script.  She 
succeeded  in  1947,  when  she  was  asked  to  join 
the  outside  broadcasts  team  commentating  on  the 
wedding  of  Princess  Elizabeth,  to  cover  the 
'women's  angle',  describing  the  wedding  dress 
and  clothes  worn  by  the  guests. 

She  decided  in  1948  to  leave  the  news  division 
and  join  the  outside  broadcasts  department  on  a 
contract  basis.  She  became  one  of  the  principal 
royal  commentators  on  state  occasions,  covering 
eight  royal  weddings  between  1047  and  1981. 
She  covered  the  Festival  of  Britain  in  195 1,  and 
went  on  the  first  of  many  royal  tours  in  1952.  At 
the  coronation  in  1953  she  was  in  Westminster 
Abbey  to  describe  the  processions,  and  then 
accompanied  the  six-month  royal  tour  around 
the  world  by  sea.  Even  year  she  broadcast  from 
the  Royal  Maundy  service.  She  covered  the 
funerals  of  Sir  Winston  *Churchill  and  *Victoria 
(Man),    the    princess    royal,    in     1965,    and 


described  the  silver  jubilee  in  1977  and  the 
eightieth-birthday  celebrations  for  the  queen 
mother  in  1980.  In  recognition  of  her  work  the 
queen  gave  her  a  hand-embroidered  chair. 
Although  she  was  never  tempted  to  leave  radio 
broacasting  for  television,  she  did  a  series  of 
programmes  on  BBC  television  in  the  1960s  on 
the  opening  of  the  Queen's  Gallery,  Buckingham 
Palace,  in  1962  and  the  first  ten  exhibitions  held 
there. 

Audrey  Russell  was  the  only  woman  to  be  an 
accredited  war  correspondent  in  World  War  II, 
and  the  first  woman  news  reporter  when  she 
joined  the  Home  Sen  ice  in  1945.  Her  voice  was 
instantly  recognizable,  and  she  was  to  radio 
coverage  of  state  occasions  what  Richard  *Dim- 
bleby  was  to  television.  She  became  a  freeman  of 
the  City  of  London  in  1967,  and  was  appointed 
MVO  in  1976. 

She  was  tall,  blonde,  and  elegantly  dressed, 
with  a  beautiful,  calm  speaking  voice,  with  the 
slightest  tinge  of  an  Irish  accent.  She  loved 
painting  in  oils,  and  collected  art,  as  well  as 
lecturing  on  art  and  antiques.  She  was  unmar- 
ried, having  broken  off  her  engagement  to  Brent 
Grorrian,  the  heir  to  a  baronetcy.  He  was  later 
killed  in  Burma,  in  1041.  She  died  8  August  1989 
of  Alzheimer's  disease  in  Woking,  Surrey. 

[The  Times,  10  August  1989;  Audrey  Russell,  A  Certain 
Voice  (autobiography),  1984;  Leonard  Miall,  Inside  the 
BBC.  British  Broadcasting  Characters,  1904;  recordings 
in  the  National  Sound  Archive.  29  Exhibition  Road, 
London.]  Anne  Pimlott  Baker 


393 


s 


SAINT  BRIDES,  Baron  (1916-1989),  diplomat. 
[See  James,  (John)  Morrice  (Cairns).] 

SALOMON,  Sir  Walter  Hans  (1906-1987), 
banker,  was  born  in  Hamburg  16  April  1906,  the 
elder  son  and  second  of  three  children  of  Henry 
Salomon,  personal  banker,  and  his  wife,  Rena 
Oppenheimer,  from  Vancouver.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  the  Oberrealschule,  Eppendorf,  Ham- 
burg. He  left  at  sixteen,  partly  because  he  upset 
its  authorities  by  campaigning  against  a  master 
active  in  extreme  right-wing  politics  and  partly 
to  be  independent  of  his  father,  who  wanted  him 
to  sacrifice  football  to  music. 

He  joined  Bachach  &  Co.,  a  small  private 
bank,  and  became  a  partner  at  twenty-eight.  He 
studied  part-time  at  Hamburg  University  but, 
disillusioned  by  philosophy  asking  but  not 
answering  questions,  did  not  take  a  degree. 
Asked  to  train  as  a  middle-distance  runner  for 
the  Olympics,  he  declined  lest  it  delayed  his 
career  progression. 

Quickly  recognizing  the  full  implications  of 
Nazi  policy  for  the  Jews,  he  began  in  ingenious 
ways  transferring  funds  for  himself  and  his 
clients  to  London  and  New  York.  In  1937  he  was 
investigated  by  the  Gestapo  and  ordered  to 
repatriate  those  funds.  He  immediately  flew  to 
London.  His  wife  escaped  across  the  Swiss 
border  when  security  was  slack  at  Christmas,  and 
her  parents  joined  them  in  London.  Salomon's 
family  escaped  to  Chile. 

In  London  he  formed  Walter  H.  Salomon  & 
Co.,  a  private  banking  company,  largely  servicing 
other  refugees.  When  war  began  he  was  interned 
near  Liverpool  and  spent  his  time  learning  Span- 
ish. If  hard  at  work,  he  skipped  roll-calls,  asking 
a  friend  to  answer  for  him  since  'they're  English, 
not  German'.  He  was  soon  released  and  spent  the 
rest  of  the  war  combining  banking  and  helping 
to  run  a  wartime  factory.  In  1946  he  obtained 
British  citizenship. 

In  1948,  by  reverse  take-over,  he  merged  his 
business  with  the  small  merchant  bank  Rea 
Brothers,  which  became  the  hub  of  all  his  busi- 
ness activities  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  He  quickly 
became  dominant  in  it,  being  its  chairman  from 
1950  to  1984.  He  ran  it  on  traditional  German 
private  banking  lines,  emphasizing  confidential- 
ity, personal  commitment,  and  detailed  control 
from  the  top.  As  well  as  accepting  business  from 


England,  he  built  strong  links  with  clients  in 
Germany  and  Brazil.  In  197 1  he  became  a 
commander  of  the  Southern  Cross  of  Brazil  and 
in  1979  Germany  gave  him  an  officer's  cross  of 
the  Order  of  Merit. 

Over  the  years,  Salomon  became  closely 
involved  as  adviser,  director,  or  chairman  with 
many  other  companies,  particularly  Furness 
Withy,  Ocean  Wilsons,  Canal-Randolph,  and 
Scottish  &  Mercantile. 

In  1967  Rea  Brothers  was  accepted  into  the 
prestigious  Accepting  Houses  Committee,  the 
only  bank  for  generations  to  obtain  this  status 
without  taking  over  an  existing  member.  In  the 
committee  he  showed  little  newcomer's  diffi- 
dence, quickly  becoming  its  most  vociferous 
member.  Frequently  he  hectored  and  irritated, 
but  his  views  were  never  ignored.  When  talking, 
he  often  raised  his  left  shoulder,  turning  his  head 
to  the  right;  many  in  the  committee  affection- 
ately copied  this  gesture  whilst  passing  on  his 
latest  obiter  dicta. 

In  1963  he  demonstrated  his  belief  in  practical 
education  by  founding  Young  Enterprise,  to 
teach  young  people  business.  Thirty  years  later 
28,000  youngsters  of  school  age  throughout  Brit- 
ain were  involved  in  2,000  Young  Enterprise 
companies.  For  this  he  was  knighted  in  1982. 

As  his  status  in  the  City  grew,  he  became  a 
prolific  writer  and  commentator  on  public  affairs, 
passionately  proselytizing  for  individual  freedom 
and  against  interference  by  government  in  busi- 
ness. His  views  were  contained  in  his  One  Man 's 
View  (1973)  and  Fair  Warning  (1983),  the  latter  a 
collection  of  essays.  Although  actively  involved 
with  the  Liberal  party  in  the  1950s,  he  later 
became  an  ardent  supporter  of  Margaret  (later 
Baroness)  Thatcher,  who  valued  his  advice  and 
individuality.  Nevertheless,  he  fought  bitterly 
against  her  government's  imposition  of  new 
regulatory  bodies  on  financial  companies.  He 
believed  'fonctionnaires'  could  not  understand 
banking  and  threatened  its  cornerstone  of 
secrecy. 

Salomon  was  immensely  proud  of  winning  in 
1964  a  three-year  battle  in  the  courts  with  the 
customs,  recovering  £15  18s.  excess  duty  on  a 
camera.  In  private  life,  he  was  devoted  to  his 
family.  He  was  an  active  club  man,  master  of  the 
Pattenmakers'  Company  (1977-8),  keen  on  tennis 


394 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Sandys 


and  snooker,  and  excellent  at  bridge.  He  skied 
until  late  in  life,  enjoyed  his  large  yacht,  and  built 
an  outstanding  collection  of  paintings,  mainly  of 
French  Impressionists.  He  was  slim,  trim,  and 
well  proportioned,  with  an  air  of  confident  dis- 
tinction. In  town  he  always  wore  a  bowler  hat 
and  a  red  carnation  in  his  buttonhole. 

In  1935  he  married  Kate,  daughter  of  Walter 
Jacoby,  sugar  merchant.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter.  He  died  at  his  home  in  London, 
Castlemaine  House  in  St  James's,  16  June  1087, 
and  was  buried  at  Ohlsdorf  in  Hamburg. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

George  Blunden 

SAMUEL,  Harold,  Baron  Samuel  of  Wych 
Cross  (191 2-1987),  businessman,  was  born  23 
April  1912  at  8  Fairley  Road,  Finchley,  north- 
west London,  the  second  of  three  children  and 
younger  son  of  Vivian  Samuel,  master  jeweller 
and  later  property  developer,  and  his  wife,  Ada 
Cohen.  He  was  educated  at  Mill  Hill  School  and 
the  College  of  Estate  Management.  He  was  then 
articled  to  surveyors  and  qualified  as  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Institution  of  Chartered  Surveyors 
(1933).  He  set  up  as  an  estate  agent  in  London, 
but  subsequently  decided  to  become  a  property 
dcveloper  and  investor,  and  promptly  ceased  to 
practise,  in  order  to  avoid  any  conflict  of  inter- 
est. 

In  1944  Samuel  acquired  the  shares  of  an 
insignificant  company,  the  Land  Securities 
Investment  Trust,  which  owned  three  properties 
with  total  assets  of  under  £20,000.  He  foresaw 
that  the  key  to  the  success  of  a  property  invest- 
ment company  was  a  strong  base,  a  sound  repu- 
tation, and  the  provision  of  fixed  long-term 
finance  at  low  interest  rates.  In  1947  profits  from 
the  Land  Securities  Investment  Trust  enabled 
him  to  provide  the  financial  backing  to  secure 
bomb  sites  in  provincial  cities  devastated  during 
World  War  II.  The  associate  company,  which  he 
formed  for  this  purpose  with  colleagues  and 
subsequently  merged  into  Land  Securities,  suc- 
ceeded in  rebuilding  the  city  centres  of  Ply- 
mouth, Exeter,  Hull,  Coventry,  and  Bristol. 

Samuel  adopted  a  revolving  development  pol- 
icy, acquiring  new  sites  to  improve  the  portfolio 
and  refurbishing  or  rebuilding  existing  holdings. 
His  aims  were  to  provide  high-quality  building 
in  first-class  locations,  tenants  of  good  standing, 
and  architects'  open  competition  to  ensure  inno- 
vative designs.  He  assembled  throughout  Britain 
a  fine  collection  of  income-producing  commer- 
cial buildings  of  all  types.  He  developed  the 
financial  muscle  of  his  company,  which  enabled 
him  to  take  over  control  of  the  United  City 
Property  Trust,  Associated  London  Properties, 
the  shares  and  assets  of  City  Centre  Properties, 
with  its  vast  holdings  and  subsidiary  companies, 
and  the  City  of  London  Real  Property  Company, 


with  its  exceptional  portfolio  of  outstanding 
buildings.  In  1953  he  failed  to  gain  control  of  the 
Savoy,  an  episode  which  ended  in  public  acri- 
mony. Eventually  his  company  accounts  showed 
assets  of  £3  billion.  He  donated  generously  to 
many  charities,  but  liked  to  remain  anonymous. 
Among  others,  he  supported  the  Royal  College  of 
Surgeons  and  the  universities  of  Cambridge  and 
London.  He  was  president  of  the  Central  Lon- 
don Housing  Trust  for  the  Aged,  an  honorary 
fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge  (1961). 
and  University  College  London  (1068),  and  vice- 
president  of  the  British  Heart  Foundation.  He 
was  knighted  in  1963  and  became  a  life  peer  in 
1972. 

In  1936  Samuel  married  Edna,  daughter  of 
Harry  Nedas,  outfitter,  of  Manchester.  They  had 
three  daughters,  one  of  whom  died  in  1968.  In 
1947  the  family  moved  from  Hampstead  to  a 
house  with  extensive  gardens  in  Regent's  Park. 
There  their  love  of  horticulture  and  art  was 
nurtured,  and  Samuel  assembled  an  outstanding 
personal  collection  of  paintings,  which  included 
works  by  Pieter  Brueghel  and  Frans  Hals.  In 
1952  he  acquired  an  estate  in  Ashdown  forest, 
Sussex,  which  provided  more  room  for  his  grow- 
ing art  collection.  He  also  completely  renovated 
the  mansion  there  and  cultivated  magnificent 
flower  gardens.  Samuel  bequeathed  his  private 
art  collection  to  the  Corporation  of  London, 
where  it  hangs  in  the  Mansion  House. 

Samuel  was  five  feet  ten  inches  tall,  clean 
shaven,  and  with  good  regular  features.  He 
dressed  immaculately,  in  formal  and  conservative 
style.  He  was  a  perfectionist,  extremely  precise, 
and  a  deep  thinker  with  high  standards  of  integ- 
rity. A  shy  man,  he  avoided  public  speaking.  He 
died  28  August  1987  at  Wych  Cross  Place,  Forest 
Row,  East  Sussex. 

[Edward  Erdman,  People  and  Property,  1982;  personal 
knowledge.]  Edward  Erdman 

SANDYS,  (Edwin)  Duncan,  Baron  Duncan- 
Sandys  (1908-1987),  politician,  was  born  24 
January  1908  in  Sandford  Orcas,  Dorset,  the 
only  child  of  Captain  George  John  Sandys,  of  the 
2nd  Life  Guards,  later  MP  for  Wells,  and  his 
wife,  Mildred  Cameron,  of  New  Zealand.  He  had 
a  Russian  nanny  and  won  the  Newcasde  prize  for 
Russian  at  Eton,  being  the  only  entrant.  At 
Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  he  read  history, 
obtaining  a  second  class  in  1929.  He  then  entered 
the  Diplomatic  Service  in  1930,  passing  third  in 
the  competitive  examination.  Posted  to  the  Ber- 
lin embassy,  he  improved  his  German  and 
learned  to  fly. 

He  left  the  Diplomatic  Service  to  stand  suc- 
cessfully as  Conservative  candidate  in  the  Nor- 
wood by-election  in  1935.  The  same  year  he 
married  Diana  (died  1963),  daughter  of  (Sir) 
Winston     Leonard     Spencer-*Churchill,     and 


395 


Sandys 


D.N.B. 1986-1990 


divorced  wife  of  John  Milner  Bailey,  the  son  of 
Churchill's  friend,  the  multi-millionaire  South 
African  mine-owner,  Sir  Abe  *Bailey,  first  bar- 
onet. Sandys  struck  up  a  close  political  relation- 
ship with  his  father-in-law,  and  was  one  of  the 
few  Conservative  MPs  who  campaigned  with 
Churchill  to  throw  the  Nazis  out  of  the  Rhine- 
land  by  force  in  1936  and  for  rearmament  instead 
of  appeasement.  Like  other  young  Conservative 
MPs,  Sandys  joined  the  Territorial  Army  and  in 
1938  he  used  inside  knowledge  for  parliamentary 
questions  designed  to  reveal  anti-aircraft  defi- 
ciencies. This  angered  the  prime  minister  and 
the  secretary  of  state  for  war,  who  knew  that  it 
was  a  Churchill  ploy.  Sandys  was  threatened 
with  a  court  martial,  but  was  exonerated  by  a 
select  committee  of  privileges. 

In  1940  Sandys  went  to  Norway  with  the 
expeditionary  force.  On  his  return  he  com- 
manded the  Anti-Aircraft  Rocket  Regiment, 
driving  through  the  night  regularly  to  the 
launching  base  near  Cardiff.  On  one  of  these 
trips  he  was  involved  in  an  accident  and  badly 
damaged  both  his  feet.  He  suffered  recurrent 
pain  throughout  his  life,  which  may  have  affected 
his  temperament  but  not  his  judgement.  In  the 
summer  of  1944  the  massive  destruction  of  inner 
London  by  Vi  and  V2  flying  bombs  caused 
Churchill  to  put  Sandys  in  charge  of  counter- 
measures.  Sandys  had  been  appointed  chairman 
of  a  war  cabinet  committee  on  V  weapons  in  1943 
when  he  was  parliamentary  secretary,  Ministry 
of  Supply,  and  become  minister  of  works  in 
1944.  With  his  scientific  advisers  he  conceived 
the  ingenious  scheme  of  feeding  the  enemy  false 
reports,  through  German  spies  who  had  been 
'turned',  about  the  landing  zones  of  the  bombs, 
in  the  hope  the  Germans  would  aim  at  less 
populated  areas.  Sandys  transmitted  a  number  of 
misleading  signals,  ignoring  a  cabinet  directive, 
until  at  a  second  cabinet,  despite  Churchill's 
insistence,  Herbert  *Morrison  (later  Baron  Mor- 
rison of  Lambeth)  vetoed  the  plan. 

After  his  defeat  in  the  Labour  landslide  of 
1945  Sandys  concentrated  on  helping  his  father- 
in-law  in  his  campaign  for  a  united  Europe, 
accompanying  him  to  Zurich  for  his  famous 
speech.  In  1950  he  returned  to  the  Commons  as 
MP  for  Streatham.  He  became  minister  of  sup- 
ply in  Churchill's  postwar  government  in  195 1, 
but  by  now  Churchill's  other  son-in-law,  Chris- 
topher (later  Baron)  *Soames,  had  superseded 
Sandys  as  the  prime  minister's  chief  confidant. 
Four  years  later  Sandys  was  appointed  minister 
of  housing  and  local  government  by  Sir  Anthony 
*Eden  (later  the  first  Earl  of  Avon).  He  did  not 
take  a  strong  stand  against  the  Suez  war, 
although  he  expressed  serious  doubts  in  one 
letter  to  Eden,  but,  deeply  disappointed  over 
Eden's  cold-shouldering  of  plans  to  form  a  Com- 
mon Market  at  Messina  in    1956,  he  buried 


himself  in  his  own  ministry.  His  enthusiasm  for 
town  planning  lasted  for  the  rest  of  his  life  and  he 
was  the  pioneer  of  pedestrian  town  centres  at 
home  and  abroad.  He  also  inspired  and  inaugu- 
rated the  Civic  Trust.  In  1957  Sandys  became 
minister  of  defence  and  in  1959  of  aviation.  His 
1957  defence  white  paper,  the  principles  of 
which  were  accepted  by  successive  governments, 
was  largely  drafted  by  him  and  called  for  drastic- 
reductions  in  the  armed  forces  and  the  end  of 
conscription  in  favour  of  nuclear  weapons;  this 
made  him  unpopular  with  the  services.  In  1962 
Sandys  reached  the  peak  of  his  career  as  secretary 
of  state  for  the  colonies,  a  post  he  held  in  tandem 
with  that  as  secretary  of  state  for  Commonwealth 
relations,  which  he  had  become  in  i960.  The 
British  empire  was  breaking  up  with  demands 
for  independence  which  could  not  be  denied. 
Sandys,  overcoming  great  difficulties,  success- 
fully negotiated  independence  for  eleven  former 
colonies  including  Cyprus,  Malaya,  Nigeria, 
Ghana,  and  Uganda.  The  continuous  travel  this 
demanded  put  a  severe  strain  on  his  stamina  and 
patience. 

Sandys's  front-bench  career  ended  abruptly 
when  (Sir)  Edward  Heath  removed  him  from  the 
shadow  cabinet  in  1964.  According  to  Heath,  this 
was  because  Sandys  had  been  in  the  cabinet  for 
thirteen  years  and,  as  it  was  likely  to  be  five  years 
until  the  next  election,  he  wanted  'new  faces'. 
Another  factor  may  have  been  that  Sandys,  too 
outspoken  for  Heath  and  perhaps  too  right-wing, 
belonged  to  the  landowning,  aristocratic  section 
of  the  parliamentary  party  with  whom  Heath  did 
not  always  feel  at  home.  He  stayed  active  on  the 
back  benches,  in  1969  unsuccessfully  introducing 
a  private  Bill  to  limit  Commonwealth  immigra- 
tion. He  retired  from  the  Commons  in  1972  and 
in  1974  accepted  a  life  barony.  He  continued  to 
work  for  the  European  Movement  and  the  Civic 
Trust,  and  took  up  abstract  painting. 

In  his  last  years  Sandys  was  privately  bitter 
against  Heath  for  dismissing  him  and  for  Heath's 
criticism  of  his  role  in  Lonrho,  of  which  he  had 
become  chairman  in  1972,  on  the  suggestion  of 
the  Bank  of  England.  A  Department  of  Trade 
report  disclosed  Sandys  had  been  paid  £  130,000 
by  Lonrho  in  the  Cayman  Islands  at  a  time  when 
British  residents  were  forbidden  by  exchange 
regulations  to  hold  overseas  accounts.  Heath 
described  this  as  'the  unacceptable  face  of  capi- 
talism'. 

Sandys  was  one  of  the  outstanding  politicians 
of  his  generation,  full  of  initiative  and  with  a 
creative  political  mind.  Tall  and  good  looking, 
with  red  wavy  hair,  he  might  have  reached  higher 
office  had  he  not  been  aloof  and  unwilling  to  go 
out  of  his  way  to  cultivate  his  fellow  MPs;  he 
could  also  appear  patronizing.  He  was  always  a 
master  of  his  brief,  never  worsted  at  the  dispatch 
box,  but  a  slow  worker  who  by  over-stressing 


396 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Sargant 


details  could  make  his  speeches  dull.  Never- 
theless on  occasions  his  colleagues  were  grateful 
to  him  for  defusing  a  tense  debate. 

There  were  one  son  and  two  daughters  from 
his  first  marriage.  Diana  became  difficult  to  live 
with,  and  an  embarrassment  due  to  her  heavy 
drinking,  and  there  was  a  divorce  on  Sandys's 
petition  in  i960.  In  1962  he  married  Marie- 
Claire,  daughter  of  Adrien  Schmidt,  of  Paris,  and 
former  wife  of  Robert  William  Hudson,  second 
Viscount  Hudson.  They  had  one  daughter.  His 
second  marriage  mellowed  Sandys,  helping  him 
to  appreciate  the  point  of  view  of  others.  He 
became  a  privy  councillor  in  1944  and  CH  in 
1973.  After  several  years  of  ill  health  he  died  at 
his  home  in  Warwick  Square,  London,  26 
November  1987. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Richard  Lamb 

SARGANT,  Thomas  (1905- 1988),  law  re- 
former, was  born  in  Highgate,  London,  17 
August  1905,  the  fourth  child  in  the  family  of 
five  daughters  and  three  sons  of  Norman  Tho- 
mas Carr  Sargant,  commodity  merchant,  and  his 
wife  Alice  Rose,  daughter  of  William  Davies 
Walters,  a  Methodist  minister.  Tom  (as  he  was 
always  known)  was  brought  up  in  a  household 
committed  to  devout  .Methodism,  progressive 
politics  (his  father  was  four  times  a  Liberal 
candidate),  and  high  moral  principles.  He  inher- 
ited all  these  commitments.  He  was  educated  at 
Highgate  School,  where  he  became  head  boy, 
won  the  public  schools'  mile,  and  gained  a 
scholarship  to  Cambridge.  However,  his  father 
got  into  financial  difficulties  and  Sargant  offered 
to  join  him  in  the  family  business  instead  of 
taking  up  his  place  at  Cambridge.  Eventually  the 
business  collapsed  and  Sargant  went  to  work  in 
the  Royal  Mint  Refinery,  where  he  later  became 
commercial  manager.  He  left  the  refinery  in  1947 
and  held  various  jobs  in  the  metal  trade  until  at 
the  end  of  1955  he  became  ill  with  tubercu- 
losis. 

In  1 94 1  he  had  published  These  Things  Shall 
Be,  a  plea  for  a  new  and  juster  social  order.  The 
book  came  to  the  attention  of  Sir  Richard 
*Acland,  who  invited  Sargant  to  join  the  Chris- 
tian Socialist  movement.  Common  Wealth, 
which  Acland  was  launching.  Sargant  stood  for 
Common  Wealth  in  a  by-election  in  1943  and  in 
the  general  election  of  1945.  He  then  joined  the 
Labour  party,  for  which  he  stood  in  the  1950  and 
1955  elections,  again  without  success. 

On  his  recovery  from  illness,  Sargant  found 
himself  with  no  qualifications,  no  job,  and  no 
wish  to  return  to  the  City.  In  November  1956 
Peter  Benenson,  then  a  young  barrister,  asked 
Sargant  to  help  in  setting  up  an  all-party  group 
of  lawyers  to  send  observers  to  the  trial  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Hungarian  revolution  and  to  the 


treason  trial  in  South  Africa.  Benenson  per- 
suaded leading  lawyers  from  the  three  main 
political  parties  to  convert  their  ad  hoc  group  into 
a  permanent  organization  for  the  protection  of 
human  rights  and  the  rule  of  law,  which  was 
formally  established  under  the  name  'Justice'  in 
June  1957,  and  became  the  British  section  of  the 
Internationa]  Commission  of  Jurists.  Sargant's 
offer  to  act  as  the  part-time  secretary  of  Justice, 
at  a  salary  of  £500  a  year,  was  accepted. 

He  remained  the  secretary  of  Justice  for 
twenty-five  years,  until  1982.  He  had  no  legal 
training,  but  his  concern  with  the  legal  process 
had  been  stimulated  by  his  own  experiences  as  a 
defendant  in  a  libel  action,  in  which  he  even- 
tually succeeded,  in  the  face  of  great  difficulties, 
against  a  plaintiff  supported  by  the  General 
Medical  Council.  His  sympathy  for  the  underdog 
led  him  to  begin  taking  up — contrary  to  instruc- 
tions— the  cases  of  individual  prisoners  who 
wrote  to  Justice  complaining  of  wrongful  convic- 
tions. His  disregard  of  orders  proved  fortunate 
both  for  the  prisoners  whom  he  helped  (he  was 
able  to  secure  the  release  of  some  twenty  -five  of 
them)  and  for  Justice.  Sargant's  casework  kept 
Justice  firmly  involved  with  the  practical  realities 
of  the  legal  system  and  gave  it  an  unrivalled 
expertise  in  the  causes  of  miscarriages  of  justice 
and  the  problems  of  correcting  them.  He  helped 
to  make  miscarriages  of  justice  a  matter  of  public 
concern  through  his  co-operation  with  the  BBC 
in  producing  a  series  of  television  programmes 
on  the  subject,  under  the  title  'Rough  Justice'. 

Sargant  was  also  actively  involved  in  Justice's 
work  on  law  reform.  This  was  mainly  achieved 
through  reports  prepared  by  expert  committees, 
but  he  was  influential  in  choosing  the  subjects, 
selecting  the  chairmen  and  members  of  the 
committees,  and  sometimes  guiding  their  discus- 
sions. He  was  in  no  way  overawed  by  the  very 
distinguished  lawyers,  such  as  Lord  *Gardiner, 
Sir  John  *Foster,  and  Lord  Shawcross,  who 
chaired  the  council  of  Justice.  He  was  particu- 
larly proud  of  the  part  which  Justice  reports  and 
his  own  efforts  had  played  in  the  creation  in  1967 
of  the  post  of  'ombudsman'  (parliamentary  com- 
missioner for  administration)  and  the  extension 
of  the  ombudsman  system  into  other  fields;  in 
the  setting  up  of  the  Criminal  Injuries  Com- 
pensation Board;  and  in  reforming  the  system  of 
appeals  in  criminal  cases.  He  also  wrote,  jointly, 
More  Rough  Justice,  1985,  and  Criminal  Trials: 
the  Search  for  Truth,  1986.  He  was  appointed 
OBE  in  1966,  was  awarded  an  honorary  LL  M 
by  Queen's  University,  Belfast  (1977),  and  sat  for 
many  years  as  a  JP  in  Hampstead. 

Sargant  looked  like  a  shabby  eagle.  Tall,  angu- 
lar, and  untidy,  he  was  usually  covered  in  cigar- 
ette ash.  In  1929  he  married  Marie,  daughter 
of  Frantisek  Hlousek,  shoemaker.  They  were 
divorced  in  1942,  and  in  that  year  he  married 


397 


Sargant 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Dorothy,  daughter  of  William  Lattimer,  head- 
master. Sargant  had  two  daughters  by  his  first 
marriage  and  a  son  by  his  second.  He  died  in 
Highgate  26  June  1988. 

[Unpublished  autobiography  in  the  possession  of  the 
family;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

William  Goodhart 

SAYERS,  Richard  Sidney  (1908- 1989),  eco- 
nomist, was  born  11  July  1908  in  Bury  St 
Edmunds,  Suffolk,  the  fifth  in  the  family  of  five 
sons  (the  eldest  of  whom  died  in  infancy)  and 
two  daughters  of  Sidney  James  Sayers,  county 
accountant  for  West  Suffolk  county  council,  and 
his  wife,  Caroline  Mary  Watson.  He  attended  a 
succession  of  schools  in  Bury  St  Edmunds  from 
1912  to  1926,  becoming  head  prefect  in  his  last 
two  years  at  West  Suffolk  County  School.  He 
entered  St  Catharine's  College,  Cambridge,  in 
1926,  taking  first  classes  (division  II)  in  both 
parts  of  the  economics  tripos  (1928  and  1929). 
Although  he  was  made  a  member  of  J.  M.  (later 
Baron)  *Keynes's  Political  Economy  Club,  it  was 
to  (Sir)  Dennis  *Robertson  that  he  habitually 
sent  drafts  of  his  work  before  publication. 

After  postgraduate  study  in  Cambridge  he 
was  appointed  assistant  lecturer  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics  in  193 1  and  remained  there 
for  four  years  before  moving  in  1935  to  lecture  in 
Oxford,  where  he  became  a  fellow  of  Pembroke 
College  in  1939.  In  1936  he  published  Bank  of 
England  Operations,  i8go-igi4,  which  estab- 
lished Sayers's  reputation  as  a  monetary  histo- 
rian. Two  years  later,  in  need  of  additional 
income  with  the  approaching  birth  of  his  second 
child,  Sayers  produced  the  first  of  seven  editions 
of  his  internationally  known  textbook,  Modern 
Banking  (1938).  Although  a  textbook,  it  gave 
expression  to  many  original  thoughts  that  are 
prominent  in  his  later  writings:  his  emphasis  on 
liquidity;  his  judgement  that  the  bank  rate  is  'a 
halting,  clumsy,  indeed  a  brutal  instrument';  and 
his  scepticism  of  unsupported  monetary  policy 
('I  know  of  no  case  in  monetary  history  of  a  dear 
money  policy  alone  producing  a  general  deflation 
of  money  incomes'). 

During  World  War  II  Sayers  worked  in  the 
Ministry  of  Supply,  where  his  duties  carried  him 
into  the  secret  area  of  the  atomic  bomb  and 
negotiations  for  the  development  of  uranium 
supplies.  At  the  end  of  the  war  he  was  persuaded 
by  James  Meade  to  serve  as  deputy  director  of 
the  economic  section  of  the  Cabinet  Office,  but 
after  two  years  opted  to  resume  his  academic 
career,  accepting  the  Sir  Ernest  Cassel  chair  of 
economics  at  the  LSE  in  1947  and  remaining 
there  until  he  took  early  retirement  in  1968. 

In  the  1950s  he  produced  or  edited  half  a 
dozen  books,  including  one  of  his  major  works — 
some  would  say  his  best — Financial  Policy 
1939-45,  which  was  part  of  the  official  war 


history.  This  took  over  five  years  to  complete, 
appearing  finally  in  1956.  It  recreated  the  atmo- 
sphere of  the  wartime  Treasury  and  dealt  with 
both  economic  and  political  issues  with  great 
skill.  Another  work — his  favourite  though  not 
his  best — was  his  history  of  Lloyds  Bank 
(1957)- 

In  the  spring  of  1957  he  was  appointed  a 
member  of  the  committee  on  the  working  of  the 
monetary  system,  chaired  by  Baron  (later  Vis- 
count) *Radcliffe,  the  most  important  assign- 
ment of  his  life.  He  played  a  dominant  part  in  the 
committee's  affairs,  undertaking  much  of  the 
examination  of  witnesses  and  drafting  the  key 
sections  of  its  report  (1959).  The  reception 
accorded  to  the  report  was  a  bitter  disappoint- 
ment to  Sayers.  'Two  years  of  my  life — two  years 
wasted!'  he  once  exclaimed. 

His  disappointment  did  not  prevent  a  con- 
siderable volume  of  new  work,  most  of  it  essays 
and  articles  but  also  a  centenary  history  of 
Gillett's  discount  house  (1968).  Sayers  was  much 
in  demand  as  a  historian  of  banking  institutions. 
He  was  considered  as  a  possible  historian  of  the 
Federal  Reserve  System  and  invited  to  produce  a 
sequel  to  Sir  J.  H.  *Clapham's  history  of  the 
Bank  of  England  to  1914.  This  was  completed  in 
1976,  in  three  volumes  covering  the  years  from 
1 89 1  to  1944,  in  celebration  of  the  250th  anniver- 
sary of  the  founding  of  the  Bank.  The  history 
was  highly  praised  but  left  Sayers  dissatisfied. 

Apart  from  his  academic  duties,  Sayers  was 
editorial  adviser  and  'chief  architect'  of  the  Three 
Banks  Review  for  twenty  years  from  its  founda- 
tion in  1948,  was  closely  associated  for  a  time 
with  the  editorial  side  of  Economica,  and  from 
1969  to  1974  was  publications  secretary  of  the 
British  Academy,  of  which  he  was  made  a  fellow 
in  1957  and  became  vice-president  in  1966-7. 

He  was  a  superb  lecturer,  taking  immense 
pains  over  his  lectures  and  expressing  himself, 
both  in  lectures  and  in  conversation,  slowly  and 
with  deliberation.  He  took  great  trouble  over  his 
graduate  students — most  of  them  from  abroad. 
His  former  pupils  are  said  to  have  included 
nineteen  ministers  of  finance. 

He  was  temperamentally  a  loner  who  pre- 
ferred to  get  on  with  his  work  without  much 
social  activity.  This  tendency  was  accentuated 
after  the  war  by  a  bad  back,  which  obliged  him  to 
rest  for  long  spells.  None  the  less  he  was  basically 
a  healthy  and  vigorous  man  and  would  walk  for 
hours  over  rough  country  even  with  arthritic 
hips.  Latterly,  however,  his  health  deteriorated 
and  in  his  last  few  years  he  was  more  or  less 
bedridden.  Music,  art,  and  walking  were  his 
main  non-academic  interests.  In  appearance  he 
was  tall  and  lean,  clean-shaven,  and  good- 
looking. 

In  1967  the  universities  of  Warwick  and  Kent 


398 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Schmitthoff 


conferred  honorary  degrees  on  him  and  the 
University-  of  Cambridge  sought  to  do  so  unsuc- 
cessfully. He  was  an  honorary  fellow  of  his  old 
Cambridge  college,  St  Catharine's,  and  of  the 
LSE  and  the  Institute  of  Bankers.  After  the 
publication  of  The  Bank  of  England  he  was 
offered,  but  refused,  a  knighthood. 

In  1930  Savers  married  an  old  classmate, 
Millicent,  daughter  of  William  Henry  John  Hod- 
son,  bookkeeper  in  a  brewery.  They  had  a  son 
and  a  daughter,  but  the  marriage  eventually 
broke  down.  In  1985  he  finally  left  his  wife  and 
went  to  live  with  Audrey  Taylor,  an  old  asso- 
ciate, in  Eastbourne,  where  he  died  after  a  long 
illness,  separated  from  his  family,  25  February 
1989. 

[Information  from  professors  Theodore  Barker,  Leslie 
Pressnell,  and  J.  S.  G.  Wilson  and  from  Sayers's 
family;  Alec  Cairncross  in  Proceedings  of  the  British 
Academy,  vol.  lxxvi,  1990;  personal  knowledge.] 

Alec  Cairncross 

SCHMITTHOFF,  Clive  Macmillan  (1903- 
1990),  legal  scholar  and  barrister,  was  born 
Maximilian  Schmitthoff  in  Berlin  24  March 
1903,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of  one  son  and  two 
daughters  of  Hermann  Schmitthoff,  a  prominent 
Berlin  lawyer,  and  his  wife  Anna.  After  a  classical 
education  at  the  Friedrichsgymnasium  in  Berlin, 
he  read  law  at  the  University  of  Freiburg  im 
Breisgau  and  later  at  the  University  of  Berlin, 
studying  under  the  well-known  jurist  Professor 
Martin  Wolff,  with  whom  he  quickly  established 
a  warm  rapport  and  later  collaborated  in  publica- 
tions. Awarded  his  doctorate  in  law  at  Berlin  in 
1927,  he  joined  his  father's  flourishing  law  prac- 
tice and  quickly  became  a  successful  advocate  in 
the  Berlin  Kammergericht  (court  of  appeal).  But 
in  1933  he  was  forced  to  leave  Germany  for 
England,  where  he  lived  for  the  rest  of  his  life, 
assuming  the  name  Clive,  and  altering  Max- 
imilian to  Macmillan.  Having  obtained  an  LL  M 
degree  at  the  London  School  of  Economics  in 
1936  he  was  called  to  the  bar  in  Gray's  Inn, 
becoming  a  tenant  in  the  chambers  of  (Sir) 
Valentine  *Holmes,  where  he  had  served  his 
pupillage.  Lacking  the  contacts  to  make  a  full- 
time  living  at  the  bar,  he  became  a  part-time 
lecturer  in  German  at  the  City  of  London 
College  (later  the  Gty  of  London  Polytechnic) 
and  wrote  books  on  commercial  German  and 
German  poetry  and  prose.  A  cultured  man,  he 
maintained  a  keen  interest  in  literature,  art,  and 
music  throughout  his  life.  He  was  naturalized  in 
July  1946. 

After  wartime  service  in  the  Pioneer  Corps 
and  Canadian  Engineers  as  a  warrant  officer, 
during  which  he  took  part  in  the  Normandy 
landings  and  received  several  medals,  he 
returned  to  England,  to  the  War  Office.  He  then 


went  back  to  the  City  of  London  College,  ini- 
tially in  the  language  department  but  later 
becoming  a  lecturer  in  law  in  the  department  of 
professional  studies  (lecturer  1948-58,  senior 
lecturer  1958-63,  principal  lecturer  1963-71). 
Right  up  to  the  time  of  his  retirement  he  had  an 
abiding  loyalty  to  his  first  academic  home,  resist- 
ing all  blandishments  to  accept  university 
chairs. 

Schmitthoff  was  in  love  with  the  law  in  all  its 
manifestations.  A  superb  teacher  and  devoted  to 
his  students,  he  also  maintained  a  successful 
consultancy  practice  at  the  bar.  Of  medium  build 
and  thoughtful  demeanour,  he  had  an  infectious 
enthusiasm  and  humour  which  captivated  stu- 
dents and  clients  alike.  He  combined  prodigious 
energy-  with  enterprise  and  vision.  In  1948  he 
founded  the  Mansfield  Law  Club,  also  establish- 
ing a  highly  successful  summer  school  in  English 
law  for  foreign  students.  He  developed  the  MA 
in  business  law,  the  first  postgraduate  law  degree 
to  be  offered  in  the  polytechnic  sector.  He 
co-founded  the  Association  of  Law  Teachers  in 
1966  and  was  its  honorary  vice-president  until 
the  time  of  his  death.  He  was  a  prolific  and 
scholarly  writer,  with  countless  articles  to  his 
credit  in  legal  periodicals  around  the  world.  His 
first  major  English  law  textbook,  A  Textbook  of 
the  English  Conflict  of  Laws,  was  published  in 
1945.  He  also  wrote  a  book  on  the  sale  of  goods, 
and  for  many  years  from  i960  co-edited  Charles- 
worth's  Mercantile  Law.  He  was  general  editor  of 
Palmer's  Company  Law  for  nearly  thirty  years, 
from  1959.  He  was  also  the  founder  and  editor  of 
the  Journal  of  Business  Law  (1957-89).  In  1953  he 
received  an  LL  D  from  the  University  of  Lon- 
don in  recognition  of  his  scholarship. 

Schmitthoffs  most  striking  achievements  lay- 
in  the  field  of  international  trade  law,  which  he 
created  as  a  subject  of  academic  study  and  made 
peculiarly  his  own.  His  classic  textbook,  The 
Export  Trade,  first  published  in  1948  and  trans- 
lated into  several  languages,  was  the  first  work  to 
give  an  overall  picture  of  the  law,  practice,  and 
institutional  structure  of  international  trade  law 
and  practice,  and  in  1979  he  became  vice- 
president  of  the  Institute  of  Export.  It  was  his 
report  The  Progressive  Development  of  the  Law  of 
International  Trade  (1966),  commissioned  by  the 
United  Nations,  that  led  to  the  establishment  of 
the  United  Nations  Commission  on  International 
Trade  Law  (UNCITRAL),  devoted  to  the  har- 
monization of  international  trade  law;  and  it  is  he 
who  is  credited  with  first  propounding  the  new 
lex  mercatoria,  the  transnational  law  of  inter- 
national trade,  a  subject  on  which  he  wrote 
extensively. 

Schmitthoffs  retirement  in  1971  was  purely 
notional.  His  scholarly  publications  continued 
unabated.  His  seventieth  birthdav  was  celebrated 


399 


Schmitthoff 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


with  a  Festschrift  in  his  honour,  Law  and  Inter- 
national Trade  (ed.  Fritz  Fabricius).  He  con- 
tinued to  lecture  extensively  in  England  and 
abroad.  He  held  the  Gresham  chair  in  law  at  City 
University,  London  (1976-86),  and  honorary 
and  visiting  professorships  at  a  number  of  uni- 
versities, including  the  University  of  Kent  at 
Canterbury,  Gty  University,  the  Ruhr  Uni- 
versity Bochum,  and  Notre  Dame  University, 
and  received  honorary  doctorates  from  several 
universities  in  Britain  and  abroad,  and  from  the 
Council  for  National  Academic  Awards.  In  1974 
he  received  the  grand  cross  of  the  German  Order 
of  Merit.  In  1983  his  colleagues  at  Kent  pub- 
lished a  collection  of  essays  by  way  of  tribute, 
Essays  for  Clive  Schmitthoff '(ed.  John  Adams). 

The  passing  of  the  years  seemed  to  have  little 
impact  on  him.  In  1985,  his  ninth  decade,  he 
became  joint  vice-chairman  of  the  Centre  for 
Commercial  Law  Studies  at  Queen  Mary  (later 
Queen  Mary  and  Westfield)  College,  University  of 
London,  where  he  introduced  and  co-taught  an 
LL  M  course  on  international  trade  law,  at  the 
same  time  establishing  and  organizing  a  series  of 
annual  conferences  on  international  commercial 
law.  A  new  edition  of  Palmer  appeared  in  1987  and 
of  The  Export  Trade  in  1990.  A  week  before  his 
death  he  was  busy  editing  a  set  of  conference 
papers  and  arranging  a  meeting  with  his  publishers 
to  discuss  new  projects.  Despite  his  huge  follow- 
ing he  was  essentially  a  private  man,  at  his  happiest 
working  alone  in  his  study. 

In  1940  he  married  Use  ('Twinkie'),  daughter 
of  a  leading  Frankfurt  lawyer,  Ernst  Moritz 
Auerbach,  and  herself  a  lawyer.  They  had  no 
children.  He  died  30  September  1990  at  the 
Charing  Cross  Hospital,  London. 

[Fritz  Fabricius  (ed.),  Law  and  International  Trade, 
1973;  Chia-Jui  Cheng  (ed.),  Clive  M.  Schmitthoffs 
Select  Essays  on  International  Trade  Law,  1988;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]  Roy  Goode 

SCOTT,  Sir  Peter  Markham  (1909-1989), 
conservationist,  painter,  naturalist,  sportsman, 
writer,  and  broadcaster,  was  born  at  174  Buck- 
ingham Palace  Road,  London,  14  September 
1909,  the  only  child  of  Captain  Robert  Falcon 
*Scott,  Antarctic  explorer,  and  his  wife  Kathleen 
Bruce,  sculptor,  daughter  of  Canon  Lloyd  Stew- 
art Bruce.  His  father  died  in  1912  and  in  1922  his 
mother  married  Edward  Hilton  *Young,  who 
became  first  Baron  Kennet.  There  was  one  son  of 
this  marriage.  In  his  last  message  home  before  he 
died  Scott  had  urged  his  wife  to  make  his  son 
interested  in  natural  history,  which  was  better 
than  sport.  In  the  event,  Peter  Scott  came  to 
excel  at  both.  He  was  an  energetic  child,  with  a 
passion  for  natural  history,  who  spent  much  time 
drawing  and  painting.  He  also  shone  at  sports, 
ice-skating,  and  sailing  in  small  boats.  From  his 
preparatory  school,  West  Downs,  he  went  to 


Oundle.  He  then  studied  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge  (1927-30),  where  he  hoped  to  take 
the  natural  sciences  tripos,  but  failed  his  part  i 
(1930).  He  stayed  on  for  an  extra  term  and 
obtained  an  ordinary  degree  in  December  1930 
(zoology,  botany,  and  history  of  art).  During  his 
Cambridge  days  he  took  up  wildfowling,  and  in 
1929  Country  Life  magazine  printed  two  articles 
on  the  sport  written  and  illustrated  by  him. 

From  Cambridge  he  went  to  the  Munich 
Academy  for  a  term,  and  then  spent  two  years  at 
the  Royal  Academy  Schools  in  London.  In  1933 
he  held  his  first  one-man  exhibition,  which  was  a 
huge  success,  at  Ackermann's  Galleries  in  Lon- 
don. He  was  able  to  make  his  living  as  a  painter 
of  wildfowl,  producing  his  first  book  (entitled 
Morning  Flight  and  published  by  Country  Life)  in 
1935.  This  was  followed  by  Wild  Chorus  in  1938. 
Lavishly  illustrated  with  his  paintings,  both 
books  became  very  popular  and  ran  to  twelve 
editions. 

Scott  excelled  at  sailing  and  won  a  bronze 
medal  in  the  1936  Olympic  Games,  for  single- 
handed  yachting.  He  also  won  the  prestigious 
Prince  of  Wales  cup  for  international  fourteen- 
foot  dinghies  in  1937,  1938,  and  1946.  In  the  late 
1950s  he  developed  a  passion  for  gliding,  and 
won  the  British  gliding  championships  in  1963. 

At  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939  he  volunteered 
for  the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve.  After 
training  he  spent  two  years  in  destroyers,  mainly 
in  HMS  Broke  in  the  Western  approaches, 
becoming  a  first  lieutenant,  and  then  he  served  in 
the  coastal  forces  in  steam  gunboats.  He  became 
senior  officer  of  the  flotilla,  was  awarded  a  DSC 
(1943)  and  bar,  and  was  thrice  mentioned  in 
dispatches.  He  also  invented  a  night  camouflage 
scheme  for  naval  ships.  His  final  appointment 
was  the  command  of  a  new  frigate,  as  a  lieuten- 
ant-commander. With  the  war  coming  to  a  close, 
Scott  was  adopted  as  the  Conservative  candidate 
for  Wembley  North,  but  he  failed  to  be  elected 
by  435  votes,  having  had  only  two  weeks  to 
prepare  for  the  election. 

While  visiting  the  river  Severn  at  Slimbridge 
in  Gloucestershire  in  1945,  in  search  of  a  rare 
goose  amongst  the  wintering  white-fronted 
geese,  he  decided  to  establish  a  research  organi- 
zation, which  he  had  planned  for  many  years,  to 
study  the  swans,  geese,  and  ducks  of  the  world. 
The  Severn  Wildfowl  Trust  was  set  up  at  Slim- 
bridge  in  1946  and  soon  boasted  the  largest 
collection  of  wildfowl  in  the  world.  Later  known 
as  the  Wildfowl  and  Wetlands  Trust,  it  expanded 
into  nine  centres  around  Britain.  Scott  remained 
its  honorary  director  until  he  died.  Scientific 
research  took  Scott  to  Iceland  in  1951  to  study 
pink-footed  geese  on  their  breeding  grounds,  and 
to  the  Perry  river  region  of  northern  Canada, 
where  in  1949  he  mapped  this  unknown  area 
while  in  search  of  the  breeding  grounds  of  the 


400 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Scott 


ross  goose.  Scott  did  more  than  any  British 
contemporary  to  save  wildlife  species  from 
extinction. 

When  the  BBC  founded  a  television  centre  in 
Bristol  Scott  helped  to  establish  the  Natural 
History  Unit  there,  planning  a  programme  on 
natural  history  called  Look,  which  he  hosted  for 
seventeen  years.  Many  of  the  early  programmes 
contained  his  own  film  which  he  shot  on  his 
travels.  He  took  part  in  Mature  Parliament,  a 
radio  programme  which  ran  for  twenty-one 
years,  and  was  the  narrator  in  many  other  pro- 
grammes. 

In  the  early  1950s  Scott  became  involved  with 
the  International  Union  for  the  Conservation 
of  Nature  and  Natural  Resources  (IUCN). 
He  helped  build  up  the  Species  Survival  Com- 
mission of  the  union  and  became  chairman 
(1062-81).  With  two  friends,  in  1961  he  founded 
the  World  Wildlife  Fund  (later  the  World  Wide 
Fund  for  Nature)  to  raise  the  money  needed  to 
finance  nature  conservation  around  the  world.  As 
its  chairman  from  1961,  he  designed  its  panda 
logo  and  invented  the  red  data  books  listing 
endangered  species.  He  travelled  abroad  exten- 
sively on  behalf  of  the  Fund,  establishing 
national  appeals,  advising  on  conservation  issues 
and  areas  for  reserves,  lecturing,  and  fund- 
raising.  He  was  also  involved  in  numerous  other 
conservation  and  naturalist  societies.  He  became 
as  much  of  an  expert  on  coral  fish  as  he  was  on 
birds  and  his  records  have  proved  scientifically 
useful. 

His  autobiography,  The  Eye  of  the  Wind,  was 
published  in  196 1  and  was  reprinted  many  times. 
He  was  a  prolific  author  and  illustrator,  his  final 
books  being  the  three  volumes  of  Travel  Diaries 
of  a  Naturalist,  published  in  1983,  1985,  and 
1987  respectively. 

He  was  elected  rector  of  Aberdeen  University 
(1960-3)  and  appointed  chancellor  of  Birming- 
ham University  (1974-83).  Appointed  MBE 
(1942)  and  CBE  (1953),  he  was  knighted  in  1973. 
In  1987  he  became  both  CH  and  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Society.  He  had  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Exeter,  Aberdeen,  Birmingham, 
Bristol,  Liverpool,  Bath,  Guelph,  and  Ulster.  He 
was  also  awarded  numerous  medals,  prizes,  and 
foreign  honours. 

Strongly  built  and  of  average  height,  Scott  was 
warm  and  friendly,  tackling  everything  with 
enthusiasm.  He  liked  to  paint  even  day.  In  1942 
he  married  the  nov  elist  Elizabeth  Jane  Howard, 
daughter  of  David  Liddon  Howard,  timber  mer- 
chant. They  had  a  daughter.  This  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  195 1  and  in  the  same  year  he 
married  (Felicity)  Philippa,  daughter  of  Com- 
mander Frederick  William  Talbot-Ponsonby,  of 
the  Royal  Navy,  and  his  wife  Hannah  (nee 
Findlay).  They  had  a  daughter  and  a  son.  Peter 


Scott  died  from  a  heart  attack  in  hospital  in 
Bristol  29  August  1989. 

[Peter  Scon,  The  Eye  of  the  Wind  (autobiography), 
1961;  Jonathan  Benington,  Sir  Peter  Scott  at  80:  a 
Retrospective  (catalogue  including  a  biography),  1989; 
Elspeth  Huxley,  Peter  Scott,  1993;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Paul  Walkoen 

SCOTT,  William  George  (1913-1989),  painter 
and  printmaker,  was  born  15  February  191 3  in 
Greenock,  Scotland,  the  third  of  eleven  children 
and  eldest  son  of  William  John  Scott,  a  sign 
writer  and  house  decorator  from  Enniskillen  in 
county  Fermanagh,  Northern  Ireland,  and  his 
Scottish  wife,  Agnes  Murray.  The  family 
removed  to  Enniskillen  in  1924,  where  he 
attended  Enniskillen  Technical  School  and, 
encouraged  by  his  father,  enrolled  in  evening 
classes  in  art.  In  1928  he  entered  Belfast  College 
of  Art  with  a  local  scholarship.  From  1931  to 
1935  Scott  studied  at  the  Royal  Academy 
Schools  in  London,  where  he  won  the  silver 
medal  for  sculpture  in  1933,  the  Landseer  schol- 
arship in  painting  (1934),  and  a  Leverhulme 
travelling  scholarship  in  1935.  Once  freed  from 
the  restrictions  of  academic  training,  he  sought 
alternatives  to  both  English  landscape  painting 
and  to  the  Surrealist  and  abstract  modes  of  the 
day. 

In  1937  he  married  (Hilda)  Mary,  daughter  of 
William  Lucas,  a  paint  manufacturer  of  Bristol. 
She  was  a  sculptor,  and  a  fellow  student  at  the 
Academy  Schools.  They  were  to  have  two  sons. 
For  the  next  two  years  they  travelled  in  Italy  and 
the  south  of  France,  and  taught  during  the 
summers  at  a  painting  school  at  Pont  Aven  in 
Brittany.  It  was  there  that  Scott  did  his  first 
mature  paintings.  They  prefigure  his  later  work 
in  their  modesty  of  subject-matter  (the  single 
figure,  still  life,  and  landscape),  a  deliberate 
simplicity  in  composition,  a  painterly  touch,  and 
rich  tonality.  Cezanne  was  an  important  influ- 
ence, and  Scott  was  also  affected  by  other  French 
painters,  notably  Bonnard  and  Matisse.  In 
November  1938  he  exhibited  at  the  Salon  d'Au- 
tomne,  and  was  elected  societaire. 

At  the  outbreak  of  war  in  September  1939  the 
Scotts  moved  to  Dublin,  where  their  elder  son, 
Robert,  was  born  in  January  1940.  After  a  few 
months  in  London,  in  194 1  they  took  a  cottage  at 
Hallatrow  in  Somerset,  where  Scott  created  a 
market  garden  and  taught  pan-time  at  Bath 
Academy  of  Art.  James,  his  second  son,  was  born 
in  July  1941.  In  1942,  shortly  before  his  first  one- 
man  exhibition  at  the  Leger  Gallery,  London, 
Scott  volunteered  for  the  armed  forces,  and 
joined  the  Royal  Engineers.  As  an  ordnance 
mapmaker  he  learned  lithography,  and  in  north 
Wales  made  water-colour  landscapes  in  the  per- 
vasive  English   Romantic   mode   of  the   time. 


401 


Scott 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


These   were  shown   in   London   in    1944  and 

1945- 

In  September  1946  Scott  painted  the  seminal 
'The  Frying  Pan',  his  first  table-top  still  life 
featuring  a  frying-pan,  bowl,  and  toasting-fork, 
props  that  with  a  number  of  other  simple  kitchen 
objects  (saucepans,  spoons,  eggs,  beans,  fish,  etc.) 
were  to  recur  as  motifs  in  his  work.  Scott 
invested  these  simple  things  with  multivalent 
symbolic  significance,  first  as  attributes  of  the 
elemental  life  of  the  simple  poor;  later  they  seem 
to  be  the  components  of  obscure  sexual  encoun- 
ters in  what  Scott  referred  to  as  'the  secret  in  the 
picture'.  This  intensity  of  regard  for  domestic 
objects  was  derived  from  a  French  tradition 
of  still-life  painting  (variously  exemplified  by 
J.  B.  S.  Chardin,  Paul  Cezanne,  and  Georges 
Braque),  with  which  Scott  felt  a  particular 
affinity. 

In  1946  Scott  had  returned  to  H  alia  trow,  and 
was  appointed  senior  painting  master  at  Bath 
Academy  of  Art,  now  at  Corsham  Court  in 
Wiltshire.  He  taught  there,  highly  regarded  by 
staff  and  students,  until  1956.  During  the  late 
1940s  he  made  fruitful  contacts  with  many  of 
those  St  Ives  artists  associated  with  Ben  •Nichol- 
son, who  were  moving  towards  a  simplifying 
abstraction  of  forms.  These  artists,  among  them 
Roger  *Hilton,  Terry  Frost,  (G.)  Peter  Lanyon, 
Bryan  Winter,  Patrick  Heron,  and  Adrian  Heath, 
formed  the  nucleus  of  a  British  school  of  abstract 
painting,  within  which  Scott  was  to  be  a  prime 
mover  and  major  influence  throughout  the  1950s. 

Scott  maintained  an  individual  creative 
course,  the  momentum  and  direction  of  which 
was  determined  by  his  own  predilections  towards 
a  reductive  simplification  of  forms  and  an  evoca- 
tive richness  of  surface  texture.  In  1953  in  New 
York  he  was  the  first  British  painter  to  meet  the 
abstract  expressionists  at  first  hand,  and  was 
impressed  by  the  expansive  scale  and  confidence 
of  their  work.  The  effect  was  to  confirm  his  sense 
of  identity  as  essentially  a  European  painter, 
whose  abstraction  was  derived  from  first-hand 
experience  of  the  world  of  familiar  objects  and 
phenomena.  He  returned  to  the  painterly  evoca- 
tion of  figurative  subjects,  freed  from  direct 
description  but  never  absolutely  free  of  refer- 
ence. In  the  mid-1960s  Scott  experimented  with 
an  even-surfaced  decorative  abstraction,  but  the 
flattened  outlines  of  domestic  utensils  and 
ambiguous  fruit  and  vegetable  forms  invariably 
found  their  way  back  into  his  work.  These  formal 
and  symbolic  elements  of  the  pictorial  drama  are 
unmistakably  personal  in  origin,  and  resolutely 
modern  in  their  deployment  on  the  flat  surface  of 
the  canvas. 

William  Scott  was  widely  recognized  as  an 
artist  of  international  standing.  He  represented 
Britain  at  the  twenty-ninth  Venice  Biennale  in 
1958,  and  at  the  sixth  Bienal,  Sao  Paulo,  in  1961. 


He  received  honorary  doctorates  from  the  Royal 
College  of  Art  (1975),  Queen's  University  in 
Belfast  (1976),  and  Trinity  College,  Dublin 
(1977).  The  Tate  Gallery  mounted  a  major 
retrospective  in  1972.  He  was  elected  ARA  in 
1977  and  RA  in  1984.  He  was  appointed  CBE  in 
1966.  Scott  was  unostentatious  in  appearance; 
but  his  emphatic  dark  brows  and  small  beard 
were  expressive  of  an  intense  temperament. 
Small  and  wiry,  and  compact  of  energy,  he  was 
quick  and  precise  in  his  gestures,  and  deliberate 
in  manner.  He  died  in  Coleford,  Somerset,  28 
December  1989,  after  suffering  from  Alzheimer's 
disease  for  several  years.  Scott's  work  is  repre- 
sented in  many  public  collections,  in  Britain  and 
abroad,  including  the  Tate  Gallery,  the  Ulster 
Museum,  the  Scottish  National  Gallery  of  Mod- 
ern Art,  and  the  Guggenheim  Museum,  New 
York. 

[Ronald  Alley,  William  Scott,  1963;  Alan  Bowness, 
William  Scott  Paintings,  1964,  and  William  Scott,  1972; 
Norbert  Lynton,  William  Scott,  1990;  Tate  Gallery 
catalogue,  1972;  William  Scott  Foundation  archives,  13 
Edith  Terrace,  London  SW10.]  Mel  Gooding 

SCUPHAM,  John  (1 904-1 990),  educationist  and 
broadcaster,  was  born  7  September  1904  in 
Market  Rasen,  Lincolnshire,  the  younger  son 
and  third  of  five  children  of  Roger  Scupham, 
master  builder  and  monumental  mason,  and  his 
wife  Kate,  daughter  of  Thomas  Hulme  Whit- 
tingham,  proprietor  of  the  Rasen  Mail  and  book- 
seller. He  was  educated  at  Market  Rasen 
Grammar  School  and  then  became  a  scholar  of 
Emmanuel  College,  Cambridge,  gaining  first- 
class  honours  in  part  i  of  the  history  tripos  (1925) 
and  in  English  (1926). 

He  was  a  polymath,  who  would  have  been  a 
scientist  had  his  school  been  able  to  provide  the 
grounding.  His  wide  reading,  together  with  an 
intense  interest  in  people  of  all  kinds,  no  doubt 
contributed  to  his  success  as  a  teacher.  From 
1927  to  1946  his  experience  was  unusually 
varied,  with  teaching  in  grammar  schools  in 
Newcastle,  Liverpool,  and  Derby,  Workers' 
Educational  Association  tutoring  in  Forces  Edu- 
cation, and  running  the  department  of  liberal 
studies  and  adult  education  at  Cambridge  Tech- 
nical College.  He  prided  himself  on  the  fact  that 
he  had  done  everything  from  teaching  appren- 
tices to  write  a  few  lines  of  literate  English  to 
examining  open  scholarships  in  history  at  a 
group  of  Cambridge  colleges. 

From  1946  to  1965  he  worked  in  educational 
broadcasting  at  the  BBC.  Starting  as  an  educa- 
tion officer  with  the  School  Broadcasting  Coun- 
cil, a  body  representing  the  educational  world 
within  the  Corporation,  he  progressed  rapidly  to 
become  assistant  head  of  school  broadcasting  and 
in  1954  was  made  head  of  educational  broad- 
casting.  His  work  with  the  Council,  visiting 


402 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Seebohm 


schools  and  colleges  and  meeting  other  educa- 
tionists, enabled  him  to  guide  the  production 
departments  in  what  was  needed.  His  profound 
understanding  of  the  issues  involved  in  teaching 
and  learning  through  broadcasts  made  him  a 
formidable  head  of  the  complete  production 
machine  and  in  1963  he  was  made  the  first  con- 
troller, educational  broadcasting.  This  enhanced 
role  reflected  the  expansion  that  had  occurred 
under  his  aegis  as  head. 

The  expansion,  which  he  promoted  with  con- 
siderable energy  and  fortitude,  was  mainly  exem- 
plified by  the  creation  of  a  School  Television 
Department  in  1959  and  a  Further  Education 
Department  in  1965,  which,  when  added  to  the 
two  equivalent  radio  departments,  constituted  a 
large  output  'empire'.  This  was  resented  by  a 
number  of  very  senior  managers  in  the  television 
service.  It  took  them  some  time  to  realize  that 
Scupham's  small  yet  precise  physique,  his  quiet, 
reasonable  negotiating  style,  and  his  absolute 
moral  integrity  concealed  a  steely  will.  He 
believed  passionately  in  the  importance  of  dis- 
seminating knowledge  widely  and  saw  broad- 
casting as  a  new,  powerful  medium  through 
which  to  achieve  this  both  at  home  and  abroad. 
Like  John  (later  first  Baron)  *Reith,  the  BBC's 
first  director-general,  he  worked  tirelessly  in  the 
arena  of  international  broadcasting  and,  as  he 
reveals  in  his  books,  Broadcasting  and  the  Commu- 
nity (1967)  and  The  Revolution  in  Communications 
(1970),  believed  that  mass  media  have  important 
social  purposes.  He  was  appointed  OBE  in 
1961. 

Towards  the  end  of  his  BBC  career  he  helped 
to  devise  plans  for  a  College  of  the  Air,  but  when 
the  more  ambitious  Open  University  project 
emerged  he  worked  assiduously  and  diplomat- 
ically to  see  that  the  BBC  played  a  vital  role. 
After  retiring  from  the  BBC  in  1965  he  sat  on  the 
ministerial  committee  to  advise  on  the  setting  up 
of  the  university,  and  from  1969  to  1978  was  a 
member  of  its  council.  He  was  awarded  an  Open 
University  honorary  doctorate  in  1975.  Among 
his  many  other  activities  were  participation  in 
the  inquiry  undertaken  by  (Sir)  John  *Newsom 
in  1961-3,  which  championed  the  educational 
needs  of  less  able  children,  and  in  the  Church  of 
England  board  of  education  (1960-72),  as  well  as 
the  presidency  of  the  educational  section  of  the 
British  Association  (1965-6). 

Scupham  was  a  lifelong,  but  not  uncritical, 
member  of  the  Church  of  England,  a  proud 
provincial,  who  combined  a  sense  of  life's  mys- 
teries with  an  extensive  knowledge  of  modern 
thinking.  Like  Matthew  *Arnold  he  thought  that 
'the  men  of  culture  are  the  true  apostles  of 
equality ',  but  was  wise  enough  at  the  end  of  his 
life  to  see  that  times  were  changing. 

In  1932  he  married  Dorothy  Lacey  (died 
1987),  daughter  of  Fred  Clark,  a  Lincolnshire 


draper,  and  their  happy  marriage  produced  a  son 
and  a  daughter.  Scupham  died  10  January  1990 
in  Norwich,  near  to  his  daughter,  having  lived 
much  of  his  married  life  in  Harpenden. 

[Recorded  interview  with  John  Scupham,  1084,  for 
BBC  Oral  History  Project,  Broadcasting  House,  Lon- 
don; BBC  Written  Archives  Centre,  Caversham  Park, 
Reading;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Cain 

SEEBOHM,  Frederic,  Baron  Seebohm  (1909- 
1990),  banker  and  philanthropist,  was  born  18 
January-  1909  at  Poynder's  End,  Hitchin,  Hert- 
fordshire, the  second  in  the  family  of  three  sons 
and  one  daughter  of  Hugh  Exton  Seebohm, 
banker,  of  Poynder's  End,  and  his  wife  Leslie, 
daughter  of  George  James  Gribble.  He  was  the 
grandson  of  the  historian  Frederic  *Seebohm. 
The  Seebohm  family  had  emigrated  from  Ger- 
many to  York  in  the  mid-nineteenth  century,  and 
subsequently  had  been  for  three  generations 
Quakers  and  bankers  at  Hitchin;  their  bank  had 
been  one  of  the  constituents  of  Barclays  Bank 
Limited  on  its  formation  in  1896.  Seebohm  was 
educated  at  the  Dragon  School,  Oxford,  at 
Leighton  Park  School  in  Reading,  and  then  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  read  eco- 
nomics but  left  after  two  years  (having  achieved 
a  third  class  in  part  i  in  1929)  to  enter  Barclays 
Bank,  Cambridge,  in  1929.  He  spent  most  of  the 
next  twenty-five  years  in  Sheffield,  where  he  was 
posted  in  1932,  and  after  the  war  in  York  and 
Birmingham,  as  a  local  director.  During  this  time 
he  developed  his  interest  in  social  services  as 
treasurer  of  the  Sheffield  council  of  social  serv- 
ice, chairman  of  the  community  council  in  York, 
and  a  member  of  the  Joseph  Rowntree  Memorial 
Trust.  The  Seebohms  were  related  to  the 
Rowntree  family. 

In  1938  he  joined  the  Territorial  Army  and  in 
1939  was  commissioned  in  the  Royal  Artillery. 
After  attending  the  Staff  College  in  1944,  he  was 
posted  to  Supreme  Headquarters  Allied  Expedi- 
tionary Force,  as  a  lieutenant-colonel  (GSO  1). 
In  1945  he  was  mentioned  in  dispatches  and 
awarded  the  bronze  star  of  America. 

He  was  appointed  a  director  of  Barclays  Bank 
Limited  in  1947  and  in  1951  of  Barclays  Bank 
(Dominion,  Colonial  and  Overseas).  In  1957  he 
moved  to  London  in  a  full-time  executive  posi- 
tion in  Barclays  Bank  DCO,  becoming  a  deputy- 
chairman  in  1959  and  chairman  in  1965.  See- 
bohm dev  eloped  DCO  from  a  federation  of  retail 
banks  in  the  ex-colonies  and  South  Africa  into  an 
international  bank  operating  on  a  worldwide 
basis. 

In  spite  of  constant  travelling  overseas  he 
continued  to  extend  his  interests  in  the  City  as 
chairman  of  Friends'  Provident  Life  Office 
(1962-8),  the  Export  Guarantees  Advisory 
Council  (1967-72),  and  Barclays  Bank  Limited, 


403 


Seebohm 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


where  he  became  deputy  chairman  in  1968.  In 
1966-8  he  was  president  of  the  Institute  of 
Bankers.  He  was  knighted  in  1970.  In  1972  he 
retired  as  chairman  of  DCO  which,  as  part  of  his 
international  strategy,  had  been  taken  over  by 
Barclays  Bank  Limited  in  1971  and  renamed 
Barclays  Bank  International.  He  remained  dep- 
uty chairman  of  Barclays  until  1974  but, 
although  he  remained  on  the  board  until  1979, 
his  interests  were  increasingly  elsewhere.  From 
1974  to  1979  he  was  chairman  of  Finance  for 
Industry,  which  had  been  set  up  by  the  banks  in 
the  aftermath  of  World  War  II  to  assist  in  the 
development  of  industry,  a  subject  close  to  See- 
bohm's  heart. 

His  wider  reputation  and  his  life  peerage,  in 
1972,  came  from  his  other  great  interest,  social 
service.  His  earlier  experience  made  him  a  natu- 
ral choice  to  head  (1965-8)  the  government's 
inquiry  into  local  authority  and  allied  personal 
social  services,  which  led  to  the  Seebohm  report 
(1968).  The  far-reaching  conclusions,  most  of 
which  were  embodied  in  the  Local  Authority 
(Social  Services)  Act  of  1970,  owed  much  to  his 
strong  personal  convictions,  skilled  chairman- 
ship, and  vigorous  advocacy.  He  maintained 
from  the  House  of  Lords,  where  he  sat  as  an 
independent,  a  close  interest  in  subsequent 
developments  in  the  social  services,  as  well  as  in 
financial  matters,  and  served  as  chairman  of  the 
Joseph  Rowntree  Memorial  Trust,  and  president 
of  Age  Concern,  the  National  Institute  of  Social 
Work,  the  Royal  Africa  Society,  and  the  Over- 
seas Development  Institute.  He  was  asked  by  the 
government  to  report  on  naval  welfare  (1974)  and 
the  British  Council  (1980).  He  was  high  sheriff  of 
Hertfordshire  in  1 970-1.  He  received  an  hon- 
orary LL  D  from  Nottingham  in  1970  and  an 
honorary  D.Sc.  from  Aston  in  1976. 

Seebohm's  rather  military  bearing,  concise- 
ness of  speech,  and  formidable  powers  of  chair- 
manship, combined  with  a  very  direct  approach 
and  strong,  sometimes  unconventional,  views, 
won  him  respect  and  affection  in  the  many  fields 
to  which  he  contributed.  In  later  years  he  became 
a  member  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  which  his 
father  had  left  on  'marrying  out'.  He  was  a  keen 
shot,  played  real  tennis,  and  was  later  a  skilled 
gardener  and  competent  water-colourist.  He 
became  an  honorary  member  of  the  Royal  Water- 
colour  Society. 

In  1932  he  married  Evangeline,  daughter  of 
Sir  Gerald  Hurst,  QC;  they  had  two  daughters 
(one  of  them  the  writer  Victoria  Glendinning) 
and  one  son.  Lady  Seebohm  died  thirteen  days 
after  her  husband  as  a  result  of  a  motor  accident 
near  Sutton  Scotney  in  Hampshire.  Seebohm 
died  in  the  accident,  15  December  1990. 

[Archives  of  Barclays  Bank;  private  information.] 

Peter  Leslie 


SELLORS,  Sir  Thomas  Holmes  (1902-1987), 
cardiothoracic  surgeon,  was  born  7  April  1902  in 
Wandsworth,  the  only  son  and  younger  child  of 
Thomas  Blanchard  Sellors,  a  family  doctor,  and 
his  wife,  Anne  Oliver  McSparron.  His  father 
later  practised  at  Westcliff-on-Sca,  where  Tom, 
as  he  was  always  known,  was  educated  at  Alleyn 
Court  School.  He  then  went  to  Loretto  College, 
Musselburgh,  and  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  received  a  second  class  in  physiology  (1923). 
He  secured  an  entrance  scholarship  to  the 
Middlesex  Hospital,  qualifying  BM,  Ch.B.  and 
MRCS,  LRCP  in  1926  before  holding  resident 
and  surgical  registrar  appointments  there.  After  a 
thorough  grounding  in  general  surgery,  includ- 
ing a  year  in  Scandinavia  as  recipient  of  the  first 
G.  H.  Hunt  award  by  Oxford  University  in  1928, 
he  decided  to  specialize  in  chest  work,  which  was 
then  a  rather  limited  field.  He  became  FRCS  in 
1930. 

In  1934  he  was  appointed  to  the  London  Chest 
Hospital  and  then  to  various  London  county 
council  hospitals  and  sanatoria,  for  some  90  per 
cent  of  thoracic  surgery  was  then  concerned  with 
pulmonary  tuberculosis.  In  1933  he  surprised 
many  of  his  seniors  with  the  publication  of 
Surgery  of  the  Thorax,  and  during  the  1930s  he 
started  chest  surgery  units  at  the  Radcliffe  Infir- 
mary, Oxford,  and  Leicester  Royal  Infirmary, 
which  entailed  even  more  travelling  and  a  heavy 
workload.  He  became  DM  in  1933. 

On  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  he  became 
adviser  in  thoracic  surgery  to  the  north-west 
metropolitan  region  of  the  Emergency  Medical 
Service,  based  on  Harefield  Hospital,  Middlesex. 
In  the  next  few  years,  in  addition  to  his  tubercu- 
losis work,  he  did  an  increasing  number  of 
resections  for  lung  and  gullet  cancer,  whilst  the 
nascent  field  of  heart  surgery  slowly  demanded 
more  of  his  time  and  interest.  On  appointment  as 
thoracic  surgeon  to  the  Middlesex  Hospital  in 
1947  he  enjoyed  close  and  cordial  relationships 
with  the  cardiologists  D.  Evan  Bedford  and 
Walter  Somerville,  which  were  to  prove  vital  to 
the  development  of  more  complex  heart  surgery. 
He  was  responsible  for  the  creation  of  three 
cardiac  surgical  units — at  Harefield  (which 
remained  his  first  love),  the  Middlesex,  and 
finally,  in  1957,  the  National  Heart  Hospital. 

Sellors  showed  a  healthy  conservatism  in 
avoiding  frankly  experimental  procedures,  but 
was  quick  to  utilize  the  significant  advances  of  his 
contemporaries.  Before  there  was  a  practicable 
heart-lung  machine  for  open  heart  surgery  he 
learned  his  hypothermic  technique  from  Henry 
Swann  in  the  United  States  and  closed  some  500 
atrial  septal  defects  with  overall  results  which 
were  unrivalled  at  that  time.  He  and  his  team 
then  acquired  the  early  cardiopulmonary  bypass 
technique  from  John  Kirklin  at  the  Mayo  Clinic. 
Sellors  became  FRCP  in  1963. 


404 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Semprini 


Ever  courteous  in  the  operation  room,  and 
never  known  to  raise  his  voice  (the  fiercest 
reaction  to  an  inept  assistant  was  no  more  than 
his  favourite  admonition  'Juggins!'),  Sellors  was 
a  superb  craftsman,  a  master  of  sharp  dissection. 
He  did  the  first  successful  direct  operation  on  the 
pulmonary  heart  valve  for  the  relief  of  valvular 
stenosis,  but,  characteristically,  was  not  the  first 
to  publish  this  success.  He  had  retired  from 
practice  before  coronary  artery  surgery  was 
established  and  later  frankly  admitted  that  he  had 
wrongly  believed  the  successful  and  lasting  ana- 
stomosis of  such  small  vessels  to  be  impractic- 
able. 

From  the  inception  of  the  National  Health 
Service  Sellors  was  active  in  the  medico-political 
field.  Having  been  chairman  of  his  regional 
consultants'  and  specialists'  committee  for  some 
years,  he  was  an  inaugural  member  of  the  central 
committee  and  its  chairman  for  five  years.  In 
1958  he  became  chairman  of  the  Joint  Consult- 
ants' Committee,  which  linked  the  British  Medi- 
cal Association  with  the  various  royal  colleges,  an 
arduous  task  which  he  undertook  for  nine  years. 
For  this  work,  and  his  services  to  surgery,  he  was 
knighted  in  1963.  A  Hunterian  professor  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons  in  1944,  he  was 
elected  to  its  council  in  1957,  and  was  vice- 
president  in  1968-9  and  president  in  1969-72. 
He  was  president  of  the  British  Medical  Associa- 
tion in  1972-3  and  was  awarded  its  gold  medal  in 
1979.  Throughout  his  busy  surgical  life  he  trav- 
elled widely  abroad,  lecturing  and  demonstrat- 
ing. He  was  awarded  honorary  fellowships  of  the 
American  (1971)  and  South  African  surgical 
colleges,  as  well  as  those  of  Edinburgh  (1972)  and 
the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons  in  Ireland  (1975). 
He  had  honorary  degrees  from  Groningen 
(1964),  Liverpool  (1970),  and  Southampton 
(1972),  and  was  an  honorary  fellow  of  Oriel 
College,  Oxford  (1973). 

Well  after  his  retirement  from  surgical  prac- 
tice he  laboured  for  many  good  causes.  Apart 
from  his  early  textbook  he  wrote  a  number  of 
surgical  papers  and  edited  several  cardiothoracic 
works.  Outside  his  professional  work  he  had  a 
capacity  for  gracious  living.  He  was  a  keen 
gardener,  a  fine  draftsman,  and  a  competent 
painter  in  water-colours.  He  had  great  sympathy 
and  kindness,  and  a  quiet  wit. 

Sellors  was  of  medium  height  and  portly 
build,  with  a  fine  Churchillian  head;  his  reading 
spectacles  were  generally  perched  near  the  end  of 
his  nose.  He  was  thrice  married  and  thrice 
widowed.  His  first  wife,  Brenda  Lyell,  died  of 
acute  appendicitis  a  few  weeks  after  their  mar- 
riage in  1928.  She  was  the  daughter  of  William 
Darling  Lyell,  advocate  and  sheriff-substitute  of 
Lanark.  In  1932  he  married  (Dorothy)  Elizabeth, 
daughter  of  John  Chesshire,  businessman.  They 
had  a  son,  Patrick,  who  became  surgeon  oculist 


to  the  queen,  and  a  daughter.  Elizabeth  died  in 
1953  and  in  1955  Sellors  married  his  secretary, 
Marie  Hobson,  who  died  in  1985.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  Martin  Greenwall  or  Grunwald, 
aeronautical  engineer.  Sellors  died  12  September 
1987  in  Parkside  Hospital,  Wimbledon,  of  car- 
cinoma of  the  colon  and  chronic  prostatic 
obstruction. 

[Muni's  Roll,  vol.  viii,  1989;  private  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Reginald  Murley 

SEMPRINI,  (Fernando  Riccardo)  Alberto 
(1908-1990),  pianist  and  conductor,  was  born  27 
March  1908  in  Bath,  the  second  of  three  sons 
(there  were  no  daughters)  of  Arturo  Riccardo 
Fernando  Semprini,  musician,  from  Rimini, 
Italy,  and  his  wife,  Elizabeth  Tillev ,  opera  singer, 
from  Dudley,  Worcestershire.  The  family  settled 
in  Bath  until  Alberto  was  nine,  when  his  father, 
a  horn  player,  was  appointed  librarian  to  the 
Scala  Opera  House,  Milan.  The  boy  was 
intensely  musical  and  won  a  state  scholarship  to 
the  Conserv  atorio  Verdi  to  study  piano,  compo- 
sition, and  conducting.  When  he  was  only  sixteen 
Arturo  Toscanini,  chief  conductor  of  the  Scala, 
auditioned  him  for  the  fiendishly  difficult  orches- 
tral piano  part  in  Igor  Stravinsky's  ballet  Pet- 
roushka  and  gave  him  the  job. 

On  his  vacations  he  played  the  piano  on 
transatlantic  liners,  and  while  in  New  York  was 
enthralled  by  jazz  groups  and  the  popular  con- 
cert orchestra  of  Andre  Kostelanetz.  He  dis- 
covered he  could  play  this  sort  of  repertoire  far 
better  than  most  classically  trained  pianists,  and 
this  seems  to  have  proved  a  decisive  influence  in 
shaping  his  career.  Another  consideration  was  his 
marriage  in  Italy  in  193 1  to  Brunilde  Regarbag- 
nati  and  the  arrival  of  three  sons  to  clothe,  feed, 
and  educate. 

Semprini  left  the  Conserv  atorio  in  1929  with  a 
doctorate  of  music  and  though  he  occasionally 
conducted  at  the  Scala  and  elsewhere,  the  piano 
was  his  first  love.  In  the  1930s  he  and  another 
Italian  pianist  Bormioli  toured  Europe  as  a  pop- 
ular piano  duo,  and  later  he  formed  his  own 
rhythm  orchestra  in  Italy,  with  which  he  made 
records,  broadcasted,  and  played  in  a  number  of 
musical  films.  The  outbreak  of  war  in  1939 
halted  his  career.  He  had  angered  the  Fascist 
authorities  by  playing  western  music  against 
their  orders,  and  though  he  had  dual  Italian  and 
British  citizenship,  both  passports  were  confis- 
cated, obliging  the  family  to  keep  a  low  profile. 
When  eventually  the  Allies  advanced  into  south- 
ern Italy  he  managed  to  get  to  Rome,  where  he 
volunteered  for  ENSA,  the  Services  entertain- 
ments organization,  and  gave  many  front-line 
concerts,  his  piano  on  the  back  of  an  army 
truck. 

Among  his  troop  audiences  was  the  actor 
Michael  Brennan,  who  offered  to  be  his  manager 


405 


Semprini 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


if  he  ever  came  to  England.  But  immediately 
after  the  war  he  went  to  work  and  study  in  Spain, 
where  he  fell  in  love  with  a  young  Spanish 
dancer,  Maria  de  la  Conception  Consuelo  Garcia 
Cardoso,  daughter  of  Generoso  Jose  Garcia 
Inglesias,  house  painter.  Sadly  his  first  marriage 
had  not  survived  the  stresses  of  a  musician's 
peripatetic  life.  He  took  Consuelo  to  England  in 
1949  and  after  his  divorce  in  1952  married  her 
the  same  year.  There  were  two  sons  of  this  happy 
and  enduring  union. 

When  they  arrived  in  England  Brennan 
secured  Semprini  a  BBC  audition.  He  was  imme- 
diately engaged  to  play  in  a  series  of  fifteen- 
minute  programmes  in  the  style  of  the  recently 
deceased  Charlie  Kunz,  a  popular  pianist  whose 
German  name  had  caused  public  resentment. 
The  style  of  Semprini  quickly  took  over,  pleased 
the  listeners,  and  led  to  a  short  programme  with 
orchestra,  for  which  he  chose,  arranged,  and 
orchestrated  all  the  music.  It  was  entitled  Sem- 
prini Serenade,  and  was  a  subtle  blend  of  classical 
pieces  interspersed  with  selections  from  theatre 
and  film  music  and  the  work  of  popular  com- 
posers like  George  Gershwin,  impeccably  per- 
formed and  introduced  quietly  and  economically 
from  the  piano.  Soon  the  programme  stretched 
to  an  hour;  it  remained  on  the  air  for  twenty-five 
years. 

Semprini  appeared  rarely  on  television,  but 
was  a  great  favourite  from  1952  in  the  surviving 
variety  theatres,  sharing  the  bill  with  rising  stars 
like  Peter  *Sellers  and  (Sir)  Harry  Secombe,  and 
touring  the  country  in  a  caravan  pulled  by  an 
ancient  ambulance  that  contained  a  piano  and  a 
long  table  for  doing  orchestrations.  Later,  driv- 
ing his  beloved  Jaguar,  he  gave  many  concerts 
with  a  more  classical  content  both  in  Britain  and 
abroad.  Whenever  possible  he  drove  home 
through  the  night  to  L'Espe'rance,  a  sailing  ship 
converted  into  a  houseboat  at  West  Mersea, 
where  the  family  lived  happily  for  many  years. 

Some  critics  regretted  that  Semprini  did  not 
pursue  a  more  serious  musical  career.  Certainly 
he  could  have  performed  at  the  very  top  of  his 
profession,  but  he  was  master  of  his  genre  and 
millions  of  radio  listeners  and  concert-goers 
loved  his  music.  In  1972  he  was  made  an  officer 
of  the  Order  of  St  John  and  he  was  appointed 
OBE  in  1983 — both  recognitions  of  his  consider- 
able efforts  for  charity.  He  was  a  tall,  dark, 
dignified  man  with  fine  features,  always  immac- 
ulately dressed,  but  his  gravity  was  often  dis- 
pelled by  a  strong  sense  of  humour  and  a 
charming  smile.  He  looked  Italian,  but  he  was  an 
Englishman  at  heart.  He  died  in  Brixham  from 
Alzheimer's  disease,  19  January  1990. 

[Information  from  relatives,  friends,  and  Kathleen 
Davey,  his  personal  assistant  and  music  librarian  for 
many  years;  personal  knowledge.]  Ian  Wallace 


SHACKLETON,  Robert  (1919-1986),  professor 
of  French  literature  and  Bodley's  librarian,  was 
born  in  Todmorden  25  November  1919,  the 
eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  one  daughter 
of  (Robert  William)  Albert  Shackleton,  a  boot 
and  shoe  maker,  and  of  his  wife,  Emily  Sun- 
derland. He  attended  Broomfield  Boys'  School 
and  Todmorden  Secondary  School,  and  subse- 
quently went  to  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  as  a 
scholar  in  modern  languages,  taking  a  first  class 
in  1940.  The  next  five  years  were  spent  in  the 
Royal  Corps  of  Signals,  serving  in  North  Africa 
and  Italy.  In  1946  he  was  elected  the  first  modern 
languages  fellow  at  Brasenose  College,  Oxford. 
The  college  became  the  physical  and  affective 
centre  of  his  life;  he  resided  there,  served  as 
senior  dean  in  the  difficult  postwar  years 
(1954-61),  was  college  librarian  (1948-66),  and 
came  close  to  the  principalship.  An  enthusiastic 
gastronome  and  a  connoisseur  of  wines,  he  was  a 
generous  host  to  both  young  and  old. 

Born  and  bred  in  north  country  nonconform- 
ity, he  was  a  lifelong  Liberal,  taking  an  active 
part  in  politics  early  on  and  standing  for  Parlia- 
ment, unsuccessfully,  at  Blackburn  in  1945.  A 
man  of  unusual  elocution — his  nasal  intonation 
was  a  striking  characteristic — he  was  neverthe- 
less a  good  lecturer.  Factually  based  academic 
research  was,  however,  one  of  his  real  strengths 
and  he  soon  gained  a  considerable  reputation  as 
both  a  scholar  and  an  academic  administrator.  A 
leading  member  of  his  faculty,  he  was  president 
of  the  conference  of  university  teachers  of 
French  in  1958  and  an  editor  of  French  Studies 
from  i960,  and  in  1965  succeeded  Enid  Starkie 
as  university  reader  in  French  literature. 

His  early  edition  of  Bernard  de  Fontenelle's 
Entretiens  sur  la  Pluralite  des  Mondes  (1955), 
linking  his  childhood  love  of  astronomy  with  his 
deep  devotion  to  the  European  Enlightenment, 
was  followed  by  his  magisterial,  if  dry,  critical 
biography  of  Montesquieu  (1961),  which  was 
translated  into  French  in  1977.  Shackleton's 
identification  of  Montesquieu's  different  scribes 
and  the  painstaking  research  behind  this  volume 
contributed  largely  to  the  resurgence  of  Mon- 
tesquieu studies  with  which  his  name  became 
synonymous.  He  took  his  Oxford  D.Litt.  in 
1966.  A  regular  traveller  abroad  and  an  easy 
speaker  of  French  and  Italian,  Shackleton 
became  a  major  figure  in  the  international 
learned  field,  being  president  of  the  International 
Comparative  Literature  Association  (1964-7) 
and  of  the  International  Society  for  Eighteenth- 
Century  Studies  (1975-9)  (where  in  particular  he 
did  much  to  improve  relationships),  and  chair- 
man of  committee  of  the  Voltaire  Foundation 
(from  1983),  the  transfer  of  which  to  Oxford 
University  he  did  much  to  assist.  From  1972  to 
198 1  he  was  a  delegate  of  the  Oxford  University- 
Press. 


406 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Shaw 


An  expert  committee  man,  he  was,  though 
often  of  firm  views,  notably  articulate  in  their 
expression  and  deft  at  either  compromise  or  the 
maintenance  of  an  entrenched  position.  A  fre- 
quenter of  libraries  at  home  and  abroad  and, 
from  early  days  a  bibliophile  and  book  collector, 
he  became  a  curator  of  the  Bodleian  Library  in 
1 96 1  and  in  1965-6  chaired  the  special  Oxford 
committee  on  the  university's  libraries.  Its 
report,  written  at  the  end  of  the  period  of 
postwar  expansion,  foresaw  notable  develop- 
ments in  storage,  co-operation,  and  automation, 
but,  in  the  manner  of  pre-oil  crisis  days,  took 
funding  for  granted.  The  office  of  Bodley's 
librarian  fell  vacant  in  1966  and  Shackleton  was 
elected  to  it.  Retaining  his  rooms  in  Brasenose, 
he  was  active  in  promoting  the  cause  of  the 
Bodleian  and  that  of  sharing  the  labour  and  cost 
of  cataloguing  between  major  libraries  by  using 
automated  techniques.  He  travelled  much  during 
these  years  and  lectured  throughout  the  world. 
Shackleton  was  an  excellent  ambassador  but  less 
effective  as  head  librarian,  in  the  changed  finan- 
cial and  academic  climate  of  the  1970s.  The 
desire  for  a  more  active  participation  in  the 
development  of  the  Bodleian  by  staff,  curators, 
university  administrators,  and  library-  users  did 
not  chime  easily  with  his  autocratic  management 
style.  Already  suffering  from  a  blood  complaint, 
he  resigned  the  librarianship  in  1979  in  favour  of 
a  return  to  the  more  strictly  academic  post  of 
Marshal  Foch  professor  of  French  literature 
(1979-86). 

This  translation  required  removal  from  Bra- 
senose to  All  Souls  and  to  the,  for  him  as  an 
unmarried  man,  difficulties  of  practical  domes- 
tic life.  He  had  built  up  a  renowned  private 
library  and  an  informal  portrait  of  him  by 
Margaret  Foreman  (later  placed  in  the  col- 
lege), standing  in  his  beloved  rooms  in  Brase- 
nose, depicts  the  man  better  than  his  formal 
portrait  by  Sir  William  *Coldstream  in  the 
Bodleian.  His  superlative  Montesquieu  collec- 
tion, the  basis  of  his  1983-4  Lyell  lectures  in 
bibliography,  was  ultimately  bequeathed  to  the 
Bodleian  while  the  rest  of  his  books  were  sold 
to  the  John  Rylands  University  Library  of 
Manchester.  He  was  appointed  CBE  (1986), 
was  a  fellow  of  the  British  Academy  (1966),  of 
which  he  was  publications  secretary  (1974-7), 
and  a  chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honour 
(1982),  and  held  numerous  other  awards, 
including  honorary  degrees  from  Bordeaux 
(1966),  Dublin  (1967),  Manchester  (1980),  and 
Leeds  (1985). 

Shackleton  was  tall  with  a  domed  brow  and 
long  arms,  which  at  times  made  him  appear 
ungainly  in  his  movements.  His  last  professorial 
years  were  clouded  by  illness  and  he  died  in 


Ravello  9  September  1986,  a  few  weeks  before  he 
was  due  to  retire. 

[List  of  publications  in  G.  Barber  and  C.  P.  Courtney 
(eds.),  Enlightenment  Essays  in  Memory  of  Robert  Shack- 
leton, 1988;  Giles  Barber  in  Proceedings  of  the  British 
Academy,  vol.  lxxiii,  1087;  personal  knowledge.] 

Giles  Barber 

SHAW,  Charles  James  Dalrymple,  Baron 
Kilbrandon  (1906-1989),  lord  of  appeal,  was 
born  15  August  1906  in  Martnaham,  near  May- 
bole,  Ayrshire,  the  only  son  and  second  of  three 
children  of  James  Edward  Shaw,  of  High 
Greenan  by  Ayr,  solicitor  and  county  clerk  of 
Ayrshire,  and  his  wife,  Gladys  Elizabeth  Lester. 
He  was  educated  at  Charterhouse,  Balliol  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  and  Edinburgh  University.  He 
obtained  a  second  class  in  philosophy,  politics, 
and  economics  at  Oxford  (1928)  and  an  LL  B  at 
Edinburgh  (1932). 

Shaw  was  called  to  the  Scottish  bar  in  1932. 
By  1939  he  had  a  substantial  junior  practice,  had 
been  commissioned  as  a  territorial  officer  in  the 
Royal  Artillery,  and  had  sustained  a  knee  injury 
while  skiing,  which  made  him  lame  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  In  1939  he  was  mobilized  and  served  in 
the  Royal  Artillery,  mostly  on  the  staff  in  the 
rank  of  major  (from  1941),  until  the  end  of 
World  War  II  in  1945.  On  his  return  to  the  bar 
his  practice  rapidly  increased.  He  took  silk  in 
1949.  It  then  became  clear  that,  despite  a  ten- 
dency to  be  unbusinesslike  and  absent-minded, 
he  was  destined  for  the  highest  appointments. 
(He  was  liable  to  be  found  in  Kilbrandon  on  the 
coast  of  Argyll,  having  forgotten  a  professional 
engagement  in  Edinburgh.  The  unaccountably 
missing  brief  would  be  found  among  his  much- 
loved  music.) 

In  1957  he  was  elected  dean  of  the  Faculty  of 
Advocates,  the  highest  honour  which  can  be 
conferred  on  a  member  of  the  Scots  bar.  As  dean, 
Shaw  was  an  anxious  guardian  of  the  Faculty's 
traditions.  In  May  1959  he  was  appointed  to  the 
bench  of  the  Court  of  Session,  taking  the  judicial 
title  of  Lord  Kilbrandon.  From  the  outset 
Kilbrandon  displayed  the  highest  judicial 
qualities — complete  impartiality,  patience  and 
courtesy,  legal  scholarship,  and  a  determination 
not  to  be  prevented  from  doing  justice  by  any 
rules  of  mere  procedural  law.  His  judicial  career 
in  Scotland  ended  with  his  appointment  in  1965 
as  chairman  of  the  Scottish  Law  Commission,  for 
he  retained  that  office  until  his  elevation  to  the 
House  of  Lords  in  1971,  as  a  life  peer,  privy 
councillor,  and  lord  of  appeal  in  ordinary.  As 
chairman  Kilbrandon  found  in  Sir  Leslie  (later 
Baron)  Scarman,  the  first  chairman  of  the  Eng- 
lish Law  Commission,  a  kindred  spirit.  Kil- 
brandon was  also  a  member  of  the  royal 
commission  on  the  constitution  from  1969  to 


407 


Shaw 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


1972  and  its  chairman  in  1972-3.  The  commis- 
sion's report  was  a  major  contribution  to  the 
contemporary  debate  on  devolution.  In  1969 
Kilbrandon  was  elected  an  honorary  fellow  of 
Balliol,  a  distinction  which  he  particularly  cher- 
ished, and  in  1974  he  was  appointed  visitor,  a 
position  he  held  until  1986.  He  became  an 
honorary  LL  D  of  Aberdeen  (1965)  and  an 
honorary  D.Sc.  of  Edinburgh  (1970). 

Kilbrandon's  elevation  to  the  Lords  was  pre- 
dictable. For  three  years  he  sat  as  the  junior 
Scottish  colleague  on  the  judicial  committee  of 
the  octogenarian  Baron  *Reid.  In  an  apt  obituary 
of  Reid,  Kilbrandon  wrote  'Counsel  found  him  a 
formidable  figure,  and  so  did  P.  Kilbrandon,  on 
the  other  hand,  did  not  have  it  in  him  to  be  what 
Ronald  *Knox  called  an  'awful  presence',  unless 
dealing  with  someone  whose  conduct  gave  him 
no  option.  In  a  line  of  Scotsmen  who  have 
become  lords  of  appeal  in  ordinary  Kilbrandon 
was  sui  generis.  Large  of  frame,  heart,  and  mind, 
he  had  the  traditional  Scottish  regard  for  legal 
principles  but  he  had  more.  He  had  the  breadth 
of  outlook,  culture,  and  philosophical  learning  of 
James  *Dalrymple,  first  Viscount  Stair,  the 
father  of  Scots  law.  Endowed  with  a  verbal 
dexterity,  analogous  to  the  cartoonist's  art,  he 
was  able  to  compress  profound  and  novel  ideas 
into  a  synoptic  phrase.  In  his  Hamlyn  lectures 
(1966)  he  derided  the  civil  jury  as  a  mere  'bingo 
session'.  His  observation  in  Customs  and  Excise 
v.  Thorn  Electrical,  Weekly  Law  Reports,  vol.  i, 
1975,  that  'a  modern  Hampden  would  in  many 
quarters  be  pilloried  as  a  tax  evader',  was  worthy 
of  F.  X.  J.  *Russell,  Baron  Russell  of  Killowen. 
Kilbrandon's  most  lasting  memorial  may  be  the 
Social  Work  (Scotland)  Act  (1968),  which  arose 
from  his  report  for  the  departmental  committee 
on  the  treatment  of  children  and  young  persons 
in  Scotland  (1964).  Kilbrandon  retired  as  a  lord 
of  appeal  in  ordinary  in  1976. 

Kilbrandon  was  an  outstandingly  handsome 
man.  Over  six  feet  in  height,  he  was  a  striking 
figure  in  his  Inverness  cape,  limping  at  a  smart 
pace  from  Westminster  to  Gray's  Inn,  where  he 
lived  during  term.  He  was  elected  an  honorary 
bencher  in  1971.  Until  almost  seventy  he 
retained  a  boyish  appearance  enhanced  by  his 
thick,  wavy  hair.  In  old  age  he  enjoyed  a  peaceful 
retirement  in  the  beautiful  setting  of  Kilbrandon 
House  on  the  island  of  Seil  in  Argyll.  The 
essential  Kilbrandon  was  the  man  of  religion 
whose  faith  pervaded  his  life  and  outlook.  He 
liked  to  speak  of  himself  as  a  Catholic  although 
he  was,  denominationally,  a  Scottish  Episcopa- 
lian of  High  Church  outlook.  One  who  knew  him 
well  described  him  as  'a  practising  Christian'. 
This  was  apt.  His  amiability,  sweetness  of  char- 
acter, freedom  from  prejudice,  and  kindness 
were  all  exceptional. 

In  1937  he  married  (Ruth)  Caroline,  youngest 


daughter  of  Frank  Morrison  Seafield  Grant, 
landowner,  of  Knockie,  Whitebridge,  Inverness. 
They  had  two  sons  and  three  daughters.  Kil- 
brandon died  from  heart  disease  in  Kilbrandon 
House,  Balvicar,  by  Oban,  Argyll,  10  September 
1989. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

D.  W.  R.  Brand 

SHAW,  Glencairn  Alexander  Byam  ('Glen') 
(1904- 1 986),  actor  and  director  of  theatre  and 
opera.  [See  Byam  Shaw,  Glencairn  Alexan- 
der.] 

SHEEHAN,  Harold  Leeming  (1900- 1988), 
expert  on  the  pathology  of  pregnancy,  was  born 
4  August  1900  in  Carlisle,  Cumberland,  the 
second  of  six  sons  and  second  of  thirteen  chil- 
dren of  Patrick  Sheehan,  general  medical  practi- 
tioner, and  his  wife  Eliza,  daughter  of  Francis 
Leeming,  a  businessman  in  the  cotton  trade.  He 
was  educated  at  Carlisle  Grammar  School  and 
the  University  of  Manchester,  where  he  gradu- 
ated MB,  Ch.B.,  with  second-class  honours,  in 
1 92 1.  His  father  died  in  191 9  and  as  soon  as 
Harold  qualified  he  went  back  to  Carlisle  to  assist 
his  elder  brother  in  the  family  medical  practice 
for  the  next  six  years. 

In  1927  he  returned  to  Manchester  University 
as  a  demonstrator,  and  later  as  a  lecturer,  in  the 
department  of  pathology,  where  his  researches 
into  renal  function  earned  him  the  degree  of 
MD,  with  a  gold  medal,  in  193 1  and  the  M.Sc.  in 
1932.  He  gained  a  Rockefeller  medical  fellowship 
in  1934  and  spent  a  year  on  further  studies  of  the 
kidney  in  the  department  of  pharmacology  at  the 
Johns  Hopkins  Medical  School  in  Baltimore, 
Maryland,  USA,  after  which  he  was  appointed 
director  of  research  at  Glasgow  Royal  Maternity 
Hospital  (1935-46).  During  the  next  five  years  he 
established  himself  as  an  international  expert  on 
the  pathology-  of  pregnancy  by  making  important 
contributions  on  disease  of  the  liver,  brain,  heart, 
and  kidneys  in  pregnancy  and,  in  particular,  on 
the  importance  of  shock  and  haemorrhage  in 
causing  necrosis  of  the  anterior  lobe  of  the 
pituitary  gland. 

Since  he  was  a  Territorial  Army  officer,  on  the 
declaration  of  war  in  1939  he  was  mobilized  and 
graded  as  a  specialist  in  pathology,  with  the  rank 
of  major,  in  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps.  He 
served  in  Britain  until  January  1944  and  was  then 
posted  to  Italy,  with  the  rank  of  lieutenant- 
colonel.  In  January  1945  he  became  a  full  colonel 
and  was  director  of  pathology  to  the  central 
Mediterranean  forces  until  the  end  of  the  war. 
He  was  mentioned  in  dispatches. 

In  1946  he  was  appointed  to  the  chair  of 
pathology  in  the  University  of  Liverpool.  Stu- 
dents found  him  informative,  entertaining,  and 
memorable;     he    challenged     much     accepted 


408 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Shinwell 


dogma.  His  well-deserved  reputation  as  an  exact- 
ing examiner,  however,  made  him  respected 
rather  than  popular.  He  continued  his  researches 
and  accepted  many  invitations  to  lecture  abroad. 
Gradually  the  effects  of  post-partum  necrosis  of 
the  pituitary  gland  came  to  be  known  as  Shee- 
han's  syndrome.  After  his  retirement  Sheehan 
produced  two  books.  Pathology  of  Toxaemia  of 
Pregnancy  (with  J.  B.  Lynch,  1973)  and  Post- 
partum Hypopituitarism  (with  J.  C  Davis, 
1982). 

In  1040  Sheehan  became  a  D.Sc.  of  Man- 
chester University.  In  1941  he  gained  member- 
ship of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  of 
London  and  he  was  promoted  to  fellowship  in 
1947.  He  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Obstetricians  and  Gynaecologists  (1949)  and  a 
founder  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of  Patho- 
logists (1964).  His  foreign  honours  included  an 
honorary  MD  from  the  University  of  Szeged, 
Hungary,  in  1982.  He  was  an  honorary  member 
of  endocrinological  societies  in  Argentina,  Chile, 
Romania,  and  Hungary.  He  was  also  an  honorary 
fellow  of  the  Obstetrical  and  Gynaecological 
Societies  of  America  and  of  Belgium,  while  in 
France  he  was  a  foreign  associate  of  the  National 
Academy  of  Medicine. 

Physically,  though  not  obese,  he  looked  portly 
and  stooped  slightly.  He  wore  formal  suits,  even 
at  informal  times,  but  never  looked  smart.  His 
hair  became  white  at  an  early  age,  but  his 
eyebrows  remained  black  until  he  was  old.  When 
he  was  excited  or  emphatic  his  eyes  would  bulge 
slightly.  He  was  enthusiastic,  talkative,  argu- 
mentative, and  self-confident.  He  smoked  his 
pipe  while  he  worked — even  in  the  autopsy 
room.  He  ate  and  drank  with  discrimination  and 
was  an  excellent  host.  He  was  a  strong  swimmer 
and  a  successful  gardener.  His  secrecy  about  his 
personal  affairs  was  notorious,  but  he  was  cer- 
tainly affluent  when  his  position  had  become 
established. 

In  1934  he  married  Eve  Suzette  Gertrude 
(died  1986),  daughter  of  (Martin)  Henry  Potter, 
theatre  manager.  She  was  a  good  linguist, 
assisted  in  the  preparation  of  Sheehan's  publica- 
tions, and  travelled  abroad  with  him.  She  was 
rather  reserved,  but  her  penetrating  remarks  gave 
balance  to  her  husband's  exuberance.  They  had 
no  children.  Sheehan  died  in  Kendal,  Cumbria, 
25  October  1988,  having  become  immobile  due 
to  a  fracture  of  his  hip  in  January  of  that  year. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

A.  H.  Crlickshank 

SHINWELL,  Emanuel,  Baron  Shinwell 
(1884- 1 986),  politician,  was  born  18  October 
1884  in  Spitalfields,  east  London,  the  eldest  in  a 
family  of  thirteen  children  of  Samuel  Shinwell,  a 
clothing  manufacturer  of  Polish  Jewish  origin, 
and  his  Dutch  wife,  Rose  Konigswinter.  The 


family  moved  to  Glasgow  but  Shinwell  left 
school  at  the  age  of  eleven  to  be  apprenticed  to 
the  tailoring  trade.  He  joined  his  first  trade 
union,  the  Amalgamated  Society  of  Clothing 
Operatives,  at  the  age  of  seventeen  and  was 
elected  to  Glasgow  Trades  Council  in  1906.  He 
was  to  serve  twice  as  its  president.  He  became  an 
early  member  of  the  Independent  Labour  party 
and  was  an  active  socialist  crusader.  In  191 1  he 
was  prominent  on  the  Clyde  during  the  national 
dock  strike. 

He  continued  his  militant  union  activities 
during  the  war  and  was  wrongly  alleged  to  have 
been  involved  in  the  disturbances  in  George 
Square,  Glasgow,  between  striking  workers  and 
the  police  on  'Red  Friday'  (31  January  1919).  As 
a  result,  he  spent  over  five  months  in  Calton  gaol, 
Edinburgh.  He  was  now  turning  to  thoughts  of  a 
political  career.  In  the  191 8  general  election,  he 
stood  unsuccessfully  as  Labour  candidate  for 
Linlithgow  (West  Lothian);  in  1922  he  was 
elected  to  Parliament  there. 

He  served  as  parliamentary  secretary  to  the 
mines  department  in  the  first  Labour  govern- 
ment of  Ramsay  *MacDonald  in  1924.  Defeated 
in  the  1924  general  election,  he  was  re-elected  in 
a  by-election  in  1928  and  served  in  junior  offices 
in  the  second  Labour  government,  as  financial 
secretary  to  the  War  Office  in  1929-30  and  again 
in  the  mines  department  in  1930-1.  He  had  an 
immense  admiration  for  MacDonald  and  tried  in 
vain  to  persuade  him  not  to  head  the  "national" 
government  in  August  1931.  In  the  subsequent 
general  election,  Shinwell  was  defeated  again. 

He  now  decided  to  challenge  MacDonald 
direcdy  and  in  the  1935  general  election  hand- 
somely defeated  his  old  leader  at  Seaham  Har- 
bour. After  a  redistribution  of  seats,  the 
constituency  was  later  renamed  Easington.  Shin- 
well was  always  a  pugnacious  member  of  Parlia- 
ment. In  1938  he  caused  a  sensation  by  striking  a 
Conservative,  Commander  Robert  Bower  (as  it 
happened,  a  former  naval  boxing  champion), 
when  the  latter  made  a  hostile  interjection  in 
debate.  During  the  war  years  Shinwell  was  a 
vigorous,  though  always  patriotic,  critic  of  (Sir) 
Winston  *Churchill's  coalition  government.  He 
and  the  Tory  sixth  Earl  *Winterton  were  popu- 
larly christened  'Arsenic  and  Old  Lace'.  Shinwell 
was  also  prominent  in  Labour's  policy-making 
committees,  notably  those  dealing  with  coal  and 
energy. 

When  Labour  won  the  1945  general  election, 
Attlee  appointed  Shinwell  to  the  cabinet  as 
minister  of  fuel  and  power.  Here  he  achieved  the 
nationalization  of  coal  in  1946  and  also  negotiated 
the  so-called  miners'  charter  with  the  National 
Union  of  Mineworkers.  He  caused  much  con- 
troversy by  declaring  that  the  middle  class  was 
"not  worth  a  tinker's  cuss'.  He  served  as  chair- 
man of  the  Labour  party  in  1947-8.  However, 


409 


Shinwell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


his  reputation  slumped  during  the  acute  fuel 
crisis  of  January-March  1947,  at  a  time  of  an 
exceptionally  severe  winter.  He  was  accused  of 
complacency  and  failing  to  plan  to  deal  with  basic 
problems  of  coal  production.  That  October, 
much  to  his  chagrin,  Shinwell  was  demoted  by 
Artlee  to  the  War  Office,  outside  the  cabinet. 
Hugh  *Gaitskell  took  his  place  and  thereby 
earned  Shinwell's  undying  enmity,  reinforced  by 
Gaitskell's  public  school  background.  Shinwell 
was  also  attacked  by  younger  men  like  James 
(later  Baron)  Callaghan  for  being  less  than  ardent 
over  nationalization.  However,  Shinwell  proved 
to  be  a  vigorous  war  minister,  in  tune  with  army 
sentiment,  and  Attlee  reappointed  him  to  the 
cabinet  in  March  1950  as  minister  of  defence. 
Here  Shinwell  dealt  energetically  with  the  emer- 
gency in  Malaya  and  war  in  Korea.  In  the 
summer  of  195 1  he  urged  the  cabinet  to  send 
British  troops  to  protect  the  oil  refineries  at 
Abadan,  which  the  Persian  government  had 
nationalized,  but  he  was  successfully  resisted  by 
other  ministers. 

After  Labour  fell  from  office  in  1951,  Shinwell 
lost  ground.  He  was  defeated  in  elections  for  the 
party  national  executive  in  1952  and  left  the 
shadow  cabinet  in  1955.  Gaitskell  was  elected 
party  leader  that  year;  Shinwell  had  backed  his 
fellow  veteran,  Herbert  *Morrison  (later  Baron 
Morrison  of  Lambeth).  However,  despite  being 
in  his  seventies,  he  continued  to  play  a  lively  role 
in  politics.  He  changed  his  stance  on  nuclear 
weapons  and  campaigned  against  the  stationing 
of  US  Polaris  submarines  at  Holy  Loch.  The 
election  of  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of 
Rievaulx)  as  party  leader  after  Gaitskell's  death 
gave  Shinwell  new  opportunities.  Although  now 
eighty,  he  was  appointed  by  Wilson  as  chairman 
of  the  Parliamentary  Labour  party  in  October 
1964,  and  worked  hard  to  secure  support  for  a 
government  whose  initial  majority  was  only 
three.  However,  he  came  into  conflict  with  min- 
isters from  1966,  especially  with  the  equally 
aggressive  foreign  secretary,  George  *Brown 
(later  Baron  George-Brown),  since  Shinwell  was 
a  vehement  enemy  of  British  entry  into  the 
European  Common  Market.  He  resigned  as 
party  chairman  in  1967;  in  1970  he  became  a  life 
peer. 

His  career  was  still  far  from  over.  He  became 
chairman  of  the  all-party  Lords'  defence  study 
group.  He  voted  against  his  own  Labour  govern- 
ment in  1976  and  in  March  1982  resigned  the 
party  whip  in  protest  against  left-wing  militancy, 
though  he  remained  a  Labour  party  member.  He 
was  now  a  legendary  figure,  and  his  hundredth 
birthday  was  celebrated  in  the  House  of  Lords  in 
1984  (during  a  national  miners'  strike)  with 
considerable  enthusiasm. 

With  his  stocky  figure  and  Glaswegian  accent, 
'Manny'  Shinwell  was  pugnacious  in  Parliament 


and  on  the  platform.  Appropriately,  his  enthu- 
siasms included  professional  boxing.  Though  not 
religious,  he  was  also  much  involved  with  the 
Jewish  community.  His  performance  in  office 
was  marred  by  the  1947  fuel  crisis,  while  as  a 
service  minister  he  showed  a  jingoism  some 
thought  inappropriate.  However,  he  had  the  gift 
of  striking  up  friendships  across  the  spectrum, 
including  with  the  first  Viscount  *Montgomery 
of  Alamein  and  the  editor  of  the  Sunday  Express, 
Sir  John  Junor.  He  was  kindly  towards  the 
young.  He  was  a  major  personality  over  sixty 
years,  and  a  notable  pioneer  in  Labour's  long 
march  to  power  in  1945.  He  wrote  several 
autobiographical  works,  of  which  Conflict  With- 
out Malice  (1955)  is  the  most  important.  He  was 
married  (and  widowed)  three  times.  In  1903  he 
married  Fay  ('Fanny')  Freeman  (died  1954);  they 
had  two  sons  and  a  daughter.  In  1956  he  married 
Dinah  (died  1971),  daughter  of  Carol  Ludwig 
Meyer,  of  Denmark.  In  1972  he  married  Sarah, 
former  wife  of  Alfred  Hurst  and  daughter  of 
Solomon  Stungo.  She  died  in  1977.  Shinwell 
himself  died  8  May  1986  at  the  age  of  10 1,  at  his 
St  John's  Wood  flat  in  London,  and  was  cre- 
mated at  Golders  Green  crematorium. 

[Emanuel  Shinwell,  Conflict  Without  Malice,  1955,  I've 
Lived  Through  It  All,  1973,  Lead  with  the  Left:  my  First 
Ninety-Six  Years,  1981,  and  Shinwell  Talking,  tape- 
recorded  conversations  edited  by  John  Dexat,  1984; 
The  Times  and  Guardian,  9  May  1986;  Dalton  papers, 
London  School  of  Economics;  Gaitskell  papers,  Nuf- 
field College,  Oxford;  Labour  party  archives,  Man- 
chester; private  information.]  Kenneth  O.  Morgan 

SHOTTON,  Frederick  William  (1906-1990), 
geologist,  was  born  8  October  1906  in  Exhall, 
near  Coventry,  the  younger  child  and  only  son  of 
Frederick  John  Shotton,  an  industrialist  special- 
izing in  drop  forged  products,  who  was  manager 
of  the  Albion  Drop  Forging  Company  of  Cov- 
entry, and  his  wife,  Ada  Brooks.  He  was  edu- 
cated at  Bablake  School  in  Coventry  and  Sidney 
Sussex  College,  Cambridge.  He  obtained  first 
classes  in  both  parts  (1926  and  1927)  of  the 
natural  sciences  tripos  (geology),  and  was 
awarded  the  Harkness  scholarship  in  1927.  In 
1929  he  was  appointed  assistant  lecturer  at  the 
University  of  Birmingham,  where  he  remained 
until  returning  to  Cambridge  as  a  lecturer  in 
1936.  After  war  service  he  became  Sorby  pro- 
fessor of  geology  at  Sheffield  University  in  1945 
and  in  1949  he  took  up  the  post  of  Lapworth 
professor  of  geology  at  Birmingham  University, 
from  which  he  retired  in  1974.  He  was  vice- 
principal  of  Birmingham  University  in  1965- 

Shotton  made  contributions  in  three  main 
areas:  as  a  military  geologist,  as  a  Quaternary 
stratigrapher  and  geomorphologist,  and  as  a  stu- 
dent of  the  Mesozoic  and  Palaeozoic.  His  career 
as  a  military  geologist  started  in  1938  when  he 


410 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Sieghart 


joined  the  Army  Officers'  Emergency  Reserve. 
He  was  called  up  in  May  1940  and  commissioned 
into  the  Royal  Engineers.  He  took  responsibility 
for  geological  activities  in  North  Africa  and  the 
Middle  East  and  was  particularly  concerned  with 
the  provision  of  water  supplies.  Indeed,  the 
success  of  the  advance  from  El  Alamein  owed 
much  to  Shotton's  hydrological  studies  in 
parched  desert  terrain.  In  1943  Shotton,  now  a 
major,  was  recalled  to  Britain  as  geological 
adviser  on  the  staff  of  the  chief  engineer  at  the 
headquarters  of  21st  Army  Group  under  the 
command  of  Sir  Bernard  'Montgomery  (later 
first  Viscount  Montgomery  of  Alamein).  There 
he  worked  on  the  assessment  of  the  character  of 
the  invasion  beaches  prior  to  Operation  Overlord 
and,  inter  alia,  cross-country  mobility  along  the 
line  of  advance  towards  the  Rhine.  He  was  three 
times  mentioned  in  dispatches.  After  demobiliza- 
tion he  retained  his  links  with  the  army  and  acted 
as  the  geological  adviser  to  the  chief  scientist 
(army)  until  the  post  was  disbanded  in  1970. 

Shotton's  career  as  a  Quaternary  scientist  was 
an  important  one  and  dominated  the  last  three 
decades  of  his  life.  At  Birmingham  he  created 
one  of  the  outstanding  British  centres  for  Qua- 
ternary research,  establishing  a  radiocarbon  dat- 
ing laboratory  and  a  renowned  centre  for  the 
study  of  Quaternary  beetles.  He  helped  to  launch 
the  Quaternary  Field  Study  Group  (eventually 
the  Quaternary  Research  Association)  in  1964 
and  presided  at  the  International  Quaternary 
Association  (INQUA)  in  1977.  He  made  funda- 
mental contributions  to  the  study  of  Quaternary 
sediments  and  land-forms  in  the  English  mid- 
lands and  was  the  editor  of  (and  contributed  to) 
British  Quaternary  Studies  (1977).  With  charac- 
teristic vigour  and  forthrightness  he  argued  and 
debated  the  issues  until  the  end;  he  was  one  of 
the  physical  and  intellectual  giants  of  British 
Quaternary  geology. 

As  a  mainstream  geologist  Shotton  wrote 
extensively  on  the  stratigraphy,  structures,  and 
sedimentology  of  a  range  of  rocks,  particularly 
from  the  English  midlands.  Especially  important 
was  his  work  on  the  Bunter  Sandstones,  for 
which  he  reconstructed  palaeo-wind  patterns 
from  aeolian  cross  stratification.  As  head  of  the 
geology  department  at  Birmingham  University 
he  introduced  both  geophysics  and  hydrogeology 
into  the  curriculum  and  instituted  M.Sc.  courses 
in  them. 

Shotton  was  appointed  MBE  in  1945.  He 
became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  (1956),  and 
president  of  the  Geological  Society  of  London 
(1964-6),  Section  C  of  the  British  Association 
for  the  Advancement  of  Science  (1961-2),  and 
INQUA.  He  was  awarded  honorary  membership 
of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  (1970),  the  Prestwich 
medal   of  the   Geological    Society   of  London 


(1954),  and  the  Stopes  medal  of  the  Geologists' 
Association  (1967). 

Shotton  was  large,  bespectacled,  and  a  smoker. 
In  1930  he  married  Alice  Louise,  daughter  of 
John  Linnett,  a  draper  from  Coventry;  they  had 
two  daughters.  She  died  in  1979  and  in  Sep- 
tember 1983  he  married  a  widow,  Lucille  Fran- 
ces Bailey,  daughter  of  David  Ray  Marteson, 
chief  accountant  of  the  Spokane,  Portland,  and 
Seattle  Railway  in  Portland,  Oregon.  Her  career 
was  in  psychology  and  education.  Shotton  died 
21  July  1990  in  the  East  Birmingham  Hospital. 

[M.  S.  Rosenbaum  in  Royal  Engineers  Journal,  vol.  civ 
(3),  1990,  pp.  289-90;  P.  Worsley  in  Proceedings  of  the 
Geologists'  Association  of  London,  vol.  cii,  1991,  pp. 
322-3;  E.  P.  F.  Rose  and  M.  S.  Rosenbaum,  'British 
Military  Geologists:  through  the  Second  World  War  to 
the  End  of  the  Cold  War',  ibid.,  vol.  civ,  1993,  pp. 
95-108;  Russell  Coope  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxx,  1994;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]  AS.  Got  die 

SIEGHART,  (Henry  Laurence)  Paul  (Alex- 
ander) (1927-1988),  law  reformer,  was  born  22 
February  1927  in  Vienna,  the  only  child  of  Ernst 
Alexander  and  his  wife  Marguerite,  daughter 
of  Rudolph  Sieghart.  Following  his  parents' 
divorce  in  about  1930,  his  mother  resumed  her 
maiden  name  for  herself  and  her  son.  Sieghart 
came  from  a  remarkable  background.  His  grand- 
parents were  Jewish  by  birth  but  had  converted 
to  Catholicism.  He  was  brought  up  as  a  pious 
Roman  Catholic,  unaware  of  his  Jewish  ancestry 
until  1938.  His  maternal  grandfather  entered  the 
Austro-Hungarian  civil  service  and  became  chef 
de  cabinet  to  the  Emperor  Franz  Josef.  Sieghart's 
mother  was  the  first  woman  to  obtain  a  doctorate 
of  law  at  Vienna  University. 

In  January  1939  Sieghart  (knowing  no  Eng- 
lish) and  his  mother  fled  to  England  from  Aus- 
tria. After  one  unhappy  term  at  Harrow  he 
moved  to  Berkhamsted  School.  He  went  on  to 
read  mathematics  at  University  College  London, 
but  decided  to  leave  without  taking  a  degree, 
believing  that  he  had  not  done  enough  work  to 
obtain  the  outstanding  result  of  which  he  was 
capable.  After  a  succession  of  short-term  and 
very  varied  jobs,  Sieghart  decided  to  read  for  the 
bar,  to  which  he  was  called  by  Gray's  Inn  in 
1953.  He  was  talent-spotted  by  (Sir)  John  •Fos- 
ter, who  invited  him  to  join  his  chambers. 
Sieghart  quickly  developed  an  enormous  com- 
mercial and  tax  practice,  but — probably  because 
he  had  made  enemies  among  the  judiciary — his 
first  application  for  silk  was  rejected  in  1966.  He 
promptly  quit  the  bar. 

Thereafter  Sieghart  earned  money  as  a  con- 
sultant and  arbitrator,  but  devoted  most  of  his 
time  and  energy  to  the  advancement  of  human 
rights.  Foster  had  introduced  Sieghart  to  the  law 


411 


Sieghart 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


reform  organization,  Justice.  This  became  his 
main  forum  and  he  chaired  its  executive  commit- 
tee from  1978  until  shortly  before  his  death. 
Sieghart  was  almost  single-handedly  responsible 
for  the  enactment  of  the  Rehabilitation  of 
Offenders  Act  (1974).  He  wrote  and  lectured 
frequently  on  human  rights.  His  book,  The 
International  Law  of  Human  Rights  (1983),  was  a 
masterly  analysis  of  the  principal  international 
human  rights  instruments.  The  Lawful  Rights  of 
Mankind  (1985),  aimed  at  a  less  expert  reader- 
ship, was  also  an  outstanding  book.  Sieghart 
became  a  governor  of  the  British  Institute  of 
Human  Rights  in  1974  and  a  trustee  of  the 
European  Human  Rights  Foundation  in  1980. 
The  quickness  of  his  mind,  breadth  of  his 
intellectual  interests,  skill  in  argument,  and 
enthusiasm  for  his  causes  made  Sieghart  a  lead- 
ing contributor  to  the  development  of  human 
rights  law  both  in  Britain  and  beyond. 

Sieghart  was  fascinated  by  many  aspects  of 
science,  including  computers  and  nuclear  energy, 
and  by  medical  ethics.  He  linked  these  interests 
with  his  concern  for  human  rights  by  founding 
the  Council  for  Science  and  Society  in  1972  and 
by  his  publications  Privacy  and  Computers  (1986) 
and  Plutonium  and  Liberty  (a  Justice  report, 
1978).  He  pushed  the  Home  Office  into  setting 
up  the  committee  (of  which  he  was  an  influential 
member)  which  resulted  in  the  Data  Protection 
Act  of  1984. 

Although  not  devout,  Sieghart  retained  close 
links  with  the  Roman  Catholic  church  and  was  a 
member  of  the  hierarchy's  Commission  on  Inter- 
national Justice  and  Peace  (1976-80).  One  of  his 
last  acts  was  to  address  a  Vatican  conference, 
attended  by  the  pope,  on  human  rights.  He  was 
a  regular  contributor  to  the  Tablet  and  a  trustee 
of  the  Tablet  Trust  (from  1976).  Sieghart  proved 
to  be  a  superb  television  performer  as  the  moder- 
ator of  discussion  programmes.  One  of  his  pro- 
grammes won  a  Royal  Television  Society  award. 
He  was  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of  Arts  and 
a  freeman  of  the  City  of  London. 

Gaunt,  beak-nosed,  a  chain  smoker  (he  died  of 
lung  cancer),  Sieghart  aroused  strong  personal 
reactions.  He  could  be  difficult  and  self-centred, 
but  he  could  also  exercise  a  compelling  fascina- 
tion. In  1954  he  married  Rosemary,  daughter  of 
Commander  Charles  E.  Aglionby,  DSO,  of  the 
Royal  Navy.  She  died  of  cancer  in  1956,  leaving 
Sieghart  with  an  infant  son  and  daughter.  In 
1959  he  married  Felicity  Anne  Olga  Howard, 
daughter  of  Alfred  Max  Baer,  chairman  of  Rio 
Tinto  Zinc,  with  whom  he  had  a  further  son  and 
daughter.  Sieghart  died  in  Islington  12  Decem- 
ber 1988,  shortly  after  returning  home  from  a 
dinner  given  by  Justice  in  his  honour. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

William  Goodhart 


SILKIN,  John  Ernest  (1923-1987),  solicitor  and 
Labour  MP,  was  born  18  March  1923  in  Lon- 
don, the  third  and  youngest  son  (there  were  no 
daughters)  of  Lewis  *Silkin  (later  first  Baron 
Silkin),  solicitor,  who  became  minister  of  town 
and  country  planning  in  the  Labour  government 
of  1945-51,  and  his  wife,  Rosa  Neft.  It  was  a 
Jewish,  intellectual,  Labour  family,  and  his 
brother  Samuel  *Silkin  (later  Baron  Silkin  of 
Dulwich),  the  second  son,  became  a  somewhat 
controversial  attorney-general  in  the  Labour 
governments  of  1974-9.  John  Silkin  was  edu- 
cated at  Dulwich  College  and  for  a  short  period 
at  the  University  College  of  Wales,  Cardiff, 
before  going  to  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge,  where 
he  obtained  a  second  class  (division  I)  in  part  ii  of 
the  law  tripos  in  1942.  He  was  then  called  up  for 
the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve.  He  became  a 
lieutenant-commander  in  the  intelligence  branch 
and  saw  service  in  the  Far  East.  On  demobiliza- 
tion he  entered  the  family  firm  of  solicitors.  He 
was  admitted  a  solicitor  in  1950. 

His  first  attempt  to  enter  Parliament  in  the 
Labour  interest  was  in  the  general  election  of 
1950  for  the  London  constituency  of  St  Mary- 
lebone.  It  was  a  hopeless  seat  for  any  Labour 
candidate.  Having  unsuccessfully  contested  West 
Woolwich  in  195 1  and  South  Nottingham  in 
1959,  Silkin  finally  entered  the  House  of  Com- 
mons in  July  1963  for  the  south  London  con- 
stituency of  Deptford,  and  very  soon  began  to 
move  upwards  within  the  Parliamentary  Labour 
party.  In  1966  he  became  chief  whip  in  the 
government  of  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wil- 
son of  Rievaulx),  a  position  which  he  filled  with 
an  agreeable  competence  until  1969,  at  a  time 
when  Labour  had  a  majority  of  only  three.  He 
was  deputy  leader  of  the  House  of  Commons  in 
1968-9  and  minister  of  public  building  and 
works  in  1969-70.  It  was  in  this  period  that  he 
became  close  to  Richard  *Crossman,  whose  dia- 
ries for  these  years  offer  a  favourable  commen- 
tary on  Silkin's  personality  and  political  skills. 

In  the  last  Wilson  government  of  1974-6 
Silkin  was  given  the  office  of  minister  for  plan- 
ning and  local  government.  It  was  not  a  very 
happy  appointment  and  in  1976  he  was  moved  to 
the  Ministry  of  Agriculture,  where  he  was  much 
more  successful.  During  the  years  to  1979  he 
became  well  known  through  extensive  press 
coverage  of  his  disputes  with  the  Brussels  offi- 
cials of  the  European  community.  Silkin's  own 
personal  politics  were  now  directly  involved.  He 
belonged  to  the  left  of  the  Parliamentary  Labour 
party,  which  clustered  around  the  journal  Trib- 
une. In  foreign  affairs  he  was  a  unilateralist  on  the 
issue  of  the  atom  bomb,  and  a  vigorous  opponent 
of  Britain's  entry  into  the  European  community. 
His  tenure  at  the  Ministry  of  Agriculture  was 
notable  for  the  tough  stance  he  took  on  European 
matters,  using  a  strongly  nationalist  approach  to 


412 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Silkin 


the  much  debated  issues  of  fishing  rights,  and 
agricultural  policies  in  general.  His  public  quar- 
rels with  Brussels  greatly  extended  his  political 
image  among  the  British  electorate.  His  general 
opposition  to  the  European  Economic  Commu- 
nity was  based  upon  his  acceptance  of  what  was 
known  at  the  time  as  'the  alternative  economic 
policy':  import  controls  and  the  protection  of 
Britain's  industrial  base,  a  withdrawal  from 
Europe,  and  a  renegotiation  of  the  terms  for  a 
possible  future  entry. 

The  Labour  party  lost  the  general  election  of 
1979  and  a  year  later,  after  James  Callaghan  (later 
Baron  Callaghan  of  Cardiff)  had  resigned  from 
the  leadership  of  the  party,  there  was  an  election 
for  his  successor.  For  reasons  which  are  difficult 
to  justify,  John  Silkin  confidently  believed  that 
he  was  a  serious  candidate  as  a  compromise 
between  Denis  (later  Baron)  Healey  on  the  right 
of  the  party  and  Michael  Foot  on  the  left. 
Barbara  Castle  (later  Baroness  Castle  of  Black- 
burn) wrote  in  her  diary  in  1976  that  Silkin  was 
'the  kindest  chap,  but  has  not  yet  proved  himself 
a  political  heavyweight';  it  must  have  been  his 
success  against  the  Brussels  officials  that  warped 
his  judgement.  In  the  first  round  of  the  leader- 
ship election  he  received  38  votes  against  Hea- 
ley's  112,  Foot's  83,  and  Peter  Shore's  32.  Nor 
did  Silkin  succeed  in  the  election  for  deputy 
leader.  This  serious  miscalculation  concerning 
his  own  position  weakened  his  general  standing 
in  the  Parliamentary  Labour  party. 

In  the  years  that  followed,  although  he  was  on 
the  Labour  opposition's  front  bench,  he  became 
involved  in  various  disputes  that  he  was  to  find 
very  wearing.  His  own  constituency  Labour 
party  was  much  to  the  left  of  his  own  position 
and  there  were  serious  attempts  to  replace  him  as 
the  candidate  for  the  next  election.  They  failed 
for  the  general  election  of  1983,  but  the  con- 
tinued friction  helped  to  push  Silkin  into  decid- 
ing in  1985  that  he  would  not  stand  again.  He 
was  also  much  involved  in  a  bitter  internal 
quarrel  over  the  control  of  Tribune,  the  organ  of 
the  moderate  left. 

Silkin  had  been  brought  up  in  an  affluent 
family  and  he  added  to  his  inherited  wealth 
during  his  own  lifetime.  His  parliamentary  salary 
was  augmented  by  his  continued  practice  as  a 
solicitor.  Among  his  clients  was  Robert  Maxwell, 
which  meant  that  Silkin  had  a  place  on  the  board 
of  Pergamon  Press.  Silkin  died  before  Maxwell 
was  exposed  as  a  fraudulent  swindler  on  a  very 
large  scale.  Silkin  also  benefited  financially  from 
property  deals,  one  of  which — a  family  affair 
involving  his  father  in  earlier  years — prompted 
discussion  in  the  national  press  in  1974.  John 
Silkin  publicly,  and  vigorously,  defended  his 
position. 

Slightly  taller  than  average,  Silkin  was  well 
built.   In   1950  he  married  an  actress,  (Nora) 


Rosamund  John,  formerly  the  wife  of  Lieuten- 
ant-Commander (Hugh)  Russell  Lloyd,  of  the 
Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve,  and  daughter  of 
Frederick  Henry  Jones.  They  had  one  son.  Silkin 
died  suddenly,  of  a  heart  attack,  at  his  London 
home,  4  Dean's  Yard,  SWi,  26  April  1987. 

[Sunday  Times,  30  June  1974;  R.  H.  S.  Crossman,  The 
Diaries  of  a  Cabinet  Minister  1964-1970,  3  vols.,  1975, 
1976,  and  1977;  The  Crossman  Diaries:  Selections  (ed. 
Anthony  Howard),  1079;  Barbara  Castle,  The  Castle 
Diaries,  1914-76, 1080;  N.  Wapshott,  'Mr  John  Silkin', 
The  Times,  3  November  1980;  The  Times,  27  April 
1987.]  John  Saville 

SILKIN,  Samuel  Charles,  Baron  Silkin  of 
Dulwich  (1918-1988),  barrister  and  Labour 
MP,  was  born  6  March  1918  in  Neath,  Glamor- 
gan, the  second  in  the  family  of  three  sons  of 
Lewis  *Silkin,  later  first  Baron  Silkin,  solicitor, 
who  became  minister  of  town  and  country  plan- 
ning in  the  Labour  government  of  1945-51,  and 
his  wife,  Rosa  Neft.  Educated  at  Dulwich  Col- 
lege and  Trinity  Hall,  Cambridge,  he  obtained 
first  classes  in  both  parts  of  the  law  tripos  (1938 
and  1939),  and  in  his  bar  finals  was  awarded  a 
certificate  of  honour  and  the  Harmsworth  law 
scholarship.  He  was  called  to  the  bar  by  the 
Middle  Temple  in  1041.  A  formidable  cricketer, 
he  played  for  Glamorgan  in  1938. 

In  World  War  II  he  achieved  the  rank  of 
lieutenant-colonel  in  the  Royal  Artillery.  He  was 
on  the  staff  of  XII  Corps  during  the  invasion  of 
France  in  1944  and  was  mentioned  in  dispatches. 
He  presided  at  two  trials  of  major  Japanese  war 
criminals.  After  the  war  he  practised  from  the 
chambers  of  Edmund  Davies  (later  Baron 
Edmund-Davies).  Careful  and  methodical  in 
style,  he  acquired  a  substantial  practice,  particu- 
larly in  the  planning  field. 

He  took  silk  in  1963  and  in  1964  he  entered 
Parliament  as  Labour  member  for  Camberwell, 
Dulwich.  He  served  on  the  royal  commission  on 
the  penal  system  in  1965-6.  An  enthusiastic 
European,  he  led  the  British  delegation  to  the 
Council  of  Europe  in  1968-70;  there  he  formed  a 
friendship  with  Robert  Maxwell.  Unlike  his 
brother  John  *Silkin,  he  was  never  associated 
with  the  left  of  the  Labour  party,  and  he  was  one 
of  the  sixty-nine  Labour  MPs  who,  in  1971, 
defied  a  three-line  whip  to  support  British  entry 
to  the  European  Economic  Community.  During 
this  time  he  was  also  recorder  of  Bedford 
(1966-71).  From  1970  to  1974  he  served  on  the 
opposition  front  bench,  on  Law  Office  matters, 
and  it  was  no  surprise  when  in  1974  Harold 
Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx),  the 
incoming  prime  minister,  appointed  him  attor- 
ney-general. He  was  then  sworn  of  the  Privy 
Council.  He  began  on  a  controversial  note,  by 
declining  to  accept  the  knighthood  which,  for 
400  years,  had  been  bestowed  upon  law  officers 


4i3 


Silkin 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


on  their  appointment.  From  1974  to  1983  he  was 
MP  for  South  wark,  Dulwich. 

Shortly  afterwards  the  government  introduced 
the  Housing  Finance  (special  provisions)  Bill, 
granting  retrospective  immunity  to  the  Clay 
Cross  councillors,  who  faced  surcharges  and 
disqualification  from  office  for  refusing  to 
increase  council  rents  under  the  Housing 
Finance  Act  of  1972.  It  fell  to  Silkin  to  speak  in 
the  Commons  on  the  legal  aspects  of  the  Bill  and 
the  opposition  was  able  to  produce  a  leaked  letter 
written  by  him  to  a  front-bench  colleague  advis- 
ing against  the  principle  of  the  Bill.  He  was  the 
subject  of  press  criticism,  which  seemed  destined 
to  continue  throughout  his  period  of  office. 

In  1974  the  literary  executors  of  Richard 
*Crossman  proposed  publication  in  the  Sunday 
Times  of  his  diaries,  including  his  records  of 
confidential  discussions  within  the  Labour  gov- 
ernment of  1964-70.  In  accordance  with  the 
established  convention,  they  submitted  them  to 
the  cabinet  secretary,  who  declined  to  agree  to 
their  publication  without  excising  the  offending 
passages.  The  Sunday  Times  announced  that  it 
proposed  nevertheless  to  publish.  The  affair  was 
presented  in  sections  of  the  press  as  a  blatant 
attempt  to  suppress  publication  of  embarrassing 
material.  Ironically,  the  government  would  have 
preferred  to  see  the  material  published,  in  order 
to  establish  that  there  were  no  secrets.  But  Silkin 
was  his  own  man,  and  insisted  that  the  public 
interest  in  the  enforcement  of  constitutional 
conventions  must  take  precedence  over  the  polit- 
ical interests  of  the  government.  The  lord  chief 
justice  (Lord  *Widgery)  held  that  the  convention 
existed,  and  that  the  courts  would  enforce  it,  but 
that,  given  the  long  interval  which  had  elapsed 
since  the  events  which  formed  the  subject-matter 
of  the  entries,  no  damage  would  be  done  by 
publication,  and  he  declined  to  issue  the  injunc- 
tion. The  purpose  of  upholding  the  convention 
had  been  achieved,  but  the  public  perception  was 
that  Silkin  had  lost'. 

In  1977,  when  he  declined  to  authorize  a 
relator  action  which  would  have  enabled  John 
Gouriet,  of  the  National  Association  for  Free- 
dom, to  proceed  against  the  Union  of  Post  Office 
Workers,  Lord  Denning,  master  of  the  Rolls, 
used  language  in  the  Court  of  Appeal  which  was 
construed  by  the  press  as  imputing  improper 
motives  to  Silkin.  In  the  House  of  Lords  he  was 
completely  vindicated,  but  the  outcome  received 
less  publicity  than  the  earlier  judgment.  Silkin 
ceased  to  be  attorney-general  in  1979,  when  the 
Labour  government  left  office. 

In  court  and  in  the  House  his  contributions 
were  quiet,  well  reasoned,  and  delivered  in  a 
slow,  carefully  formulated  style,  which  did  not 
appeal  to  the  media.  Arising  as  it  did  from  a 
preoccupation  with  the  logical  form  of  the  argu- 
ment, it  ensured  that  he  was  rarely  guilty  of 


fallacious  reasoning,  but  tended  to  conceal  his 
passionate  commitment  to  social  justice  and 
human  rights.  He  retired  from  the  Commons  in 
1983  and  entered  the  House  of  Lords,  as  a  life 
peer.  There  he  found  the  style  of  debating  more 
congenial.  He  became  a  director  of  two  of  Robert 
Maxwell's  companies,  Pergamon  Press  and 
BPCC. 

Tall  and  well  made,  with  the  prominent  nose 
and  rather  heavy  jowls  associated  with  his  cent- 
ral European  ancestry,  his  face  was  frequently 
softened  in  a  smile.  In  1941  he  married  Elaine 
Violet,  daughter  of  Arthur  Stamp,  headmaster, 
of  London;  there  were  two  sons  and  two  daugh- 
ters of  the  marriage.  In  1984  she  died,  and  in 
1985  he  married  an  old  friend  of  the  family, 
Sheila  Marian,  widow  of  Walter  Swanston  and 
daughter  of  Arthur  Jeal,  an  executive  of  a  small 
gas  company  who  owned  property  and  land. 
Silkin  died  in  the  Churchill  Hospital,  Oxford,  17 
August  1988. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  Archer  of  Sandwell 

SIMPSON,  (Bessie)  Wallis,  Duchess  of  Wind- 
sor (1896-1986),  wife  of  the  former  King 
Edward  VIII.  [See  Windsor,  (Bessie)  Wallis.] 

SINCLAIR,  Hugh  Macdonald  (191 0-1990), 
nutritionist,  was  born  4  February  19 10  at  Dud- 
dingston  House,  Edinburgh,  the  second  son  and 
youngest  of  four  children  of  Colonel  Hugh 
Montgomerie  Sinclair,  of  the  Royal  Engineers, 
and  his  wife  Rosalie  Sybil,  daughter  of  Sir  John 
Jackson,  civil  engineer  and  MP.  He  was  educated 
at  Winchester  and  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  where 
he  obtained  a  first  class  in  physiology  in  1932.  He 
then  went  to  University  College  Hospital,  Lon- 
don, and  qualified  as  LMSSA  (he  was  master  of 
the  Society  of  Apothecaries  in  1967-8)  and  BM, 
B.Ch.  in  1936.  Elected  a  university  demonstrator 
and  lecturer  in  biochemistry  at  Oxford,  and  a 
fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  in  1937,  he  chose  to 
work  on  thiamine.  He  obtained  his  Oxford  DM 
in  1939.  In  May  1941  he  created  the  Oxford 
Nutrition  Survey  (ONS),  of  which  he  was  direc- 
tor from  1942  to  1947.  Scarcely  out  of  his 
twenties,  he  had  acquired  a  mastery  of  survey 
technique,  and  by  1944  was  directing  twenty-five 
trained  and  experienced  staff.  His  work  was  a 
springboard  for  the  postwar  surveys  in  The 
Netherlands  and  Germany,  which  he  was  invited 
to  undertake  with  the  rank  of  brigadier  after  his 
success  in  assuring  the  British  government  that 
its  food  policy  was  working. 

Sinclair's  reports  to  the  Ministry  of  Health 
were  brief,  but  he  kept  his  records  well,  and  his 
1940s  data  were  still  being  written  up  in  the 
1990s.  Some  of  the  German  data  was  lost  as  a 
result  of  administrative  tangles,  partly  due  to 
Sinclair's  delight  in  twisting  the  tails  of  supposed 
superiors.  He  was  a  difficult  man  to  work  under, 


414 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Sitwell 


with,  or  over.  He  was  appointed  an  officer  of 
the  Order  of  Oranje-Nassau  in  195 1  and  was 
awarded  the  US  medal  of  freedom  with  silver 
palm  in  1046  for  his  postwar  work.  He  became 
FRCP  in  1064. 

By  1047  the  ONS  had  given  place  to  the 
University  Laboratory  of  Human  Nutrition,  of 
which  Sinclair  was  director  until  1955.  He  was 
reader  in  human  nutrition  from  1951  to  1958, 
but,  in  a  titanic  quest  for  better  premises,  he  fell 
foul  of  authority,  losing  both  the  directorship 
(to  Sir  Hans  *Krebs)  and  the  readership  in  the 
struggle,  a  calamity  that  might  have  been  pre- 
vented by  a  better  record  of  publication.  His 
fellowship  at  Magdalen  lapsed  with  the  reader- 
ship, and  he  became  a  research  fellow  there,  with 
some  tutoring,  at  which  he  was  excellent,  at  a 
much  reduced  stipend.  Meanwhile,  he  was 
developing  his  fatty-acid  hypothesis:  having 
undertaken  a  compendious  review,  he  concluded 
in  the  'longest  and  rudest  letter'  in  the  Lancet  (6 
April  1956,  p.  381)  that  a  relative  deficiency  of 
essential  polyunsaturated  fatty  acids  was  the 
main  cause  of  various  diseases  of  civilization. 
This  was  thought  too  speculative  by  his  seniors, 
and  weakened  Sinclair's  chances  of  re-election  to 
the  readership,  for  which  he  did  not  reapply. 
Encouraged  by  the  first  Earl  of  *Woolton,  he 
decided  to  set  up  an  independent  nutrition 
institute,  to  which  he  dedicated  his  property.  He 
sold  his  medical  library  in  1965  for  £90,000,  to 
escape  insolvency.  The  rump  of  his  library, 
including  much  erotica  (the  basis  of  his  wide 
knowledge  of  sado-masochism),  sold  for  £70,000 
in  1992. 

In  1972  Sinclair  registered  a  nutrition  'associa- 
tion' as  a  charity,  which  was  renamed  the  Inter- 
national Nutrition  Foundation  (INF)  in  1982. 
He  was  its  unpaid  director  and  main  sponsor, 
housing  it  rent-free  at  his  estate  in  Sutton 
Courtenay,  ten  miles  south  of  Oxford,  where  he 
planned  to  build  a  research  centre.  The  INF 
failed  to  raise  the  £12  million  needed,  and  after 
his  death  its  trustees,  as  the  sole  heirs  of  his 
estate,  decided  to  develop  it  to  raise  capital  for  a 
university  chair  of  nutrition. 

From  1970  to  1980  Sinclair  was  much  appre- 
ciated as  a  visiting  professor  at  Reading,  and  was 
still  doing  scientific  work.  In  his  seventieth  year 
he  followed  an  Eskimo  diet,  composed  of  water, 
seal,  and  fish,  for  three  months.  His  bleeding 
time  rose  from  three  to  fifty-seven  minutes,  thus 
supporting  his  view  that  the  unsaturated  fatty 
acids  of  fish  decrease  the  aggregation  of  platelets 
and  are  effective  in  diminishing  the  incidence  of 
coronary  thrombosis  in  persons  on  a  high-fat 
diet.  Sinclair  continued  work  on  fatty  acids  to  the 
end  of  his  life,  writing  or  editing  ten  books, 
giving  lectures,  composing  critical  chapters  and 
reviews,  and  appearing  on  television.  In  all  he 
published  about  400  separate  pieces,  and  much 


enjoyed  his  final  years  as  the  doyen  of  an 
international  branch  of  research.  He  was  devoted 
to  scientific  truth,  but  slow  to  establish  it  by 
experiment.  Claiming  an  allergy  to  publication, 
he  produced  some  important  speculation,  which 
he  thought  more  significant  than  reputation,  and 
throughout  his  life  scrupulously  maintained  his 
own  education,  relentlessly  sacrificing  home  and 
wardrobe  to  the  work  of  his  beloved  foundation, 
to  the  acquisition  of  new  texts,  and  to  the 
cultivation  of  friendships. 

Sinclair's  tall  mesomorphic  physique  tempted 
him  to  work  excessively  far  into  the  small  and 
not  necessarily  productive  hours,  but,  relishing 
deadlines  and  crises,  he  was  never  late  for  work 
in  the  morning.  He  had  a  broad  and  high 
forehead,  fair  colouring,  and  strongly  slanting 
eyebrows,  supercilious  at  the  extremities  and 
contracted  downwards  at  the  centre,  above  stone- 
blue  eyes.  He  was  engaged  to  be  married  twice, 
but  one  of  his  fiancees  died  in  1939  from  cancer, 
and  the  other  died  from  taking  cyanide  when 
captured  behind  German  fines  in  1940.  He 
remained  unmarried.  He  died  22  June  1990  in 
the  John  Radcliffe  Hospital,  Oxford,  from  a 
gastric  carcinoma. 

[Mary  Gale  and  Brian  Lloyd  (eds).  Sinclair  (Founders 
of  Modern  Nutrition  no.  3,  McCarrison  Society),  1990; 
personal  knowledge.]  Brian  Lloyd 

SINCLAIR,  Ronald  (pseudonym)  (1880-1988), 
intelligence  officer.  [See  Teague-Jones,  Regi- 
nald.] 

SITWELL,  Sir  Sacheverell,  sixth  baronet 
(1897-1988),  writer,  was  born  in  Scarborough  15 
November  1897,  the  youngest  of  three  children 
and  younger  son  of  Sir  George  Reresby  *Sitwell, 
fourth  baronet,  of  Renishaw  Hall,  Derbyshire, 
antiquarian,  and  his  wife,  Lady  Ida  Emily 
Augusta  Denison,  daughter  of  the  first  Earl  of 
Londesborough.  Sachie  (as  he  was  nicknamed) 
passed  his  childhood  with  his  sister  Edith  •Sit- 
well  and  brother  Osbert  *Sitwell,  mosdy  at 
Renishaw  Hall  or  in  his  grandmothers'  houses  at 
Scarborough.  At  Eton  he  was  fortunate  in  his 
tutor  G.  W.  Headlam,  who  encouraged  his  mania 
for  reading.  He  did  not  distinguish  himself  at 
games  which  he  detested.  In  later  life  he  looked 
back  upon  the  school  holidays  as  fraught  with 
misery.  This  was  largely  caused  by  Lady  Ida's 
imprisonment  for  heavy  gambling  debts,  a  trau- 
matic experience  for  a  doting  son  while  still  a 
schoolboy. 

On  leaving  Eton  in  19 15  Sitwell  was  gazetted 
an  ensign  of  the  Grenadier  Guards,  although  on 
account  of  a  weak  heart  he  was  spared  the 
trenches  in  France.  His  duties  at  Aldershot 
barracks  were  compensated  for  by  an  obsession 
with  poetry.  In  June  1918  he  published  a  first 
volume  of  poetry,  The  People's  Palace,  which  had 


415 


Sitwell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


a  moderate  reception.  John  *Lehmann  consid- 
ered his  poetic  inspiration  the  fruit  of  great 
works  of  art  rather  than  life's  experiences.  Yet  it 
was  deeply  tinged  by  the  blood  bath  in  which 
'my  school  friends  were  killed,  with  hardly  an 
exception'.  For  the  rest  of  his  days  he  was 
haunted  by  a  macabre  pessimism  made  all  the 
more  tormenting  by  total  lack  of  religious  faith. 
Another  obsession  was  with  the  Russian  ballet. 
With  Edith  and  Osbert  he  celebrated  armistice 
night  of  191 8  entertaining  Sergei  Diaghilev  and 
his  corps  de  ballet.  This  led  to  Diaghilev  com- 
missioning from  him  in  1926  a  libretto,  The 
Triumph  of  Nature,  set  to  music  by  Lord  *Ber- 
ners.  By  Christmas  191 8  Sitwell  was  demobil- 
ized. 

He  immediately  entered  Balliol  College, 
Oxford.  But  the  university  offered  little  to  the 
ex-Guards  officer,  whose  acquaintances  were  art- 
ists, writers,  musicians,  and  actors.  His  intoxica- 
tion with  the  stage  sprang  from  memories  of  the 
Pierrot  troupes  who  danced  on  the  sands  at 
Scarborough.  After  the  summer  term  of  1919  he 
left  Oxford  and  set  up  house  with  Osbert  at  5 
Swan  Walk  and  then  2  Carlyle  Square,  Chelsea. 
Until  his  marriage  the  two  brothers  were  insep- 
arable, and  indeed  with  Edith  made  a  formidable 
phalanx  of  intellectuals  against  the  philistines. 
Already  a  leader  of  the  avant-garde,  Sacheverell 
organized  an  exhibition  of  modern  French  paint- 
ers in  London  and  helped  introduce  Modigliani, 
Utrillo,  and  Dufy  to  the  British  public.  He 
discovered  the  composer  (Sir)  William  *Walton 
and  promoted  the  author  (A.  A.)  Ronald  *Fir- 
bank. 

In  1920  he  made  a  quixotic  expedition  to 
Fiume  to  see  its  leader  Gabriele  d'Annunzio, 
whom  he  admired  as  the  greatest  poet  of  the  age. 
In  the  autumn  he  accompanied  Osbert  to  Naples 
and  Caserta,  and  the  next  year  to  the  southern 
extremities  of  Italy,  then  exceedingly  remote  and 
beyond  the  tourist  horizon.  These  visits  fired  his 
enthusiasm  for  baroque  and  rococo  architecture, 
the  track  of  which  he  pursued  to  Spain,  Portugal, 
Bavaria,  and  even  Latin  America.  The  outcome 
was  Southern  Baroque  Art  (1924).  A  masterpiece 
in  the  delineation  of  a  style,  the  book  caused  a 
sensation  among  the  cognoscenti.  It  was  followed 
by  German  Baroque  Art  (1927). 

Sacheverell,  unlike  Osbert  and  Edith,  was 
modest  and  besettingly  shy.  He  was  an  uneasy 
collaborator  in  his  siblings'  provocative  Facade 
recitation  to  Walton's  music  in  1923.  Tall,  slen- 
der, with  an  oval  face,  small  mouth,  and  attenu- 
ated nose,  he  conjured  up  the  effigy  of  a  Crusader 
knight  on  a  tomb-table.  His  manner  to  old  and 
young  was  exquisite,  and  towards  children  of  the 
poor  deeply  compassionate.  His  memory,  like  his 
imagination,  was  prodigious.  As  a  raconteur  he 
was  spellbinding:  his  humour  impish  and  bub- 


bling. Before  exhausting  one  subject  he  was 
launched  upon  another. 

In  1925  he  married  Georgia,  younger  daughter 
of  Arthur  Doble,  banker,  of  Montreal.  They  had 
two  sons.  Marriage  brought  him  great  happiness. 
While  inducting  him  into  circles  of  the  rich  and 
raffish,  Georgia  also  protected  the  privacy  of  his 
writing.  The  young  couple  lived  comfortably  at 
Weston  Hall  near  Towcester,  which  his  father  on 
inheriting  had  passed  to  his  younger  son  in  1923. 
Yet  Sitwell  always  considered  himself  to  be 
dogged  by  poverty.  Devoted  though  he  was  to 
Weston,  its  family  treasures  and  old-fashioned 
garden,  he  was  never  a  countryman. 

He  wrote  a  great  number  of  books.  In  spite  of 
their  diversity  of  subject,  most  are  basically 
autobiographical.  The  Gothic  North  (3  vols., 
1929-30)  gave  Sitwell  as  much  rein  for  his 
fantasy  as  Southern  Baroque  Art.  His  sympathy 
for  the  age  of  chivalry  was  as  pronounced  as  for 
that  of  rococo.  British  Architects  and  Craftsmen 
(1945)  was  a  brilliant  compendium  of  the  master 
workers  of  Great  Britain.  Love  of  music  led  to 
the  publication  of  Mozart  (1932)  and  a  life  of 
Liszt  (1934).  The  composers  Constant  *Lambert 
and  F.  B.  Busoni,  and  the  clavichord  player 
Violet  Woodhouse  were  among  his  intimate 
friends. 

Mauretania  (1940),  The  Netherlands  (1948), 
Spain  (1950),  Portugal  and  Madeira  (1954),  Den- 
mark (1956),  and  Malta  (1958)  poured  from  his 
pen.  Half  guidebook,  half  travelogue,  they  were 
idiosyncratic  and  subjective.  Of  even  more  seri- 
ous consideration  are  his  travel  books  of  the  mind 
and  spirit,  of  which  Sacred  and  Profane  Love 
(1940),  an  aesthetic  journey  during  the  stress  of 
World  War  II,  was  the  first,  and  For  Want  of  the 
Golden  City  (1973)  the  last. 

He  was  a  JP  (1943)  and  high  sheriff  of  North- 
amptonshire (1948-9).  He  was  granted  the  free- 
dom of  the  city  of  Lima  (Peru)  in  i960.  In  1981 
the  Royal  Society  of  Literature  awarded  him 
the  Benson  silver  medal,  and  in  1984  he  was 
appointed  CH.  On  his  wife's  death  in  1980 
Sitwell  gave  up  writing  altogether.  His  remaining 
years  were  spent  quietly  at  Weston  where  he  died 
1  October  1988.  He  was  succeeded  in  the  bar- 
onetcy by  his  elder  son,  (Sacheverell)  Reresby 
(born  1927). 

[Sarah  Bradford,  Sacheverell  Sitwell,  1993;  Max 
Wykes-Joyce,  Triad  of  Genius,  1953;  John  I-chmann,  / 
Nest  of  Tigers,  1968;  Denys  Sutton,  'The  World  of 
Sacheverell  Sitwell',  Apollo,  part  1,  September  1080, 
and  part  2,  October  1980;  Neil  Ritchie,  Sacheverell 
Sitwell:  an  Annotated  and  Descriptive  Bibliography, 
1987;  John  Pearson,  Facades:  Edith,  Osbert  and  Sache- 
verell Sitwell,  1978;  personal  knowledge.] 

James  Lf.es-Mii.nk 

SKYRME,  Tony  Hilton  Royle  (1922-1987), 
theoretical  physicist,  was  born  5  December  1922 
at  7  Blessington  Road,  Lewisham,  Kent,  the  only 


416 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Slack 


child  of  John  Hilton  Royle  Skyrme,  bank  clerk, 
and  his  wife,  Muriel  May  Roberts.  After  attend- 
ing a  boarding  school  in  Lewisham,  he  won  a 
scholarship  to  Eton,  where  he  distinguished 
himself  by  outstanding  work  in  mathematics, 
gaining  a  number  of  prizes.  In  1940  he  became  a 
scholar  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  reading 
mathematics,  and  there  he  maintained  the  high 
standard  shown  at  Eton.  He  passed  part  ii  of  the 
mathematics  tripos  as  a  wrangler  in  1942,  and 
part  iii  in  1943. 

On  graduating,  he  was  directed  by  the  wartime 
central  register  of  scientists  to  Birmingham, 
where  a  group  under  (Sir)  Rudolf  Peierls  was 
working  on  the  theoretical  aspects  of  atomic 
energy,  particularly  atomic  weapons.  Here  his 
great  ability  soon  attracted  attention.  While  cap- 
able of  using  abstract  reasoning  on  difficult 
problems,  he  was  prepared  to  look  at  experi- 
mental situations  and  at  measurements  which 
needed  theoretical  analysis.  He  wrote  a  number 
of  useful  reports,  one  of  which,  concerned  with 
neutron  scattering,  remained  in  demand  for 
many  years.  At  the  end  of  1943  several  scientists 
working  on  atomic  energy,  including  Peierls, 
were  transferred  to  the  United  States,  to  assist  in 
the  'Manhattan  Project'.  Skyrme  followed  a  little 
later,  and  worked  first  in  New  York,  on  problems 
concerning  the  diffusion  plant  for  isotope  separa- 
tion, and  then  at  Los  Alamos. 

After  the  end  of  World  War  II  Skyrme  spent 
two  years  (1946-7)  as  a  research  fellow  at  Bir- 
mingham University,  where  he  acquired  a  com- 
mand of  modern  theoretical  physics.  One  of  the 
results  he  obtained  provided  a  rigorous  mathe- 
matical proof  of  an  important  theorem  in  nuc- 
lear physics.  He  submitted  this  for  publication, 
but  the  referee  wanted  one  section  expanded; 
Skyrme  never  complied  with  this  request,  and 
the  paper  remained  unpublished.  The  academic 
years  1948-9  and  1949-50  were  spent  at  the 
Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology  and  at  the 
Institute  for  Advanced  Study  in  Princeton, 
respectively. 

From  1950  to  1962  Skyrme  worked  at  the 
Atomic  Energy  Research  Establishment  at  Har- 
well, and  these  were  his  most  productive  years. 
Apart  from  papers  relating  to  the  design  or 
interpretation  of  experiments  in  nuclear  physics, 
and  much  work  on  specific  problems  of  nuclear 
structure,  he  made  two  pioneering  contributions 
to  nuclear  physics.  One  was  to  show  how  to 
handle  short-range  forces  in  a  three-body  prob- 
lem; the  other,  not  unrelated,  was  a  powerful 
approximation  to  nuclear  forces,  later  widely 
used  as  the  'Skyrme  model'.  An  even  more 
original  contribution  was  a  treatment  of  funda- 
mental particles,  in  which  particles  such  as 
neutrons  and  protons,  which  obey  the  Pauli 
exclusion  principle,  appear  as  manifestations  of 
fields  such  as  that  of  mesons.  These  ideas  were  so 


revolutionary  that  it  was  some  years  before  they 
received  adequate  attention.  Later  the  study  of 
these  'Skyrmions'  became  a  flourishing  branch  of 
theoretical  physics.  For  this  work  Skyrme  was 
awarded  the  Hughes  medal  of  the  Royal  Society 
in  1985. 

During  a  year's  leave  from  Harwell,  he  and  his 
wife  spent  a  semester  in  the  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania and  then  returned  via  the  United  States, 
Australia,  and  the  Far  and  Middle  East,  making 
all  the  land  journey's  by  Land-Rover.  They  had 
enjoyed  Malaysia,  and  when  changes  at  Harwell 
made  his  condition  there  less  congenial,  he 
accepted  a  post  in  the  University  of  Malaysia  in 
Kuala  Lumpur,  where  they  arrived,  again  by 
Land-Rover,  in  the  autumn  of  1962.  Since  the 
staff  of  the  department  was  much  smaller  than  he 
had  been  led  to  believe,  there  were  heavy  teach- 
ing duties  and  few  people  interested  in  research. 
In  1964  Skyrme  accepted  an  invitation  to  a 
professorship  in  Birmingham,  initially  as  head  of 
the  department,  but  later  he  was  relieved  of  the 
administrative  duties.  He  remained  in  Birming- 
ham until  his  death. 

Skyrme  was  distinguished  by  a  deep  under- 
standing of  physics,  by  a  great  command  of 
mathematics,  and,  above  all,  by  an  original  and 
fertile  imagination.  He  was  of  medium  height, 
with  light  brown  hair  and  brown  eyes.  As  a 
young  man  he  had  a  slim,  athletic  figure;  in  later 
life  he  put  on  much  weight.  He  tended  to  be 
rather  quiet,  being  a  solitary  person  who  did  not 
like  joint  work,  but  preferred  to  think  about 
problems  on  his  own.  In  1949  he  married  Doro- 
thy Mildred,  daughter  of  Francis  Charles  Mill- 
est,  commercial  traveller.  They  had  no  children. 
Skyrme  died  25  June  1987  in  Selly  Oak  Hospital, 
Birmingham,  of  an  embolism  after  an  opera- 
tion. 

[R.  H.  Dalitz,  'An  Oudine  of  the  Life  and  Work  of 
Tony  Skyrme',  International  Journal  of  Modern  Physics 
A,  vol.  iii,  1088,  pp.  2719-44,  1988;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Ridolf  Peierls 

SLACK,  Kenneth  (1917-1987),  Nonconformist 
minister,  was  born  20  July  1917  in  Wallasey,  the 
second  son  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  one 
daughter  of  Reginald  Slack,  manager  of  a  small 
grocery  store,  and  his  wife,  Nellie  Bennett.  They 
lived  on  a  grocer's  wage  and  providing  for 
Kenneth's  education  was  a  struggle.  He  was 
educated  at  Wallasey  Grammar  School  and  Liv- 
erpool University,  from  which  he  graduated  with 
a  BA  honours  degree  in  1937.  He  then  studied 
theology  at  Westminster  College,  Cambridge,  on 
a  Lewis  Gibson  scholarship.  He  was  ordained 
into  the  Presbyterian  Church  of  England  in 
1941. 

Throughout  the  years  of  his  ministry  there 
was  a  continual  and  creative  movement  between 
service  in  local  churches  and  leadership  within 


417 


Slack 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  ecumenical  agencies.  In  both  he  revealed 
talents  for  organization,  and  preaching  and  writ- 
ing skills.  His  first  pastorate  was  at  St  Nicholas 
church,  Shrewsbury.  In  1942  he  entered  the 
Royal  Air  Force  Volunteer  Reserve  as  a  chaplain. 
From  1943  to  1946  he  served  in  the  Far  East, 
from  which  he  returned  with  an  MBE  (1946)  and 
an  international  dimension  to  his  thinking.  He 
became  minister  of  St  James's,  Edgware,  where 
his  abilities  were  soon  recognized  throughout  the 
Presbyterian  Church  of  England,  as  a  vigorous 
pastor,  forthright  editor  of  the  church  journal, 
and  supporter  of  ecumenical  development. 

In  1955  Slack  was  appointed  general  secretary 
of  the  British  Council  of*  Churches,  the  first  Free 
Church  minister  to  hold  this  position,  and  as 
such  became  the  senior  civil  servant  of  the 
ecumenical  movement  in  Britain.  It  was  an  ideal 
appointment,  for  he  was  quick  to  establish  excel- 
lent personal  relations  with  senior  officers  of  the 
churches,  becoming  a  trusted  colleague  at  Lam- 
beth Palace  and  at  Archbishop's  House,  West- 
minster. The  BCC  had  been  a  tender  plant  in  its 
early  years,  but  Slack  was  able  to  give  it  a  higher 
public  profile  and  a  greater  priority  in  the  life  of 
the  churches.  He  was  also  concerned  with  the 
local  expression  of  ecumenism,  travelling  con- 
stantly to  encourage  local  councils  of  churches. 

In  1965  he  returned  to  local  ministry,  first  at 
St  Andrew's  church  in  Cheam  (1965-7),  and 
then  in  central  London  at  the  City  Temple 
(1967-75).  During  this  time  he  became  well 
known  as  a  broadcaster,  being  frequently  heard 
on  the  BBC's  'Thought  for  the  Day'.  So  skilled 
was  he  at  the  brief  pertinent  message  that  a 
member  of  his  congregation  was  moved  to  ask  if 
he  could  not  preach  as  briefly  on  Sundays.  The 
cause  of  Christian  unity  remained  a  priority  to 
him,  and  during  the  1960s  he  took  a  leading  part 
in  the  discussions  between  Presbyterians  and 
Congregationalists,  which  led  to  the  formation  of 
the  United  Reformed  Church  in  1972.  It  was 
no  surprise  that  he  was  elected  moderator  of 
the  URC  for  1973-4  and  stimulated  consulta- 
tion about  further  unions.  He  had  become  a 
leading  public  exponent  in  Britain  of  the  call  to 
remove  the  ancient  barriers  between  Christian 
churches. 

The  broader  scene  claimed  him  again  from 
1975  to  1982,  when  he  was  director  of  Christian 
Aid,  the  agency  through  which  the  churches 
provided  help  to  the  most  needy  people  of  the 
world.  This  task  called  for  much  travel  and 
constant  advocacy  so  that  resources  could  be 
provided,  not  only  for  disaster  relief,  but  to  lift 
the  chronic  burdens  of  poverty.  Another  period 
of  local  church  ministry  followed  for  him,  at 
Kensington,  from  1982  until  his  death  in  1987. 

A  steady  and  prolific  writer,  he  produced  a 
series  of  books  on  World  Council  of  Churches 
assemblies,  biographies  of  Martin  Luther  King 


(1970)  and  Bishop  George  *Bell  (1971),  and 
biblical  studies  on  the  Lord's  Prayer  (1973)  and 
the  Psalms  (New  Light  on  Old  Songs,  1975).  But 
he  was  never  a  cloistered  writer.  Excelling  in 
conversation  and  friendship,  vigorous  and  chal- 
lenging, he  was  good  company,  helping  many  to 
share  his  own  confidence  in  the  radical  power  of 
Christian  faith.  Tall,  upright,  and  burly,  he  was 
a  commanding  figure,  particularly  when  robed  in 
the  pulpit.  His  air  of  confidence,  good  humour, 
and  frequent  laughter  gave  him  a  welcoming 
appearance.  Southampton  University  gave  him 
an  honorary  degree  in  1971. 

In  1 94 1  he  married  (Barbara)  Millicent, 
daughter  of  William  Spong  Blake,  a  traveller  for 
the  family  printing  firm.  They  had  two  sons  and 
one  daughter.  Slack  died  4  October  1987  in  East 
Finchley. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  Bernard  Thorogood 

SMART,  Elizabeth  (191 3-1986),  writer,  was 
born  27  December  19 13  in  Ottawa,  Canada,  the 
third  child  and  third  daughter  in  the  family  of 
four  daughters  (one  of  whom  died  in  infancy) 
and  one  son  of  Russel  Sutherland  Smart,  a 
prominent  Ottawa  lawyer,  specializing  in 
patents,  and  his  wife,  Emma  Louise  ('Louie'), 
daughter  of  James  Alexander  Parr,  executive  in 
the  Montreal  Telegraph  Co.  She  grew  up  in 
affluent  circumstances  in  Ottawa  and  Kingsmere, 
where  the  family  had  a  second  house  on  a  lake. 
She  was  educated  at  Ottawa  Normal  School, 
Elmwood  School,  and  Hatfield  Hall  in  Cobourg, 
with  the  exception  of  one  year  during  which  she 
was  obliged  to  lie  in  bed  with  a  heart  condition, 
and  there  began  to  write.  She  vacillated  between 
becoming  a  musician  or  writer  and  did  not  go  to 
university.  She  travelled  around  the  world  under 
the  eye  of  a  family  friend.  In  London  she  studied 
to  become  a  professional  pianist  with  Katharine 
Goodson,  but  with  the  confidence  born  of  what 
she  called  the  'huge  luckiness'  of  her  childhood 
she  reacted  against  the  hollowness  of  her  social 
life  and  broke  away  to  travel  around  the  world, 
always  gravitating  towards  artistic  rebels. 
Although  she  had  studied  music  for  thirteen 
years  and  played  the  piano  very  well,  she  never 
played  again.  She  lived  on  an  allowance  from  her 
father. 

She  expressed  her  adventurous,  romantic 
nature  to  the  full  when,  after  reading  the  poems 
of  George  Granville  Barker  in  a  Charing  Cross 
bookshop,  she  promptly  fell  in  love  with  the 
poet,  who  was  then  working  unhappily  in  Japan. 
He  was  the  son  of  George  Barker,  formerly  of  the 
Coldstream  Guards,  butler  at  Gray's  Inn.  In 
1940  she  invited  Barker  and  his  wife  to  Canada, 
raising  the  cash  herself  for  both  their  fares,  and 
they  then  moved  to  Monterey,  California,  where 
she  was  living.  This  was  the  pivotal  act  of  her  life 
and  resulted  in  a  passion-wracked  affair,  which 


418 


D..VB.  1986-1990 


Smith 


began  in  July  1940,  four  children,  and  her 
extraordinary  novel,  By  Grand  Central  Station  I 
Sat  Doom  and  Wept,  which  she  completed  in 
1 94 1.  First  published  in  August  1945  by  Tambi- 
muttu  just  before  the  end  of  World  War  II,  her 
novel  (or  narrative  prose  poem)  remained  largely 
unnoticed  in  the  fray,  although  Cyril  *Connolly 
gave  it  a  certain  grudging  admiration  in  Hori- 
zon. 

After  the  birth  of  her  first  love-child,  a  girl,  in 
1941,  Smart  went  to  England  in  1943  on  a 
convoy  which  was  torpedoed.  Shortly  afterwards 
she  produced  a  son  by  Barker,  whose  wife  had 
twins  five  weeks  later.  The  rigours  of  bringing  up 
a  family  with  very  little  money  (she  was  still 
reliant  on  an  allowance  from  her  father)  and 
without  a  permanent  father-figure  gagged  her 
muse,  but  she  became  more  settled  when  she 
moved  to  a  mill-house  in  Essex.  She  wrote 
intermittently  about  the  aftermath  of  her  grand 
passion,  but,  understandably  under  the  circum- 
stances, her  productivity  was  low.  She  had 
another  of  Barker's  sons  in  1945  and  a  daughter 
in  1947. 

From  1949  to  195 1  she  was  a  sub-editor  on 
House  and  Garden.  Separated  from  Barker,  who 
eventually  had  fifteen  children  by  different 
women,  she  had  occasional  affairs.  By  the  mid- 
1950s  she  supported  her  family  by  writing  adver- 
tising copy.  Her  large  flat  at  9  Westbourne 
Terrace  was  a  centre  for  London  bohemians, 
many  of  them  distinguished  remnants  from  the 
old  Soho  'Fitzrovia'  days  (the  painters  Robert 
*Colquhoun,  Robert  MacBryde,  Patrick  Swift, 
and  Craigie  Aitchison;  the  poets  Patrick  Kava- 
nagh  and  W.  S.  *Graham,  and  the  inspired 
drifter  Jeffrey  Bernard).  In  1957,  with  Agnes 
Ryan,  she  published  Cooking  the  French  Way. 
Her  life  began  to  pick  up  considerably  in  1964  as 
the  children  grew  up  and  she  began  writing  for 
the  sparkling  new  magazine  Queen,  a  job  she  held 
until  1966. 

In  1966  her  novel  was  republished  by  Panther 
Books  in  a  silver  paperback,  with  an  introduction 
by  Brigid  Brophy,  who  described  it  as  one  of 
the  half  dozen  masterpieces  in  the  world:  'The 
entire  book  is  a  wound.  Even  when  its  rhythm 
expresses  the  throb  of  pleasure,  the  pleasure  is  so 
ardent  it  lays  waste  the  personality  which  experi- 
ences it. ..it  is  one  of  the  most  shelled,  skinned, 
nerve-exposed  books  ever  written/  But  some 
critics  continued  to  be  affronted  by  such  a 
metaphor-laden,  raw,  female  emotion,  the  eternal 
wail  of  a  woman  for  her  demon  lover,  and  took 
their  refuge  in  accusations  of  purple  prose, 
discounting  the  passages  of  searing  humour. 

After  her  younger  daughter  became  involved 
with  drugs,  she  often  had  full  responsibility  for 
the  daughter's  two  children,  and  she  soon  moved 
to  a  cottage  near  Bungay,  Suffolk,  where  she 


became  absorbed  in  creating  a  garden  and  writing 
poetry.  She  aimed  for  Blakean  simplicity  which 
did  not  appeal  to  the  poetry  Mafia  of  the  period. 
However,  her  first  collection,  A  Bonus,  was 
published  in  1977  (Polytantric  Press)  and  she 
began  to  give  poetry  readings.  The  publication  of 
The  Assumption  of  the  Rogues  and  Rascals  in  1978 
(Cape/Polytantric),  her  long-brewing  aftermath 
novel,  and  the  Canadian  publication  of  her  daz- 
zling memoirs,  In  the  Meantime  (1984),  rein- 
forced her  growing  reputation.  Meanwhile  the 
now  famous  early  book  was  translated  into  many 
languages  and  became  something  of  a  cult  novel. 
In  1982  she  spent  a  year  as  writer  in  residence  at 
the  University  of  Alberta. 

Elizabeth  Smart  had  occasional  affairs  with 
both  men  and  women.  She  was  a  great  beauty, 
not  only  in  the  classical  blonde,  blue-eyed,  well- 
featured  sense,  but  because  of  a  radiance  which. 
even  later,  ravaged  by  age  and  empathy,  could 
draw  so  many  people  to  her.  She  was  a  bohemian 
in  the  best  sense  of  the  word  and  died  4  March 
1986,  of  a  heart  attack,  in  her  son  Christopher's 
flat  in  the  Soho  where  she  had  spent  so  many 
hours  in  conviviality,  good  talk,  and  freedom 
from  hypocritical  moral  restraints.  Her  younger 
daughter  had  died  from  drug-taking  in  1982.  Her 
journals,  Necessary  Secrets,  were  posthumously 
published  by  Harper  Collins  in  1986. 

[Elizabeth  Smart,  In  the  Meantime,  1984;  Rosemary 
Sullivan,  By  Heart:  Elizabeth  Smart,  a  Life,  1991; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

Jill  Neville 

SMITH,  Sir  (James)  Eric  (1909-1990),  marine 
biologist,  was  born  in  Hull  23  February  1909,  the 
elder  son  and  eldest  of  three  children  of  Walter 
Smith,  who  had  a  wholesale  grocery  business, 
and  his  wife,  Elsie  Kate  Pickett.  He  was  educated 
at  Hull  Grammar  School,  where  he  was  head  boy 
and  an  all-round  athlete.  After  a  short  period  in 
his  father's  firm,  he  entered  King's  College, 
London,  in  1927,  where  he  gained  a  first  class  in 
zoology. 

He  began  his  scientific  career  in  1930,  as  a 
student  probationer  at  the  Plymouth  laboratory 
of  the  Marine  Biological  Association,  where 
he  worked  on  the  invertebrate  fauna  of  the 
Eddystone  shell  gravels.  He  left  Plymouth  in 
1932,  and  after  three  years  as  an  assistant  lecturer 
at  Manchester  University  (1932-5)  moved  to 
Sheffield  (1935-8),  and  thence  to  Cambridge  as 
an  assistant  lecturer  (1938-50).  He  then  took  the 
chair  in  zoology  at  Queen  Mary  College,  Lon- 
don (1950-65),  where  he  ran  a  most  successful 
department  with  a  strong  marine  biological  side. 
Although  much  of  his  time  was  taken  up  by 
administrative  duties  (he  was  vice-principal  of 
the  college  from  1963  during  a  period  of  expan- 
sion), he  took  an  active  pan  in  lecturing  and 


419 


Smith 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


continued  his  research  on  echinoderms,  recog- 
nized by  his  election  as  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1958. 

From  QMC  he  returned  to  Plymouth  as 
director  of  the  Marine  Biological  Association 
laboratory  in  1965,  a  post  he  held  until  his 
retirement  in  1974. 

Soon  after  he  became  director  at  Plymouth, 
the  wreck  of  the  oil  tanker  Torrey  Canyon  in  1967 
produced  the  first  large-scale  oil  pollution  inci- 
dent. The  work  of  the  MBA  during  this  episode 
resulted  in  a  classic  account  of  the  incident, 
which  Smith  edited.  He  also  acted  as  one  of  the 
three  members  of  the  commissions  of  Australia 
and  of  the  state  of  Queensland  dealing  with 
possible  oil  drilling  on  the  Great  Barrier  Reef. 
The  scientific  work  for  which  Smith  is  chiefly 
known,  the  neurobiology  of  starfish,  was  begun  at 
Manchester  and  continued  at  Cambridge  and 
QMC.  It  resulted  in  a  series  of  monumental 
papers.  The  study  of  the  starfish  nervous  system 
presented  challenging  difficulties,  and  when 
Smith  began,  only  rudimentary  information 
about  gross  morphology  was  available.  He  was 
undaunted  by  the  difficulties,  and  was  able 
greatly  to  advance  knowledge  of  the  nervous 
system  by  careful  histological  work.  He  also 
made  significant  contributions  to  the  study  of  the 
fine  structure  of  the  nervous  system  in  another 
invertebrate  group,  the  polychaete  worms,  using 
the  methods  he  had  developed  for  starfish. 

Smith  was  a  kindly  and  generous  man,  notable 
for  his  obvious  and  genuine  interest  in  people, 
and  an  unusually  able  and  diplomatic  negotiator; 
these  qualities  made  his  advice  and  counsel  much 
sought,  and  he  undertook  a  good  deal  of  commit- 
tee work.  Both  at  QMC  and  at  Plymouth,  Smith 
played  an  important  role  in  British  zoology  by  his 
membership  of  many  committees.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  Science  Research  Council 
(1965-7);  a  council  member  (1953-6)  and  vice- 
president  (1954-5)  of  the  Linnean  Society;  twice 
a  council  member  of  the  Zoological  Society 
(1958-61  and  1964-7)  and  vice-president 
(1959-61);  as  well  as  serving  twice  (1962-3  and 
1972-4)  on  the  council  of  the  Royal  Society  and 
as  vice-president  (1973-4).  He  was  also  a  trustee 
of  the  British  Museum  (Natural  History)  in 
1963-74  (chairman  1969-74),  and  chairman  of 
the  board  of  the  Millport  laboratory.  After  his 
retirement  his  skills  on  committees  were  still 
much  in  demand,  and  he  acted  as  a  member  of 
the  Advisory  Board  for  the  Research  Councils 
(1974-7),  president  of  the  International  Council 
of  Scientific  Unions,  and  chairman  of  its  special 
committee  on  problems  of  the  environment 
(1972).  He  also  chaired  the  important  ABRC 
review  group  on  taxonomy  in  Britain,  whose 
report  was  published  in  1977. 

Smith  was  appointed  CBE  in  1972  and 
knighted  in   1977;  amongst  other  honours,  he 


received  the  gold  medal  of  the  Linnean  Society 
in  1 97 1,  the  Frink  medal  of  the  Zoological 
Society  in  1981,  and  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
King's  College,  London  (1964)  and  Queen  Mary 
College  (1967).  He  received  an  honorary  D.Sc. 
from  Exeter  (1968),  and  was  one  of  the  first 
fellows  of  the  Plymouth  Polytechnic. 

Smith  was  of  medium  height  and  build,  blue- 
eyed  and  more  or  less  bald  in  early  life.  He 
usually  dressed  simply,  in  a  sports  coat  and 
flannel  trousers,  and  his  benevolent  demeanour 
and  charming  smile  made  him  very  approach- 
able. In  retirement,  as  well  as  spending  more 
time  in  his  garden  (he  was  a  keen  vegetable 
gardener),  he  continued  a  lifelong  interest  in  the 
naturalists  of  the  west  country,  and  also  worked 
on  periwinkles,  collected  from  the  shore  below 
his  house  at  Saltash,  and  at  many  sites  around  the 
south-west.  In  1934  he  married  Thelma  Audrey 
(died  1989),  daughter  of  John  Lillicrap  Cornish, 
auctioneer  and  house  agent.  They  had  a  son  and 
a  daughter.  Smith  died  in  a  nursing  home  in 
Plymouth,  3  September  1990. 

[Q.  Bone  and  D.  Nichols  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of 
Fellows  oj  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxviii,  1092;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]        Quentin  Bonf. 

SMITH,  Ronald  William  (1913-1990),  photo- 
grapher. [See  Parkinson,  Norman.] 

SMITH,  Sir  Thomas  Broun  (1915-1988),  aca- 
demic lawyer,  was  born  in  Glasgow  3  December 
1915,  the  second  of  four  sons  (there  was  also  one 
daughter,  the  fourth  child)  of  John  Smith,  DL, 
JP,  restaurateur,  of  Pollokshields,  Glasgow,  and 
Symington,  Lanarkshire,  and  his  wife,  Agnes 
Macfarlane.  He  was  educated  at  the  High  School 
of  Glasgow  and  Sedbergh  School,  went  to  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  as  Boulter  exhibitioner,  and 
graduated  in  1937  with  first-class  honours  in 
jurisprudence  and  the  Eldon  law  scholarship. 
A  year  later,  having  achieved  a  first  class  and 
certificate  of  honour  in  the  bar  final,  he  was 
called  to  the  bar  by  Gray's  Inn,  which  in  1986 
made  him  an  honorary  bencher. 

Smith  joined  the  Territorial  Army  in  1937  and 
served  throughout  World  War  II  in  the  Gordon 
Highlanders  and  Royal  Artillery,  rising  to  the 
rank  of  lieutenant-colonel.  He  took  part  in  the 
retreat  from  Dunkirk,  served  in  the  Mediterran- 
ean and  the  Middle  East,  and  moved  to  intelli- 
gence work.  He  then  returned  to  Scotland, 
passed  advocate  of  the  Scottish  bar  in  1947,  and 
commenced  practice.  In  1949  he  accepted  the 
chair  of  Scots  law  in  the  University  of  Aberdeen, 
where  he  was  very  happy,  made  a  great  impres- 
sion on  students,  and  began  the  movement  to 
change  the  study  of  law  in  the  Scottish  uni- 
versities from  a  part-time  complement  to  office 
training  to  a  more  thorough  study.  He  became  a 
QC  (Scotland)  in  1956  and  in  1958  moved  to  the 


420 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Soames 


chair  of  civil  (Roman)  law  at  Edinburgh,  where 
he  transformed  the  course  from  classical  civil  law 
to  its  later  Romanist  developments  as  the  basis  of 
much  modern  European  law.  Ten  years  later,  in 
1968,  he  transferred  to  the  chair  of  Scots  law  at 
Edinburgh,  which  he  held  till  1972.  In  i960  he 
established  the  Scottish  Universities  Law  Insti- 
tute, a  co-operative  organization  of  the  law  facul- 
ties of  the  four  Scottish  universities,  to  secure  the 
writing  and  publication  of  new,  modern  text- 
books in  all  the  major  fields  of  Scots  law.  He  was 
its  director  from  i960  to  1972. 

Smith  also  made  many  contacts  abroad, 
becoming  a  visiting  professor  at,  among  other 
universities,  Cape  Town  (1958),  Harvard 
(1962-3),  and,  as  Tagore  professor,  Calcutta 
(1977).  A  member  of  the  law  reform  committee 
for  Scotland  from  1954,  he  became  a  commis- 
sioner when  the  Scottish  Law  Commission  was 
established  in  1965  (full-time  from  1972  to  1980); 
on  this  body  his  breadth  of  scholarship  made  him 
a  stimulating  and  inspiring  colleague.  In  retire- 
ment he  took  up  in  198 1  the  onerous  post  of 
general  editor  of  the  new  The  Laws  of  Scotland: 
Stair  Memorial  Encyclopaedia  (25  vols.,   1986- 

94)- 

He  wrote  extensively  and  entertainingly  in 
journals  and  some  of  his  papers  are  collected  in 
Studies  Critical  and  Comparative  (1952).  His 
Hamlyn  lectures,  British  Justice:  the  Scottish 
Contribution  (1961),  strongly  asserted  the  distinc- 
tive nature  of  Scots  law.  His  biggest  book, 
requested  as  a  chapter  on  Scodand  for  a  volume 
The  United  Kingdom  in  a  series  The  British 
Commonwealth:  the  Development  of  its  Laws  and 
Constitutions  (ed.  G.  W.  Keeton  and  D.  Lloyd), 
emerged  in  1955  as  a  full  volume.  It  was  also 
issued  as  A  Short  Commentary  on  the  Law  of 
Scotland  (1962),  to  provide  a  better  basic  text- 
book for  Scottish  law  students  than  was  then 
available.  In  this  it  was  not  a  success,  being  too 
general  and  discursive. 

Physically  Smith  had  a  tendency  to  heaviness 
and  his  cheerful  round  face  and  moustache 
maintained  to  the  end  strong  traces  of  his  mili- 
tary years.  He  was  a  genial  and  jovial  companion, 
with  a  lively  sense  of  humour;  in  discussion  he 
was  courteous  and  stimulating,  but  tended  some- 
times to  pontificate.  He  cared  deeply  about 
Scotland  and  Scots  law.  He  was  much  influenced 
by  T.  M.  *Cooper  (Baron  Cooper  of  Culross), 
whom  he  revered.  In  particular  he  was  interested 
in  the  influence  of  civil  law  on  Scots  law  and  the 
shared  tradition  of  Scots  and  Roman-Dutch  law. 
He  made  a  great  contribution  to  raising  to 
importance  Scots  law  and  Scottish  legal  scholar- 
ship, modernizing  it,  and,  more  by  his  contacts 
than  by  his  writings,  making  it  better  known  to 
the  world  and  better  appreciated  outside  Scot- 
land. 

Smith's  published  work  gained  him  a  DCL 


(Oxford,  1956)  and  LL  D  (Edinburgh,  1963).  He 
was  elected  FBA  in  1958,  FRSE  in  1977,  and  a 
foreign  honorary  member  of  the  American  Acad- 
emy of  Arts  and  Sciences  (1969).  He  received 
honorary  LL  D  degrees  from  Cape  Town  (1959), 
Aberdeen  (1969),  and  Glasgow  (1978),  and  was 
knighted  on  his  retirement  in  1981.  The  Juridical 
Review  for  1982  was  devoted  to  essays  in  his 
honour. 

In  1940  he  married  Ann  Dorothea,  crimino- 
logist, daughter  of  Christian  Tindall,  CIE,  of  the 
Indian  civil  service,  of  Exmouth,  Devon.  It  was  a 
happy  marriage,  which  produced  a  son,  who  died 
in  1962,  and  two  daughters,  one  of  whom  also 
predeceased  Smith  in  1976.  Smith  died  of  cancer 
in  Edinburgh  15  October.  1988.  Till  near  the  end 
he  continued  to  welcome  friends  and  bombard 
contributors  to  The  Laws  of  Scotland  with  com- 
ments and  encouragement.  There  is  a  portrait  by 
T.  A.  Cockburn  in  Edinburgh  University. 

{Juridical  Review,  1982;  The  Times  and  Daily  Telegraph, 
18  October  1988;  Scotsman,  19  October  1988;  obituary 
in  Scots  Lam  Times  (News),  1988:  Yearbook  of  the  Royal 
Society  of  Edinburgh,  1990;  J.  O.  M.  Hunter  in  Proceed- 
ings of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  Ixxxii,  1992;  personal 
knowledge.]  David  M.  Walker 

SOAMES,  (Arthur)  Christopher  (John), 
Baron  Soames  (1920- 1987),  politician,  was  bom 
12  October  1920  in  Penn,  Buckinghamshire,  the 
only  son  and  youngest  of  three  children  of 
Captain  Arthur  Granville  Soames,  OBE,  of  the 
Coldstream  Guards  and  Ashwell  Manor,  Penn, 
and  his  wife,  Hope  Mary  Woodbyne,  daughter  of 
Charles  Woodbyne  Parish.  He  was  educated  at 
Eton  and  the  Royal  Military  College  at  Sand- 
hurst and  commissioned  in  1939  as  a  second 
lieutenant  in  the  Coldstream  Guards.  He  served 
in  the  Middle  East,  Italy,  and  France  during  the 
war,  winning  the  croix  de  guerre  (1942)  while  on 
attachment  to  the  Free  French  brigade  in  the 
Western  Desert,  where  his  right  leg  was  shat- 
tered by  a  mine  explosion.  In  1946  he  was 
appointed  assistant  military  attache  at  the  British 
embassy  in  Paris.  In  the  following  year  he  mar- 
ried Mary,  youngest  daughter  of  (Sir)  Winston 
Leonard  Spencer-*Churchill,  former  prime 
minister. 

In  1950  he  entered  Parliament  as  the  Con- 
servative member  for  Bedford.  During  Church- 
ill's second  premiership  (1952-5),  Soames  acted 
as  his  parliamentary  private  secretary.  He  did 
much  to  keep  the  government  going,  masking  the 
seriousness  of  his  father-in-law's  illness,  when 
Churchill  suffered  a  stroke  in  1953.  He  went 
through  the  ranks  of  junior  ministerial  office 
before  becoming  secretary  of  state  for  war  in 
1958  (when  he  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council), 
and  serving  in  the  cabinet  in  1960-4  as  minister 
of  agriculture. 


421 


Soames 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Having  lost  his  seat  in  the  1966  election,  he 
was  an  inspired  choice  by  the  government  led  by 
Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx) 
as  British  ambassador  to  France  (1968-72). 
Soames  took  up  his  post  at  a  difficult  time,  with 
President  Charles  de  Gaulle  continuing  to 
obstruct  British  accession  to  the  European  Com- 
munity. His  term  in  Paris  began  inauspiciously 
with  the  leaking  by  the  Foreign  Office  of  the 
contents  of  a  private  conversation  between  him 
and  de  Gaulle  (['affaire  Soames).  A  year  later,  de 
Gaulle  was  gone  and  Soames  was  able  to  estab- 
lish a  much  warmer  relationship  with  his  succes- 
sor, Georges  Pompidou.  This  was  the  crucial 
period  leading  to  the  successful  completion  of 
negotiations  for  Britain's  entry  into  the  EC  and 
Soames,  himself  a  convinced  European,  played  a 
major  part  in  persuading  the  French  government 
no  longer  to  impede  the  negotiations.  His  excel- 
lent colloquial  French,  splendid  hospitality,  and 
ebullient  personality  endeared  him  to  the  Pari- 
sians. 

Immediately  following  British  entry  into  the 
EC,  Soames  became  the  first  British  vice-presi- 
dent of  the  European  Commission  and  commis- 
sioner for  external  affairs,  from  1973  to  January 
1977.  He  was  a  most  effective  commissioner.  He 
played  a  major  role  in  international  trade  negotia- 
tions and  in  establishing  British  influence  in 
Brussels. 

After  a  brief  return  to  private  life,  Soames  was 
invited  to  join  Margaret  (later  Baroness)  Thatch- 
er's government  in  1979  as  lord  president  of  the 
Council  and  leader  of  the  House  of  Lords.  Later 
that  year  he  was  given  his  most  difficult  task, 
being  appointed  governor  of  Southern  Rhodesia 
to  oversee  the  cease-fire  and  elections  leading  to 
the  independence  of  Zimbabwe.  When  he  set  off 
from  London  the  cease-fire  had  still  not  been 
agreed,  much  less  brought  into  effect,  and  the 
prospects  for  the  success  of  his  mission  were 
generally  discounted  by  the  press.  Following  the 
successful  conclusion  of  the  Lancaster  House 
negotiations,  a  cease-fire  was  implemented  under 
the  supervision  of  the  largely  British  Com- 
monwealth monitoring  force.  Soames  had  the 
greatest  difficulty  with  the  Rhodesian  military 
commanders  on  the  one  hand  and  sections  of  the 
Patriotic  Front  on  the  other  throughout  the 
period  leading  up  to  the  elections,  which  were 
held  in  February  1980.  He  had  to  exercise 
responsibility  with  no  more  real  power  than  he 
could  win  by  bargaining  with  the  contending 
parties.  He  set  out  to  establish  a  personal  rela- 
tionship with  the  black  political  leaders,  assuring 
Robert  Mugabe  that,  if  he  won  the  elections, 
Soames  would  take  the  lead  in  helping  the  new 
government  establish  itself  in  a  still  uncertain, 
tense,  and  dangerous  situation.  When  Mugabe 
did  win  he  invited  Soames  to  continue  to  serve  as 
governor.  In  the  ensuing  period  major  steps  were 


taken  towards  bringing  together  and  forming 
into  a  single  military  command  elements  of  the 
Rhodesian  forces  and  those  of  the  Patriotic 
Front,  who  themselves  were  split  into  two  war- 
ring factions.  Soames  left  Rhodesia  having 
helped  to  bring  an  end  to  the  war  and  to  launch 
Zimbabwe  as  an  independent  nation,  amidst 
near-universal  plaudits. 

On  his  return  to  Britain  he  had  to  deal  with 
matters  far  less  congenial  to  him,  including  a 
Civil  Service  strike.  He  found  himself  out  of 
sympathy  with  the  new  economic  strategy  being 
pursued  by  Mrs  Thatcher  and  her  style  of 
government.  In  1981  he  was  dropped  from  the 
government.  He  remained  thereafter  very  active 
in  business,  holding  a  number  of  important 
directorships  until  his  death,  including  those  of 
N.  M.  Rothschild's  and  the  National  West- 
minster Bank,  and  the  chairmanship  of  ICL 
(UK). 

Soames  was  a  figure  very  much  larger  than 
life.  His  conversation  could  usually  be  heard  in 
the  next  room.  His  convivial  but  forthright 
personality  inspired  strong  loyalties  among  his 
friends  and  some  resistance  on  the  part  of  more 
sensitive  souls."  His  hospitality  and  enjoyment  of 
life  were  legendary.  As  ambassador  in  Paris, 
commissioner  in  Brussels,  and  governor  of  Rho- 
desia, he  put  up  performances  which  could 
scarcely  have  been  matched  by  anyone  else.  His 
success  in  all  these  capacities  owed  much  to  his 
wife,  (Dame)  Mary.  They  had  three  sons,  one  of 
whom,  Nicholas,  also  became  a  Conservative  MP 
and  minister,  and  two  daughters. 

The  academic  distinctions  Soames  received 
included  honorary  doctorates  from  Oxford 
(1981)  and  St  Andrews  (1974).  He  was  awarded 
the  Robert  Schuman  prize  in  1976.  He  was 
appointed  CBE  (1955)  and  GCMG  and  GCVO 
(1972),  created  a  life  baron  in  1978,  and 
appointed  CH  in  1980.  He  also  was  awarded,  on 
his  departure  from  Paris,  the  cross  of  grand 
officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour.  He  died  from 
cancer  16  September  1987,  at  his  home  in 
Odiham,  Hampshire. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Robin  Renwick 

SOLOMON  (1902- 1 988),  pianist,  was  born  9 
August  1902  at  39  Fournier  Street,  in  the  East 
End  of  London,  the  youngest  in  the  family  of 
four  sons  and  three  daughters  of  Harris  Cutner 
(formerly  Schneiderman),  master  tailor,  the 
grandson  of  a  Polish  emigre  from  Cutnow,  and 
his  wife,  Rose  Piser.  Showing  exceptional  musi- 
cal talent  from  early  childhood,  at  the  age  of 
seven  he  came  to  the  attention  of  Mathilde 
Verne,  a  fashionable  London  piano  teacher  and 
former  pupil  of  Clara  Schumann.  She  persuaded 
Solomon's  parents  to  sign  a  contract,  relinquish- 
ing him  into  her  care  for  five  years,  and  within  a 


422 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Solomon 


year  she  had  launched  him  successfully  as  a  child 
prodigy,  with  a  debut  at  the  Queen's  Hall  in  June 
ion,  playing  Mozart's  Concerto  in  B»  ('the  little 
»'),  the  slow  movement  of  Tchaikovsky's  first 
Piano  Concerto,  and  a  Polacca  by  Alice  Verne. 
The  concert  was  conducted  by  Theodor  Miiller- 
Reuter,  another  of  Clara  Schumann's  pupils. 
Billed  from  the  outset  as  'Solomon',  sometimes 
wearing  a  sailor  suit,  sometimes  in  velvet  knick- 
erbockers and  a  lace  collar,  he  captivated  his 
audiences.  He  was  invited  to  play  at  Buckingham 
Palace  in  191 2,  and  he  made  his  Proms  debut  in 
19 14  playing  Beethoven's  Second  Piano  Con- 
certo. 

After  Solomon  had  spent  five  miserable  years 
with  Mathilde  Verne,  forced  to  practise  for  many 
hours  a  day  in  a  locked  room,  his  parents  refused 
to  sign  another  contract,  and  for  a  year  he  gave 
concerts  throughout  England  chaperoned  by  one 
of  his  brothers.  In  1916  he  decided  to  give  up  all 
public  performances,  and,  after  a  farewell  recital 
at  the  Wigmore  Hall  shortly  before  his  four- 
teenth birthday,  he  began  studying  with  Dr 
Simon  Rumschisky  in  London,  while  attending 
King  Alfred  School  in  the  North  End  Road  in 
the  mornings.  His  studies  were  financed  through 
a  fund  set  up  by  an  American,  Mrs  Colson.  He 
spent  three  years  with  Rumschisky,  a  medical 
doctor  who  had  studied  the  physiological  aspects 
of  playing  the  piano.  Solomon  later  claimed  that 
he  was  one  of  the  greatest  teachers  in  the  world, 
and  had  taught  him  all  his  technique.  In  1919, 
financed  by  Mrs  Colson,  Solomon  went  to  Paris, 
where  his  teachers  included  Lazare  Levy,  Marcel 
Dupre,  and  Alfred  Cortot. 

Still  only  nineteen,  Solomon  returned  to  the 
concert  platform  with  a  Wigmore  Hall  recital  in 
1 92 1.  The  1920s  were  difficult  years  for  him,  for 
English  audiences  then  preferred  foreign  pianists 
such  as  Arthur  Schnabel.  Although  he  toured  the 
USA  in  1926,  he  remained  relatively  unknown 
outside  England.  Thanks  to  Sir  Henry  *Wood  he 
performed  regularly  at  the  Queen's  Hall  Prom- 
enade Concerts.  (Sir)  Arthur  *Bliss  wrote  his 
Viola  Sonata  (1933)  for  Solomon  and  Lionel 
*Tertis,  and  when  Solomon  was  asked  by  the 
British  Council  to  represent  Great  Britain  at  the 
New  York  World  Fair  in  1939,  he  commissioned 
Bliss  to  write  a  piano  concerto.  During  World 
War  II  Solomon  joined  the  Entertainments 
National  Service  Association  (ENSA)  and  gave 
many  concerts,  both  for  troops  abroad  and  in 
army  camps  and  hospitals  at  home,  making  many 
converts  to  classical  music.  Through  his  concerts 
on  the  wards  at  St  Mary's  Hospital,  Paddington, 
he  came  into  contact  with  Sir  Alexander  *Flem- 
ing,  and  was  successfully  treated  for  a  septic 
thumb  through  the  inhalation  of  penicillin  in  the 
very  early  days  of  its  development  as  an  antibiotic. 

After  the  war  Solomon  became  an  inter- 
national   celebrity,    following    an    enthusiastic 


reception  in  the  USA  on  his  tour  in  1949.  He 
spent  the  next  few  years  touring  and  recording, 
before  a  stroke  ended  his  career  in  1956.  He  was 
left  with  an  active  brain,  but  a  speech  impedi- 
ment. Though  he  struggled  to  express  himself 
his  playing  days  were  over.  In  the  remaining 
years  of  his  life  he  could  take  no  interest  in  his 
career,  achievements,  or  recordings. 

Solomon  was  one  of  the  three  greatest  English 
pianists  of  the  twentieth  century,  with  Dame 
Myra  *Hess  and  Sir  Clifford  *Curzon,  and 
possibly  the  greatest  twentieth-century  British 
interpreter  of  Schumann.  During  his  early  career 
he  was  best  known  for  his  performances  of 
Chopin,  but  he  later  concentrated  on  Mozart, 
Beethoven,  Schumann,  and  Brahms.  Critics 
commented  on  the  elegance  and  purity  of  his 
playing,  its  clarity  and  accuracy,  and  the  con- 
trolled nature  of  his  performances.  Famous 
recordings  from  the  early  1950s  include  those  of 
the  Brahms  'Variations  and  Fugue  on  a  Theme 
by  Handel',  Beethoven's  'Moonlight'  Sonata,  the 
two  Brahms  piano  concertos,  and  Schumann's 
'CarnavaT.  He  also  played  chamber  music, 
recording  the  Beethoven  cello  sonatas  with  Gre- 
gor  Piatigorsky,  and  he  formed  a  trio  with  Zino 
Francescatti  and  Pierre  Fournier  for  the  1955 
Edinburgh  festival. 

Solomon  was  short  and  stocky,  almost  com- 
pletely bald  from  an  early  age,  with  short,  thick 
fingers.  He  displayed  none  of  the  temperamental 
behaviour  usually  associated  with  great  artists, 
and  despite  his  years  of  adulation  as  a  child 
prodigy  he  developed  into  a  charming  and  mod- 
est person,  nicknamed  'Solo'  by  Walter  Legge, 
manager  for  artists  and  repertory  at  the  Gramo- 
phone Company.  He  had  a  passion  for  betting 
and  gambling,  possibly  originating  in  his  trips  to 
the  races  with  the  elderly  mother  of  his  landlady 
while  he  was  studying  in  Paris,  and  he  loved  to 
visit  the  casinos  in  Cannes  and  Monte  Carlo.  He 
enjoyed  bridge  and  golf,  and  for  years  played 
tennis  daily  with  his  old  friend  Gerald  *Moore. 

Solomon  was  appointed  CBE  in  1946  for  his 
wartime  work.  He  had  honorary  degrees  from 
Cambridge  (Mus.D.,  1974)  and  St  Andrews 
(LL  D,  i960).  In  1970  he  married,  after  a  long 
friendship  begun  in  1927,  a  former  pupil,  Gwen- 
doline Harriet,  daughter  of  Patrick  Byrne,  an 
Irish  doctor  and  surgeon.  They  had  not  married 
earlier  because  Solomon  was  an  orthodox  Jew 
and  Gwendoline  a  gentile.  They  had  no  children. 
Solomon  died  22  February  1988  in  London. 

[Mathilde  Verne,  Chords  of  Remembrance,  1936;  Gerald 
Moore,  Am  I  Too  Loud?,  1962;  David  Dubai,  The  Art  of 
the  Piano,  1990;  Reginald  Pound,  Sir  Henry  Wood, 
1969;  Brian  Crimp,  Solo,  1995;  BBC  Sound  Recordings 
archive;  private  information.]  Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

SOLOMON,    Keith    Granville    (1910-1990), 

chairman   and   chief  executive   of  the   British 


423 


Solomon 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Overseas  Airways  Corporation.  [See  Granville, 
Sir  Keith.] 

SOPWITH,   Sir   Thomas   Octave   Murdoch 

(1888-1989),  engineer  and  pioneer  airman,  was 
born  18  January  1888  at  92  Cromwell  Road, 
Kensington,  west  London,  the  eighth  child  and 
only  son  of  Thomas  Sopwith  (1838-1898),  man- 
aging director  of  the  Spanish  Lead  Mines  Com- 
pany of  Linares  in  southern  Spain,  and  his  wife 
Lydia  Gertrude,  daughter  of  William  Messiter, 
of  Wincanton,  Somerset.  Sopwith  was  educated 
at  the  Cottesmore  School,  Hove,  Sussex,  and, 
from  1902,  the  Seafield  Park  Engineering  College 
at  Lee-on-Solent,  where  he  pursued  his  already 
deep  interest  in  early  motor  cars,  motor  cycles, 
and  all  things  mechanical.  His  childhood  was 
deeply  affected  by  an  incident  on  a  boating 
expedition  during  the  family's  annual  summer 
holiday  on  the  Isle  of  Lismore,  off  Oban  in 
Scotland,  when  a  gun,  lying  across  the  ten-year- 
old  Sopwith's  knee,  went  off  and  killed  his 
father.  This  haunted  Sopwith  for  the  rest  of  his 
life.  A  substantial  inheritance  of  £52,000  was 
divided,  chiefly,  between  Sopwith  and  his 
mother,  because  five  of  the  seven  daughters  had 
already  married  well. 

Thus  provided,  on  leaving  Seafield  Park  in 
1905,  without  academic  attainments,  but  with  a 
good,  practical  grasp  of  basic  engineering,  Sop- 
with plunged  into  the  enjoyable  pursuits  of 
ballooning,  motor-racing  at  Brooklands,  and  sail- 
ing in  Channel  waters.  He  bought  a  single-seat 
Avis  monoplane  and  taught  himself  to  fly  (he 
gained  the  aviator's  certificate  no.  31).  Before  the 
end  of  1910  he  set  up  a  British  distance  and 
duration  record  of  107  miles  and  3  hours  10 
minutes  and,  in  December,  with  a  flight  of  169 
miles  in  3!  hours,  won  the  £4,000  Baron  de 
Forest  prize  for  the  longest  flight  of  the  year 
from  Britain  into  Europe.  He  won  further  prize 
money  in  America,  which  enabled  him,  in  Feb- 
ruary 191 2,  to  found  the  Sopwith  School  of 
Flying  and,  in  June,  the  Sopwith  Aviation  Com- 
pany Ltd. 

By  the  outbreak  of  war  in  August  19 14  the 
Sopwith  Aviation  Company  had  become  one  of 
the  leading  early  British  aircraft  manufacturers, 
supplying  aircraft  to  both  the  Admiralty  and 
the  War  Office.  Moreover,  a  Sopwith  Tabloid 
on  floats; — a  precursor  of  all  subsequent  single- 
seat  fighters — had  won  for  Britain  the  second 
Schneider  Trophy  air  race  at  Monaco.  Between 
August  19 1 4  and  November  19 18  more  than 
18,000  Sopwith  aircraft,  of  thirty-two  different 
types,  were  designed  and  built  for  the  Allied  air 
forces.  They  included  5,747  Sopwith  Camel 
single-seat  fighters.  The  Camel  was  one  of  the 
most  successful  military  aircraft  of  World  War  I, 
with  1,294  confirmed  victories  in  air  combat. 

Sopwith's  contribution  to  the  war  was  recog- 


nized by  his  appointment  as  CBE  in  191 8,  but 
from  the  end  of  the  war  until  September  1920 
the  Sopwith  Company  built  only  fifteen  aircraft, 
while  vainly  endeavouring  to  maintain  the  em- 
ployment of  as  many  as  possible  of  its  workers  by 
building  motor-car  bodies,  motor  cycles,  and 
even  aluminium  saucepans.  In  September  1920 
Sopwith  put  the  company  into  liquidation  while 
he  was  still  able  to  pay  creditors  in  full.  Two 
months  later  he  launched  the  H.  G.  Hawker 
Engineering  Company  Ltd.,  with  himself  as 
chairman,  Fred  Sigrist  as  chief  engineer,  and 
Harry  Hawker  as  designer/ test  pilot.  In  June 
1928  the  Hawker  Company's  fortunes  were  truly 
founded,  following  the  first  flight  at  Brooklands 
of  the  outstanding  Hawker  Hart,  a  two-seat  day 
bomber,  designed  by  (Sir)  Sydney  *Camm,  who 
had  joined  the  Hawker  Company  in  1923.  Dur- 
ing the  next  ten  years  3,036  Harts,  and  its  seven 
variants,  were  built  to  form  a  substantial  portion 
of  the  Royal  Air  Force. 

Until  1963,  under  Sopwith's  leadership  and 
with  Camm's  design  team,  26,800  aircraft  of 
fifty-two  different  types  flowed  from  the  produc- 
tion lines  of  Hawkers  and  its  associated  com- 
panies. Chief  among  them  was  the  Hawker 
Hurricane,  a  single-seat  fighter,  first  flown  on  6 
November  1935,  and  put  into  production  by 
Sopwith  three  months  before  an  Air  Ministry 
order  had  been  received.  Thanks  to  that  hazard- 
ous but  calculated  risk,  an  additional  300  Hurri- 
canes were  able  to  be  in  service  when  the  Battle 
of  Britain  began  in  1940 — a  factor  which  contrib- 
uted to  Britain  winning  the  world's  first  decisive 
air  battle. 

Meanwhile,  in  July  1935,  with  acumen  and 
skill  Sopwith  had  begun  to  weld  a  major  portion 
of  the  British  aircraft  industry  into  the  Hawker 
Siddeley  Group — a  combination  of  the  Arm- 
strong-Whitworth,  Avro,  Gloster,  and  Hawker 
aircraft  companies,  with  the  Armstrong  Siddeley 
aero-engine  and  motor-car  company  and  Air 
Service  Training.  During  World  War  II  the 
group  delivered  more  than  40,000  aeroplanes  of 
fifteen  different  types.  They  ranged  from  the 
Avro  Lancaster  bomber  to  the  Gloster  Meteor  jet 
fighter.  In  1959  the  de  Havilland  Aircraft  Com- 
pany was  added  to  the  group  and,  in  1963, 
Blackburn  and  General  Aircraft  Ltd.  Sopwith 
remained  steadfastly  in  charge  as  chairman  of  the 
board,  skilfully  delegating  his  responsibilities 
until  in  1963,  at  the  age  of  seventy-five,  he 
retired  as  chairman,  but  remained  on  the  board 
until,  on  his  ninetieth  birthday,  he  was  elected 
founder  and  life  president.  He  was  knighted  in 

1953- 

Throughout  his  long  life  Sopwith  maintained 
his  cherished  pursuits  of  fishing,  shooting,  and 
boating.  In  19 13  he  set  up  a  world  speed  record 
for  powerboats  of  48  knots,  and  between  1928 
and    1930,    with   seventy-five   first    prizes,    he 


424 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Sorabji 


became  the  leading  British  12-metre  yachtsman. 
In  1930  he  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Royal 
Yacht  Squadron.  With  his  J-class  sloop.  Endeav- 
our, he  came  close  to  winning  the  America's  Cup 
for  Britain  in  1934.  In  1937  he  tried  again,  with 
Endeavour  II,  but  lost  to  a  better  boat.  In  later 
years  he  confided,  'My  one  great  regret  is  that  I 
didn't  bring  home  that  Cup.'  Between  1937  and 
1939  Sopwith  revelled  in  the  ownership  of  the 
1,600-ton,  ocean-going  diesel  yacht,  Philante, 
built  to  his  own  requirements. 

Sopwith  was  six  feet  tall,  somewhat  chubby- 
faced,  with  full  cheeks,  and  a  high,  broad,  and 
clear  forehead,  topped  by  a  mass  of  thick  dark 
hair,  always  parted  to  the  right.  He  had  some- 
what heavy  eyebrows,  hazel  eyes,  a  broad, 
straight  nose,  a  wide  mouth,  and  a  rather  thin 
upper  lip.  In  19 14  he  married  the  forty -three- 
year-old  Beatrix  Mary  Leslie,  divorced  wife  of 
Charles  Edward  Malcolm  and  daughter  of 
Walter  James  Ruthven,  Baron  Ruthven.  To  his 
great  distress,  she  died  of  cancer  in  1930.  In  1932 
he  married  Phyllis  Brodie  Leslie,  daughter  of 
Frederick  Philip  Augustus  Gordon,  inspector  of 
gaols  in  the  Indian  Civil  Service.  She  died  in 
1978.  They  had  one  son.  In  his  ninetieth  year 
Sopwith  became  completely  blind,  but  he  lost 
none  of  his  memory,  nor  his  interest  in  aviation, 
sport,  and  meeting  old  friends.  In  1988  a  great 
assembly  of  Sopwith's  legion  of  friends  attended 
a  hundredth  birthday  party  held  for  him  at 
Brooklands,  at  which  they  contacted  him  in 
Hampshire  by  land  line  (a  discreet  telephone 
line).  He  died  at  his  home,  Compton  Manor,  at 
Kings  Somborne  in  Hampshire,  27  January 
1989. 

[Bruce  Robertson,  Sopwith  the  Man  and  His  Aircraft, 
1970;  Horace  F.  King,  Sopwith  Aircraft  igi2-ig20, 
1 081;  Alan  Bramson,  Pure  Luck,  the  Authorized  Bio- 
graphy of  Sir  Thomas  Sopunth,  1090;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  Peter  Masefield 

SORABJI,  Kaikhosru  Shapurji  (1 892-1 988), 
composer,  pianist,  and  critic,  was  born  14  August 
1892  in  Buxton  Road,  Chingford,  Essex,  as  Leon 
Dudley  Sorabji,  the  only  child  of  a  Parsee  father, 
Shapurji  Sorabji,  mining  engineer  and  iron  mer- 
chant, and  his  wife,  Madeline  Matilda  Korthy,  a 
Spanish-Sicilian  opera  singer.  He  adopted  the 
baptismal  Parsee  name  by  which  he  was  univer- 
sally known  early  in  life,  though  near  the  begin- 
ning of  his  career  he  signed  himself  with  various 
forms  combined  with  Leon  and  Dudley.  Lat- 
terly, he  rejected  enquiries  into  his  nomen- 
clature, as  into  the  date  of  his  birth,  with  the 
jealousy  of  his  privacy  that  characterized  his  life. 
This  refusal  to  countenance  journalistic  curi- 
osity, coupled  with  the  challenging  letters  with 
which  he  would  bombard  those  who  displeased 
him,  was  in  contrast  to  the  good  humour, 
humanity,  and  generosity  which  he  would  show 


to  those  who  came  into  personal  contact  with 
him. 

Sorabji  had  a  number  of  teachers,  both  as 
pianist  and  as  composer,  but  no  formal  educa- 
tion. His  keyboard  technique  was  admired  as 
'fabulous'  in  the  early  part  of  his  career,  when  he 
played  in  London,  Paris,  Vienna,  Glasgow,  and 
Bombay;  but  he  came  to  dislike  the  circum- 
stances of  public  music-making,  and  withdrew 
from  the  concert  platform  in  December  1936.  In 
part,  this  was  a  product  of  his  distaste  for  playing 
to  listeners  of  whom  he  knew  nothing,  and  a 
preference  for  addressing  himself  to  a  circle  of 
like-minded  friends.  Modest  private  means 
enabled  him  to  pursue  a  life  free  from  the 
commercial  considerations  he  despised,  though 
he  continued  to  compose  (up  to  1982)  and  won 
himself  a  reputation  as  a  trenchant  and  forceful 
critic.  He  wrote  especially  for  the  New  English 
Weekly  and  for  A.  R.  *Orage's  New  Age.  Some  of 
these  articles  were  later  reprinted  in  two  collec- 
tions, Around  Music  (1932)  and  Mi  Contra  Fa 

(1947)- 

The  allusion  in  the  latter  tide  is  to  the  medie- 
val theorists'  description  of  two  harmonically 
opposed  notes:  'mi  contra  fa,  diabolus  in  musica'. 
However,  Sorabji's  criticism  was  generally  on  the 
side  of  the  angels.  Composers  he  championed 
included  those  who  later  won  international 
recognition,  such  as  Karol  Szymanowski,  Nicolai 
Medtner,  Ferruccio  Busoni,  and  Charles-Henri 
Alkan  (all  influences  on  him),  and  some  who  have 
remained  neglected  even  in  their  homeland,  such 
as  Francis  George  Scott  and  Bernard  van  Dieren. 
Though  he  had  strong  opinions,  his  attacks  were 
mostly  reserved  for  individuals  and  organizations 
whose  attitudes  he  saw  as  betraying  the  loftiest 
standards.  He  expressed  himself  forcefully,  even 
vituperarively,  but  always  with  an  expressive 
bravura  in  his  widely  ranging  sentences  that 
made  his  prose  an  entertainment  to  read.  A 
characteristic  sally  is  contained  in  the  dedication 
of  what  is  probably  his  masterpiece,  the  'Opus 
Clavicembalisticum',  to  his  friend  Hugh  *Mac- 
Diarmid,  'likewise  to  the  everlasting  glory  of 
those  few  men  blessed  and  sanctified  in  the 
curses  and  execration  of  those  many  whose  praise 
is  eternal  damnation'. 

The  elaborate  richness  of  Sorabji's  own  music 
reflects  not  so  much  the  oriental  luxuriance  often 
attributed  to  it  (nothing  enraged  him  more  than 
being  described  as  Indian)  as  the  profusion  of  his 
mind.  His  earliest  music,  such  as  'In  the  Hot- 
house' (19 18),  is  sensuously  chromatic  in  a  man- 
ner that  might  have  appealed  to  Frederick 
*Delius  (who  admired  his  'Le  Jardin  Parfume'  of 
1923).  His  First  Piano  Sonata  (1919)  makes  some 
use  of  thematic  cells,  but  the  Second  (1920)  lacks 
any  clear  controlling  form;  his  Fourth  (1929)  was 
accompanied  by  a  rare  analytical  account  (prob- 
ably written  as  a  concert  introduction)  and  gave 


425 


Sorabji 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  music  more  traditional  forms,  such  as  passa- 
caglia.  He  claimed  to  have  found  his  direction 
with  the  First  Organ  Symphony  (1924),  a  work 
lasting  two  hours  (the  later  organ  symphonies  are 
longer).  In  this,  an  opening  passacaglia  provides 
an  admirable  tether  for  his  far-ranging  fantasy,  a 
fugue  develops  some  ideas  strictly,  and  in  the 
complex  finale  all  the  ideas  are  woven  into  a 
complex  tapestry.  Other  works  drew,  with  great 
technical  virtuosity,  on  established  forms  as  pro- 
viding the  basis  for  elaborate  fantasizing.  The 
'Opus  Clavicembalisticum'  (1930)  for  solo  piano 
combines  into  its  time-span  of  four  and  a  half 
hours  a  wide  range  of  disciplines,  of  which  the 
principal  is  fugue. 

Sorabji  gave  the  first  performance  himself  in 
Glasgow  in  December  1930.  It  caused  a  sensa- 
tion, but  then  an  inadequate  London  perform- 
ance of  the  first  part  by  an  inferior  pianist 
contributed  to  Sorabji  withdrawing  his  music 
from  being  performed  without  his  express  per- 
mission. This  'ban'  was  relaxed  when,  in  the 
1970s,  there  began  to  emerge  virtuosi  with  the 
technique  to  master  the  music's  difficulties  and 
the  intellectual  curiosity  to  explore  its  substance. 
Sorabji  was  happy  with  performances  by  John 
*Ogdon,  Yonty  Solomon,  Michael  Habermann, 
Geoffrey  Douglas  Madge,  and  the  organist  Kevin 
Bowyer. 

He  had  by  now  long  since  withdrawn  to  what 
he  called  his  'granite  tower',  a  small  house  on  the 
outskirts  of  Corfe  castle  in  Dorset,  from  which 
he  repelled  casual  vistors  with  fierce  notices,  but 
welcomed  friends  with  warmth  and  wit.  Short  of 
stature  and  bespectacled,  with  a  shock  of  wild 
black  hair  that  in  later  life  became  a  heavy  white 
mane,  he  was  a  delightful  conversationalist 
whose  independence  of  mind  remained  intact. 
Though  he  denied  any  formal  doctrinal  persua- 
sion, he  had  a  religious  temperament  that 
inclined  towards  Roman  Catholicism  while  not 
excluding  an  interest  in  Parsee  mysticism.  He 
never  married,  and  died  in  Winfrith  Newburgh 
15  October  1988. 

[Sorabji  archive,  organized  by  Alistair  Hinton,  Easton 
Dene,  Bailbrook  Lane,  Bath,  BAi  7  A  A;  personal 
knowledge.]  John  Warrack 

SOSNOW,  Eric  Charles  (19 10-1987),  journal- 
ist, lawyer,  and  businessman,  was  born  18 
August  191 0  in  Kolno,  eastern  Poland,  the  sec- 
ond son  in  the  family  of  three  boys  and  two  girls 
of  David  Sosnow,  a  Jewish  produce  merchant, 
and  his  wife,  Libby  Markewitz.  He  spent  his 
early  years  in  Poland  and  was  educated  at  Lomza 
Secondary  School,  Wilno  University,  law  cham- 
bers in  Warsaw,  and  the  London  School  of 
Economics.  In  1934  he  left  Poland  for  England 
and  was  employed  as  a  foreign  correspondent  for 
Polish  newspapers. 

He  worked  briefly  for  Nahum  Sokolov  as  his 


private  secretary.  In  1936  he  became  a  graduate 
research  student  at  the  London  School  of  Eco- 
nomics. As  a  foreign  journalist  he  joined  the 
Foreign  Press  Association  and  with  his  know- 
ledge of  politics  and  command  of  languages  (he 
spoke  eight)  he  specialized  in  articles  on  eastern 
Europe.  In  1938  he  started  writing  for  the 
Economist  under  Donald  *Tyerman,  and  in  1940 
became  an  overseas  correspondent  for  the  Sun- 
day Times  and  Sunday  Chronicle.  He  was  to 
continue  writing  for  these  papers  for  a  further 
twenty  years.  His  reputation  grew  and  in  1944  he 
was  asked  to  interview  the  Polish  prime  minister 
and,  later,  the  president  of  Czechoslovakia  before 
his  ill-fated  journey  to  Moscow.  He  mixed  easily 
with  foreign  journalists  of  every  nationality  and 
political  persuasion.  He  loved  journalism  for  the 
contact  it  gave  him  with  people  and  the  outlet  it 
provided  for  his  writing.  He  was  naturalized  in 
October  1947. 

While  travelling  and  reporting  he  built  a 
network  of  contacts  around  the  world.  Although 
his  first  love  was  journalism,  the  most  obvious 
outlet  for  his  talents  and  energy  was  international 
trade.  On  his  arrival  in  England  he  worked  with 
his  uncle  in  the  importation  of  fruit  juices.  In 
1945  he  took  over  a  redundant  orange-juice 
factory  and  started,  together  with  his  wife,  the 
manufacture  of  inexpensive  fashion  clothing 
under  the  name  'Estrava'. 

In  1955  he  was  asked  by  Joe  Bradley,  with 
whom  he  had  developed  a  very  close  association, 
to  take  over  the  management  of  Carters  Mer- 
chants, an  import-export  company.  In  1961 
Estrava  and  Carters  Merchants  were  combined 
into  Whiteley  Stevens,  a  textile  company  quoted 
on  the  London  Stock  Exchange.  In  the  same  year 
the  group  bought  Gordon  Woodroffe,  with  its 
trading  interests  in  India,  China,  Japan,  and 
Africa.  In  1962  Sosnow  changed  the  name  of  the 
group  to  United  City  Merchants.  He  now  had  an 
international  trading  group,  which  was  to  con- 
tinue to  grow  and  keep  him  travelling. 

Gaining  a  reputation  for  barter,  he  became  a 
central  figure  in  international  trade,  and  particu- 
larly trade  behind  the  iron  curtain.  When  he 
retired  as  chairman  in  1981,  United  City  Mer- 
chants was  an  international  trading  company, 
with  offices  worldwide,  involved  in  banking, 
shipping,  leather,  raw  materials,  industrial 
machinery,  cars,  and  turnkey  projects.  He  had 
hoped  that  his  very  talented  son  Norman  would 
take  over  from  him,  but  he  was  killed  in  an  air 
crash  in  1967,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  while 
working  for  the  company. 

From  1 98 1  onwards  Sosnow  devoted  more  of 
his  time  to  predominantly  educational  charities. 
He  became  a  governor  and  honorary  fellow  of  the 
London  School  of  Economics  and  was  elected  a 
fellow-commoner  of  Christ's  College,  Cam- 
bridge. He  endowed  chairs  and  travelling  schol- 


426 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Spear 


arships  in  both  universiries  in  his  son's  name;  he 
had  a  great  affection  for  and  understanding  of 
young  people.  He  was  very  much  involved  in  the 
Hebrew  University  of  Jerusalem  and  the  Weiz- 
mann  Institute  in  Israel,  and  was  closely  asso- 
ciated with  the  Oxford  Centre  for  Postgraduate 
Hebrew  Studies  and  with  the  Institute  of  Jewish 
Affairs  in  London.  Among  his  decorations  were 
the  Polish  Order  of  Merit  (1085)  and  the  rank  of 
comendador  of  the  Republic  of  Portugal  (1973). 
He  became  a  freeman  of  the  City  of  London  in 
i960. 

Sosnow  was  a  short,  affable,  and  energetic 
man,  always  immaculately  dressed,  and  with  a 
great  sense  of  humour.  He  was  never  prepared  to 
take  'no'  for  an  answer.  As  a  journalist  he 
searched  for  the  scoop.  As  a  businessman  he 
expanded  his  company,  which  grew,  not  only  in 
spite  of  the  controls  in  the  1960s  and  1970s,  but 
because  of  them.  He  was  never  prepared  to 
contest  take-over  bids  but  was  willing  to  fight  the 
system.  When  dividend  controls  were  instituted 
he  used  them  as  an  opportunity  to  conserve  cash 
with  which  he  bought  businesses.  He  developed 
a  technique  for  issuing  tax-free  bonus  shares  to 
his  shareholders  which  was  widely  copied.  He 
enjoyed  the  pomp  and  ceremony  of  the  Gty  and 
was  happy  when  he  was  made  a  freeman  of  the 
City  of  London.  He  believed  the  basic  tools 
necessary  for  success  in  international  trade  were 
a  knowledge  of  and  aptitude  for  languages,  train- 
ing in  economics  and  international  law,  a  love  of 
travel,  and  an  interest  in  modem  history  and 
people. 

He  was  a  voracious  reader  and  an  excellent 
academic  lawyer,  from  whom  solicitors  and 
counsel  learned  many  lessons.  As  a  lawyer  he 
derived  immense  satisfaction  from  his  successful 
appeal  to  the  House  of  Lords  in  1982,  United 
City  Merchants  Investments  Ltd.  v.  Royal  Bank  of 
Canada,  which  decided  that  where  a  letter  of 
credit  was  in  order  on  its  face,  refusal  by  a  banker 
to  pay  on  presentation  did  not  extend  to  fraud  to 
which  the  seller  was  not  party. 

In  1943  Sosnow  married  Sylvia,  daughter  of 
Mark  Tafler,  an  authority  on  late  nineteenth- 
century  English  engraved  glass.  They  had  a  son, 
who  died  in  1967,  and  a  daughter.  They  were  a 
remarkable  couple,  Sylvia  being  an  active  partner 
in  the  business  and  contributing  greatly  to  its 
success.  Sosnow  died  at  the  Hospital  of  St  John 
and  St  Elizabeth,  London  NW8,  20  February 
1987,  and  his  wife  died  in  1988. 
[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.]  E.  S.  Birk 

SPEAR,  (Augustus  John)  Ruskin  (1911-1000), 
artist  and  teacher,  was  born  30  June  191 1  in 
Hammersmith,  London,  the  only  son  and  young- 
est of  five  children  of  Augustus  Spear,  coach- 
builder  and  coach-painter,  and  his  wife, 
(Matilda)  Jane  Lemon,  cook.  He  acquired  his 


unusual  and  appropriate  Christian  names  by 
being  named  Augustus  after  his  father,  John  after 
his  maternal  grandfather,  and  Ruskin  after  a 
member  of  the  artistically  inclined  family  with 
whom  his  mother  was  in  service  at  the  time  of  his 
birth.  Crippled  by  polio  at  an  early  age,  Spear 
attended  the  Brook  Green  School,  Hammer- 
smith, for  afflicted  children,  where  his  artistic 
talent  was  recognized.  He  went  on  to  study  at  the 
Hammersmith  School  of  Art  on  a  scholarship, 
aged  about  fifteen,  and  then  at  the  Royal  College 
of  Art  in  London  (1930-4),  on  another  scholar- 
ship, under  Sir  William  *Rothenstein. 

He  subsidized  his  own  work  by  teaching, 
stating  that  he  'tried  to  believe  money  unim- 
portant', and  he  noted  wryly:  'first  teaching 
appointment  Croydon  School  of  Art.  Fee  for  2j 
hours,  16  shillings  plus  train  fare.  The  Principal, 
interested  in  palmistry,  read  my  hand,  deciding  it 
was  promising,  offered  me  four  days  per  week.' 
He  taught  at  Croydon,  Sidcup,  Bromley,  St 
Martin's,  Central,  and  Hammersmith  schools  of 
art,  and — notably — as  a  visiting  teacher  in  the 
painting  school  at  the  Royal  College  of  Art 
(1952-77).  He  was  also  a  gifted  musician,  and 
added  to  his  income  by  playing  jazz  piano. 

Throughout  his  life  Spear  regarded  himself  as 
'a  working-class  cockney',  while  pursuing  an 
extensive  career  as  one  of  the  liveliest  members 
of  the  an  world,  loved  by  the  public,  fellow 
artists,  and  students,  but  only  occasionally  by  the 
critics,  by  whom  he  was  not  taken  seriously.  He 
was  a  robust  character,  direct,  colourful,  pipe- 
smoking,  and  bearded.  Known  as  a  man  with  a 
prodigious  thirst,  he  frequented  his  local  pubs  in 
Hammersmith  and  Chiswick,  where  his  fellow 
drinkers  formed  a  substantial  proportion  of  his 
subject-matter.  He  summed  up  his  life  view  thus: 
'Painting,  Breathing,  Drinking,  Ars  Longa,  Vita 
Brevis.'  His  polio  caused  a  permanent  limp  and 
prevented  active  service  in  World  War  II.  He 
did,  however,  contribute  noteworthy  paintings  of 
working  life  on  the  home  front,  commissioned 
and  purchased  by  the  war  artists'  advisory 
committee. 

He  became  an  associate  of  the  Royal  Academy 
in  1944  and  a  fellow  in  1954.  This  enabled  him  as 
of  right  to  contribute  to  the  Academy's  summer 
exhibitions,  where  he  had  first  exhibited  in  1932. 
His  facility  with  paint,  and  his  fascination  with 
low  life  and  high  life,  and  the  foibles  of  both, 
often  made  his  contributions  newsworthy.  Pub 
characters,  members  of  the  royal  family,  and 
politicians  were  his  favourite  subjects  for  Acad- 
emy presentation,  with  the  portraits  of  public 
figures  often  based  on  newspaper  photographs. 
He  was  a  gentle  satirist,  exaggerating  what  was 
there  rather  than  turning  to  stereotypes.  He  also 
portrayed  ordinary  life  with  vivid  sympathy;  a 
painting  of  a  mother  potting  a  baby  caused  the 
president   of  the   Royal   Academy,   Sir  Alfred 


427 


Spear 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


*\1  un Minus,  such  displeasure  in  1944  that  it  was 
not  shown.  In  1942  Spear  was  elected  to  the 
London  Group,  becoming  its  president  in 
1949-50. 

Spear  had  a  thriving  portrait  practice  among 
prominent  figures.  His  subjects,  which  he 
proudly  listed  in  his  Who's  Who  entry,  included 
lords  *Butler,  "Adrian,  *OHvier  as  Macbeth 
(painted  from  life),  and  *Ramsey  of  Canterbury, 
Sir  John  *Betjeman  in  a  rowing-boat,  and  Lords 
Goodman  and  Howe  of  Aberavon.  He  was  a 
portrayer  of  the  human  comedy  with  a  light 
touch,  in  spite  of  often  using  a  dark  palette.  He 
never  had  regular  showings  or  a  contract  with  a 
commercial  gallery.  He  did  occasionally  exhibit 
abroad,  but  the  only  substantial  exhibition  of  his 
work  ever  held  in  Britain  (or  anywhere)  was  the 
retrospective  in  the  Diploma  Galleries  in  the 
Royal  Academy  in  1980.  The  National  Portrait 
Gallery  has  several  of  his  portraits. 

In  spite  of  the  relatively  conventional,  if  exu- 
berant, nature  of  his  own  work,  Spear  promoted 
what  he  called  the  'modern  chaps',  and  was 
instrumental  in  turning  the  Academy  away  from 
its  unhealthy  nostalgia;  he  was  assisted  by  his 
outstanding  success  as  a  teacher  during  a  golden 
age  at  the  Royal  College  (Ron  Kitaj,  Frank 
Auerbach,  David  Hockney,  and  Peter  Blake  were 
his  students).  'We  did  a  lot  of  teaching.  The 
atmosphere  tingled  with  the  excitement  of  being 
free.J  Spear  himself  produced  portraits  endowed 
with  sympathy;  he  was  also  a  fascinating  re- 
porter, but  his  portrayals  often  appeared  skin- 
deep  rather  than  profound,  and  his  talent  was 
'made  in  England'  and  not  for  travel.  He  was 
appointed  CBE  in  1979. 

In  1935  Spear  married  (Hilda)  Mary,  artist 
and  only  child  of  William  Henry  Freer  Hill,  civil 
engineer,  and  Hilda  Anne  Grose;  they  had  a  son. 
The  existence  of  his  long-lasting  liaison  with 
Claire  Stafford,  an  artist's  model,  whom  he  met 
in  1956  when  she  was  sixteen,  was  posthumously 
publicly  revealed  in  1993.  They  had  a  daughter 
Rachel  Spear-Stafford  (born  1957).  Spear  died  in 
Hammersmith  17  January  1990. 

[Ruskin  Spear  RA:  a  Retrospective  Exhibition,  Royal 
Academy,  1980;  Mervyn  Levy,  Ruskin  Spear,  1985; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Marina  Vaizey 

STEERS,  James  Alfred  (1 899-1987),  geo- 
grapher and  conservationist,  was  born  8  August 
1899  in  Bedford,  the  only  child  of  James  Alfred 
Steers,  house  agent  and  property  owner,  and  his 
wife,  Clara  Blott.  He  was  educated  at  Elstow 
School  in  Bedford.  After  joining  the  army  in 
World  War  I  and  being  stationed  at  Oswestry, 
he  went  to  St  Catharine's  College,  Cambridge, 
obtaining  first-class  honours  in  part  ii  of  the 
geographical  tripos  (1921).  After  a  year  of  teach- 
ing at  Framlingham  College,  he  returned  to 


Cambridge,  where  he  became  a  fellow  of  St 
Catharine's  in  1925  and  stayed  for  the  rest  of 
his  life.  He  subsequently  became  dean  (1928), 
tutor  (1939),  and  president  (1946-66)  of  St 
Catharine's.  He  was  a  university  demonstrator 
(1926-7),  lecturer  (1927-49),  and  professor  of 
geography  (1949-66). 

At  Framlingham  he  began  studies  of  Orford 
Ness,  which  led  him  to  more  general  coastal 
studies  in  East  Anglia,  Britain,  and  abroad. 
Numerous  publications  reported  his  meticulous 
and  pioneering  work,  culminating  in  his  major 
treatise  The  Coastline  of  England  and  Wales,  first 
published  in  1946.  Altogether,  he  published 
fourteen  books  and  well  over  100  papers,  mainly 
on  physical  geography  and  conservation. 

In  1928-9  Steers  participated  in  a  major  expe- 
dition to  the  Great  Barrier  Reef,  during  which  he 
did  important  work  on  the  evolution  of  coral 
reefs  and  atolls.  His  conclusions  concerning  sea- 
level  changes  and  coral  formation  provided  lively 
discussion;  further  work  by  himself  and  others 
generally  substantiated  the  conclusions  he  drew 
in  these  two  years. 

In  1945  Steers,  as  adviser  to  the  Ministry  of 
Town  and  Country  Planning,  was  asked  to  pre- 
pare a  report  on  the  coasts  of  England  and  Wales. 
Two  years  later  he  joined  the  wildlife  conserva- 
tion special  committee;  their  report  led  to  the 
formation  of  the  Nature  Conservancy  in  1948.  At 
the  same  time  his  influence  was  apparent  in  the 
establishment  of  the  National  Parks  Commission, 
on  which  he  served  from  i960  to  1966.  For  the 
rest  of  his  life  Steers  played  an  active  part  in 
promoting  conservation,  especially  but  not 
exclusively  through  his  work  for  the  Nature 
Conservancy  and  its  successor,  the  Nature  Con- 
servancy Council.  The  call  which  he  had  made  in 
a  1944  paper  to  the  Royal  Geographical  Society, 
for  a  national  policy  of  coastal  planning  and 
management,  was  heeded  and  acted  upon. 

Steers  was  elected  professor  of  geography  at 
Cambridge  in  1949.  He  had  already  served  on  all 
of  the  major  university  committees  during  the 
1940s.  As  head  of  department,  Steers  was  able  to 
enhance  the  standing  of  his  subject  within  the 
university  and  more  generally,  especially  through 
the  staff  appointments  that  were  made  and  the 
calibre  of  the  students  attracted  to  the  depart- 
ment, and  in  particular  to  St  Catharine's  College. 
In  1928  he  persuaded  the  college  to  establish  a 
scholarship  in  geography;  on  his  retirement  in 
1966  he  was  presented  with  a  silver  salver  bear- 
ing the  signatures  of  forty-nine  St  Catharine's 
geographers  who  held  university  posts  around 
the  world. 

A  major  storm  surge  in  1953  wrought  havoc- 
along  the  East  Anglian  coast.  Steers  sat  on  the 
departmental  committee  on  coastal  flooding, 
under  John  *Anderson,  first  Viscount  Waverley, 
which  recommended  that  new  coastal  protection 


428 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Stephenson 


measures  were  needed.  For  many  years  thereaf- 
ter he  was  a  member  of  the  advisory  committee 
to  improve  sea  defences.  The  effectiveness  of  this 
work  was  demonstrated  by  the  1973  storm  surge 
which,  although  as  severe  as  that  of  1953,  caused 
minimal  damage. 

Steers  left  an  enduring  imprint  within  Cam- 
bridge, on  the  international  standing  of  geo- 
graphy and,  above  all,  on  coastal  studies.  He  was 
a  national  figure  who  played  an  influential  role  in 
shaping  conservation  and  landscape  management 
in  the  post-war  period.  He  was  a  tall,  imposing 
figure,  commanding  but  generous  to  a  fault. 
Never  at  ease  in  the  lecture  room,  he  excelled  in 
more  personal  interaction,  where  his  sense  of 
humour  showed  at  its  best.  He  was  a  reserved 
man,  with  an  aversion  to  controversy. 

The  Royal  Geographical  Society  awarded  him 
the  Victoria  medal  in  i960  'for  research  in  coastal 
geomorphology',  and  seventeen  years  later  he 
and  his  wife  were  given  honorary  membership 
for  their  exceptional  services  to  the  society.  The 
Royal  Scottish  Geographical  Society  awarded 
him  the  Scottish  geographical  medal  in  1969.  In 
1973  he  was  appointed  CBE,  and  he  received 
honorary  degrees  from  the  universities  of  Aber- 
deen (LL  D,  1971)  and  East  Anglia  (D.Sc., 
1978). 

In  1942  he  married  Harriet,  daughter  of  John 
Alfred  Wanklyn,  mill  owner;  they  had  a  son  and 
a  daughter.  Steers  died  10  March  1987  in 
Cambridge. 

[Geographical  Journal,  vol.  cliii,  1987,  pp.  436-8;  Trans- 
actions of  the  Institute  of  British  Geographers,  vol.  xiii, 
1088,  pp.  109-15;  D.  R.  Stoddart,  'Alfred  Steers, 
1899-1987',  Department  of  Geography,  Cambridge 
(mimeo),  1987;  personal  knowledge.] 

Michael  Chisholm 

STEPHENSON,       Sir       William       Samuel 

( 1 896-1989),  businessman  and  intelligence 
agent,  was  born  11  January  1896  of  Scottish 
ancestry  in  Point  Douglas,  near  Winnipeg,  the 
son  of  Victor  Stephenson,  lumber  mill  owner, 
and  his  wife,  Christiana.  He  was  educated  at 
Argyll  High  School,  Winnipeg.  In  World  War  I 
he  enlisted  in  the  Royal  Canadian  Engineers, 
straight  from  school.  He  then  served  in  the  Royal 
Flying  Corps,  being  shot  down  in  July  19 18.  He 
was  decorated  with  the  MC  and  DFC  and  was 
officially  credited  with  six  air  victories. 

Between  the  wars  he  was  in  business  in  Eng- 
land, his  principal  interests  being  the  radio 
transmission  of  photographs  and  film  produc- 
tion. In  1940  he  went  to  New  York  as  head  of  an 
organization  called  British  Security  Co-ordina- 
tion, intended  to  promote  co-operation  with  the 
US  Federal  Bureau  of  Investigation.  Originally 
sent  by  the  Secret  Intelligence  Service  (MI6),  he 
was  responsible  also  for  security  (MI5)  until 
March    1942   and   for   the   Special   Operations 


Executive  (SOE).  Stephenson  was  energetic  and 
effective.  He  formed  close  relationships  with  the 
powerful  Herbert  Hoover,  head  of  the  FBI,  and 
with  William  Donovan,  head  of  the  Office  of 
Strategic  Services,  who  acknowledged  Stephen- 
son's aid  in  creating  OSS.  In  1945  he  was 
knighted  in  recognition  of  his  valuable  services; 
from  the  United  States  he  received  the  Medal  for 
Merit,  on  Donovan's  recommendation. 

About  fifteen  years  after  the  end  of  the  war 
Stephenson  began  to  commission  books  by  vari- 
ous authors  to  give  a  more  colourful  and  ima- 
ginative slant  to  his  wartime  career.  The  first 
choice  was  C.  H.  Ellis,  a  former  SIS  operative; 
but  his  draft  was  not  flamboyant  enough  to 
satisfy  its  subject,  who  gave  the  task  to  H. 
Montgomery  Hyde,  an  established  biographer. 
The  result,  The  Quiet  Canadian,  was  published  in 
1962.  Its  numerous  invented  stories,  based  on 
briefing  from  Stephenson,  created  a  certain  sen- 
sation but  it  still  came  short  of  Stephenson's 
inflated  ideas;  and  as  fresh  revelations  of  British 
successes  in  the  intelligence  sphere  continued  to 
appear — for  instance  the  Ultra  secret — he  clearly- 
wished  to  claim  credit  for  them.  He  accordingly- 
commissioned  another  biographer,  William  Ste- 
venson (no  relation  of  his)  and  provided  him 
with  careful  guidance,  a  fund  of  fresh  stories,  and 
misleading  and  wrongly  captioned  photographs. 
The  publication  of  Stevenson's  book,  A  Man 
Called  Intrepid,  in  1976  brought  enormous  pub- 
licity and  record  sales,  especially  in  North  Amer- 
ica. It  is  almost  entirely  a  work  of  fiction. 

Stephenson's  World  War  I  record  was  embel- 
lished with  twenty  extra  air  victories,  the  Legion 
of  Honour,  the  croix  de  guerre  with  palms  (in  his 
Who 's  Who  entry  from  1984  onwards  he  added 
two  bars  to  his  DFC),  and  also  the  amateur 
lightweight  boxing  championship  of  the  world. 
About  World  War  II  fantasy  was  unrestrained. 
The  principal  claim  is  that  he  was  so  close  to 
(Sir)  Winston  *Churchill  that  he  was  appointed 
his  'personal  representative  in  the  western  hemi- 
sphere'. In  truth  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever 
met  Churchill  and  much  evidence  to  the  con- 
trary. In  1976  he  quoted  in  support  a  letter 
attributed  to  Churchill,  which  was  immediately 
denounced  as  a  fabrication;  in  a  biographical  note 
of  1982  he  withdrew  this  claim  and  substituted 
another  story  that  can  also  be  proved  fictitious. 
Stevenson  used  as  his  frontispiece  a  well-known 
press  photograph  of  Churchill  and  Brendan 
(later  Viscount)  *Bracken;  in  the  caption,  sup- 
plied by  his  mentor,  Bracken's  name  is  changed 
to  Stephenson. 

The  principal  purpose  of  A  Man  Called 
Intrepid  is  to  enumerate  the  best-known  suc- 
cesses of  British  wartime  skill  and  intelligence 
and  ascribe  them  to  Stephenson.  The  decipher- 
ment  of  German    Enigma   transmissions,    the 


429 


Stephenson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


development  of  nuclear  weapons,  the  organiza- 
tion of  European  resistance:  he  was  supposedly 
involved  in  them  all  and  found  time  also  to 
invent  petroleum  warfare  and  the  'V  sign  and 
help  with  the  production  of  the  Spitfire  and  the 
jet  engine.  He  is  described  as  an  invisible  man 
directing  the  work  of  all  four  intelligence  agen- 
cies: SIS,  SOE,  Security  Executive,  and  MI5; 
invisible  is  the  mot  juste.  Film  clips  misrepre- 
sented as  genuine  archival  material  were  used  to 
suggest  a  wholly  imaginary  connection  between 
Stephenson  and  the  famous  SOE  agent  Mad- 
eleine. The  book,  later  made  into  a  successful 
film,  was  strongly  criticized  by  knowledgeable 
reviewers  in  Britain  who  called  it  'worthless', 
'ludicrous',  and  'dishonest';  this  did  not  affect 
Stephenson's  reputation  in  North  America. 

Stephenson  was  short  in  stature  and  often 
called  'Little  Bill'.  He  spent  the  last  years  of  his 
life  in  Bermuda.  In  1980  he  was  appointed  a 
Companion  of  the  Order  of  Canada.  He  married 
in  1924  Mary  French  (died  1978),  daughter  of 
William  H.  Simmons,  of  Springfield,  Tennessee. 
Stephenson  subsequently  adopted  as  his  daugh- 
ter the  person  who  had  nursed  Mary  during  her 
final  illness.  He  died  in  Bermuda  3 1  January  1989 
and  was  buried  there. 

[F.  H.  Hinsley  and  C.  A.  G.  Simkins,  British  Intelli- 
gence in  the  Second  World  War,  vol.  iv,  1990;  William 
Stevenson,  A  Man  Called  Intrepid,  1976;  H.  Mont- 
gomery Hyde,  The  Quiet  Canadian,  1962,  and  Secret 
Intelligence  Agent,  1982;  David  Stafford,  'A  Myth 
Called  Intrepid',  in  Saturday  Night  Magazine  (Tor- 
onto), 1989;  Sir  David  Hunt,  'Looking-Glass  War' 
(review  of  A  Man  Called  Intrepid),  Times  Literary 
Supplement,  1976;  Timothy  J.  Naftali,  'Intrepid's  Last 
Deception:  Documenting  the  Career  of  Sir  William 
Stephenson',  Intelligence  and  National  Security,  vol. 
viii,  no.  3,  July  1993]  David  Hunt 

STEPTOE,  Patrick  Christopher  (191 3-1988), 
gynaecologist,  was  born  9  June  191 3  in  Witney, 
Oxfordshire,  the  sixth  and  youngest  son  and 
seventh  of  ten  children  of  Harry  Arthur  Steptoe, 
who  lived  in  Abingdon  before  moving  to  Witney 
as  registrar  of  births,  deaths,  and  marriages,  and 
his  wife,  (Grace)  Maud  Minns.  Steptoe  attended 
Witney  Grammar  School.  He  developed  an  early 
interest  in  music  and  by  the  age  of  thirteen 
played  incidental  music  for  silent  films  at  the 
local  cinema,  as  well  as  the  organ  at  St  Mary's 
church.  When  eighteen  he  became  director  and 
organist  of  Christ  Church  Musical  Society  in 
Oxford. 

At  the  age  of  twenty  he  entered  King's  Col- 
lege, London,  as  a  medical  student  and  qualified 
in  1939  with  the  degrees  of  MRCS,  LRCP  from 
St  George's  Hospital,  London.  Already  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Royal  Naval  Volunteer  Reserve,  he 
served  in  the  navy  from  1939  to  1946,  reaching 
the  rank  of  surgeon  lieutenant-commander.  His 


ship  was  torpedoed  in  the  Mediterranean  in 
1941.  After  some  hours  in  the  water,  he  was 
rescued  by  the  Italians  and  held  as  a  prisoner  of 
war  for  two  years  (1941-3).  After  demobilization 
Steptoe  became  chief  assistant  in  obstetrics  and 
gynaecology  at  St  George's  Hospital  (1947-9) 
and  then  senior  registrar  at  the  Whittington 
Hospital,  passing  the  MRCOG  examination  in 
1948  and  the  FRCS  (Edin.)  in  1950.  In  195 1, 
after  only  five  years  of  specialist  training  and 
with  the  need  to  support  a  young  family,  he 
obtained  the  post  of  consultant  obstetrician  and 
gynaecologist  in  Oldham. 

Although  his  work  covered  all  aspects  of 
obstetrics  and  gynaecology,  Steptoe  developed  at 
an  early  stage  a  special  interest  in  female  infertil- 
ity. Diagnostic  techniques,  particularly  in  rela- 
tion to  pelvic  pathology  and  endocrinology,  were 
rudimentary,  but  laparoscopy  and  culdoscopy 
were  being  introduced  at  centres  in  Europe  and 
North  America.  Steptoe  visited  these  centres  and 
established  lasting  friendships  and  collaboration 
with  Raoul  Palmer  in  Paris  and  Hans  Frangen- 
heim  in  Germany.  He  became  the  first  gynaeco- 
logist to  develop  laparoscopy  in  Britain,  lectured 
at  the  first  international  symposium  in  gynae- 
cological laparoscopy  in  Palermo  in  1964, 
and  published  the  first  English  book  on  the 
subject,  Laparoscopy  in  Gynaecology,  in  1967.  He 
described  not  only  the  potential  for  accurate 
diagnosis  in  relation  to  problems  of  infertility, 
pelvic  infection  and  pain,  ectopic  pregnancy,  and 
endometriosis,  but  also  explored  the  therapeutic 
aspects  of  surgical  laparoscopy.  Within  a  decade 
this  led  to  the  incorporation  of  laparoscopy  into 
everyday  gynaecological  practice. 

It  was  at  a  meeting  at  the  Royal  Society  of 
Medicine  in  1968  that  Robert  Edwards  first 
approached  Steptoe.  A  young  geneticist  and 
embryologist,  Edwards  had  already  done  out- 
standing work  on  in  vitro  fertilization  in  mice, 
other  mammals,  and  human  beings.  The  collab- 
oration between  the  two  men  lasted  for  twenty 
years  until  Steptoe's  death.  It  resulted  in  the 
delivery  on  25  July  1978  of  Louise  Brown,  the 
first  'test-tube'  baby  born  after  laparoscopic 
oocyte  recovery,  in  vitro  fertilization,  and  transfer 
of  the  eight-cell  embryo  into  the  mother's  uterus. 
Steptoe  and  Edwards  reported  the  bare  facts  in  a 
dramatic  letter  to  the  Lancet  (12  August  1978) 
and  gave  a  full  account  of  their  work  at  a  his- 
toric scientific  meeting  at  the  Royal  College  of 
Obstetricians  and  Gynaecologists  on  26  January 
1979. 

Following  Steptoe's  retirement  from  the 
National  Health  Service  in  1978,  he  and  Edwards 
founded  the  Bourn  Hall  Clinic  in  1980.  Edwards 
was  the  first  scientific  director  and  Steptoe,  as 
medical  director,  continued  seeing  patients  until 
his   death,    whilst   at   the   same   time   training 


430 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Stevenson 


juniors,  lecturing  worldwide,  and  collaborating 
in  over  fifty  scientific  papers. 

Steptoe's  impact  on  gynaecology  was  enor- 
mous. Following  the  introduction  of  carbon  fibre 
optics  to  provide  brilliant  cold  light  illumination 
from  an  external  source,  laparoscopy  became  safe 
and  efficient.  Steptoe  popularized  the  procedure, 
not  only  for  direct  visualization  of  the  abdominal 
and  pelvic  organs,  but  also  for  laparoscopic 
photography,  video  recording,  and  surgery.  Had 
he  done  no  more,  his  fame  would  have  been 
assured.  His  work  with  Edwards,  overcoming 
what  was  previously  insuperable  infertility, 
resulted  in  the  birth  of  over  i  ,000  babies  from 
Bourn  Hall  Clinic  alone  in  his  lifetime.  It  ush- 
ered in  the  new  speciality  of  assisted  reproduc- 
tion and  led  to  a  wealth  of  clinical  work  and 
scientific  research,  the  setting  up  of  the  commit- 
tee of  inquiry  into  human  fertilization  and 
embryology  chaired  by  Dame  Man-  (later  Baron- 
ess) Warnock  (1982-4),  the  establishment  of  the 
Voluntary  Licensing  Authority,  and  the  passage 
in  Parliament  in  1990  of  the  Human  Fertilization 
and  Embryology  Act.  The  fact  that  all  the  early 
work  was  done  in  a  small  provincial  hospital,  on 
shoestring  budgets,  in  the  face  of  scepticism, 
opposition,  and  even  hostility,  and  with  no  finan- 
cial support  from  the  established  bodies  in  medi- 
cine and  research,  is  testimony  to.  Steptoe's  total 
dedication  and  exceptional  perseverance. 

He  was  elected  FRCOG  in  196 1  and  made  an 
honorary  D.Sc.  of  Hull  University  in  1983.  The 
winner  of  many  medals  and  awards  both  at  home 
and  in  the  USA,  he  was  a  founder  member  and 
first  chairman  of  the  British  Fertility  Society 
from  1973  to  1986  and  president  thereafter,  and 
was  president  of  the  International  Federation  of 
Fertility  Societies  (1977-80).  In  1987  he  was 
elected  FRS,  the  first  gynaecologist  thus  hon- 
oured, and  he  was  appointed  CBE  in  1988. 

Steptoe  was  of  medium  height,  thickset  but 
not  obese,  with  blue  eyes  and  grey  hair.  He  was 
genial,  relaxed,  tidy,  and  well  dressed.  Sailing 
and  music  remained  lifelong  hobbies,  and  many 
an  international  meeting  finished  with  Steptoe  at 
the  piano.  Something  of  a  sybarite,  good  food 
and  wines,  travelling,  opera,  and  theatre  consti- 
tuted his  pleasures.  He  married  in  1943  Sheena 
Macleod,  daughter  of  Nina  and  Arthur  Kennedy, 
a  general  practitioner  in  Kent.  Trained  at 
RAD  A,  Sheena  acted  in  repertory  theatre  during 
the  war.  A  woman  of  beauty,  charm,  and 
warmth,  she  was  a  great  support  in  Steptoe's 
professional  life.  She  died  from  a  second  cerebral 
haemorrhage  in  1990.  They  had  two  children:  a 
daughter,  Sally  (1947),  killed  in  a  road  traffic 
accident  in  1992,  and  a  son,  Andrew  (1951),  who 
became  professor  of  psychology  at  St  George's 
Hospital  medical  school,  London.  Steptoe  died 
of  prostatic  carcinoma  at  the  Chaucer  Hospital, 
Canterbury,  21  March  1988.  His  bust,  sculpted 


by  Peter  Wardle,  stands  in  the  Royal  College  of 
Obstetricians  and  Gynaecologists. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Herbert  Reiss 

STEVENS,  Thomas  Terry  Hoar  (1911-1990), 
actor  and  comedian.  [See  Terry-Thomas.] 

STEVENSON,  Sir  (Aubrey)  Melford  (Steed) 
(1902-1987),  judge,  was  born  in  Newquay  17 
October  1902,  the  elder  child  and  only  son  of  the 
Revd  John  George  Stevenson  and  his  wife  Olive, 
daughter  of  Joshua  Steed,  solicitor,  of  Long 
Melford,  Suffolk,  and  sister  of  Henry  Wickham 
•Steed,  later  editor  of  The  Times.  The  father  was 
a  Congregational  minister  of  distinction  and 
eloquence  who  died  in  1916  when  his  son  was 
fourteen.  The  family  was  left  impoverished,  but, 
with  the  help  of  another  uncle,  also  a  solicitor  in 
Long  Melford,  Stevenson  was  sent  to  Dulwich 
College.  There  he  was  a  contemporary  of  Hartley 
(later  Baron)  Shawcross.  His  school  career  was 
unhappy.  He  was  destined  by  his  uncles  for  the 
family  firm  and  to  that  end  began  articles  in 
London.  Funds  did  not  permit  a  full  university 
education,  which  he  always  regretted,  but  he 
took  an  external  LL  B  at  London  University.  He 
disliked  articles  and  was  determined  to  go  to  the 
bar.  He  joined  the  Inner  Temple  and  was  called 
by  that  Inn  in  1925.  He  was  to  become  its 
treasurer  in  1972.  After  pupillage  with  (Sir) 
Hubert  Wallington  and  a  short  tenancy  in  the 
chamber  of  Sir  Patrick  'Hastings,  he  moved  to 
the  chambers  of  (Sir)  Wintringham  ('Owlie') 
•Stable,  where,  save  for  the  war  years,  he 
remained  for  the  rest  of  his  career  at  the  bar. 

His  surviving  fee  books  show  a  slow  but  steady- 
increase  in  junior  practice,  almost  always  with 
small  fees,  until  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1939.  In 
view  of  his  later  reputation  it  is  remarkable  how- 
little  criminal  work  he  did.  His  junior  practice  lay 
largely  in  the  field  of  insolvency  and  running 
down  cases.  By  the  outbreak  of  war  he  would 
have  been  justified  in  applying  for  silk.  But  like 
most  others  in  the  Temple  he  left  practice.  He 
served  in  the  army  and  from  1940  to  1945  acted 
as  deputy  judge  advocate,  with  the  rank  of  major. 
In  October  1945  he  served  as  judge  advocate  in 
the  war  crimes  trial  of  former  officers  of  the 
submarine  6/S52,  who  were  convicted  and  exe- 
cuted for  the  murder  of  the  crew  of  the  Greek 
ship  Peleus  after  that  ship  had  been  torpedoed 
and  sunk.  The  succinctness  of  Stevenson's  sum- 
ming up  perhaps  foretold  his  subsequent  con- 
duct of  criminal  trials. 

Meanwhile,  while  on  war  service  he  had  in  a 
special  wartime  list  in  1943  been  given  the  silk 
the  war  had  denied  him.  After  a  brief  and 
unsuccessful  foray  into  politics  as  a  Conservative 
candidate — he  was  heavily-  defeated  by  Tom 
•Driberg  (later  Baron  Brad  well )  at  Maiden  in  the 


43i 


Stevenson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


1945  general  election — he  returned  to  practice  in 
1946.  His  gifts  of  speech  with  his  fluent  delivery, 
distinctive  voice,  remarkable  sense  of  timing,  and 
pungency  of  phrase  soon  marked  him  out  as  an 
advocate  of  note.  He  successively  held  the 
recorderships  of  Rye  (1944-51)  and  Cambridge 
(1952-7),  but  his  increasing  practice  still  lay 
outside  the  criminal  courts.  He  was  employed  in 
fashionable  divorce  and  libel  cases.  He  appeared 
for  the  Marten  family  in  the  Crichel  Down 
enquiry,  and  he  also  prosecuted  Jomo  *Kenyatta 
in  Kenya.  His  unsuccessful  defence  of  Ruth  Ellis 
(the  last  woman  to  be  hanged  for  murder)  and  his 
appearances  at  the  magistrates  court  and  (with 
the  attorney-general)  at  the  Old  Bailey  in  the 
notorious  trial  of  Dr  John  Bodkin  *Adams  for 
the  murder  of  his  patients,  brought  him  into  the 
public  eye. 

Yet  at  the  same  time  his  uninhibited  com- 
ments on  people  and  affairs  gained  him  another 
reputation,  that  of  an  eccentric  and  a  maverick 
who  might  not  always  show  the  restraint  tradi- 
tionally required  on  the  bench.  It  was  perhaps  for 
this  reason  that  it  was  not  until  1957  when  he  had 
been  fourteen  years  in  silk,  eleven  of  them  in  full 
practice,  that  the  lord  chancellor,  Viscount  (later 
the  Earl  of)  *Kilmuir,  appointed  him  to  the 
Probate,  Divorce,  and  Admiralty  Division  of  the 
High  Court.  In  the  same  year  he  was  knighted. 
He  served  in  that  division  for  four  years  without 
attracting  attention,  but  far  from  content  with 
the  work  that  he  was  required  to  do  under  the 
existing  divorce  laws.  It  was  only  after  his 
transfer  to  the  Queen's  Bench  Division  in  1961 
that  his  strong  personality,  style,  and  penetrating 
and  outspoken  use  of  language  made  him  one  of 
the  best  known  judges  of  the  day.  He  had  no  time 
for  those  at  the  bar  whom  he  saw  as  prolix, 
pompous  fools  or  time-wasters  and  he  made  his 
views  all  too  clear.  But  to  the  young  and  to 
beginners  and  many  others  (not  least  his  former 
clerk)  he  could  show  great  kindness  and  patience. 
He  felt  strongly  that  it  was  the  duty  of  a  judge  in 
a  criminal  case  to  do  everything  he  could  to  stop 
crime  and  above  all  to  punish  severely  crime  in 
all  its  forms.  It  was,  however,  by  chance  and  not 
by  choice  that  his  country  home  in  Sussex  was 
named  'Truncheons'.  His  conduct  of  the  Kray 
trial  and  of  the  Garden  House  'riot'  trial  in 
Cambridge  in  1970  brought  notoriety  and  in  the 
latter  case  much  criticism,  not  only  for  the 
severity  of  the  sentences  which  he  passed  but  also 
for  the  force  of  some  of  his  comments.  But 
notwithstanding  these  criticisms,  again  and  again 
he  was  entrusted  with  the  conduct  of  sensitive 
and  difficult  cases  and  always  fulfilled  his  task  as 
he  saw  it,  fearless  and  unmoved  by  criticism.  He 
was  ready  to  say  things  which  others  feared  to  say 
and  had  no  time  for  judges  who  courted  popu- 
larity. 

It  would  be  wrong  to  judge  him  simply  by  the 


notoriety  of  a  few  cases.  There  were  others  where 
with  no  publicity  he  showed  great  mercy  to  those 
whom  he  saw  to  be  victims  rather  than  aggres- 
sors. Those  who  sat  in  the  Court  of  Appeal  in  the 
1970s  might  sometimes  find  in  the  appeal  papers 
a  letter  from  Stevenson  to  the  court  suggesting 
that  he  might  have  been  too  severe  and  that  the 
sentences  which  he  passed  should  be  reviewed. 
He  never  claimed  to  be  a  profound  lawyer  or 
interested  in  the  theory  of  law  as  distinct  from  its 
practice.  Though  privately  he  could  be  critical  of 
the  Court  of  Appeal,  especially  when  that  court 
differed  from  him,  he  sometimes  expressed  dis- 
appointment that  he  had  not  become  one  of  its 
members.  He  rejected  a  possible  opportunity  in 
mid-career  and  the  chance  did  not  recur.  But  his 
special  appointment  to  the  Privy  Council  in  1973 
gave  him  great  pleasure. 

Stevenson  was  of  medium  height,  but  strongly 
built.  Initially  he  gave  an  impression  of  severity, 
but  on  the  shortest  acquaintance  his  immense 
sense  of  humour  became  apparent.  In  private  life 
he  was  very  gregarious,  often  at  the  centre  of  a 
group  at  the  bar  of  the  Garrick  Club,  where 
occasionally  his  witticisms  trespassed  across  the 
boundary  into  indiscretion.  No  moment  spent  in 
his  company  could  ever  be  dull  and  he  had  a  wide 
circle  of  friends  both  within  and  without  his 
profession.  In  1929  he  married  Anna  Cecilia 
Francesca  Imelda,  daughter  of  Michael  Rynston, 
musician.  He  divorced  her  in  1942.  There  was 
one  daughter  of  that  marriage.  In  1947  he  mar- 
ried Rosalind  Monica,  daughter  of  Orlando 
Henry  Wagner,  founder  of  Waynes,  the  well- 
known  boys'  day-school  in  Kensington,  and 
sister  of  (Sir)  Anthony  Wagner,  later  Garter  king 
of  arms.  There  was  one  son  (who  later  became  a 
practising  barrister)  and  one  daughter  of  that 
marriage.  Stevenson  retired  in  1979,  after  which 
he  enjoyed  appearing  on  television,  where  his 
gifts  of  expression  made  him  a  good  performer  in 
what  was  to  him  a  novel  medium.  But  failing 
health  and  eyesight  led  to  gradual  withdrawal 
from  active  life  and  he  died  in  St  Leonards  on 
Sea  26  December  1987. 

[The  Times,  28  December  1987;  Independent,  30 
December  1987;  family  papers  and  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Roskill 

STEWART,  (Robert)  Michael  (Maitland), 
Baron  Stewart  of  Fulham  (1906- 1990),  politi- 
cian, was  born  6  November  1906  at  20  Minster 
Road,  Bromley,  the  only  son  and  youngest  of 
three  children  of  Robert  Wallace  Stewart,  D.Sc., 
lecturer  and  author  of  scientific  textbooks,  and 
his  wife  Eva,  daughter  of  Samuel  Blaxley.  In 
1910  his  father  died  and  his  mother,  for  whom 
Stewart  had  a  deep  affection,  went  to  work  in  a 
mixed  school.  Stewart  used  to  complain  that  she 
was  paid  four-fifths  of  the  salary  of  her  male 
colleagues,  some  of  them  bachelors.  He  gave  this 


432 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Stewart 


as  one  explanation  for  his  passionate  advocacy  of 
equal  pay  and  conditions  for  women  teachers 
when  he  became  secretary  of  state  for  education. 
After  attending  Brownhill  Road  Elementary 
School  in  Catford  during  World  War  I,  in  191 8 
Stewart  went  by  scholarship  to  Christ's  Hospital, 
Horsham,  which  was  unique  among  public 
schools  for  closing  its  doors  to  the  sons  of  the 
rich,  or  even  moderately  well-off  parents.  In  1925 
Stewart  won  an  open  scholarship  to  St  John's 
College,  Oxford,  where  he  obtained  first  classes 
in  classical  honour  moderations  (1927)  and  philo- 
sophy, politics,  and  economics  (1929).  Stewart 
spent  a  formative  summer  vacation  in  Dresden  in 
1927,  which  accounted  for  the  complaints  from 
Intelligence  Corps  superiors  during  World  War 
II  that  he  had  a  Saxon  accent.  He  was  elected 
president  of  the  Oxford  Union  in  1929,  an 
unusual  post  for  a  Labour  supporter. 

After  Oxford,  Stewart  became  a  teacher  at 
Merchant  Taylors'  School  (1930-1)  and  Coo- 
pers' Company  School  (1931-42),  which  gave 
him  the  opportunity  to  contest,  unsuccessfully, 
the  parliamentary  seat  of  West  Lewisham  for  the 
Labour  party  in  1931  and  1935.  He  joined  the 
Army  Intelligence  Corps  in  1942,  transferred  to 
the  Army  Educational  Corps  in  1943,  and  was 
commissioned  and  promoted  to  captain  in  1944. 
In  1945  he  was  elected  as  Labour  MP  for  Fulham 
East.  He  went  into  the  government  whips'  office 
and  took  to  parliamentary  life  with  the  greatest  of 
ease.  He  was  comptroller  of  the  royal  household 
in  1946-7  and  then  became  under-secretary  of 
state  for  war  (1947-51),  where  his  performance 
led  R.  H.  S.  *Crossman,  for  whom  he  had  a 
mutual  antipathy,  to  brand  him  'an  inveterate 
cold  warrior'.  Stewart's  parliamentary  seat  from 
1955  to  1974  was  Fulham  and  from  1974  to  1979 
Hammersmith  and  Fulham. 

In  thirteen  years  of  Labour  opposition  (1951- 
64),  Stewart  was  one  of  the  workhorses  of  the 
opposition  front  bench,  specializing  in  housing 
and  local  government.  Appointed  education  sec- 
retary in  1964  by  Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron 
Wilson  of  Rievaulx),  he  became  secretary  of  state 
for  foreign  affairs  in  January  1965  where  he 
remained  until  August  1966,  when  George 
•Brown  (later  Baron  George-Brown)  had  to 
be  accommodated.  Deeply  resentful,  Stewart 
became  first  secretary  for  economic  affairs 
(1966-7),  where  it  was  thought  that  his  clarity  of 
mind  would  ease  the  government's  difficulties 
over  its  prices  and  incomes  policy.  Such  hopes 
were  unfulfilled,  partly  because  trade-union  lead- 
ers, whose  co-operation  was  essential,  regarded 
Stewart  as  a  'cold  fish'. 

In  March  1968  Stewart  returned  to  the  For- 
eign Office,  which  was  now  linked  with  Com- 
monwealth affairs,  after  the  resignation  of 
George  Brown.  Vietnam  apart,  the  main  issues 
were  Rhodesia,  where  Stewart  was  anathema  to 


the  white  population,  and  Nigeria.  He  returned 
to  the  back  benches  in  1970,  when  the  Labour 
government  fell,  after  suffering  a  crushing  defeat 
in  the  elections  in  the  Parliamentary  Labour 
party  for  the  shadow  cabinet.  Stewart  was  an 
excellent  choice  as  leader  of  Labour's  first  dele- 
gation to  the  indirectly  elected  European  Parlia- 
ment (1976),  where  he  enjoyed  an  Indian 
summer.  The  obvious  quality  of  his  mind  and  his 
dignity  impressed  European  politicians.  In  the 
words  of  a  conservative,  Sir  James  Spicer,  'he 
was  a  steady  hand  on  the  tiller  at  a  time  when 
Labour  was  deeply  divided  over  EEC  member- 
ship.' 

Stewart's  two  stints  as  foreign  secretary 
involved  him  in  bitter  controversy.  He  infuriated 
the  left  by  his  unswerving  support  of  the  Amer- 
ican position  in  the  Vietnam  war.  Then  he 
outraged  a  wider  section  of  opinion  by  stridently 
supporting  the  federal  government's  crushing  of 
the  secessionist  Biafrans  in  the  ferocious  Nige- 
rian civil  war.  During  his  first  stint,  his  relations 
with  back-bench  MPs  were  safeguarded  by  his 
parliamentary  private  secretary  and  friend,  Laur- 
ence Pavitt,  the  popular  MP  for  Willesden. 
When  Pavitt,  a  committed  member  of  the  Cam- 
paign for  Nuclear  Disarmament,  withdrew  from 
Stewart's  service  on  grounds  of  policy  differ- 
ences, the  foreign  secretary  became  curiously 
estranged  from  the  Parliamentary  Labour  party. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  was,  according  to  Sir  (J.) 
Nicholas  Henderson,  who  was  once  his  private 
secretary,  'an  unsung  foreign  secretary'.  Hender- 
son argued  that,  by  strength  of  reason  and 
integrity,  Stewart  prevented  many  possible  dis- 
asters, such  as  a  serious  deterioration  in  British 
relations  with  the  US  as  a  result  of  the  Vietnam 
war,  or  the  setting  of  a  dangerous  precedent  for 
Africa,  if  he  had  equivocated  over  Biafra.  Yet  it 
was  Russia  that  dominated  Stewart's  thinking. 

When  he  retired  from  Parliament  in  1979  he 
accepted  a  life  peerage.  He  also  became  president 
of  the  Trade  Union  committee  for  transatlantic 
understanding  and  of  the  H.  G.  Wells  Society 
(from  1982).  St  John's  College,  Oxford,  elected 
him  to  an  honorary  fellowship  in  1965,  and  he 
became  a  freeman  of  Hammersmith  in  1967.  He 
had  honorary  degrees  from  Leeds  (1966)  and 
Benin  (1972).  He  was  sworn  of  the  Privy  Council 
in  1964  and  appointed  CH  in  1969. 

Stewart  was  no  orator  but  a  good  debater,  in 
his  nasal,  flat,  toneless  voice.  He  made  a  memor- 
able return  to  the  Oxford  Union  in  1968,  in  a 
televised  debate  in  which  he  put  the  American 
case  for  intervention  in  Vietnam  better  than  the 
Americans.  His  capacity  to  speak  from  brief 
notes  was  remarkable,  and  yet  he  was  not  a  good 
conversationalist.  He  tended  to  display  his 
knowledge  of  the  classics  too  readily,  acting  in  a 
patient  and  expository  manner  which  he  prob- 
ably acquired  as  a  schoolmaster.  He  was  inclined 


433 


Stewart 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


to  be  prim  and  austere.  He  was  dapper,  with 
soulful  serious  eyes;  because  of  his  dark  hair,  in 
his  younger  days  some  of  his  friends  called  him 
'Black  Michael'.  Spare  of  frame,  he  became  grey 
and  distinguished  in  later  years.  He  wrote  five 
books  on  political  subjects,  as  well  as  an  auto- 
biography. 

In  1 94 1  Stewart  married  Mary  Elizabeth 
Henderson,  daughter  of  Herbert  Birkenshaw, 
teacher.  There  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 
A  pillar  of  the  Fabian  Society,  his  wife  was 
created  a  life  peer  in  her  own  right  in  1974,  as 
Baroness  Stewart  of  Alvechurch.  When  she  died, 
28  December  1984,  Stewart  was  stricken  with 
grief,  but  contrived  to  speak  fluently  and  logi- 
cally in  the  Lords  until  he  died  in  a  London 
hospital,  10  March  1990. 

[Michael  Stewart,  Life  and  Labour,  1980;  Sir  Nicholas 
Henderson,  Private  Office,  1984;  personal  knowledge.] 

Tam  Dalyell 

STIRLING,  Sir  (Archibald)  David  (1915- 
1990),  founder  of  the  Special  Air  Service  Regi- 
ment, was  born  15  November  19 15  at  Keir, 
Stirlingshire,  the  third  son  and  fourth  child  in 
the  family  of  four  sons  and  two  daughters  of 
Brigadier-General  Archibald  Stirling  of  Keir,  of 
the  Scots  Guards  and  later  MP  for  West  Perth- 
shire, and  his  wife  Margaret  Mary,  daughter  of 
Simon  Fraser,  fifteenth  Baron  Lovat.  His  child- 
hood, mostly  spent  at  Keir,  was  a  happy  one.  He 
was  educated  at  Ampleforth  and,  for  a  brief 
period,  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  Soon 
after  leaving  Cambridge,  without  a  degree,  he 
decided  that  he  wanted  to  climb  Mount  Everest 
and,  with  this  in  mind,  spent  some  time  climbing 
in  Switzerland  and  later  in  the  American  and 
Canadian  Rockies.  On  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
September  1939  he  returned  from  North  Amer- 
ica to  join  the  Scots  Guards  Supplementary 
Reserve,  of  which  he  had  become  a  member  the 
previous  year. 

Early  in  1941  the  newly  raised  Guards  Com- 
mando, for  which  he  volunteered  as  soon  as  he 
had  been  commissioned  and  which  he  found 
more  congenial  than  ordinary  regimental  soldier- 
ing, sailed  for  the  Middle  East  as  part  of  Lay- 
force,  consisting  of  three  commando  units 
commanded  by  a  friend  of  his,  Brigadier  (Sir) 
Robert  *Laycock.  Later  in  1941  Lay  force  was 
disbanded,  leaving  Stirling  at  a  loose  end,  but  at 
least  in  a  theatre  of  war.  This  offered  him  the 
opportunity  he  needed.  The  war  in  the  desert 
had  by  this  time  settled  down  into  a  slogging 
match  between  the  opposing  armies  and  Stirling 
turned  a  fertile  mind  to  the  overall  strategic 
situation.  What  he  quickly  grasped  was  the 
possibility  of  turning  the  enemy's  flank  by  send- 
ing well-equipped  raiding  parties  through  the 
allegedly  impassable  Sand  Sea  to  strike  at  worth- 
while targets  far  behind  the  enemy's  front  line. 


Gaining  access  to  the  commander-in-chief 
Middle  East,  General  Sir  Claude  *Auchinleck, 
by  what  can  best  be  described  as  shock  tactics, 
Stirling,  still  to  all  appearances  an  unremarkable 
subaltern  of  twenty-five,  with  little  or  no  military 
experience,  managed  to  win  his  confidence,  con- 
vince him  of  the  soundness  of  his  ideas,  and  gain 
from  him  authority  to  recruit  at  the  end  of  July 
1 94 1  six  officers  and  sixty  other  ranks,  a  small- 
scale  raiding  force  to  be  known,  misleadingly,  as 
L  detachment  Special  Air  Service  brigade.  He 
was  promoted  to  captain. 

Stirling's  first  operation,  in  November  1 941  by 
parachute,  was  a  total  failure.  But  he  did  not  let 
this  deter  him,  and  General  Auchinleck,  greatly 
to  his  credit,  continued  to  back  him.  Fortunately 
L  detachment's  next,  land-borne,  raids,  which 
followed  immediately  and  were  carried  out  with 
the  invaluable  help  of  the  Long  Range  Desert 
Group,  were  spectacularly  successful.  In  two 
weeks  ninety  enemy  aircraft  were  destroyed  on 
the  ground.  They  were  the  first  of  a  succession  of 
no  less  brilliant  operations  planned  and  led  by 
Stirling  himself,  who  was  quickly  promoted  to 
major  (January  1942)  and  then  to  lieutenant- 
colonel  (July  1942).  In  their  planning  he  showed 
remarkable  imagination  and  resourcefulness.  In 
their  execution  his  personal  courage  and  utter 
determination  were  unsurpassed.  He  possessed 
above  all  the  ultimate  quality  of  a  leader,  the  gift 
of  carrying  those  he  led  with  him  on  enterprises 
that  by  any  rational  standards  seemed  certain  to 
fail  and  convincing  them  that  under  his  leader- 
ship they  were  bound  to  succeed.  Stirling  was 
appointed  to  the  DSO  in  1942,  and  also  became 
an  officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honour  and  of  the 
Order  of  Orange  Nassau. 

By  the  time  Stirling  was  taken  prisoner  in 
Tunisia  in  January  1943  the  potential  value  of  the 
SAS  and  of  his  contribution  to  military  thinking 
had  been  generally  recognized.  As  he  had 
intended  it  should,  the  regiment  went  on  to  play 
an  important  part  in  the  Mediterranean  and  later 
in  the  European  theatres  where,  without  their 
founder's  outstanding  leadership,  but  using  his 
methods,  they  achieved  a  series  of  remarkable 
successes. 

Stirling  escaped  from  prison  in  Germany  four 
times  and  was  eventually  shut  up  in  Colditz.  On 
his  return  to  Great  Britain  in  May  1945,  his  first 
thought  was  to  take  full  advantage  of  the  obvious 
opportunities  for  SAS  operations  offered  by  the 
war  against  Japan.  But  before  he  could  put  his 
plans  into  execution,  the  war  in  the  Far  East  was 
over  and  by  the  end  of  1945  the  SAS  had  been 
disbanded.  In  due  course  the  SAS  was,  however, 
reconstituted  in  the  shape  of  one  regular  and  two 
territorial  regiments.  With  these  Stirling,  who  as 
founder  had  been  active  in  securing  their  recon- 
stitution,  remained  in  continual  contact. 

After  the  war  Stirling's  imagination  was  cap- 


434 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Stockwell 


tured  by  Africa  and  its  problems,  to  which  he 
was  thereafter  to  devote  much  time  and  energy-. 
He  settled  in  Southern  Rhodesia  and  in  1947 
became  president  of  the  newly  founded  Cap- 
ricorn Africa  Society,  set  up,  largely  on  his 
initiative,  to  help  find  a  solution  to  Africa's 
innumerable  racial,  economic,  social,  and  polit- 
ical problems,  which  he  felt  could  not  safely  be 
ignored.  His  efforts  were  overtaken  by  political 
events  and  he  returned  to  Britain  in  1961.  In 
1974  he  organized  GB75,  to  run  essential  serv- 
ices, such  as  power  stations,  in  the  event  of  a 
general  strike.  He  then  turned  to  fighting  left- 
wing  extremism  in  trade  unions,  by  backing  the 
Movement  for  True  Industrial  Democracy 
(Truemid). 

Six  feet  six  inches  tall,  with  a  deceptively 
vague  and  casual  manner,  Stirling  had  a  very 
strong  personality.  He  was  appointed  OBE  in 
1946  and  knighted  in  1990  by  when,  half  a 
century  on,  the  full  extent  of  his  achievement 
had  finally  been  recognized.  He  died  in  the 
London  Clinic  4  November  1990.  He  never 
married. 

[Alan  Hoe,  David  Stirling,  1992;  John  Strawson, 
A  History  of  the  SAS  Regiment,  1984;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Fitzroy  Maclean 

STOCKTON,  first  Earl  of  (i  894-1986),  prime 
minister.  [See  Macmillan,  (Maurice)  Har- 
old.] 

STOCKWELL,  Sir  Hugh  Charles  (1903- 
1986),  general,  was  born  16  June  1903  in  Jersey, 
the  only  son  and  youngest  of  three  children  of 
Lieutenant-Colonel  Hugh  Charles  Stockwell, 
OBE,  of  the  Highland  Light  Infantry,  later  chief 
constable  of  Colchester,  and  his  wife,  Gertrude 
Forrest.  He  spent  his  early  childhood  in  India 
with  his  parents  before  attending  school  at  Cot- 
hill  House  in  Abingdon,  Marlborough  College, 
and  the  Royal  Military  College,  Sandhurst. 
Commissioned  into  the  Royal  Welch  Fusiliers  on 
1  February  1923,  he  was  one  of  a  small  number 
of  postwar  officers  among  the  veterans  of  the  war 
of  1914-18.  High  spirited,  professionally  keen,  a 
proficient  rugby  football,  hockey,  and  cricket 
player,  he  was  quickly  accepted  by  both 
groups. 

Garrison  life  in  England  and  Germany  palled, 
however.  'Hughie'  Stockwell  was  seconded  to  the 
Royal  West  African  Frontier  Force,  serving  from 
1929  to  1935  as  a  Vickers  machine-gun  officer,  a 
position  which  led  to  an  instructor's  post  at  the 
Small  Arms  School,  Netheravon,  in  1935-8.  War 
approached.  The  Territorial  Army  was  expand- 
ing and,  without  attending  the  Staff  College,  in 
1938  he  was  made  brigade-major  of  158th — the 
Royal  Welch — brigade  at  Wrexham,  an  excep- 
tional appointment.  However,  his  reputation  as  a 
leader  suggested  his  employment  in  the  'special 


companies'  formed  hastily  in  April  1940,  for 
independent  tasks  in  the  flagging  Norwegian 
campaign.  Promoted  to  lieutenant-colonel,  he 
commanded  a  group  of  these  units  in  the  opera- 
tions, and  was  appointed  to  the  DSO  (1940).  He 
was  then  made  commandant  of  the  special  forces 
training  centre  at  Lochailort. 

In  June  1942  he  led  the  2nd  Royal  Welch 
Fusiliers  in  the  Madagascar  landings.  He  was 
promoted  to  brigadier,  commanding  the  30th 
East  African  and  then,  from  January  1943,  the 
29th  Independent  Infantry  brigade  group  during 
the  battles  for  Arakan  and  northern  Burma.  For 
his  leadership  in  lengthy  operations,  notably  his 
personal  influence  in  maintaining  the  morale  of 
his  soldiers,  he  was  created  CBE  (1045). 

In  January  1945  he  was  appointed  com- 
mander, 82nd  West  African  division  in  Burma. 
This  completed  a  rise  from  major  to  major- 
general  in  less  than  five  years,  and  although  he 
was  only  forty-two  years  of  age  he  was  confirmed 
as  a  general  officer  at  the  end  of  the  war. 
Successively  commander  of  the  Home  Counties 
District  (1946-7)  and  44th  Territorial  division, 
and  the  6th  Airborne  division  (1047-8),  he  was 
responsible  for  the  evacuation  of  the  latter  and  all 
other  British  troops  from  Palestine  in  1048.  His 
friendly  but  firm  relationship  with  the  Jewish 
authorities  ensured  a  peaceful  withdrawal  despite 
late  attempts  to  frustrate  British  demolition  of 
selected  facilities.  Appointed  CB  in  1946,  he  was 
promoted  to  KBE  in  1949. 

An  inspired  selection  placed  him  next  as 
commandant  of  the  Royal  Military  Academy, 
Sandhurst  (1948-50).  His  early  choice  of  a 
scooter  bearing  a  major-general's  two  stars  to 
carry  him  about  the  grounds  characterized  him: 
unpretentious,  practical,  and  approachable,  he 
moved  easily  between  formal  occasions,  such  as 
the  sovereign's  parade,  to  informal  association  in 
the  training  field  with  instructors  and  cadets. 
Unrecognized  by  two  late  returning  cadets  on 
one  occasion,  he  helped  to  push  them  over  the 
wall  to  avoid  detection  at  the  gate. 

After  two  years  with  the  3rd  division,  he  was 
promoted  to  lieutenant-general  and  command  of 
the  land  forces  in  Malaya  in  1952,  augmenting 
the  policies  of  General  Sir  Gerald  *Templer  to 
counter  terrorism.  He  was  active  in  the  expan- 
sion of  the  Royal  Malay  Regiment  at  this  time. 
Command  of  I  British  Corps  followed  (1954-6), 
from  which  he  was  withdrawn  to  lead  the  land 
forces  in  the  Port  Said  and  Suez  canal  operation 
in  the  latter  part  of  1956.  In  an  environment  of 
political  and  military  fumbling,  his  resistance  to 
impractical  commitments  spared  his  forces  many 
difficulties.  Following  the  seizure  of  the  port  and 
its  southern  approaches,  the  British  forces  were 
subjected  to  repeated  acts  of  terrorism.  Stockwell 
visited  daily  the  areas  most  affected,  explaining 
to  the  soldiers  concerned  in  his  friendlv  and 


435 


Stockwell 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


direct  way  the  need  for  restraint.  His  withdrawal 
plan  was  a  model.  It  ensured  the  safety  of  his 
troops  without  jeopardizing  the  United  Nations 
forces  who  relieved  them.  StockwelPs  talents  as 
an  extrovert,  practical  commander  were  seen  at 
their  best  in  the  politically  fraught  Port  Said 
operation.  He  was  also  able  to  stimulate  laughter 
in  dismal  circumstances.  As  a  consequence,  the 
army  units  involved  disengaged  in  high  morale. 

Thereafter,  as  military  secretary  (1957-9)  and 
adjutant-general  (1959-60),  in  which  appoint- 
ment he  was  promoted  to  general  in  the  army 
(1957),  his  name  is  associated  with  the  well-being 
of  officers  and  men,  whose  confidence  he  held 
absolutely.  He  was  finally  selected  by  the  first 
Viscount  *Montgomery  of  Alamein  as  his  suc- 
cessor in  the  post  of  deputy  supreme  allied 
commander,  Europe  (1960-4).  His  first  step, 
wisely,  was  to  become  the  trusted  friend  of  two 
American  supreme  commanders.  On  this  firm 
basis  he  gathered  considerable  influence  among 
the  international  commanders  and  staffs.  He 
worked  for  the  creation  of  strong  mobile  forces  in 
Europe,  advocating  the  use  of  tactical  nuclear 
weapons  only  as  a  last  resort. 

Following  his  retirement  in  1964,  he  was 
active  in  the  development  and  maintenance  of 
British  waterways,  not  least  as  chairman  of  the 
Ken  net  and  Avon  Canal  Trust  from  1966  to 
1975.  Among  many  connections  with  the  army, 
he  was  colonel  of  the  Royal  Welch  Fusiliers 
(1952-65),  Royal  Malay  Regiment  (1954-9),  and 
Army  Air  Corps  (1957-63),  and  ADC-general  to 
the  queen  (1959-62).  He  was  further  appointed 
KCB  (1954),  GCB  (1959),  and  a  grand  officer  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour  (1958).  He  was  also 
awarded  a  bar  to  his  DSO  (1957). 

Tall  and  fair,  Stockwell  had  striking  features, 
notably  piercing  blue  eyes  above  a  beaky  nose, 
and  an  expression  daunting  when  he  was  angry, 
but  more  frequently  relieved  by  an  engaging 
smile.  In  1931  he  married  Joan  Rickman,  daugh- 
ter of  Charles  and  Marion  Garrard,  of  independ- 
ent means,  of  Kingston  Lisle,  Berkshire.  They 
had  two  daughters.  Stockwell  died  27  November 
1986  at  the  Royal  Air  Force  Hospital,  Wrough- 
ton. 

[Royal  Welch  Fusilier  archives,  Regimental  Head- 
quarters, Caernarfon;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Anthony  Farrar-Hockley 

STONEHOUSE,  John  Thomson  (1925- 1988), 
politician  and  confidence  trickster,  was  born  28 
July  1925  in  Southampton,  the  youngest  of  four 
children  and  second  son  of  William  Mitchell 
Stonehouse,  Post  Office  engineer  and  later  dock- 
yard engine-fitter,  and  his  wife  Rosina  Marie, 
formerly  a  scullery  maid  in  Cowes,  Isle  of  Wight, 
daughter  of  Henry  George  Taylor,  boilermaker. 
The  family  was  active  in  the  local  Labour  move- 
ment, the  father  becoming  a  trade  union  official 


and  the  mother  being  an  alderman  (1936-70)  and 
later  mayor  (1959)  of  Southampton.  Stonehouse 
was  educated  at  Tauntons  School,  Southampton, 
which  he  left  at  the  age  of  sixteen  to  work  in  the 
Southampton  probation  department  as  a  clerk 
and  typist  (1941-4).  In  1944  he  joined  the  Royal 
Air  Force,  training  as  a  pilot  in  the  USA.  From 
1947  to  1 95 1  he  studied  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics,  where  he  obtained  a  B.Sc.  (Econ.)  in 

I95i- 

In  the  early  1950s  he  gained  experience  by 
working  in  the  Co-operative  movement  both  at 
home  and  abroad.  In  1952  he  established  valuable 
African  credentials  by  taking  his  wife  and  young 
family  to  Uganda,  where  they  stayed  until  1954, 
while  he  helped  to  organize  the  Co-operative 
movement  among  the  African  population.  Some 
of  his  contemporaries  said  that  his  work  in 
Uganda  was  not  as  pioneering  as  he  subsequently 
claimed.  Nevertheless,  it  gave  him  powerful 
authority  in  the  political  debate  about  decoloni- 
zation, which  was  gathering  strength  in  Britain 
and  Africa.  Stonehouse  was  certainly  not  out  of 
step  with  his  own  party's  developing  policy  on 
Africa. 

In  February  1957,  at  a  by-election,  he  entered 
Parliament  as  Labour  Co-operative  member  for 
Wednesbury,  whose  MP  he  remained  until  1974. 
In  March  1959  he  was  declared  persona  non  grata 
by  the  government  of  the  Federation  of  Rhodesia 
and  Nyasaland.  The  cause  of  this  heavy-handed 
treatment  was  a  speech  to  an  African  audience  in 
which  he  had  urged  the  black  people  of  Rhodesia 
to  'lift  your  heads  high  and  behave  as  though  the 
country  belongs  to  you'.  However,  spats  with 
minority  regimes  in  Africa  did  no  harm  to 
Stonehouse's  reputation  as  a  coming  man.  He 
wrote  a  book  about  his  experiences,  Prohibited 
Immigrant  (i960). 

He  also  established  a  reputation  on  the  do- 
mestic front  when  he  became  a  director  of  the 
London  Co-operative  Society  (1956-62,  presi- 
dent 1962-4).  The  LCS  was  one  of  the  jewels  in 
the  crown  of  the  Co-operative  movement  and 
Stonehouse's  role  kept  him  in  the  public  eye  as  a 
tough,  if  not  always  popular,  political  in-fighter 
and  administrator.  It  was  no  surprise  when 
Harold  Wilson  (later  Baron  Wilson  of  Rievaulx) 
sent  him  to  the  Ministry  of  Aviation  as  parlia- 
mentary under-secretary  when  Labour  returned 
to  power  in  October  1964.  He  held  several 
subsequent  posts  in  the  1964-70  Labour  govern- 
ment: parliamentary  under-secretary  of  state 
for  the  colonies  (1966-7),  minister  of  aviation 
(1967),  minister  of  state  for  technology  (1967-8), 
postmaster-general  (1968-9),  and  minister  of 
post  and  telecommunications  (1969-70).  How- 
ever, he  never  made  the  cabinet  and  was  dropped 
from  the  government  shortly  before  Labour  lost 
office  in  1970. 

In  the  early  1970s  he  turned  his  energies  to  a 


430 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Streatfeild 


variety  of  fund-raising  and  money-making  activ- 
ities, many  associated  with  the  new  country  of 
Bangladesh.  He  created  a  lattice-work  of  com- 
panies, in  which  he  manipulated  funds  to  conceal 
mismanagement  and  fraud.  On  21  November 
1974  he  went  missing,  presumed  dead,  whilst 
supposedly  swimming  in  the  sea  off  Miami.  Five 
weeks  later  he  was  discovered  in  Australia  by 
Australian  police,  who  thought  he  might  be  the 
missing  Lord  Lucan.  The  Stonehouse  story  then 
took  on  aspects  of  cheap  fiction  rather  than  real 
life.  He  had  obtained  two  passports  in  the  names 
of  husbands  of  widows  in  his  constituency.  A 
beautiful  mistress,  his  House  of  Commons  secre- 
tary, Sheila  Buckley,  was  identified  as  having 
conspired  with  him  to  fake  the  disappearance  to 
enable  them  both  to  start  a  new  life  together  in 
Australia  with  money  salted  away  from  the 
Stonehouse  companies.  At  his  trial  the  Stone- 
house  defences  ranged  from  international  con- 
spiracy to  mental  breakdown.  That  he  had  not 
lived  up  to  high  expectations,  his  own  and  those 
of  others,  had  caused  him  to  retreat  into  a  world 
of  deceit  and  fraud.  In  1976  he  resigned  his  privy 
councillorship,  to  which  he  had  been  appointed 
in  1968,  and  applied  for  the  Chiltern  Hundreds, 
thus  ceasing  to  be  an  MP  (he  had  represented 
Walsall  North  from  1974). 

His  behaviour  would  have  condemned  most 
men  to  oblivion,  but  Stonehouse  did  not  shun 
the  public  eye.  He  served  three  and  a  half  years 
in  prison,  being  released  in  1979,  and  then,  after 
a  brief  period  of  charity  work,  turned  his  hand  to 
writing.  Between  1982  and  1987  he  had  three 
novels  published:  Ralph  (1982),  The  Baring  Fault 
(1986),  and  Oil  on  the  Rift  (1987).  A  posthumous 
publication,  in  1989,  was  Who  Sold  Australia? 
Earlier  he  had  written  an  autobiography,  Death  of 
an  Idealist  (1975).  Three  years  before  his  death 
he  started  a  company  which  manufactured  elec- 
tronic safes. 

Stonehouse  was  tall,  handsome,  and  charming. 
In  1948  he  married  Barbara  Joan,  stenographer, 
daughter  of  Robert  Charles  Smith,  insurance 
agent;  they  had  one  son  and  two  daughters.  The 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1978  and  in  1981  he 
married  Sheila  Elizabeth  Buckley,  secretary, 
whose  previous  marriage  had  ended  in  divorce, 
daughter  of  Leslie  William  Black,  master 
butcher.  They  had  one  son.  Stonehouse,  who 
had  suffered  a  series  of  heart  attacks  and  under- 
gone heart  surgery  during  his  prison  term,  col- 
lapsed during  the  night  of  15  April  1988  at  his 
home  in  Totton,  near  Southampton,  and  was 
dead  on  his  arrival  at  Southampton  General 
Hospital. 

[John  Stonehouse,  Prohibited  Immigrant,  i960,  and 
Death  of  an  Idealist,  1975;  The  Times,  15  April  1988; 
information  from  House  of  Commons  library.] 

C.  S.  NlCHOLLS 

Tom  McNally 


STREATFEILD,  (Mary)  Noel  (1 895-1086), 
children's  author,  was  born  24  December  1895  in 
Frant,  Sussex,  the  second  child  and  second 
daughter  in  a  family  of  five  daughters  (the  second 
youngest  of  whom  died  at  the  age  of  two)  and  one 
son  of  William  Champion  Streatfeild,  Anglican 
vicar,  and  his  wife  Janet  Mary,  daughter  of 
Henry  Venn,  vicar  of  Walmer.  She  grew  up  in 
Amberley,  St  Leonards-on-Sea,  and  Eastbourne, 
where  her  father  was  vicar  (he  later  became 
suffragan  bishop  of  Lewes).  In  the  first  part  of 
her  autobiography  she  describes  overhearing  her 
mother's  friends  identify  her  as  'the  plain  one'. 
That,  and  the  genteel  poverty  in  which  they 
lived,  made  her  fiercely  resentful  and  in  later 
years  it  was  noticeable  what  an  important  part 
clothes  played  in  her  plots  and  her  own  life;  she 
was  always  elegant.  She  was  educated  at  the 
Hastings  and  St  Leonard's  Ladies  College  in  St 
Leonards  and  Laleham  School  in  Eastbourne.  In 
19 1 6  she  went  to  work  in  Woolwich  Arsenal,  but 
became  ill. 

In  1919  she  joined  the  Academy  of  Dramatic 
Art  in  London  (later  to  become  RADA).  She  had 
moderate  success  as  an  ingenue  playing  in  reper- 
tory, reviews,  and  pantomime.  She  also  went  on 
tour  in  South  Africa,  Rhodesia,  New  Zealand, 
and  Australia.  When  her  father  died  in  1929  she 
returned  home  and  decided  to  adopt  a  more 
stable  career,  choosing  to  be  a  writer. 

Her  first  efforts  were  three  fain-  stories  pub- 
lished in  a  children's  magazine  and  a  novel,  The 
Whicharts  (1931),  based  on  children's  misunder- 
standing of  the  prayer  'Our  Father  which  art...'. 
Its  success  encouraged  her  to  write  five  other 
novels,  including  /  Ordered  a  Table  for  Six 
(1942),  which  anticipated  the  bomb  which 
destroyed  the  Cafe  Royal  a  year  later.  It  was 
about  this  time,  after  her  agent  suggested  she  try 
writing  for  children,  that  she  rather  unenthusias- 
tically produced  Ballet  Shoes  (1936),  which 
became  a  runaway  success,  and  which  caused  her 
to  have  no  further  worries  about  money. 

Almost  by  accident  she  had  found  the  perfect 
ingredients  for  a  children's  book.  Into  it  she  had 
put  all  her  accumulated  backstage  knowledge  of 
the  theatre  and  of  her  sister's  ballet  training,  as 
well  as  their  childhood  struggles  with  hardship 
and  a  genuine  picture  of  family  life.  Tennis  Shoes 
(1937)  incorporated  the  advice  given  to  her  by 
John  *Galsworthy,  in  the  first  fan  letter  she 
received,  'always  remember  to  know  at  least 
three  times  as  much  as  you  are  going  to  put  on 
paper'.  Her  third  book,  The  Circus  Is  Coming 
(1938),  was  the  result  of  nearly  a  year  spent 
travelling  with  a  family  circus  and  won  her  the 
Library  Association's  Carnegie  medal. 

On  the  outbreak  of  World  War  II  she  trained 
as  an  air-raid  warden  and  joined  the  Women's 
Voluntary  Service,  running  a  canteen  service  for 
people  in  the  Deptford  shelters.  In  her  spare 


437 


Streatfeild 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


time,  she  prettified  London  by  scattering  flower 
seeds  on  bomb  sites.  In  1941  her  London  flat  was 
bombed  and  she  lost  almost  everything.  She 
wrote  four  more  children's  books,  including 
Party  Frock  (1946).  After  the  war  she  spent  some 
time  in  Hollywood,  from  which  came  The 
Painted  Garden  (1949).  In  1951  White  Boots,  a 
story  about  skating,  appeared.  She  began  to  share 
a  flat  at  51 A  Elizabeth  Street,  London,  with  a 
friend,  Margot  Grey. 

Noel  Streatfeild  believed  that  every  detail  in 
her  books  should  be  factually  correct  and  she  also 
developed  her  characters  convincingly.  Her  writ- 
ing for  young  readers  had  a  reassuring  warmth, 
or  'heart'  as  she  described  it,  and  almost  all  her 
stories  were  centred  around  families.  The  family 
background  and  rules  of  behaviour  between  par- 
ents and  siblings  had  a  warm  quality  which  made 
them  both  fascinating  and  believable. 

In  all  she  wrote  sixty-four  books,  all  but 
seventeen  for  children,  always  drawing  on  her 
own  experience  to  make  them  as  authentic  as 
possible.  Many  of  them  were  broadcast  on  radio 
or  television;  it  was  the  BBC  who  introduced  her 
Bell  family  to  radio;  the  serials  were  broadcast 
from  1949  to  1953.  The  Growing  Summer  (1966) 
was  a  television  serial  set  in  Ireland,  and  Thurs- 
day's Child  (1970)  was  also  serialized.  She  wrote 
her  autobiography  in  three  volumes,  and  a  life  of 
another  renowned  writer  of  children's  books, 
Edith  *Nesbit  {Magic  and  the  Magician,  1958). 
She  was  generous  in  encouraging  young  writers 
and  replied  kindly  to  every  child  who  wrote  to 
her.  She  was  also  indefatigable  in  her  response  to 
schools  and  libraries,  never  treating  this  as  a 
duty,  but  taking  the  trouble  to  make  her  visits  as 
exciting  and  glamorous  as  possible.  On  the  days 
when  she  visited  the  yearly  exhibition  of  the 
Puffin  Club  (the  children's  branch  of  Penguin 
Books,  which  published  her  work)  huge  queues 
formed  to  get  her  autograph.  Mothers  came  with 
their  daughters,  bringing  their  own  battered 
copies  of  Ballet  Shoes  to  be  signed.  She  was 
appointed  OBE  in  1983. 

Noel  Streatfeild  was  a  tall  woman,  with  a  fine 
carriage.  She  often  wore  a  mink  coat,  and  her 
lovely  hands  were  regularly  manicured  with  rich 
red  nail  polish.  She  was  physically  somewhat 
clumsy,  with  a  rather  loud,  commanding  voice. 
She  died  11  September  1986  in  a  nursing  home 
in  Vicarage  Gate,  London,  after  a  stroke.  She 
never  married. 

[Noel  Streatfeild,  A  Vicarage  Family,  1963,  Away  from 
the  Vicarage,  1965,  and  Beyond  the  Vicarage,  1971 
(three  volumes  of  autobiography);  Angela  Bull,  Noel 
Streatfeild,  a  Biography,  1984;  Barbara  Ker  Wilson, 
Noel  Streatfeild,  1961;  personal  knowledge.] 

Kaye  Webb 

STRONG,  Patience  (1907-1990),  author  and 
poet,  was  born  Winifred  Emma  May  4  June  1907 


in  Catford,  south-east  London,  the  younger 
daughter  and  second  of  three  children  of  Alfred 
William  May,  postal  worker  at  Mount  Pleasant, 
London,  and  his  wife,  Nell  Mason.  She  played 
the  piano  by  ear  at  the  age  of  four  and  began 
composing  verses  when  very  young.  She  was 
educated  at  the  local  school  in  Catford  and  then 
at  Cusack's  College,  where  she  learned  shorthand 
and  typing.  She  worked  in  a  patent  agency  and 
subsequently  in  a  music  publisher's  office,  which 
stimulated  her  interest  in  writing  lyrics  for  pop- 
ular music.  She  was  nurtured  by  Lawrence 
Wright,  an  influential  music  publisher  of  the 
time,  and  among  the  lyrics  she  subsequently 
wrote  were  those  for  the  well-known  tango, 
'Jealousy',  and  the  ballad,  'The  Dream  of 
Olwen'. 

In  August  1935,  spurred  by  the  success  of 
the  prose-poem  writer,  Wilhelmina  Stitch,  who 
wrote  regularly  for  the  Daily  Sketch,  she  decided 
to  try  to  perform  a  similar  service  for  the  rival 
newspaper  the  Daily  Mirror  and,  'with  a  poem  in 
my  pocket' — the  subsequent  title  of  her  auto- 
biography— she  visited  the  paper's  features  edi- 
tor with  her  proposal.  He  was  impressed  and 
invited  her  to  return  the  following  day  with 
eighteen  further  poems,  and  a  suitable  pseudo- 
nym for  a  regular  column.  That  evening,  a  friend 
visited  her  with  the  gift  of  a  book  by  an  American 
author,  Adeline  D.  T.  Whitney,  with  the  title 
Patience  Strong  (1870).  The  next  day  she  pre- 
sented the  editor  with  the  further  poems — and 
her  new  name. 

Patience  Strong  continued  to  write  a  daily 
poem  for  the  Daily  Mirror,  without  interruption, 
from  then  onwards  and  throughout  World  War 
II,  under  the  heading  'The  Quiet  Corner',  which 
became  synonymous  with  her  work.  Some  critics 
derided  her  verse  for  its  sentimentality,  but 
readers  responded  warmly  to  her  poems  and  to 
her  philosophy,  feeling  that  they  knew  her  per- 
sonally and  could  confide  in  her;  she  replied  to 
each  correspondent  and  her  office  at  her  home 
became  something  of  an  adjunct  to  the  local  post 
office,  when  service  men  and  women,  and  those 
left  at  home,  wrote  to  thank  her  for  her  poems 
and  support,  explaining  that  she  had  been  able, 
through  her  verses,  to  speak  for  them.  An 
example  of  her  work  is:  'Give  me  a  window  with 
a  view  that  flows  to  meet  the  sky.  Give  me  a 
garden  where  the  trees  can  feel  the  winds  blow 
by. ..Give  me  good  days  and  sleep-blessed  nights 
when  I  have  closed  the  door — and  anyone  can 
have  the  world.  I'll  never  ask  for  more.'  (Give  Me 
A  Quiet  Corner,  1972.) 

In  the  late  1940s  she  transferred  from  the 
Daily  Mirror  to  its  sister  Sunday  newspaper,  the 
Pictorial  (subsequently  the  Sunday  Mirror),  and 
she  also  began  contributing  her  poems  to  the 
weekly  magazine,  Woman's  Own.  Her  sojourn 
with  each  was  over  forty  years.  Latterly,  her 


438 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Swann 


poems  appeared  in  the  quarterly  journal,  This 
England. 

In  the  late  1930s  her  books  of  prose  poems 
began  publication,  with  Every  Common  Bush 
(1937),  and  many  titles  followed,  published  by 
Frederick  Muller,  under  which  imprint  her 
books  appeared  until  her  death,  when  post- 
humous compilations  were  issued.  Her  books, 
which  numbered  over  seventy,  include  Quiet 
Corner  Reflections  (1938),  A  Christmas  Garland 
(1948),  The  Patience  Strong  Bedside  Book  (1953), 
The  Blessings  of  the  Years  (1963),  Come  Happy 
Day  (1966),  A  Joy  Forever  (1973),  Poems  from  the 
Fighting  Forties  (1982),  and  Fifty  Golden  Years 
(1985,  to  commemorate  her  fiftieth  anniversary 
as  Patience  Strong).  She  also  wrote  many  book- 
lets with  a  specifically  religious  basis  for  the 
Henry  E.  Walter  Company.  Her  posthumous 
publications  included  Tapestries  of  Time  (1991) 
and  many  of  her  early  titles  were  reissued  by 
Grace  Publishers.  Patience  Strong's  poems 
appeared  on  calendars  and  greetings  cards  and 
similar  publications  for  over  fifty  years  and  also 
continued  to  be  published.  Two  gramophone 
records  of  the  author  reciting  favourite  poems 
were  issued:  'The  Quiet  Hour'  (Saga,  1963)  and 
'The  Quiet  Corner'  (Meridian,  1978). 

Patience  Strong  was  attractive  in  personality 
and  appearance,  and  her  beauty  could  not  better 
have  complemented  the  nature  of  her  work.  She 
was  a  devout  Christian,  who  explored  many 
churches — Baptist,  Methodist,  Church  of  Eng- 
land, Christian  Science,  and,  in  later  years,  the 
British  Israel  movement.  Her  faith  in  God 
governed  her  life.  She  had  a  great  gift  for 
communication,  and  regarded  this  as  her  mission 
in  life.  She  was  a  countrywoman,  who  found  her 
inspiration  in  the  changing  seasons  of  the  English 
countryside,  in  all  its  moods,  as  shown  in  her 
verse:  'This  is  what  he  dreamed  about  beneath 
the  desert  sky:  brown  earth  breaking  on  the 
plough  and  white  gulls  wheeling  by.. .This  is 
what  he  fought  for  on  a  beach  in  Normandy: 
parish  church  and  village  green,  his  English 
legacy.  These  things  did  he  know  and  love.  He 
lived  and  died  for  them. ..Speak  no  word.  The 
evening  thrush  will  sing  his  requiem.'  (Magic 
Casements,  1950.) 

In  1 93 1  she  married  the  son  of  a  master 
builder  who  was  an  alderman  of  the  city  of 
Liverpool,  Frederick  Arnold  ('Paddy')  Williams, 
architect.  He  died  in  1965  and  in  1967  she 
married  Guy  Cushing,  buyer,  who  had  retired 
from  the  John  Lewis  Partnership,  the  son  of 
William  Isaac  Cushing,  draper,  and  his  wife 
Amanda,  the  great  friend  of  the  author,  who  had 
given  her  the  book  Patience  Strong  many  years 
before.  He  predeceased  her  in  1979.  There  were 
no  children  of  either  marriage.  Patience  Strong 
was  made  a  freeman  of  the  City  of  London  in 


1970.  She  died  28  August  1990  at  her  home  in 
Sedlescombe,  East  Sussex. 

(Patience  Strong,  With  a  Poem  in  my  Pocket,  1981; 
personal  knowledge.]  Doreen  Montgomery 

SWANN,  Michael  Meredith,  Baron  Swann 
(1920-1990),  biologist  and  public  servant,  was 
born  1  March  1920  in  Cambridge,  the  elder  son 
and  eldest  of  three  children  of  Meredith  Blake 
Robson  Swann,  university  demonstrator  in 
pathology,  and  his  wife,  Marjorie  Dykes.  He  was 
educated  at  Winchester  College  and  as  a  scholar 
at  Gonville  and  Caius  College,  Cambridge,  of 
which  his  father  was  a  fellow,  and  of  which  he 
himself  became  an  honorary  fellow  in  1977.  He 
left  Cambridge  at  Easter  1940,  after  six  terms, 
and,  as  a  result  of  a  wartime  dispensation,  was 
given  a  BA  (zoology)  in  1943  and  an  MA  in 
1946. 

During  World  War  II  he  worked  on  radar  at 
the  War  Office  and  on  operational  research  in 
Normandy  and  Germany.  He  was  mentioned  in 
dispatches  in  1944.  In  1946,  having  registered  as 
a  research  student  at  Cambridge,  he  was  elected 
a  fellow  of  his  college.  For  the  next  six  years  he 
was  a  university  demonstrator  in  zoology-,  and, 
during  that  period,  was  closely  concerned  with 
research  on  the  structure  during  mitosis  (the 
splitting  of  cell  or  nucleus)  and  with  the  process 
of  fertilization  of  the  eggs  of  sea  urchins  (sea 
urchins  being  one  of  those  marine  creatures  that 
do  not  mate,  but  shed  their  eggs  and  sperm  into 
the  sea).  His  findings  were  recorded  in  a  number 
of  scientific  papers  which  made  Swann's  reputa- 
tion as  a  leading  authority  on  cell  biology.  He 
obtained  a  Ph.D.  in  1950. 

In  1952  Swann  moved  to  Edinburgh  Uni- 
versity as  professor  of  natural  history.  He  con- 
tinued his  research,  but  became  increasingly- 
involved  in  the  administrative  responsibilities  of 
his  post,  and,  by  the  time  he  was  elected  dean  of 
the  faculty  of  science  in  1963,  he  had  made  his 
department  one  of  the  best  centres  for  biological 
teaching  and  research  in  the  United  Kingdom. 
Having  left  his  microscope  for  the  instruments  of 
academic  business,  he  published  his  last  scientific 
paper  in  1962. 

In  1965  he  succeeded  Sir  Edward  *Appleton 
as  principal  and  vice-chancellor  of  Edinburgh 
University  and  was  soon  seen  to  be  not  only  an 
able  administrator  within  the  university  and  the 
committee  of  vice-chancellors,  but  also  a  not- 
able authority  on  educational  problems  in  wider 
fields  beyond  Edinburgh.  He  was  a  member 
of  the  advisory  council  on  education  in  Scot- 
land (1957—61),  the  committee  on  manpower 
resources  (1963-8),  and  the  council  for  scientific 
policy  (1965-9).  However,  his  term  of  office  as 
principal  of  the  university  coincided  in  the  late 
1960s  with  an  upsurge  of  political  activism 
among  his  students,  and,  although  he  dealt  with 


439 


Swann 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  resultant  problems  with  firmness  and  tact,  he 
found  the  situation  tedious  and  tiresome. 

Meanwhile,  relations  between  the  chairman  of 
the  governors  of  the  BBC,  Baron  *Hill  of  Luton, 
and  the  director-general  and  his  staff  had  not 
been  running  smoothly,  and  (Sir)  Edward  Heath, 
the  prime  minister,  was  seeking  as  the  new 
chairman  somebody  less  assertive  and  blustering 
in  carrying  out  the  functions  of  that  office.  In 
1973  Swann  was  offered  and  accepted  the  post. 
From  the  outset  he  made  clear  that  he  had  no 
intention  of  trying  to  steer  the  ship,  but  would  be 
prepared  to  help  to  hold  her  on  course  if  rough 
weather  were  encountered.  The  next  seven  years 
were  not  without  some  rough  weather.  In  1977 
the  central  policy  review  staff  made  recom- 
mendations regarding  the  external  services  of  the 
BBC,  which  in  the  view  of  the  corporation  would 
have  been  disastrous  if  implemented.  Swann 
took  steps  to  ensure  that  the  proposals  were 
quietly  shelved.  In  1974  the  committee  on  the 
future  of  broadcasting  had  been  set  up  under 
Baron  Annan.  Its  report,  published  in  1977, 
challenged  the  role  of  the  governors.  Having 
handled  the  committee  with  tact  and  good 
humour,  Swann  was  able  to  ensure  that  the 
management  of  the  corporation  was  not  imper- 
illed. 

Throughout  his  term  of  office  as  chairman 
(1973-80),  Swann  earned  not  only  the  regard  of 
the  two  directors-general  with  whom  he  worked, 
but  also  the  respect  and  affection  of  all  BBC  staff. 
Sir  Ian  *Trethowan  paid  tribute  to  him  as  'an 
outstanding  chairman  steering  the  BBC  through 
a  number  of  political  crises'. 

Swann  was  knighted  in  1972.  In  1981  he  was 
created  a  life  peer,  and  in  the  House  of  Lords 
continued  to  defend  the  independence  of  the 
BBC.  During  that  year  (1 980-1)  he  was  provost 
of  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  but  he  was  not  happy 
there,  and  resigned  after  twelve  months.  He 
found  it  difficult  to  cope  with  the  minutiae  of 
college  life  after  facing  the  demands  of  public  life 
for  so  long,  and  the  college  itself  was  unprepared 
for  the  amount  of  time  that  his  outside  activ- 
ities were  to  take  up.  He  was  a  member  of 
many  organizations,  in  which  he  took  an  active 
part,  including  the  Medical  Research  Council 
(1962-5),  Council  for  Science  and  Society 
(1974-8),  and  the  Wellcome  Trust,  of  which  he 
was  a  trustee  from  1973  to  1990.  From  1979  to 
1990  he  was  chancellor  of  York  University.  From 
1981  to  1985  he  chaired  the  committee  of  inquiry 
into  the  education  of  children  from  ethnic 
minority  groups,  and  the  Swann  report  of  March 
1985  was  radical.  He  was  also  chairman  of  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Music  from  1983  to  1990,  an 
appointment  which  gave  him  special  pleasure, 
and  a  trustee  of  the  British  Museum  (Natural 
History),  1982-6.  He  received  many  academic 
honours,  including  honorary  degrees  from  Aber- 


deen (1967),  Leicester  (1968),  York  (1968),  and 
Heriot-Watt  (1971).  He  was  elected  FRSE  in 
1952  and  FRS  in  1962. 

Swann  was  a  big,  broad,  heavy  man,  unathletic 
and  with  blond  hair  and  a  friendly  manner.  He 
never  managed  to  look  very  smart,  even  when 
wearing  his  best  clothes.  In  1942  he  married  Tess 
Gleadowe,  a  keen  musician,  an  associate  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Music  and  of  the  Royal  College 
of  Organists.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Reginald 
Morier  Yorke  Gleadowe,  Slade  professor  of  fine 
art  at  Oxford.  They  had  two  sons  and  two 
daughters.  Swann  died  22  September  1990  of  a 
ruptured  aorta  at  his  home,  Tallat  Steps,  in  Coin 
St  Denys,  Gloucestershire. 

[The  Times  and  Independent,  24  September  1990;  J.  M. 
Mitchison  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvii,  1991.]  H.  F.  Oxbury 

SYKES,  Christopher  Hugh  (1907- 1986),  writer 
and  traveller,  was  born  17  November  1907  in 
Sledmere,  near  Driffield,  Yorkshire,  the  elder  of 
twins  and  the  second  son  and  third  child  in  the 
family  of  three  sons  and  three  daughters  of  (Sir) 
Mark  *Sykes,  later  sixth  baronet,  and  his  wife 
Edith  Violet,  third  daughter  of  Sir  John  Eldon 
*Gorst,  solicitor-general.  His  father  was  first 
employed  as  honorary  attache  to  the  British 
embassy  in  Constantinople,  before  helping  to 
found  the  Arab  Bureau  with  T.  E.  *Lawrence 
and  signing  the  Sykes-Picot  agreement  of  1916. 
Christopher  followed  an  undistinguished  aca- 
demic career  at  Downside  and  Christ  Church, 
Oxford  (which  he  left  without  a  degree),  by 
becoming  honorary  attache  at  both  the  Berlin 
embassy  (1928-9)  and  the  British  legation  in 
Tehran  (1 930-1). 

At  Oxford  he  was  thought  of  as  a  boisterous,  if 
congenial,  companion,  given  to  acts  of  bravado, 
rather  like  his  early  hero,  and  close  friend  of  his 
father,  Aubrey  *Herbert,  the  model  for  John 
*Buchan's  Greenmantle.  Unlike  Herbert  or  his 
father,  he  was  inhibited  from  embarking  on  a 
political  career  by  a  stutter,  which  grew  more 
pronounced  whenever  the  subject-matter  was 
such  as  might  inspire  disbelief.  Since  Sykes  was 
chiefly  interested  in  those  areas  of  discussion 
which  lie  on  the  borders  between  personal 
experience,  artistic  embellishment,  and  fantasy, 
it  was  thought  that  a  political  career  was  closed  to 
him.  He  took  a  course  in  Persian  studies  at  the 
School  of  Oriental  Studies,  London,  and  in  1933 
left  for  two  years'  travel  in  Persia  and  Afghani- 
stan with  Robert  *Byron.  He  wrote  for  The 
Times,  Spectator,  and  Observer. 

Of  Sykes's  writing  before  the  war,  little  sur- 
vived after  it:  rVassmus  (1936),  a  biography  of  the 
German  Arabist,  was  followed  by  two  light 
novels,  one  of  them  written  under  the  puzzling 
pseudonym  of  Waughburton  in  collaboration 
with   Robert  Byron.   The   war  itself  saw   him 


440 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Sylvester 


commissioned  in  the  7th  battalion  of  the  Green 
Howards.  Later,  as  part  of  Special  Operations 
Executive,  he  adorned  GHQTn  Cairo  when  the 
presence  of  the  Duff  *Coopers  and  other  cronies 
made  it  the  most  elegant  place  to  be,  before  being 
posted  to  Tehran  as  a  spy  attached  to  the  British 
legation.  Transferring  to  the  2nd  battalion  of  the 
Special  Air  Service,  he  worked  with  the  French 
Resistance  and  was  awarded  the  croix  de 
guerre. 

Many  of  these  experiences  came  together  in 
what  will  probably  be  seen  as  his  masterpiece, 
Four  Studies  in  Loyalty  (1946),  incorporating 
elements  of  biography  and  autobiography.  It  is 
memorable  in  particular  for  its  study  of  a  pre- 
vious Christopher  Sykes,  his  great-uncle.  His 
Two  Studies  tn  Virtue  (1953)  was  less  successful 
in  its  treatment  of  Cardinal  J.  H.  *Newman  and 
E.  B.  *Pusey.  Although  Sykes  was  a  cradle 
Catholic,  intermittently  devout  and,  like  many 
Catholics  of  his  class,  enraged  by  the  despoliation 
of  the  Roman  liturgy  after  the  second  Vatican 
Council,  his  interest  in  the  finer  points  of  High 
Anglican  conscience  was  limited. 

After  some  foreign  reporting,  notably  for  the 
Daily  Mail  during  the  Azerbaijan  campaign  in 
Iran,  he  joined  the  BBC  in  1948.  Following  a 
short  spell  as  deputy  controller  of  the  Third 
Programme  he  joined  the  features  department 
(1949-68),  where  he  was  suspected  of  having 
formed  a  Catholic  mafia. 

His  biography  of  Orde  Wingate  (1959)  may- 
have  described  the  sort  of  life  he  would  have 
liked  to  live,  but  the  life  of  Adam  von  Trott 
(Troubled  Loyalty,  1968),  the  patriotic  anti-Nazi, 
was  closer  to  the  world  he  eventually  inhabited. 
After  a  life  of  Nancy  *Astor  (Nancy,  1971), 
generally  seen  as  a  bit  of  a  pot-boiler,  he  came, 
after  some  delay,  to  write  the  authorized  biogra- 
phy of  his  old  friend  and  boon  companion,  the 
novelist  Evelyn  *Waugh  (1975).  This  might  have 
been  his  best  book.  He  was  chosen  because  he 
was  the  only  one  of  Waugh's  obituarists  who 
caught  something  of  the  gaiety,  as  well  as  the 
recklessness  of  the  man.  Unfortunately,  when  he 
came  to  set  pen  to  paper  six  years  after  his 
subject's  death,  the  light  had  dimmed  a  little. 
Inhibited,  as  he  said,  by  respect  for  Waugh's 
widow — she,  in  fact,  had  died  two  years  before 
the  book  appeared — he  had  also  suffered  a 
decline  in  energy,  a  certain  loss  of  optimism  or 
hope.  The  book  is  marred  not  only  by  care- 
lessness but  also  perhaps,  by  a  certain  resentment 
at  the  dying  of  the  light.  Sykes's  life  had  been  a 
reasonably  successful  one,  but  not  so  successful 
as  that  of  his  arriviste  friend. 

He  was  a  most  congenial  man  to  meet,  an 
excellent  mimic,  well-mannered,  and  witty  even 
in  his  cups,  much  loved  by  the  young  to  whom 
he  was  always  pleasant  and  friendly.  In  appear- 
ance he  was  tall,  with  a  dark,  slightly  saturnine 


countenance.  He  carried  himself  well,  with  a 
debonair  and  jaunty  manner,  which  remained 
with  him  when  age  brought  a  certain  heaviness, 
not  to  say  majesty,  to  his  gait.  In  1936  he  married 
Camilla  Georgiana  (died  1983),  daughter  of  Sir 
Thomas  Wentworth  *Russell,  pasha,  chief  of 
police  in  Cairo  from  191 7  to  1946,  but  this  did 
little  to  improve  the  parlous  financial  situation  of 
a  younger  son.  He  spent  his  last  years  in  a  Kent 
nursing  home.  He  died  in  the  course  of  an 
agreeable  house  party  at  Sledmere,  his  childhood 
home,  8  December  1986.  He  was  survived  by  an 
only  son,  Mark,  publisher  and  second-hand 
bookseller. 

[The  Times,  10  December  1986;  Independent,  11 
December  1986;  personal  knowledge.] 

AUBERON  WAUGH 

SYLVESTER,  Albert  James  (1889-1989),  polit- 
ical and  private  secretary,  was  born  24  November 
1889  in  Harlaston,  Staffordshire,  the  eldest  of 
three  children  and  only  son  of  Albert  Sylvester,  a 
tenant  farmer  reduced  to  the  role  of  farm-worker 
by  the  agricultural  depression,  and  his  wife 
Edith,  daughter  of  James  Redfern,  also  from 
Staffordshire  but  of  no  traceable  address.  He 
was  educated  at  Guild  Street  School,  Burton- 
on-Trent,  and  while  there  studied  Pitman's 
shorthand.  After  leaving  school  at  fourteen  to 
become  a  brewery  clerk  he  devoted  most  of  his 
leisure  to  perfecting  his  shorthand  and  typing, 
achieving  the  champion  speeds  of,  respectively, 
210  and  80  words  a  minute.  As  a  young  man  he 
moved  as  a  freelance  typist  to  London,  where  his 
talents  were  soon  in  demand  and  he  became  a 
member,  in  191 1  and  191 2,  of  the  British  inter- 
national typewriting  team,  which  competed 
(unsuccessfully)  with  the  Americans. 

In  191 2,  on  the  recommendation  of  a  stranger 
whom  he  met  on  the  underground  after  a  concert 
at  the  Albert  Hall,  he  was  appointed  to  the 
secretarial  staff  of  the  royal  commission  on 
Indian  public  services.  This  took  him  to  the 
subcontinent  and  introduced  him  to  work  in  the 
official  sphere.  After  the  outbreak  of  war  in  1914 
he  joined  the  staff  of  Colonel  (later  first  Baron) 
M.  P.  A.  *Hankey,  secretary  of  the  committee  of 
imperial  defence.  The  following  year  he  became 
the  first  shorthand  writer  to  record  the  proceed- 
ings of  a  cabinet  committee. 

When,  in  December  19 16,  David  *Lloyd 
George  (later  first  Earl  Lloyd-George  of  Dwyfor) 
succeeded  H.  H.  *Asquith  (later  the  first  Earl  of 
Oxford  and  Asquith)  as  prime  minister,  he  at 
once  established  a  war  cabinet  secretariat  under 
Hankey,  who  chose  Sylvester  as  his  private 
secretary.  In  this  capacity  he  showed  such  dili- 
gence, discretion,  and  efficiency  that  at  the  end  of 
the  war  he  was  given  the  status  of  a  higher-grade 
civil  servant,  without  having  to  sit  the  examina- 
tion. Immediately  after  the  war  he  accompanied 


44i 


Sylvester 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Hankey  to  the  Paris  peace  conference,  where  he 
continued  to  work  under  intense  pressure.  In 
19 1 8  he  was  appointed  OBE  and  in  1920  CBE. 

His  work  for  Hankey  brought  him  into  fre- 
quent contact  with  the  prime  minister,  and  in 
1 92 1  Lloyd  George  recruited  him  to  the  secretar- 
iat at  10  Downing  Street.  With  Lloyd  George  he 
attended  the  Cannes  and  Genoa  conferences,  and 
he  was  also  involved  in  the  tortuous  processes 
leading  to  the  Anglo-Irish  Treaty  in  1921.  When, 
eleven  months  later,  the  Lloyd  George  coalition 
was  brought  down,  Sylvester  stayed  on  for  a 
time  under  two  Conservative  prime  ministers, 
Andrew  *Bonar  Law  and  Stanley  *Baldwin  (later 
first  Earl  Baldwin  of  Bewdley).  But  in  1923 
he  left  the  Civil  Service  and  rejoined  Lloyd 
George. 

Though  Sylvester's  chief  motive  for  doing  so 
was  that  he  admired  the  Welshman  and  found 
working  for  him  exciting,  Lloyd  George  facili- 
tated the  move  by  paying  him  a  higher  salary, 
and  also  a  substantial  sum  to  compensate  him  for 
the  loss  of  Civil  Service  pension  rights.  He  was 
given  the  title  of  principal  private  secretary, 
though  in  reality  that  role  belonged  to  Lloyd 
George's  mistress  (later  his  second  wife),  Frances 
Stevenson  (later  Countess  *Lloyd  George  of 
Dwyfor). 

Nevertheless,  Sylvester  accompanied  Lloyd 
George  on  most  of  his  travels  abroad,  including 
his  controversial  visit  to  Adolf  Hitler  in  1936, 
and  at  home  ran  the  office  at  Thames  House, 
Westminster,  which  at  the  height  of  Lloyd  Geor- 
ge's activity  as  an  opposition  politician  had  a  staff 
of  over  twenty.  Sylvester  dealt  with  his  master's 
enormous  correspondence  and,  when  he  was 
working  on  his  War  Memoirs  (6  vols.,  1933-6), 
carried  out  much  archival  research  and  inter- 
viewing of  former  colleagues  on  his  behalf.  His 
services  were  indispensable,  and  he  stayed  at  his 
post  until  Lloyd  George's  death  in  1945. 

Any  hopes  he  may  have  had  that  Lloyd 
George's  widow  would  invite  him  to  be,  as  it 
were,  joint  guardian  of  the  shrine,  and  to  collabo- 
rate in  work  based  on  the  papers  that  had  been 
left  to  her,  were  soon  dashed.  In  1947  he  pub- 
lished a  book  of  his  own,  The  Real  Lloyd  George, 
which  has  its  good  points  but  is  on  the  whole 
rather  disappointing.  In  1975  a  selection  from  his 
diary  appeared,  edited  by  Colin  Cross  and  enti- 
tled Life  with  Lloyd  George,  and  this  is  a  far  more 
valuable  publication.  The  diary,  kept  in  short- 
hand, gives  a  vivid  impression  of  Lloyd  George 
and  a  detailed  account  of  his  life,  though  unfor- 
tunately it  covers  only  the  last  phase,  from  1931 
to  the  end.  The  full  text  of  the  diary  is  now  in  the 
National  Library  of  Wales. 

Always  at  heart  a  countryman,  Sylvester 
bought  during  World  War  II  150  acres  of  farm- 
land in  Wiltshire.  In  1949  he  moved  from  his 
London  home  in  Putney  to  another  Wiltshire 


property,  Rudloe  Cottage  near  Corsham,  where 
he  cultivated  a  smallholding,  his  larger  holding 
being  let  to  a  tenant.  He  spent  the  rest  of  his  life 
at  Rudloe,  becoming  a  JP  (1953)  and,  in  1962, 
chairman  of  the  local  bench.  In  old  age  he  took  to 
ballroom  dancing  for  which,  at  eighty-five,  he 
received  the  top  amateur  award,  thereby  earning 
himself  a  place  in  the  Guinness  Book  of  Records. 

Sylvester  was  well  above  medium  height, 
clean-shaven,  with  a  high  forehead,  longish  nose, 
and  fresh  complexion.  His  vigorous  and  humor- 
ous temperament  came  across  most  effectively  in 
the  many  radio  and  television  interviews  that  he 
gave  in  his  later  years.  Even  when  very  old  and 
infirm  his  resilience  was  remarkable.  A  visitor  to 
Rudloe  would  find  him  slumped  in  an  armchair 
before  a  fire  that  was  nearly  out,  and  his  first 
words  would  be  a  plaintive  'I  am  very,  very  ill.' 
But  soon  he  would  be  standing  erect,  throwing 
logs  on  the  fire  and  reliving  past  experiences  with 
strong  voice  and  eloquent  gesture.  No  doubt  it 
was  his  personality  as  much  as  his  great  pro- 
fessional competence  that  appealed  to  Lloyd 
George. 

In  19 1 7  he  married  Evelyn  Annie  (died  1962), 
daughter  of  William  Welman,  draper  and  Baptist 
lay  preacher,  of  Norbiton.  They  had  one  daugh- 
ter. Sylvester  himself  died  at  St  Andrews  Hos- 
pital, Chippenham,  27  October  1989,  a  month 
short  of  his  hundredth  birthday. 

[A.  J.  Sylvester,  The  Real  Lloyd  George,  1947,  and  Life 
with  Lloyd  George  (ed.  Colin  Cross),  1975;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]  John  Grigg 

SYME,  Sir  Ronald  (1903-1989),  Roman  histo- 
rian, was  born  11  March  1903  in  Eltham,  a  small 
market  town  in  the  province  of  Taranaki  in  the 
north  island  of  New  Zealand.  He  was  the  elder 
son  and  eldest  of  three  children  of  David  Simp- 
son Syme,  solicitor,  and  his  wife,  Florence  Mabel 
Selley.  He  was  educated  at  Eltham  Primary 
School  and  Stratford  District  High  School, 
where  his  interest  in  Latin  was  strongly  encour- 
aged by  a  first-class  teacher,  Miss  Tooman.  In 
1918-20  he  attended  New  Plymouth  Boys'  High 
School,  of  which  he  was  dux  in  1919-20,  win- 
ning a  junior  university  scholarship.  From  1921 
to  1923  he  was  a  student  at  Victoria  University 
of  Wellington,  studying  English,  Latin,  French, 
jurisprudence,  and  constitutional  history.  In  the 
second  year  he  added  Greek;  it  is  a  very  striking 
sign  of  his  extraordinary  linguistic  aptitude,  as 
demonstrated  a  few  years  later  in  Oxford,  that  it 
was  only  then  that  his  formal  study  of  Greek 
began.  In  1922-4,  while  still  technically  a  student 
at  Victoria,  he  was  studying  extramurally  at  the 
University  of  Auckland,  to  which  he  transferred 
formally  in  1924.  In  1923-4  he  acted  as  assistant 
to  the  professor  of  classics,  H.  S.  Dettmann.  The 
story  that  in  this  role,  after  the  professor  took  a 
headmastership,  he  set,  sat,  and  marked  his  own 


442 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Syme 


papers  for  the  BA  in  1923  is  unfortunately  only  a 
legend. 

In  1924-5  he  studied  for  an  MA  in  classics  at 
Auckland,  winning  first-class  honours  in  Latin,  a 
senior  scholarship  in  Greek,  Latin,  and  French, 
and  a  postgraduate  scholarship  in  arts,  which 
brought  him  in  the  autumn  of  1925  to  Oriel 
College,  Oxford,  to  study  literae  humaniores, 
which  then  consisted  of  ancient  history  and 
philosophy.  He  was  not  to  return  to  New  Zea- 
land until  1950,  but  remained  profoundly 
attached  to  it,  its  mountain  scenery,  and  memo- 
ries of  seeing  Halley's  comet  in  the  clear  New 
Zealand  sky  of  19 10.  His  first  and  best-known 
book,  The  Roman  Revolution  (1939),  was  dedi- 
cated to  his  parents  and  his  homeland  ('par- 
entibus  optimis  patriaeque'),  and  he  kept  his 
New  Zealand  citizenship  throughout  his  life, 
speaking  with  unusual  passion  of  the  state- 
sponsored  terrorism  practised  there  by  the 
French  government  in  the  matter  of  the  sinking 
of  a  Greenpeace  ship. 

In  Oxford  he  was  deeply  influenced  by  his 
tutor  in  ancient  history ,  Marcus  Niebuhr  Tod,  a 
specialist  in  the  illumination  of  Greek  history 
through  the  careful  study  of  inscriptions,  and 
famed  for  the  delicacy  and  precision  of  his 
language,  both  spoken  and  written.  Syme's  own 
linguistic  gifts  were  shown  in  the  remarkable  feat 
of  his  winning  the  Chancellor's  prize  for  Latin 
prose  and  the  Gaisford  prize  for  Greek  prose  in 
1926  (some  five  years  after  beginning  Greek); 
these  were  followed  by  the  Gaisford  prize  for 
Greek  verse  in  1927. 

This  quite  outstanding  talent  had  two  conse- 
quences, the  one  merely  of  incidental  interest, 
the  other  fundamental  to  his  whole  career.  The 
former  was  a  brilliant  series  of  vignettes  of 
Oxford  life  of  the  1930s,  in  both  Latin  and  Greek 
and  in  prose  and  verse,  published  in  the  Oxford 
Magazine  ('de  coniuratione  Bodleiana";  or  a 
memorable  evocation  in  Homeric  verse  of  a  scene 
involving  Provost  L.  R.  *Phelps  at  Oriel  high 
table).  More  important  was  the  fact  that  the  areas 
of  his  attention,  within  Roman  history,  were 
always  to  be  directed  to  those  periods  from  which 
there  survives  contemporary  literature  in  Latin. 
In  his  entire  output  Greek  history  is  represented 
only  by  a  single  essay  on  Thucydides;  and,  with 
the  exception  of  Strabo,  the  vast  Greek  historical 
literature  of  the  Roman  period  did  not  engage  his 
attention. 

But  first  he  had  to  take  his  degree,  achieving  a 
first  (with  rather  modest  marks  in  philosophy)  in 
1927;  a  typically  elegant  note  from  M.  N.  Tod 
informing  him  of  the  result  is  preserved  in  the 
archive  of  Syme's  papers  at  Wolfson  College, 
Oxford.  Tod  continued  to  lend  him  his  support, 
which  led  very  quickly,  in  the  fashion  of  the 
Oxford  of  those  davs,  to  his  election  as  fellow  and 


tutor  in  ancient  history  of  Trinity  College, 
Oxford,  in  1929. 

The  decade  which  he  spent  at  Trinity  until  the 
outbreak  of  war  was  his  happiest  and  most 
creative  period.  Indeed  it  had  already  begun  in 
1928,  hence  a  year  after  he  took  his  finals,  with  an 
article  on  the  legions  under  Domitian.  That  was 
a  sign  of  one  enduring  preoccupation:  military 
history  painstakingly  reconstructed  from  literary 
sources  and  inscriptions,  and  set  against  the  vast 
and  varied  landscapes  of  the  Roman  empire, 
from  Spain  to  the  Euphrates.  With  that  went 
a  deep  engagement  with  European,  especially 
German,  scholarship.  His  command  of  both 
French  and  German  was  very  considerable,  but 
his  knowledge  of  French  was  more  typically 
deployed  in  an  exhaustive  acquaintance  with 
modern  novels.  In  German,  however,  there  was 
not  only  a  wide  knowledge  of  literature,  some  of 
which— like  parts  of  Goethe's  Faust — he  knew 
by  heart,  but  also  a  profound  relationship  to  the 
German  scholarship  of  the  previous  few  decades: 
not  so  much  Theodor  Mommsen,  however,  as 
W.  Schulze's  study  of  Roman  names;  the  great 
article  'Legio'  by  E.  Ritterling  in  Pauly-Wisso- 
wa's  Realencyclopaedte;  Friedrich  Miinzer  on  the 
history  of  Roman  aristocratic  families;  perhaps 
(this  is  not  so  clear  as  might  be  supposed) 
Matthias  Gelzer  on  'the  Roman  nobility';  and 
above  all  the  two  editions  of  the  Prosopographia 
Imperii  Roman  1  (1897  and  1933-).  Reading  in  the 
library  was  supplemented  by  many  visits  to 
Germany  and  the  Balkans,  when  he  also  walked 
long  distances  to  gain  a  detailed  understanding  of 
the  landscape. 

Military  history  was  perhaps  the  most  obvious 
product  of  his  studies  until  the  end  of  the  1930s, 
culminating  in  his  still  unsurpassed  article  on 
'Flavian  Wars  and  Frontiers'  in  the  Cambridge 
Ancient  History,  vol.  x  (1936).  But  already  other 
dominating  themes  of  his  work  were  developing. 
Among  his  papers  later  given  to  Wolfson  Col- 
lege, there  is  a  manuscript  draft  dated  1934  of  a 
book  entitled  'The  Provincial  at  Rome',  to  which 
he  refers  in  the  preface  of  his  Tacitus  (1958):  'It 
is  suitable  to  confess  in  this  place  that  the 
concluding  section,  "The  New  Romans"  (Chap- 
ters XLIII-XLV),  owes  something  to  a  book 
begun  many  years  ago,  soon  interrupted,  and  not 
yet  terminated — "The  Provincial  at  Rome".'  It 
never  was  to  be  terminated,  though  Colonial 
Elites  (1958)  also  owes  much  to  it.  But  it  is  now- 
clear  how  rapidly  the  main  lines  of  his  thought 
had  developed,  and  how  consistendy  he  main- 
tained them  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

An  interest  in  the  'provincial'  coming  to  the 
centre  from  the  periphery  must,  obviously,  have 
owed  much  to  his  background.  But  there  are 
more  general  aspects  to  his  use  of  prosopog- 
raphy,  which  he  turned  into  a  dominant  mode  in 


443 


Syme 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Roman  history:  the  study  of  families  over  genera- 
tions, the  interplay  of  literary  and  epigraphical 
evidence;  the  structure  of  public  careers;  the 
possibility  of  filling  the  stage  of  Roman  history 
not  just  with  the  Pompeys,  Caesars,  and  Augus- 
tuses, but  with  a  host  of  lesser  mortals.  All  these 
themes  came  together,  along  with  his  reactions  to 
the  rise  of  the  interwar  dictatorships  and  their 
gross  misuse  of  language,  to  produce  The  Roman 
Revolution,  finished  in  1938  when  he  was  thirty- 
five,  and  published  in  1939.  As  a  work  of 
literature,  and  as  an  exercise  in  intellectual  and 
stylistic  control,  it  has  no  equal  in  the  historio- 
graphy of  Rome,  and  few  in  that  of  any  period 
or  area. 

The  war  then  imposed  a  quite  long  hiatus, 
when  he  served  in  the  Balkans,  and  was  then 
professor  of  classical  philosophy  in  Istanbul.  He 
did  indeed  teach  classics  there;  as  to  what  other 
roles  he  played  (as  he  certainly  did),  he  never,  to 
the  end,  gave  the  smallest  hint. 

The  postwar  period  saw  him  back  in  Oxford, 
where  in  1949  he  succeeded  H.  M.  *Last  as 
Camden  professor  of  ancient  history,  and  fellow 
of  Brasenose.  It  was  very  unfortunate  that  Last,  a 
major  figure  but  not  to  be  compared  with  Syme 
in  intellectual  creativity,  was  there  still  as  princi- 
pal. Their  profound  disagreements,  which  the 
surviving  correspondence  shows  to  have  been 
Last's  fault,  significantly  soured  his  life  at  Brase- 
nose and  his  attitude  to  it. 

None  the  less  it  was  in  1958  that  he  published 
the  most  original  and  creative  of  his  works,  the 
infinitely  complex  and  fruitful  two-volume  work 
on  Tacitus,  accompanied  by  Colonial  Elites,  and 
followed  by  his  Sather  lectures  on  Sallust  (1964). 
A  wider  recognition  came:  in  1959  a  knighthood, 
in  1976  the  Order  of  Merit,  as  well  as  twenty 
honorary  doctorates,  and  memberships  of  foreign 
academies.  In  1956  (though  no  earlier)  he  made 
the  first  of  many,  ever  more  frequent,  journeys 
across  the  Atlantic.  All  his  life  an  extremely 
private  person,  Syme  rarely  developed  close 
relations  with  colleagues,  and  tended  to  gain 
more  pleasure  from  passing,  if  repeated,  contacts 
with  academic  acquaintances  made  during  his 
travels. 

Before  his  retirement  in  1970  he  had  devel- 
oped a  fascination,  possibly  excessive,  with  the 
late  fourth-century  collection  of  imperial  biogra- 
phies in  Latin  known  as  the  Historia  Augusta.  In 
the  same  period,  however,  the  generous  initiative 
of  the  newly  founded  Wolfson  College,  Oxford, 
led  to  his  election  as  a  fellow  and  to  his  occupa- 
tion of  a  fine  penthouse  apartment  overlooking 
the  river  Cherwell,  where  he  worked  with  great 
contentment,  very  productively,  publishing  His- 
tory in  Ovid  (1978),  Some  Arval  Brethren  (1980), 
and  a  work  of  remarkable  complexity,  interest, 
and  novelty,  The  Augustan  Aristocracy  (1986),  at 


the  age  of  eighty-three — not  to  speak  of  over  fifty 
papers  published  in  the  1980s. 

Always  extremely  sociable,  provided  that  his 
essential  reserve  was  respected,  Syme  never  mar- 
ried, something  which  was  not  in  the  least  a  sign 
of  aversion  from  the  opposite  sex,  or  even  of  an 
inability  to  form  a  long  and  deeply  affection- 
ate relationship.  Never  inclined  to  superfluous 
expenditure,  on  clothes  or  anything  else,  he  none 
the  less  maintained  to  very  near  the  end  a  brisk 
and  military  appearance,  walking  wherever  pos- 
sible, and  at  a  pace  which  only  very  late  began  to 
slow  to  that  of  ordinary  mortals.  His  reserve  also 
softened  somewhat  in  later  years,  when  he  found 
the  support  of  younger  scholars  and  their  fami- 
lies, who  regarded  him  with  affection,  without 
rivalry,  and  with  no  thought  of  obtrusion  beyond 
what  he  wished.  The  cheerful,  multinational 
society  of  Wolfson  also  offered  him  both  stimulus 
and  a  more  comfortable  environment  than  he  had 
ever  enjoyed  before,  while  respecting  his  pri- 
vacy. 

Late  in  August  1989,  when  already  suffering 
from  cancer,  he  collapsed  in  his  room  in  Wolf- 
son, and  never  fully  regained  consciousness, 
dying  only  four  days  before  a  party,  to  be  held  by 
the  college,  which  would  have  celebrated  the 
fiftieth  anniversary  of  the  publication  of  The 
Roman  Revolution.  This  book,  together  with 
Tacitus,  remains  the  main  memorial  to  his  unique 
contribution  to  Roman  history;  he  is  universally- 
acknowledged  as  its  greatest  practitioner  in  the 
twentieth  century.  His  particular  qualities  are 
not  easy  to  summarize,  and  the  true  importance 
of  his  work  can  hardly  yet  be  assessed.  But  his 
qualities  included  sheer  intelligence,  and  a  mem- 
ory of  legendary  accuracy;  great  sensitivity  to 
language,  and  vast  reading;  an  intense  engage- 
ment with  the  individual  lives  and  family  histo- 
ries which  can  be  brought  out  from  behind  the 
surface  of  Latin  inscriptions  and  Roman  lit- 
erature; and  a  sense  of  style,  which  could  lapse 
into  idiosyncrasy.  That  style  is  shown  at  its  best 
in  the  last  paragraph  of  his  Tacitus,  which  may 
also  serve  as  his  own  epitaph:  'The  irony  is 
restrained  and  impressive.  When  Tacitus  wrote, 
colonials  and  provincials  from  the  Latin  West 
occupied  the  place  of  the  Caesars.  There  was 
only  one  higher  pinnacle:  literary  renown.  To 
that  also  the  epoch  of  Trajan  and  Hadrian  might 
confidently  aspire.  Men  and  dynasties  pass,  but 
style  abides.'  He  died  4  September  1989  in  the 
John  Radcliffe  Hospital,  Oxford. 

[G.  W.  Bowersock  in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy, 
vol.  lxxxiv,  1993;  F.  Millar,  'Style  Abides',  Journal  of 
Roman  Studies,  vol.  lxxi,  1981;  obituary  by  M.  T. 
Griffin,  ibid.,  vol.  lxxx,  1990;  personal  information 
from  Mrs  Geraldine  Gill  (sister);  Syme  archive,  Wolf- 
son College,  Oxford;  personal  knowledge.] 

Fergus  Millar 


T 


TAYLOR,  Alan  John  Percivale  (1906-1990), 
historian,  journalist,  and  broadcaster,  was  born 
25  March  1006  in  Birkdale,  Lancashire,  the  only 
son  (and  sole  surviving  child)  of  Percy  Lees 
Taylor,  Preston  cotton  merchant,  and  his  wife, 
Constance  Sumner  Thompson,  schoolmistress. 
His  well-to-do  Edwardian  Liberal  parents  sub- 
sequently became  ardent  Labour  supporters, 
which  shaped  Taylor's  lifelong  commitment  to 
left-wing  causes,  notably  the  first  Campaign  for 
Nuclear  Disarmament.  Precocious,  learned,  and 
spoilt,  he  was  educated  at  Bootham  School  in 
York  and  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  where,  as  some- 
thing of  a  gilded  youth  who  flirted  with  the 
Communist  party,  he  took  a  first  class  in  modern 
history  as  a  medievalist  in  1927. 

Abandoning  his  intention  of  becoming  a 
labour  lawyer,  Taylor  went  to  Vienna  in  1928  as 
a  Rockefeller  fellow  to  work  on  modern  diplo- 
matic history.  Appointed  a  lecturer  at  Man- 
chester Lni versify  in  1930,  he  came  under  the 
influence,  which  he  later  denied,  of  his  professor, 
(Sir)  Lewis  *Namier,  and  wrote  the  first  of  his 
more  than  thirty  books,  The  Italian  Problem  in 
European  Diplomacy,  1847-1849  ( 1934)  and  Ger- 
many's First  Bid  for  Colonies,  1884-1885  (1938), 
both  mischievous  products  of  hard  work,  rarely 
repeated  thereafter,  in  the  archives.  He  schooled 
himself  to  lecture  (and  speak  publicly)  without 
notes,  a  craft  he  later  brought  to  perfection; 
contributed  regularly  as  reviewer  and  leader- 
writer  on  the  Manchester  Guardian  under  A.  P. 
*\\  adsworth;  travelled  widely;  and  cultivated  his 
vegetable  garden  at  Disley  in  the  High  Peak. 

With  Namier's  crucial  support,  Taylor 
returned  to  Oxford  in  1938  as  a  fellow  of 
Magdalen  College,  to  which  he  remained  de- 
voted until  his  retirement  in  1976.  Soon  estab- 
lished as  an  outstanding  tutor  of  responsive 
undergraduates  and  a  charismatic,  early-morning 
lecturer,  he  began  to  make  a  wider  name  for 
himself  as  an  incisive  speaker  on  current  affairs, 
in  person  and  on  the  radio.  Throughout  World 
War  II  his  house  at  Holywell  Ford  was  a  centre 
for  writers  young  and  old,  wayward  musicians, 
and  the  grander  Slav  refugees  clustered  in  north 
Oxford  as  well  as  his  pupils  coming  on  leave.  In 
1 94 1  he  published  the  most  elegant  of  his  books, 
the  elegaic  first  version  of  The  Habsburg  Mon- 
archy, and  this  was  followed  in  1945  by  his  initial 


best  seller,  The  Course  of  German  History,  a 
graphic,  opinionated  piece  a" occasion  and  the  clue 
to  much  of  his  later  work  in  its  anti-German 
assumptions. 

Notorious  as  an  early  critic  of  the  cold  war, 
Taylor  emerged  as  a  national  figure  with  the 
advent  of  television.  On  In  The  News  and  Free 
Speech  he  caught  the  viewers'  fancy  as  a  quick- 
witted debater,  a  Cobbett-like  scourge  of  'the 
establishment',  and,  quite  simply,  something  of  a 
card,  much  appreciated  by  the  'man  on  the 
Clapham  omnibus',  in  the  phrase  of  his  exem- 
plar, Lord  *Macaulay.  First  of  the  television 
dons,  he  retained  this  primacy  into  old  age  as  he 
delivered  unscripted  lectures  direct  to  the  camera 
on  historical  themes  to  a  vast  audience.  Mean- 
while he  was  taken  up  by  Lord  *Beaverbrook,  a 
lover  of  maverick  left-wingers,  as  the  charms  of 
Oxford  faded.  A  highly  paid,  sometimes  out- 
rageous columnist  on  the  Sunday  Express,  and 
the  first  (and  last)  director  of  the  Beaverbrook 
library,  Taylor  paid  uneasy  tribute  to  an  improb- 
able but  close  friend  in  Beaverbrook  (1972),  the 
last  of  his  substantial  works  and  dedicated  to  the 
only  man  who  ever  persuaded  him  to  cross  the 
Atlantic. 

Long  before,  Taylor  had  consolidated  his 
academic  reputation.  In  1954  The  Struggle  for 
Mastery  in  Europe,  1848-1918  was  at  once  recog- 
nized as  a  model  analysis,  with  its  careful  atten- 
tion to  the  records.  This  massive  work,  with  the 
brief  but  perceptive  Bismarck  (1955)  and  the  self- 
indulgent  Ford  lectures,  The  Trouble  Makers 
(1957),  fully  justified  his  election  to  the  British 
Academy  in  1956.  (Perversely,  he  resigned  on 
libertarian  grounds  in  1980  when  Anthony 
•Blunt  relinquished  his  fellowship.)  Contrary  to 
many  expectations,  however,  Taylor  was  not 
appointed  regius  professor  at  Oxford  in  1957. 
This  failure,  in  which  Namier  played  some  part, 
remains  a  subject  of  uncertain  legend,  but  it  did 
not  prevent  an  embittered  man  denigrating  the 
university  he  loved.  Thereafter  he  was  consoled 
by  honorary  doctorates  at  Bristol,  Manchester, 
New  Brunswick,  Warwick,  and  York,  as  well  as 
honorary  fellowships  of  both  Magdalen  (1976) 
and  Oriel  (1980). 

Superficially,  Taylor  was  an  old-fashioned 
historian,  holding  that  'politics  express  the  activ- 
ities of  man  in  society ',  with  the  addendum  that 


445 


Taylor 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


economic  and  social  circumstances  must  be  taken 
into  modest  account.  A  master  of  narrative  but 
essentially  an  analyst,  he  founded  no  school, 
despite  his  influence  upon  younger  historians, 
and  his  methods  could  be  a  dangerous  model.  In 
his  heyday  Taylor  came  to  rely  upon  assiduous 
reading  in  five  languages  and  sheer  intuition — 
'green  fingers',  in  Namier's  envious  phrase. 
There  was  no  elaborate  filing  system,  but  a 
prodigious  memory  could  usually  supply  some 
evidence  for  the  thousand  words  tapped  out  each 
well-organized  morning.  Despite  his  commit- 
ment to  popular  journalism,  he  was  also  a  superb 
and  creative  essayist,  and  published  several  vol- 
umes based  upon  serious  reviews  in  the  learned 
journals  and  the  Observer. 

Ultimately,  Taylor's  scholarly  standing  de- 
pends upon  three  major  achievements.  The 
Struggle  for  Mastery  remains  unrivalled  as  a 
totally  authoritative  study  of  international  rela- 
tions in  a  complicated  period.  English  History, 
igi4~ig4S  (1965)  is  an  enthralling,  highly  idio- 
syncratic account  of  his  own  times,  regarded  by 
some  as  his  best  book.  The  Origins  of  the  Second 
World  War  (1961)  was  a  dazzling  exercise  in 
revisionism,  which  earned  him  a  mixture  of 
international  obloquy  and  acclaim.  Whatever  its 
flaws,  this  treatment  of  Hitler  as  a  product  of 
German  tradition  summed  up  Taylor's  para- 
doxical, provocative,  and  inventive  approach  to 
historical  explanation.  A  pragmatic  loner,  suspi- 
cious of  philosophies  of  history  and  a  brilliant 
stylist,  he  was  admired  even  by  his  many  critics 
for  the  range  of  his  erudition,  his  clarity  of 
presentation,  and  the  fertility  of  his  hypotheses. 

Though  he  enjoyed  portraying  himself  as  a 
simple,  true-born  Englishman,  Taylor  was  a 
cosmopolitan  intellectual,  with  an  expert  know- 
ledge of  European  architecture,  music,  and  wine. 
An  admirable  but  frugal  host,  his  table  talk  was 
inimitable;  a  shrewd  if  nervous  man  of  business, 
he  was  soothed  by  domestic  chores;  and  in  old 
age  he  became  an  indefatigable  walker  in  town 
and  country.  Short,  stocky,  and  bespectacled,  he 
was  vain  about  his  appearance,  but  always  hap- 
piest in  a  crumpled  tweed  or,  more  often,  cordu- 
roy suit,  invariably  accompanied  by  a  flamboyant 
bow-tie. 

An  emotional  man,  despite  the  brash  exterior, 
Taylor  was  three  times  married  and  devoted  to 
his  six  children.  In  193 1  he  married  a  musician, 
Margaret,  the  daughter  of  Harold  Adams,  an 
English  merchant  trading  in  India;  they  had  two 
sons  and  two  daughters.  Margaret  was  later  an 
over-indulgent  patron  of  Dylan  *Thomas.  This 
marriage  was  dissolved  in  1951  and  in  the  same 
year  he  married  Eve,  daughter  of  Joseph  Beardsel 
Crosland,  under-secretary  at  the  War  Office. 
There  were  two  sons  of  this  marriage,  which  was 
dissolved  in  1974.  In  1976  he  married  the  Hun- 
garian historian,  Eva  Haraszti,  daughter  of  Mitse 


Herczke,  a  textile  merchant  in  Budapest.  Tay- 
lor's last  years  were  clouded  by  Parkinson's 
disease  and  he  died  at  a  nursing  home  in  Barnet, 
7  September  1990. 

[Taylor's  works  passim,  but  especially  A  Personal  His- 
tory, 1983,  and  Letters  to  Eva,  1991;  Adam  Sisman, 
A.  J.  P.  Taylor,  1994;  C.  J.  Wrigley,  A.  J.  P.  Taylor, 
a  Complete  Annotated  Bibliography,  1980;  Chris  Wrigley 
in  Proceedings  of  the  British  Academy,  vol.  Ixxxii,  1992; 
personal  knowledge.]  A.  F.  Thompson 

TEAGUE-JONES,  Reginald  (1889-1988),  intel- 
ligence officer,  known  under  the  pseudonym  of 
Ronald  Sinclair,  was  born  30  July  1889  in  Wal- 
ton, Liverpool,  the  eldest  of  four  children  and 
only  son  of  Frederick  Jones,  schoolmaster,  and 
his  wife,  Elizabeth  Deeley  Smith.  His  father, 
who  taught  languages,  died  when  he  was  about 
thirteen,  leaving  his  mother  in  straitened  circum- 
stances, and  friends  living  in  St  Petersburg 
offered  to  take  him  there  and  oversee  his  educa- 
tion. He  attended  St  Anne's  College  in  the  tsarist 
capital  and  was  soon  fluent  in  German,  French, 
and  Russian.  On  return  to  England  he  studied 
at  King's  College,  London,  but  left  without  a 
degree.  He  failed  to  pass  the  Foreign  Office  entry 
examination,  instead  joining  the  Indian  Police  in 
1910.  He  quickly  learned  some  Indian  languages, 
plus  Persian,  and  was  used  for  frontier  intelli- 
gence work — sometimes  in  disguise — before 
being  transferred  to  the  foreign  and  political 
department  of  the  British  Indian  government, 
who  had  spotted  his  unusual  talents,  and  for 
whom  he  was  working  at  the  outbreak  of  World 
War  I.  He  was  then  commissioned  into  the 
Indian  army  reserve  of  officers. 

The  nature  of  his  duties  makes  his  career  a 
shadowy  one,  but  he  appears  to  have  spent  most 
of  the  war  as  officer  in  charge  of  British  intelli- 
gence in  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  then  as  political 
officer  in  Basra.  However,  following  the  with- 
drawal of  Russian  forces  from  Persia  and  the 
Caucasus  as  a  result  of  the  Bolshevik  coup  in 
October  191 7  and  the  peace  treaty  of  Brest- 
Litovsk,  he  was  engaged  in  the  urgent  task  of 
assessing  which  groups,  if  any,  of  non-Bolshevik 
Russians  or  of  the  indigenous  peoples  would 
support  the  Allies  in  keeping  the  Germans  and 
Turks  from  overrunning  Persia,  the  Caucasus, 
and  Transcaspia — and  ultimately  India. 

Teague-Jones  himself  crossed  into  Transcas- 
pia disguised  as  a  Persian  merchant  and  travelled 
along  the  Transcaspian  railway — assessing  the 
possibility  of  blowing  it  up  if  necessary — to 
Krasnovodsk  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  Caspian. 
After  successfully  foiling  German  plans  to 
acquire  a  large  consignment  of  cotton  from  the 
Bolsheviks  (for  use  in  the  manufacture  of  explo- 
sives), he  crossed  by  ferry  to  Baku  to  liaise  with 
the  British  representative  there  and  to  organize  a 
network  of  intelligence  agents  in  the  area,  before 


446 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Terry-Thomas 


reporting  back  to  Major-General  (Sir)  Wilfrid 
Malleson  in  Meshed.  The  Bolsheviks'  brutality 
in  Transcaspia  led  to  their  being  overthrown 
there  in  July  191 8  by  Social  Revolutionaries  and 
the  local  Turcomans,  and  the  new  government, 
the  'Ashkhabad  Committee',  sought  British  help 
from  Malleson,  via  Teague-Jones,  who  sent  an 
urgent  report  to  Meshed  before  returning  to 
Baku,  which  was  being  hard  pressed  by  the 
Turks.  After  a  few  weeks,  however,  Teague- 
Jones  was  summoned  back  to  Transcaspia,  where 
a  Bolshevik  force  from  Tashkent  in  Turkestan 
was  fighting  its  way  westwards  along  the  railway 
and  seemed  likely  to  recapture  the  province. 

A  few  days  later  he  was  hit  in  the  thigh  by  a 
machine-gun  bullet  at  a  battle  eighty  miles  east  of 
Ashkhabad.  He  was  removed  to  hospital  in 
Ashkhabad  and,  as  soon  as  he  was  able  to  hobble 
around,  was  appointed  British  political  repre- 
sentative there.  In  the  meantime  Baku  had  fallen 
to  the  Turks,  and  in  the  frenzied  exodus  a  large 
party  of  Bolshevik  commissars  who  were  making 
for  Astrakhan,  which  was  still  in  Bolshevik 
hands,  had  the  misfortune  to  be  delivered  instead 
to  Krasnovodsk,  where  they  were  seized  by  their 
enemies  the  Social  Revolutionaries.  The  gaols  of 
Transcaspia  were  already  overflowing  with  the 
hated  local  Bolsheviks  and  there  was  little  room 
for  these  new  arrivals,  so  the  Ashkhabad  Com- 
mittee asked  Malleson  whether  the  British  could 
take  them  over.  Malleson  suggested  to  his 
authorities  that  the  commissars  might  be  useful 
in  an  exchange  of  prisoners  with  the  Bolsheviks, 
but  was  unsure  how  he  could  transport  them  to 
India  when  he  was  very  short  of  men.  While  the 
debate  was  proceeding  the  Social  Revolutionaries 
pre-empted  any  decision  by  taking  twenty-six  of 
the  prisoners  out  into  the  desert  at  dead  of  night, 
summarily  executing  them,  and  shovelling  their 
bodies  into  a  shallow  grave  (20  September 
1918). 

At  the  time  this  seemed  just  one  more  atrocity 
in  the  Russian  civil  war,  but  it  was  to  have  the 
gravest  repercussions  for  Teague-Jones.  Once 
World  War  I  was  over  and  the  British  had 
withdrawn  from  the  region  in  19 19,  the  Bol- 
sheviks soon  recaptured  Transcaspia  and  dis- 
covered the  fate  of  their  colleagues  from  Baku, 
some  of  whom  had  been  personally  known  to 
Lenin.  The  Social  Revolutionaries  of  the  old 
Ashkhabad  Committee,  eager  to  exonerate  them- 
selves, blamed  Teague-Jones  for  the  decision  to 
execute  the  commissars,  and  the  affair  escalated 
to  the  point  where  the  twenty-six  Baku  com- 
missars became  revered  martyrs  in  the  Soviet 
Union,  and  Teague-Jones  was  regarded  as  a  war 
criminal,  denounced  by  Stalin  and  Trotsky  per- 
sonally. Such  were  the  fears  for  his  safety  that  he 
was  forced  to  'disappear'  in  1922  and  re-emerge 
as  Ronald  Sinclair.  Thereafter  he  led  a  shadowy 
life,  stil!  apparently  working  for  British  intelli- 


gence until  his  retirement,  and  keeping  his  true 
identity  secret  right  up  to  his  death  at  the  age  of 
ninety-nine.  He  received  two  honours:  an  MBE 
(military)  (1919)  as  Reginald  Teague-Jones,  and 
an  OBE  (1923)  as  Ronald  Sinclair. 

A  big  ebullient  man  with  a  distinctive  throaty 
voice,  he  was  twice  married:  first — and  very 
romantically — to  a  Russian  girl,  Valentina 
('Valya')  Alexeeva,  whom  he  met  in  Transcaspia 
during  the  war.  In  July  1933  they  were  divorced 
in  London,  but  remained  friends.  Her  parents 
lived  in  Krasnovodsk.  In  October  1933  he  mar- 
ried in  Cairo  his  second  wife  Else  ('Taddie'), 
daughter  of  Hermann  Ferdinand  Danecker,  a 
German  engineer.  They  subsequently  lived  in 
New  York  (where  he  seems  to  have  worked  for 
British  intelligence  during  World  War  II),  Flor- 
ida, and  Spain.  After  her  death  in  1986  he  moved 
to  a  retirement  home  in  Plymouth,  where  he  was 
joined  by  Valya  not  long  before  her  own  death  in 
1988.  He  had  no  children. 

Shortly  before  his  death  in  Charlton  House, 
Mannamead,  Plymouth,  16  November  1988,  his 
first  book,  Adventures  in  Persia,  appeared,  under 
the  name  of  Sinclair,  and  it  was  as  Ronald 
Sinclair  that  his  obituary  was  published  in  The 
Times  on  22  November.  A  corrected  one,  reveal- 
ing his  real  identity  and  the  reasons  for  his 
change  of  name,  appeared  three  days  later.  His 
Transcaspian  journals  were  published  in  1990 
under  his  true  name,  with  the  title  The  Spy  Who 
Disappeared. 

[Reginald  Teague-Jones,  The  Spy  Who  Disappeared, 
with  foreword  and  epilogue  by  Peter  Hopkirk,  1090; 
Peter  Hopkirk,  On  Secret  Service  East  of  Constantinople, 
1094;  Brian  Pearce,  articles  on  the  fate  of  the  twenty -six 
Baku  commissars  in  the  Soviet  affairs  journal,  Sbornik, 
nos.  6-7  (1981),  9  (1983),  and  11  (1985);  personal 
investigations.]  Peter  Hopkirk 

TERRY-THOMAS  (1911-1990),  actor  and 
comedian,  was  born  14  July  191 1  at  his  parents' 
home  in  Finchley,  London,  as  Thomas  Terry 
Hoar  Stevens,  the  third  child  and  third  son  in  the 
family  of  four  sons  and  one  daughter  of  (Ernest) 
Frederick  Stevens,  managing  director  of  a  pro- 
duce merchant's  business,  and  his  wife  Ellen 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Joseph  Hoar,  horse- 
dealer,  of  London.  He  was  educated  at  Ardingly 
College,  Sussex.  During  World  War  II  he  served 
in  the  Royal  Corps  of  Signals  (1941-6)  and  with 
ENSA  (the  Entertainments  National  Service 
Association). 

Thomas  began  his  career  as  a  clerk  at  Smith- 
field  market,  but  his  interest  in  amateur  theatri- 
cals led  him  to  work  as  a  film  extra.  He  took  the 
stage  name  of  Terry-Thomas,  which  he  hyphen- 
ated to  match  the  gap  in  his  front  teeth.  His 
props  were  a  diamond-encrusted  cigarette 
holder,  monocle,  raffish  waistcoat,  and  red  carna- 


447 


Terry-Thomas 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


tion.  Six  feet  in  height,  handsome  in  appearance, 
with  a  neat  moustache  and  a  natural  upper-class 
accent,  Terry-Thomas  personified  the  English- 
man as  an  amiable  bounder.  With  his  drawling 
accent,  he  commonly  used  phrases  such  as  'rot- 
ter' and  a  leering  'jolly  good  show'.  Once  estab- 
lished, the  character  changed  little  from  film  to 
film.  He  toured  with  ENSA  during  World  War 
II  and,  when  demobilized,  turned  to  cabaret 
work.  In  1946  he  found  success  with  Sid  Field  in 
the  West  End  hit,  Piccadilly  Hayride.  He  soon 
became  popular  on  radio,  with  his  own  personal 
caddish  humour,  on  To  Town  with  Terry 
(1948-9)  and  Top  of  the  Town  (1951-2).  He  also 
presented  his  own  television  series — Strictly  T-T 
(1949-56)  and  How  Do  You  View?  (195 1-2). 

The  *Boulting  brothers  brought  his  natural 
comic  talents  to  universal  acclaim  when  they  cast 
him,  with  Ian  Carmichael,  Dennis  *Price,  and 
Richard  (later  Baron)  Attenborough,  in  their  film 
Private's  Progress  (1956),  in  which  he  uttered  the 
words  'You're  an  absolute  shower'  in  his  best 
upper-crust  voice,  words  which  were  to  become 
a  catch-phrase.  This  led  to  a  succession  of 
memorable  films,  which  included  Brothers  in  Law 
(1957),  Carlton-Brown  of  the  FO  (1958),  Lucky 
Jim  (1958),  I'm  All  Right,  Jack  (i960),  and  School 
for  Scoundrels  (i960).  In  the  early  1960s  Terry- 
Thomas  went  to  Hollywood,  where  he  had  to 
coarsen  his  already  not  very  subtle  persona,  and 
he  made  several  films,  including  How  to  Murder 
Your  Wife  (1964,  his  favourite  film,  in  which  he 
acted  with  Jack  Lemmon),  Those  Magnificent 
Men  in  Their  Flying  Machines  (1965),  and  Monte 
Carlo  or  Bust  (1969).  He  was  also  a  frequent 
performer  on  American  television,  appearing 
with  Danny  Kaye,  Judy  Garland,  Andy  Wil- 
liams, and  others.  A  return  to  the  BBC  in  1968, 
with  a  series  called  The  Old  Campaigner,  had  only 
a  modest  impact.  In  the  late  1970s  he  discovered 
that  he  was  suffering  from  Parkinson's  disease, 
which  put  aa  end  to  his  career. 

In  1938  Terry-Thomas  married  a  dancer,  Ida 
Florence  (died  1983),  the  divorced  wife  of  Ernest 
Stern  and  daughter  of  Philip  Patlansky,  hotel 
proprietor.  There  were  no  children  of  the  mar- 
riage. After  a  divorce  in  1962  he  married  in  1963 
Belinda,  daughter  of  Geoffrey  Percy  Cunning- 
ham, a  lieutenant-colonel  in  the  Royal  Artillery. 
They  had  two  sons. 

A  millionaire  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  after 
his  premature  retirement  he  and  his  wife  went  to 
live  in  a  villa  on  Ibiza,  where  he  had  built  up  land 
and  property  holdings.  However,  his  illness 
caused  him  to  spend  £40,000  a  year  on  medical 
bills  and  he  had  to  return  to  Britain.  Following  a 
succession  of  house  moves,  he  was  discovered  in 
the  late  1980s  living  in  reduced  circumstances  in 
a  church  charity  flat  in  Barnes,  south-west  Lon- 
don, furnished  by  the  Actors'  Benevolent  Fund. 
Friends  in  show  business  staged  a  benefit  concert 


for  him  at  London's  Drury  Lane  theatre  in  April 
1989.  The  money  that  it  raised  enabled  him  to 
live  in  comfort  at  Busbridge  Hall  Nursing  Home 
in  Godalming,  Surrey.  He  died  there  of  pneu- 
monia 8  January  1990.  At  his  funeral  service, 
the  organist  played  the  theme  tune  to  one  of  his 
favourite  films,  Those  Magnificent  Men  in  Their 
Flying  Machines. 

[Terry-Thomas,  Filling  the  Gap  (autobiography),  1959; 
Terry-Thomas  and  Terry  Daum,  Terry-Thomas  Tells 
Tales  (autobiography),  1990;  A  Tribute  to  Terry- 
Thomas,  a  documentary  made  by  the  Serendipity 
Film  Company  and  screened  by  ITV  in  May  1990.] 
Richard  Hope-Hawkins 
C.  S.  Nicholls 

THALBEN-BALL,     Sir     George     Thomas 

(1896- 1 987),  organist,  was  born  18  June  1896  in 
Sydney,  New  South  Wales,  Australia,  the  elder 
son  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  George  Charles 
Ball,  who  had  gone  to  live  temporarily  in  Aus- 
tralia on  business,  and  his  wife,  Mary  Hannah 
Spear,  daughter  of  a  miller,  of  Newquay,  Corn- 
wall. The  family  returned  to  England  in  1899, 
settling  in  Muswell  Hill,  where  the  father  kept  a 
shop.  Both  his  parents  were  amateur  musicians 
and  George  became  a  member  of  the  choir  of  St 
James's  church.  The  'Thalben'  of  George's  sur- 
name, which  he  added  by  deed  poll  in  1924, 
although  he  used  it  from  191 7,  has  some  Cornish 
connection.  After  attending  Highfield,  a  private 
school  in  Muswell  Hill,  he  entered  the  Royal 
College  of  Music  on  an  exhibition  in  191 1, 
studying  piano  with  Frits  Hartvigson,  Franklin 
Taylor,  and  Fanny  Davies,  organ  with  Sir  Walter 
*Parratt  and  F.  A.  Sewell,  and  composition  and 
history  with  Sir  Charles  *Stanford,  Sir  (C.) 
Hubert  *Parry,  and  Charles  *Wood.  He  quickly 
took  part  in  ensemble  and  solo  performances  at 
the  RCM,  playing,  among  other  works,  Franz 
Liszt's  Sonata  in  B  Minor  and,  with  the  orches- 
tra conducted  by  Stanford,  the  solo  part  in  Sergei 
Rachmaninov's  Piano  Concerto  no.  3  in  D 
Minor,  the  performance  of  which  made  a  pro- 
found impression  on  his  seniors  and  peers 
alike. 

As  an  organist  Thalben-Ball's  energies  were 
largely  directed  towards  developing  the  music  at 
the  various  churches  where  he  held  appoint- 
ments: as  organist  of  Whitefield's  tabernacle, 
Tottenham  Court  Road  (191 1);  as  organist  and 
choir-master  of  Holy  Trinity  church,  Castelnau, 
Barnes  (1914-16),  and  St  James's,  Sussex  Gar- 
dens (1916-19);  and  as  acting  organist  (from 
1919)  and  organist  (1923-81)  of  the  Temple 
church,  near  Fleet  Street,  London.  His  associa- 
tion with  Sir  (H.)  Walford  *Davies,  which  led 
eventually  to  Thalben-Ball's  appointment  at  the 
Temple  church,  began  with  Saturday  morning 
choir-training  classes  at  the  RCM,  when  he  took 
part  in  conducting  and  accompanying  the  choir. 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Thomas 


and  succeeded  in  getting  Walford  Davies  to  allow 
him  to  bring  along  his  choristers  from  Barnes  to 
take  part.  Thalben-Ball's  work  at  the  Temple 
was  the  cornerstone  of  his  musical  life.  Through- 
out an  association  of  more  than  sixty  years  he 
maintained  a  uniquely  high  standard  of  perform- 
ance, and  a  musical  style,  traditional  and  in  some 
ways  limited,  of  extraordinary  consistency.  His 
achievement  was  all  the  more  remarkable  because 
the  choir,  for  which  the  boys  were  drawn  from 
the  City  of  London  School,  had  essentially  to  be 
re-established  in  the  early  1950s  following  the 
ravages  of  World  War  II  and  the  later  rebuilding 
of  the  church.  Thalben-Ball  was  helped,  how- 
ever, by  a  strong  association  of  old  choristers, 
which  provided  a  continuing  nucleus  of  sing- 
ers. 

The  importance  of  church  and  choral  music  to 
Thalben-Ball  makes  his  position  as  an  organist 
somewhat  paradoxical.  Endowed  with  an  excep- 
tionally robust  constitution,  possessing  impec- 
cable technique  and  powers  of  co-ordination, 
showing  concentration  and  alertness  at  all  times, 
he  became  the  best  British  organ  recitalist  for 
more  than  half  a  century.  Together  with  his 
seniors,  Sir  Walter  Alcock  and  George  Dorring- 
ton  Cunningham,  he  inaugurated  the  Royal 
Albert  Hall  organ  in  1924,  and  was  the  preferred 
choice  for  many  opening  recitals.  He  became 
curator-organist  of  the  Albert  Hall  in  1934,  and 
was  a  regular  soloist  at  the  Henry  Wood  Prom- 
enade Concerts  for  many  years,  making  a  great 
effect  with  *Wood's  transcription  of  Handel 
concertos  for  modern  resources.  After  a  recital  at 
Birmingham  Town  Hall  in  1948,  following  Cun- 
ningham's death,  he  was  persuaded  to  take  on  the 
post  of  city  organist  in  1949,  together  with  that  of 
university  organist.  He  always  had  reservations 
about  this  job,  none  the  less  enjoying  the  rail 
journeys  from  London,  and  performing  a  large 
repertory  in  more  than  1,000  recitals  before  his 
retirement  in  1982. 

With  his  many-sided  work  and  musical  inter- 
ests, Thalben-Ball  was  never  a  specialist  organist, 
and  this  fact  helps  to  explain  why  his  reputation 
is  more  that  of  an  executant  than  an  interpreter; 
his  natural  sympathies  lay  firmly  within  the 
period  bounded  by  the  standard  concert  reper- 
tory of  his  time,  which  excluded  'early'  music 
and,  to  a  considerable  extent,  radical  modern 
composition.  His  teaching  was  consistent  with 
this  outlook.  He  would  work  hard  and  long,  even 
if  somewhat  spasmodically,  with  his  pupils  at  the 
RCM,  and  yet  a  student  often  received  the 
greatest  enlightenment,  not  from  explanation 
and  discussion,  but  from  persuading  the  master 
himself  to  get  on  the  organ  bench  and  demon- 
strate his  way  of  doing  things.  He  seemed  most  at 
home  in  music  of  the  era  from  Mendelssohn  to 
Sir  Edward  *Elgar,  and  produced  memorable 


accounts  of  the  organ  works  of  Liszt  and  Adolf 
Reubke.  As  an  accompanist  he  performed 
extraordinary  feats  in  turning  the  organ  into  an 
orchestra,  such  as  when  playing  for  Kathleen 
•Ferrier  in  The  Dream  of Gerontius. 

Thalben-Ball  was  religious  music  adviser  to 
the  BBC  from  1941,  concerned  with  directing 
music  for  broadcast  services  and  composing 
choral  introits  for  them.  This  at  first  involved 
constant  travel,  as  the  department  had  been 
evacuated  from  London  to  Bedford.  Even  with 
the  later  commitments  of  Birmingham  and  the 
re-formed  Temple  church  choir,  Thalben-Ball 
was  able  to  keep  his  BBC  connection  until  1970. 
He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1967  and  knighted  in 
1982.  He  was  FRCM  (1951),  FRCO  (1915), 
FRSCM  (1956,  diploma  1963),  FRSA  (1971), 
and  honorary  RAM  (1073).  He  was  president  of 
the  Royal  College  of  Organists  in  1948-50  and  an 
honorary  bencher  of  the  Inner  Temple  (1959). 
He  won  the  grand  prix  de  Chartres  (1973)  and 
the  EMI  gold  disc  (1963,  for  Mendelssohn's 
Hear  My  Prayer).  He  had  an  honorary  D.Mus. 
and  gold  medal  from  Birmingham  (1972). 

Thalben-Ball  was  about  five  feet  six  inches  in 
height,  stockily  built,  with  a  small  moustache  and 
a  ramrod-straight  back.  His  dapper  dress  and 
turnout  made  him  a  man  of  the  city.  He  married 
in  1926  a  New  Zealand  artist,  (Grace)  Evelyn, 
daughter  of  Francis  Chapman,  a  New  Zealand 
wheat  exporter.  They  had  a  son  and  a  daughter. 
Evelyn  died  in  1961  and  in  1968  Thalben-Ball 
married  the  organist  Jennifer  Lucy  Bate,  daugh- 
ter of  Horace  Alfred  Bate,  organist  of  St  James's, 
Muswell  Hill.  They  had  no  children;  the  mar- 
riage was  annulled  in  1972.  Thalben-Ball  died  at 
a  nursing  home  in  Wimbledon  18  Januarv 
1987. 

[Jonathan  Rennert,  George  Thalben-Ball,  1979;  David 
Lewer,  A  Spiritual  Song,  the  Story  of  the  Temple  Choir, 
1 061;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

James  Dalton 

THOMAS,  Howard  (1909-1986),  writer,  broad- 
caster, and  film  and  television  impresario,  was 
born  5  March  1909  in  Cwm,  Monmouthshire, 
the  second  son  and  third  and  youngest  child  of 
William  George  Thomas,  stationer  and  post- 
master, and  his  wife,  Alice  Maud  Stephens.  The 
family  left  south  Wales  when  Thomas  was  eleven 
and  moved  to  Beswick,  Manchester.  He  went  to 
local  schools  until  he  was  old  enough  to  start 
work. 

He  took  evening  classes  in  advertising  and 
qualified  as  a  copywriter,  which  led  him  to  a 
small  but  aggressive  Manchester  advertising 
agency  run  by  F.  John  Roe,  where  he  developed 
the  enterprise  and  showmanship  on  which  he  was 
to  draw  for  the  rest  of  his  career.  He  moved  to 
London  in  1934.  In  1937  he  joined  London  Press 


449 


Thomas 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Exchange  and  obtained  his  first  BBC  commis- 
sion. He  set  up  LPE's  commercial  radio  depart- 
ment in  1938,  writing  and  producing  most  of 
its  programmes  himself,  and  also  became  one 
of  BBC  Radio's  highest  paid  freelance  script- 
writers. 

Rejected  for  military  service  in  1940  because 
of  his  defective  eyesight,  Thomas  was  offered  a 
BBC  staff  position  and  in  the  next  three  years 
produced  over  500  programmes,  among  them 
two  of  the  most  notable  of  the  war  years.  Sin- 
cerely Yours  established  (Dame)  Vera  Lynn  as  a 
musical  link  between  servicemen  and  their  part- 
ners back  home  and  made  her  a  star  to  be 
remembered  ever  afterwards  as  the  'Forces' 
Sweetheart'.  In  The  Brains  Trust,  a  panel  of 
experts  answered  listeners'  questions.  This  was  a 
simple  formula  which  became  an  outstanding 
popular  success  because  of  Thomas's  selection  of 
the  panellists,  whose  three  regulars — biologist 
(Sir)  Julian  *Huxley,  philosopher  C.  E.  M. 
*Joad,  and  retired  naval  commander  A.  B. 
Campbell — became  national  figures,  answering 
questions,  which  ranged  from  'What  is  the  origin 
of  life?'  to  'How  does  a  fly  land  upside  down  on 
the  ceiling?' 

In  1944  Thomas  resigned  from  the  BBC, 
where  he  saw  no  future  for  himself,  and  moved 
to  the  film  industry  as  producer-in-chief  of  Pathe 
Pictures,  the  short-film  subsidiary  of  the  Asso- 
ciated British  Picture  Corporation,  where  he 
revitalized  Pathe  News  and  Pathe  Pictorial  and 
extended  production  into  documentaries,  such  as 
his  colour  film  of  the  coronation  of  Elizabeth  II. 
Thomas  was  a  passionate  advocate  of  commercial 
television.  When  ABPC  was  invited  by  the  Inde- 
pendent Television  Authority  in  1955  to  apply 
for  the  weekend  contract  in  the  north  and  mid- 
lands, his  lobbying  was  finally  rewarded.  ABC 
Television  was  formed  as  a  subsidiary,  with 
Thomas  as  managing  director,  and  went  on  the 
air  in  February  1956. 

ABC  was  the  last  and  smallest  of  the  original 
'big  four'  contractors,  alongside  Associated- 
Rediffusion,  ATV,  and  Granada.  But  Thomas's 
energy  and  enthusiasm,  and  his  ability  to  pick  the 
right  like-minded  lieutenants,  propelled  the  little 
company  into  prominence.  Armchair  Theatre, 
under  Sydney  Newman,  galvanized  the  single 
television  play;  arts  programming  was  pioneered 
with  Tempo,  religious  programming  with  The 
Sunday  Break,  adult  education  with  Sunday  Ses- 
sion; and  London's  dominance  of  popular  enter- 
tainment at  the  weekend  was  successfully 
challenged  with  programmes  like  Blackpool 
Night  Out,  Candid  Camera,  and  the  stylish 
thriller  series  The  Avengers. 

When  the  structure  of  Independent  Television 
was  reshaped  in  1967,  the  IBA  offered  the 
London  weekday  contract  to  a  new  company 
formed  by  the  merger  of  Rediffusion  and  ABC 


Television,  in  which  majority  control  was  to  be 
exercised  by  ABC,  with  Thomas  as  managing 
director.  In  the  words  of  IBA  chairman  Baron 
*Hill  of  Luton,  'the  combination  of  these  two 
companies  seemed  to  the  Authority  to  offer  the 
possibility  of  a  programme  company  of  real 
excellence.'  Thames  Television  began  transmis- 
sion in  August  1968  and  realized  the  possibility 
of  excellence  in  the  ensuing  years  with  a  pro- 
gramme output  high  in  both  quantity  and  qual- 
ity, ranging  from  This  Week  and  The  World  at 
War  to  Rumpole  of  the  Bailey  and  Minder,  from 
The  Naked  Civil  Servant  and  Edward  and  Mrs 
Simpson  to  This  Is  Your  Life  and  The  Benny  Hill 
Show.  In  1974  Thomas  succeeded  Baron  Shaw- 
cross  as  chairman.  He  retired  at  the  age  of 
seventy  in  1979. 

Thomas  was  part  of  a  particularly  colourful 
period  in  the  history  of  broadcasting  in  Britain,  a 
bluff,  burly  showman  in  both  radio  and  tele- 
vision. Among  the  founding  fathers  of  Independ- 
ent Television,  he  had  the  unique  distinction  of 
setting  up  and  running  two  highly  successful 
programme  companies.  He  remained  a  pro- 
gramme-maker throughout  his  career,  brimming 
with  ideas  himself  and  always  respectful  of  the 
ideas  of  other  programme-makers,  whose  talents 
he  was  quick  to  spot  and  ready  to  support.  It  was 
remarkable  that,  apart  from  his  appointment  as 
CBE  in  1967,  his  achievement  was  never  appro- 
priately recognized.  He  was  a  governor  of  the 
British  Film  Institute  (1974-82)  and  vice-presi- 
dent of  the  Royal  Television  Society  (1976-84). 
He  wrote  five  books,  including  How  to  Write  for 
Broadcasting  (1940).  He  also  served  three  times  as 
chairman  of  Independent  Television  News. 

Thomas  was  above  average  height,  thickset, 
balding  from  a  quite  early  age,  with  a  bluff 
manner  and  a  forceful  presence  emphasized  by 
his  horn-rimmed  spectacles.  He  was  capable  of 
great  charm  and  persuasiveness,  which  served 
him  well  as  a  showman  in  both  radio  and 
television  during  a  particularly  colourful  period 
in  the  history  of  British  broadcasting.  In  1934  he 
married  Hilda,  daughter  of  Harrison  Fogg,  a 
Manchester  journalist.  They  had  two  daughters. 
Thomas  died  in  hospital  in  Henley-on-Thames  6 
November  1986. 

[Howard  Thomas,  With  an  Independent  Air,  1977;  Asa 
Briggs,  History  of  Broadcasting  in  the  United  Kingdom, 
vol.  iii,  1970;  Bernard  Sendall,  Independent  Television  in 
Britain,  vol.  i,  1982;  Jeremy  Potter,  Independent  Tele- 
vision in  Britain,  vol.  iv,  1990;  personal  knowledge.] 

Brian  Tesler 

THOMAS,  (Lewis  John)  Wynford  Vaughan- 

(1908-1987),  author  and  broadcaster.  [See 
Vaughan-Thomas,  (Lewis  John)  Wynford.] 

THOMAS,  Terry-  (1911-1990),  actor  and  co- 
median. [See  Terry-Thomas.] 


450 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Thrower 


THROWER,  Percy  John  (19 13- 1988),  broad- 
caster and  writer  on  gardening,  was  born  30 
January  1913  in  Little  Horwood,  Buckingham- 
shire, the  second  child  and  second  son  in  the 
family  of  three  sons  and  two  daughters  of  Harry 
Thrower  and  his  wife,  Beatrice  Dunnett.  Just 
before  Percy's  birth  his  father  had  been 
appointed  head  gardener  at  Horwood  House, 
near  Winslow,  where  a  new  garden  was  to  be 
made  on  an  old  site.  An  intelligent  child  but  not 
a  bookish  one,  Percy  grew  up  with  the  new- 
garden,  becoming  attuned  to  the  daily  rituals  of 
garden  nurture.  With  his  ambition — 'to  be  a 
head  gardener,  like  my  father' — already  named, 
he  was  withdrawn  from  Little  Horwood  Church 
of  England  School  shortly  after  his  fourteenth 
birthday,  in  order  to  join  his  father's  staff  as  pot- 
and-crock  boy. 

In  193 1  Thrower  was  offered  a  job  as  an 
improver  in  the  royal  gardens  at  Windsor.  In 
1935  he  moved  to  Leeds  to  sample  municipal 
gardening  as  a  journeyman,  taking  with  him  a 
sense  of  hierarchy  and  an  adherence  to  the  frugal 
and  disciplined  methods  of  Windsor.  He  was 
able  to  put  some  of  these  into  practice  from  1937, 
as  deputy  parks  superintendent  at  Derby,  where 
the  job  included  maintaining  the  country's  first 
public  arboretum,  opened  in  1840.  A  century  on, 
that  now  mature  amenity  was  unregarded  by  the 
citizens,  whose  preferences,  if  any,  inclined 
towards  the  formal  bedding  schemes  that  were 
the  staple  of  municipal  gardening.  Thrower 
found  a  role  in  that  style  for  fuchsias,  whose 
seemingly  exotic  but  generally  very  tolerant  qual- 
ities he  was  to  help  popularize.  In  the  summer  of 
1939  the  focus  of  his  work  shifted  to  organizing 
the  local  'dig  for  victory'  effort.  He  spent  the 
next  five  years  instructing  often  motley  groups  of 
non-gardeners  in  the  cultivation  of  roots  and 
basic  brassicas,  supporting  the  wartime  aim  of 
self-sufficiency  in  food.  Thus  he  discovered  his 
distinguishing  gift — as  a  natural  teacher. 

From  1946  until  his  retirement  in  1974 
Thrower  was  parks  superintendent  at  Shrews- 
bury. His  responsibilities  included  helping  to 
revive  the  annual  flower  show  after  the  war  and 
maintaining  its  place  near  the  top  of  the  garden- 
er's calendar.  From  its  resumption  in  1947  the 
show  was  covered  by  the  BBC,  which  was  keen 
to  develop  its  treatment  of  all  leisure  interests.  In 
the  course  of  co-operating  with  BBC  producers  it 
became  apparent  that  Thrower  had  the  qualities 
of  a  natural  broadcaster.  The  Corporation's  prin- 
cipal gardening  voice — C.  H.  Middleton,  'the 
best-known  gardener  since  Adam' — had  died 
prematurely  in  1945  and  an  unofficial  vacancy 
existed.  Thrower's  services  were  soon  much  in 
demand. 

Most  remarkably  on  the  radio,  and  later  on 
television,  Thrower  believed  in  letting  his  mate- 
rial speak  for  itself.  Without  a  script,  and  with 


scarcely  any  comment  or  elaboration,  he  would 
describe  a  plant  and  its  capabilities,  its  strengths 
and  foibles,  likes  and  dislikes,  and  how  to  draw 
out  its  best.  The  same  technique  was  later 
brought  to  larger  themes:  how  to  discover  the 
genius  of  a  site,  however  small,  by  observation 
and  experiment;  how  to  create  a  microclimate  by 
the  judicious  planting  of  trees  and  shrubs;  how  to 
reconcile  the  desire  for  immediate  effect  with 
long-term  aims. 

No  attempt  was  made  to  change  Thrower's 
not  particularly  appealing  south  midland  accent, 
nor  to  soften  a  mode  of  utterance  reminiscent  of 
a  mild-mannered  sergeant-major.  The  tone  of 
voice  could  be  heard  too  in  his  journalism, 
principally  for  the  Daily  Mail  and  Amateur 
Gardening,  and  in  the  sixteen  books,  among  them 
the  often  reprinted  In  Your  Garden  Week  by 
Week  (1959),  commissioned  as  his  reputation 
grew.  When  he  proceeded  from  wireless  to 
television  it  was  not  a  surprise  to  behold  a  rather 
formal,  somewhat  top-heavy  figure,  who  might 
put  aside  his  pipe  and  often  his  jacket  to  demon- 
strate some  arduous  task,  but  seldom  his  tie.  The 
image  thus  innocently  created  was  that  of  the 
nation's  head  gardener. 

Through  simple  education  and  encourage- 
ment Thrower  helped  to  restore  gardening  as 
Britain's  favourite  leisure  activity,  bringing  it 
back  as  a  source  of  often  productive  pleasure 
after  the  unduly  protracted  season  of  the  war  and 
the  allotment.  As  one  who  had  known  a  little  too 
much  hands-and-knees  drudgery  during  his 
early  years  in  the  garden,  Thrower  became  a 
fervent  advocate  of  all  labour-saving  machines 
and  gadgets.  His  unrestrained  use  of  chemicals 
and  fungicides  tended  to  isolate  him  from  the 
new  generation  of  gardeners  who  rose  to  promi- 
nence as  his  own  career  drew  to  a  close.  This  was 
the  indirect  cause  of  the  BBC's  decision  in  1976 
to  end  his  thirteen  years  as  principal  presenter  of 
their  leading  garden  programme,  Gardeners' 
World.  But  Thrower  had  already  started  a  new- 
television  career  describing  gardening  on  child- 
ren's programmes,  and  with  that  audience  he  was 
soon  an  even  bigger  cult  than  he  had  been  with 
their  elders.  His  last  broadcast  was  made  a  week 
before  his  death,  from  his  hospital  bed  in  Wol- 
verhampton, where  he  was  being  treated  for 
Hodgkin's  disease. 

Recognition  from  his  peers  came  when  the 
Royal  Horticultural  Society  made  him  an  asso- 
ciate of  honour  in  1963.  Thrower  took  particular 
pleasure  from  the  Society's  Victoria  medal  of 
honour,  awarded  in  1974.  He  was  appointed 
MBE  in  1984. 

On  9  September  1939  Thrower  married  Con- 
stance Margaret,  whom  he  had  courted  since  the 
days  when  he  had  worked  under  her  father, 
Charles  Cook,  then  head  gardener  at  Windsor. 


45i 


Thrower 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


They  had  three  daughters.  Thrower  died  in 
hospital  in  Wolverhampton  18  March  1988. 

[The  Times,  19  March  1988;  Percy  Thrower,  My 
Lifetime  oj  Gardening,  1977;  Timothy  O'Sullivan,  Percy 
Thrower,  1989;  personal  knowledge.] 

Timothy  O'Sullivan 

TINBERGEN,  Nikolaas  (1007- 1988),  authority 
on  animal  behaviour  and  Nobel  prize-winner, 
was  born  15  April  1907  in  The  Hague,  the  third 
of  five  children  and  second  of  four  sons  of  Dirk 
Cornelis  Tinbergen,  schoolteacher,  who  taught 
Dutch  language  and  history  and  was  a  scholar  of 
medieval  Dutch,  and  his  wife,  Jeannette  van  Eek, 
primary  school  teacher.  'Niko'  Tinbergen  went 
to  school  in  The  Hague.  At  Leiden  University 
his  career  was  at  first  undistinguished,  and  much 
of  his  time  was  spent  on  hockey  or  natural 
history.  He  was,  however,  very  influenced  by  a 
number  of  amateur  and  professional  ornitho- 
logists and,  rebelling  against  the  arid  nature  of 
the  laboratory  curriculum,  he  preferred  to  study 
wasps  in  the  field.  Perhaps  affected  by  the  rising 
influence  of  physiology,  he  resisted  the  subjectiv- 
ism of  A.  F.  J.  Portielje  and  Bierens  de  Haan,  and 
sought  for  more  objective  explanations  of  beha- 
viour. As  a  result  he  was  able  to  defend  his 
behavioural  work  against  the  scepticism  of  the 
biological  establishment  and  he  received  his 
Ph.D.  in  1932  on  a  thesis  only  thirty-two  pages 
long,  the  shortest  on  record  in  Leiden  Uni- 
versity. 

In  1932  he  married  a  chemistry  student,  Elisa- 
beth ('Lies')  Amelie,  daughter  of  Louis  Martien 
Rutter,  geologist.  They  set  off  on  a  fourteen- 
month  'honeymoon'  with  a  meteorological 
expedition  to  Greenland.  They  lived  with  an 
'unwesternized'  group  of  Inuit  (Eskimos), 
learned  their  language,  and  acquired  an  interest 
in  the  hunter-gatherer's  way  of  life.  Tinbergen 
concentrated  his  research  efforts  on  the  snow 
bunting  (Plectrophenax  nivalis),  a  small  bird  that 
arrived  as  the  snows  melted,  expended  much 
energy  in  territorial  battles  with  rivals,  and  bred 
in  the  brief  summer.  He  also  studied  a  variety  of 
other  Arctic  animals. 

When  he  returned  he  became  an  instructor  at 
Leiden  (1936),  with  the  task  of  organizing  labo- 
ratory practicals.  For  this  he  chose  the  three- 
spined  stickleback  (Gasterosteus  aculeatus)  and 
other  animals  that  could  easily  be  kept  in  the 
laboratory.  The  three-spined  stickleback  was  a 
happy  choice,  for  its  natural  environment  could 
easily  be  imitated  in  an  aquarium,  and  simple 
experiments  were  possible.  Tinbergen  mapped 
the  reproductive  cycle,  analysed  the  stimuli  eli- 
citing attack  and  courtship,  and  showed  that  the 
complex  zigzag  courtship  dance  might  be  seen  as 
a  compromise  between  incompatible  response 
systems.  It  is  said  that  at  this  time  Tinbergen 
wrote    above    the    departmental    library    door 


'Study  Nature  and  not  Books'.  The  stickleback 
became  the  classical  animal  of  ethology,  the  work 
being  subsequently  continued  by  Jan  van  Iersel, 
Piet  Sevenster,  and  many  others.  Around  the 
same  time  Tinbergen  started  to  study  the  herring 
gull  (Larus  argentatus),  working  on  the  repro- 
ductive cycle  and  setting  up  experiments  on  egg 
recognition  and  the  stimuli  releasing  begging. 
This  also  became  one  of  the  classics  of  ethology, 
giving  rise  to  a  comparative  study  of  gull  behav- 
iour in  which  many  students  participated  and  to 
a  programme  of  experimental  work,  which  con- 
tinued under  the  leadership  of  Gerard  Baer- 
ends. 

In  1936  Tinbergen  met  Konrad  Lorenz  in 
Leiden,  and  he  spent  some  of  1937  working  with 
him  near  Vienna.  Together  they  refined  the 
methods  of  early  ethology,  Tinbergen  inserting 
experimental  probes  into  Lorenz's  observations 
of  hand-reared  greylag  geese.  At  this  time  Tin- 
bergen and  Lorenz  had  much  in  common.  Both 
loved  being  in  the  open,  observing  wildlife  and 
'walking  and  wondering'.  They  were  similarly 
unconventional  and  shared  a  common  sense  of 
humour.  They  associated  easily  with  their  stu- 
dents. But  they  also  differed  in  critical  ways. 
Whereas  'wondering'  led  Lorenz  to  an  intuitive 
solution,  with  Tinbergen  it  led  to  patient  experi- 
ments. Such  differences  were  of  great  importance 
in  the  subsequent  development  of  ethology. 

Tinbergen  became  a  senior  lecturer  in  1940. 
However,  later  in  World  War  II  he  spent  two 
years  in  a  German  hostage  camp  for  refusing  to 
co-operate  with  the  occupation  authorities  in 
their  attempts  to  'nazify'  Leiden  University  and 
for  protesting  against  the  removal  of  Jewish 
professors  from  the  university. 

After  the  war  he  returned  to  Leiden,  becom- 
ing a  full  professor  in  1947.  At  the  suggestion  of 
W.  H.  Thorpe,  the  Society  for  Experimental 
Biology  organized  a  conference  on  physiological 
mechanisms  of  animal  behaviour  in  1949  in 
Cambridge.  As  a  result,  there  was  renewed 
contact  between  Tinbergen  and  Lorenz,  and  the 
conference  provided  a  forum  for  open  con- 
troversy between  Lorenz,  who  defended  the  view 
that  motor  patterns  were  co-ordinated  centrally, 
and  (Sir)  James  *Gray  and  Hans  Lissmann, 
of  the  Cambridge  zoology  department,  who  be- 
lieved that  peripheral  reflexes  were  important. 
This  led  to  the  establishment  of  a  biennial  series 
of  ethological  conferences  in  which  Tinbergen 
played  a  major  role,  and  which  became  of  enor- 
mous importance  in  the  growth  of  ethology . 

Tinbergen  had  paid  a  brief  visit  to  the  United 
States  before  the  war,  and  saw  that  the  general- 
izations made  by  comparative  psychologists  there 
were  based  on  laboratory  studies  of  a  few  species, 
mostly  rodents.  He  thus  conceived  a  desire  to 
teach  ethology  in  the  English-speaking  world, 
and  in   1949  he  resigned  his  professorship  at 


452 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Tinling 


Leiden  and  accepted  a  less  well  paid  and  less 
prestigious  lectureship  at  Oxford  and  a  fellow- 
ship at  Merton  College  (from  1950).  Although 
the  facilities  that  he  had  looked  for  at  Oxford 
never  fully  materialized,  he  built  up  a  research 
group  that  had  a  profound  influence  on  the 
development  of  ethology.  He  was  reader  from 
i960  to  1966  and  professor  in  animal  behaviour 
from  1966  to  1974,  holding  a  fellowship  at 
Wolfson  College  at  the  same  time  as  his  chair.  He 
was  never  attracted,  however,  to  college  life. 

One  of  Tinbergen's  major  contributions  was 
to  emphasize  clearly  the  distinction  between  the 
four  basic  questions  about  behaviour — its  im- 
mediate causation,  development,  function,  and 
evolution,  while  at  the  same  time  showing  how 
these  factors  are  interrelated.  The  Study  of 
Instinct,  his  first  and  perhaps  most  important 
book,  appeared  in  195 1.  It  contained  127  pages 
on  causation,  but  only  24  on  development,  34  on 
function,  and  26  on  evolution.  From  then  on, 
however,  his  emphasis  changed  to  questions  of 
function  ('What  is  this  behaviour  for?')  and 
evolution  ('How  did  it  evolve?').  In  tackling  these 
problems,  Tinbergen  worked  primarily  with 
gulls,  and  his  work  was  especially  noteworthy  for 
his  use  of  field  experiments  and  detailed  obser- 
vation. 

By  the  1960s  two  ethologies  had  developed, 
one  stemming  from  Lorenz,  and  more  influential 
in  Germany  and  the  USA,  and  the  other  from 
Tinbergen,  more  prevalent  in  Britain  and  The 
Netherlands.  Among  the  differences  were  Lor- 
enz's  adherence  to  an  energy  model  of  motivation 
which  Tinbergen  abandoned,  Lorenz's  more  tra- 
ditional approach  to  the  nature/ nurture  con- 
troversy, and  Tinbergen's  clearer  recognition 
of  the  importance  of  an  individual  selection 
approach  to  evolutionary  questions.  Tinbergen 
was  an  inspiring  teacher.  Unlike  Lorenz,  he  was 
never  paternalistic,  but  created  an  atmosphere, 
with  his  charm  and  simplicity  of  manner,  in 
which  his  students  felt  that  he  was  working  with 
them.  He  was  a  man  of  boundless  energy  and 
enthusiasm  and  an  inspiring  leader,  who  also 
wrote  various  semi-popular  books  (such  as  The 
Herring  Gull's  World,  1953,  and  Curious  Natural- 
ists, 1958)  and  books  for  children,  and  was  an 
expert  photographer. 

Tinbergen  gave  more  and  more  of  his  time  to 
establishing  the  science  of  ethology,  writing 
freely  in  natural  history  journals.  He  took  films 
of  gull  behaviour  which  won  international  prizes. 
He  also  played  a  part  in  establishing  the  Seren- 
geti  Research  Institute  in  Tanzania  in  the  mid- 
1960s.  Later  he  put  a  lot  of  energy  into  the 
implications  of  ethology  for  human  behaviour, 
and  helped  establish  the  human  biology  course  at 
Oxford.  He  wrote  on  the  effects  of  human 
activities  on  the  environment,  and  drew  lessons 
from  animal  behaviour  about  the  incidence  of 


human  aggression.  Throughout  his  career,  his 
wife  was  a  constant  support  and  colleague.  Dur- 
ing the  last  years  of  his  life  they  collaborated  in  a 
study  of  human  autism,  drawing  lessons  from 
animal  behaviour  for  its  treatment.  They  had  two 
sons  and  three  daughters.  Small,  energetic,  and 
white-haired  for  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life, 
Tinbergen  always  dressed  in  field  clothes  unless 
under  strong  pressure.  He  was  an  inveterate 
smoker  until  fifteen  years  before  his  death. 

Tinbergen  was  awarded  the  Nobel  prize  in 
physiology  or  medicine  (together  with  Lorenz 
and  Karl  von  Frisch),  the  Swammerdam  medal, 
and  the  Wilhelm  Boelsche  medal  (all  1973).  He 
received  many  other  distinctions,  including  hon- 
orary D.Scs.  from  Edinburgh  (1973)  and  Leices- 
ter (1974).  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1962.  He  became  a  British  subject  in 
1954  and  died  21  December  1988  at  his  home,  88 
Lonsdale  Road,  Oxford. 

[R.  A.  Hinde  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxvi.  1990;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  A.  Hinde 

TINLING,  Cuthbert  Collingwood  ('Ted') 
(1910-1990),  dress  designer,  was  born  23  June 
1910  in  Eastbourne,  Sussex,  the  youngest  of  the 
three  sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  James 
Alexander  Tinling,  chartered  accountant,  and  his 
wife,  Florence  Mary  Elizabeth  Buckland.  He  was 
christened  Cuthbert  after  his  great-grandfather. 
Admiral  Cuthbert  (first  Baron)  *Collingwood, 
but  his  parents  changed  his  name  to  Teddy 
during  World  War  I  because  Cuthbert  was  the 
name  given  to  conscientious  objectors  in  cartoons 
in  the  Evening  News.  Much  later  he  shortened 
this  to  Ted,  on  the  advice  of  his  agent,  when  he 
became  a  popular  guest  on  television  chat  shows 
in  the  United  States.  Because  of  his  chronic 
asthma,  the  family  moved  to  the  French  Riviera 
after  the  war,  and  he  spent  the  rest  of  his 
childhood  in  Nice,  on  his  own  with  his  mother 
after  his  father  had  to  return  to  England.  He 
attended  a  Catholic  day  school. 

As  a  schoolboy  Tinling  joined  the  Nice  Tennis 
Qub,  umpiring  a  match  for  Suzanne  Lenglen  at 
the  age  of  thirteen,  and  he  became  a  devoted 
member  of  her  entourage,  mixing  with  high 
society  on  the  French  Riviera  while  still  in  his 
teens,  umpiring  and  refereeing  matches  and 
organizing  tournaments.  Suzanne  Lenglen,  with 
her  flowing  pure  silk  dresses  and  silk  bandeau 
around  her  head,  became  his  idol  and  inspiration. 
His  first  tennis  dress  was  designed  for  her,  in 
1937,  for  her  last  world  tour. 

In  1927  he  was  sent  to  London  to  study  dress 
designing,  and  when  he  set  up  his  own  business 
there  in  193 1  many  of  his  clients  were  friends  he 
had  made  in  the  south  of  France.  Within  a  year 
he  had  expanded  into  premises  in  Mayfair,  and 


453 


Tinling 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


showed  his  first  collection.  He  soon  had  a  reputa- 
tion in  haute  couture  to  rival  that  of  (Sir)  Hardy 
Amies  and  (Sir)  Norman  *Hartnell,  and  in  1938 
he  made  fourteen  wedding  dresses  for  society 
weddings  at  St  Margaret's,  Westminster. 

At  the  same  time  he  remained  involved  in  the 
world  of  tennis,  especially  at  Wimbledon,  where 
he  worked  from  1927  to  1949  during  the  two 
weeks  of  the  championships  as  the  'call  boy', 
responsible  for  escorting  players  from  their 
dressing-rooms  to  the  centre  court  and  court  no. 
1  for  their  matches.  In  1928  he  was  also  asked  to 
act  as  a  liaison  between  the  Wimbledon  commit- 
tee and  the  players,  and  he  did  this  until  1949.  A 
keen  amateur  player  himself,  he  played  on  the 
amateur  circuit  from  1935  until  1950,  captaining 
Sussex  for  many  years,  and  he  first  played  at 
Wimbledon  in  1948. 

During  World  War  II  Tinling  served  in  the 
Intelligence  Corps  in  Algiers  and  Germany,  and 
he  remained  in  the  army  until  1947.  He  reached 
the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel. 

In  1947  he  resumed  his  career  as  a  couturier, 
and  became  known  as  a  designer  of  tennis 
dresses.  Tinling  believed  that  women  tennis 
players  should  wear  clothes  that  stressed  their 
femininity.  He  designed  his  first  Wimbledon 
tennis  dress  for  Joy  Gannon  in  1947,  and  became 
famous  in  1949  when  'Gorgeous  Gussy'  Moran 
asked  him  to  design  her  tennis  dresses  for 
Wimbledon,  and  the  underwear  to  go  with  them. 
The  lace-trimmed  panties  he  made  for  her 
caused  a  sensation,  and,  told  he  had  put  vulgarity 
and  sin  into  tennis,  he  was  barred  from  working 
at  Wimbledon  for  many  years.  But  he  continued 
to  design  tennis  dresses  for  the  leading  women 
players.  For  ten  successive  years,  from  1952  to 
1 96 1,  he  dressed  the  winner  of  the  Wimbledon 
women's  singles  title,  and  in  1973  the  five  major 
championships  in  the  world  were  won  by  players 
wearing  his  dresses.  In  1970  he  was  appointed 
official  designer  to  the  Virginia  Slims  women's 
professional  circuit,  and  in  eight  years  he  created 
more  than  1,000  different  dresses,  embroidered 
with  sequins,  woven  with  silver  threads,  and 
covered  with  frills  and  bows.  However,  in  the 
late  1970s  the  top  players  were  attracted  by  large 
sponsorship  contracts  to  wear  sportswear  sepa- 
rates designed  by  large  manufacturers,  and  Tin- 
ling gave  up  designing  tennis  dresses.  He  settled 
in  Philadelphia  in  1976. 

He  made  fourteen  wedding  dresses  for  tennis 
stars,  including  a  dress  for  'Little  Mo'  Connolly 
for  her  wedding  in  California  in  1955,  and  ones 
for  Christine  Truman  and  Chris  Evert.  In  June 
1986,  as  part  of  the  celebration  of  the  centenary 
of  the  Wimbledon  championships,  the  Victoria 
and  Albert  Museum  put  on  an  exhibition  of 
Tinling's  tennis  creations.  The  exhibits  included 
some  of  the  coloured  dresses  he  had  designed 
during  the  war,  when  the  all-white  rule  was 


suspended,  such  as  Kay  Stammers's  pink  dress 
of  1 94 1.  Also  on  display  were  Maria  Bueno's 
dress  with  its  'Cleopatra'  embroidery,  Rosie 
Casals's  black-sequined  dress,  and  Billie  Jean 
King's  rhinestone-studded  dress  of  1973.  m  tne 
1980s  he  admired  the  ice  dancer  Jayne  Torville, 
and  always  said  that  the  movements  of  a  good 
tennis  player  were  as  beautiful  and  graceful  as 
those  of  an  ice  skater  or  ballerina. 

In  1982  Tinling  became  assistant  to  the  presi- 
dent of  the  International  Tennis  Federation  in 
Paris,  and  shortly  afterwards  was  invited  to 
become  head  of  the  Wimbledon  liaison  commit- 
tee once  again,  a  job  he  continued  to  do  until  his 
death. 

Very  tall  (6  feet  6  inches),  with  a  shining  bald 
head,  shaved  on  the  advice  of  Vidal  Sassoon, 
Tinling  wore  a  large  diamond  in  one  ear  and 
several  bracelets  on  his  wrists.  He  was  witty  and 
outrageous,  and  was  often  compared  with  Oscar 
*  Wilde  and  Sir  Noel  *Coward.  Apart  from 
tennis  and  fashion,  his  other  enthusiasms 
included  the  music  of  Richard  Wagner  and 
tenpin  bowling.  Tinling  died  23  May  1990  in 
Cambridge.  He  was  unmarried. 

[Independent,  24  May  1990;  Teddy  Tinling,  White 
Ladies,  1963,  and  Tinling,  Sixty  Years  in  Tennis,  1983; 
Max  Robertson  (ed.),  The  Encyclopedia  of  Tennis,  1974 
(article  on  fashion  written  by  Tinling).] 

Anne  Pimlott  Baker 

TOPOLSKI,  Feliks  (1907-1989),  draughtsman, 
painter,  and  stage  designer,  was  born  in  Warsaw 
14  August  1907,  the  only  child  of  Edward 
Topolski,  actor  and  manager,  and  his  wife,  Sta- 
nislawa  Drutowska,  who  later  divorced  her  hus- 
band and  married  an  army  officer.  Topolski 
matriculated  from  Mikolaj  Rev  School  in  1925, 
his  artistic  talent  already  evident  and  fostered  by 
his  mother.  He  was  encouraged  to  develop  his 
artistic  abilities  by  Tadeus  Pruszkowski,  prin- 
cipal of  the  Warsaw  Academy  of  Art,  where 
Topolski  studied  from  1927  to  1932.  A  summer 
school  at  Kazimierz,  over  which  Pruszkowski 
presided,  was  described  by  Topolski  in  his  auto- 
biography, Fourteen  Letters  (1988),  as  an  import- 
ant liberating  influence,  both  artistically  and 
socially.  He  made  many  friends,  and  began  to 
enjoy  the  free  love  affairs  with  women  which 
were  a  currency  of  his  milieu,  and  which  were 
woven  into  the  pattern  of  his  life. 

In  Warsaw  Topolski  joined  the  artillery 
reserve,  in  which  he  was  commissioned  as  a 
second  lieutenant.  He  became  active  in  the  city's 
artistic  and  literary  life,  besides  during  the  early 
1930s  making  extensive  travels  in  Europe,  begin- 
ning with  a  trip  which  included  Vienna,  Italy, 
France,  and  England  in  1933. 

In  1935  Topolski  went  to  London  with  an 
assignment  to  record  the  jubilee  of  King  George 
V.  He  found  England  enjoyably  exotic,  and  was 


454 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Trend 


quickly  accepted  into  a  congenial  set  of  talented 
people.  An  early  commission  was  to  draw  the 
first  cover  of  Night  and  Day,  a  short-lived  peri- 
odical from  which  he  gained  literary  friendships, 
including  that  of  Graham  Greene.  Drawings  for 
the  News  Chronicle  formed  the  basis  for  his  first 
English  book,  The  London  Spectacle  (1935).  His 
fluent  graphic  style  was  from  the  first  equally 
effective  in  newspapers,  magazines,  or  books;  for 
example,  George  Bernard  *Shaw  became  a  firm 
admirer,  and  commissioned  him  to  do  illustrated 
editions  of  three  of  his  plays.  Shaw  described 
him  as  'an  astonishing  draughtsman;  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  all  the  impressionists  in  black  and 
white'.  He  was  also  commissioned  by  Shaw  to 
design  stage  sets. 

The  war  years  of  1930-45  consolidated  Topol- 
ski's  British  reputation  as  an  exceptionally  gifted 
draughtsman,  adept  at  recording  history  as  it 
happened.  He  became  an  official  war  artist  in 
1940  and  began  by  making  drawings  of  the 
London  blitz.  In  1941  he  was  sent  on  an  Arctic 
convoy  to  Russia  to  draw  for  both  the  Polish 
authorities  and  Picture  Post.  He  subsequendy 
worked  for  both  the  Polish  and  British  author- 
ities, as  works  in  the  Imperial  War  Museum  and 
Warsaw  testify. 

Topolski  published  three  wartime  books  of 
drawings  (Britain  in  Peace  and  War,  1941,  Russia 
in  War,  1942,  and  Three  Continents,  1944-5, 
1946),  and  worked  extensively  for  magazines  in 
Britain  and  the  United  States.  From  1944  he  was 
officially  posted  variously  to  draw  convoys,  to 
Egypt,  the  Levant,  East  Africa,  Burma,  China, 
and  Italy.  After  the  invasion  of  France  he  fol- 
lowed the  armies  into  Germany,  where  he  was 
one  of  the  witnesses  of  Belsen  concentration 
camp;  and,  later,  he  attended  the  Nuremberg 
trials.  He  was  naturalized  in  1947. 

Topolski  had  become  internationally  cele- 
brated and  remained  so.  He  scored  a  popular 
success  with  portraits  used  for  the  British  tele- 
vision programme  Face  to  Face,  published  as  a 
book  in  1964.  In  all  he  produced  twenty-two 
books.  His  gifts  as  a  painter  on  a  large  scale  were 
also  recognized  by  commissions  beginning  with  a 
mural  for  the  Festival  of  Britain  in  195 1 — 'Cav- 
alcade of  the  Commonwealth',  later  placed  for 
ten  years  in  the  Victoria  Memorial  Hall,  Singa- 
pore. In  1958  Philip,  Duke  of  Edinburgh,  com- 
missioned a  record  of  the  coronation  of  Queen 
Elizabeth  II  for  a  corridor  in  Buckingham  Palace. 
His  culminating  mural  work  was  'Memoir  of  the 
Century',  begun  in  1975,  a  vast  panoramic  inte- 
rior under  the  railway  arches  of  Hungerford 
bridge  on  London's  South  Bank,  where  he  also 
had  his  postwar  studio.  A  graphic  published 
parallel  was  Topolski 's  Chronicle  (1953-79  and 
1982-9),  which  reproduced  drawings  from  the 
artist's  extensive  travels  throughout  the  world. 
His  work  was  acquired  by  the  British  Museum, 


Victoria  and  Albert  Museum,  Tate  Gallery,  and 
Imperial  War  Museum. 

Topolski  was  small  in  stature  with  brown  eyes, 
and  a  charm  of  manner  which  made  him  wel- 
come at  every  level  of  society.  In  1944  he  married 
Marion  (died  1985),  daughter  of  Tom  Mason 
Everall,  businessman.  They  had  a  son  and  a 
daughter,  Daniel  and  Teresa.  Daniel  became  well 
known  as  the  coach  of  the  Oxford  University 
boat  crews  which  gained  a  succession  of  wins 
over  Cambridge.  Topolski's  first  marriage  was 
dissolved  in  1975,  in  which  year  he  married 
Caryl  Jane,  architect,  daughter  of  Theodore 
Stanley,  company  director.  Topolski  received 
many  awards  for  his  work,  about  which  four 
television  programmes  were  made.  He  was 
awarded  a  doctorate  by  the  Jagiellonian  Uni- 
versity of  Cracow  in  1974,  and  was  elected  RA  in 
1989.  He  died  in  St  Thomas's  Hospital,  London, 
from  heart  disease  and  diabetes,  24  August 
1989. 

[Feliks    Topolski,    Fourteen   Letters   (autobiography), 
1988;  private  information.]  Joseph  Darracott 

TREND,  Burke  Frederick  St  John,  Baron 
Trend  (1914-1987),  civil  servant,  was  born  2 
January  19 14  in  Greenwich,  the  only  child  of 
Walter  David  St  John  Trend,  journalist,  and  his 
wife,  Marian  Gertrude  Tyers.  He  was  educated 
at  Whitgift  School  and  Merton  College,  Oxford. 
He  obtained  first  classes  in  both  classical  hon- 
our moderations  (1934)  and  literae  humaniores 
(1936). 

In  1936  he  passed  into  the  Civil  Service,  and 
was  appointed  to  the  Ministry  of  Education.  A 
year  later  he  was  transferred  to  the  Treasury, 
where  he  remained,  with  a  brief  interruption,  for 
twenty-five  years.  His  first  years  at  the  Treasury 
were  spent  on  work  relating  to  defence.  In  1939, 
shortly  after  the  outbreak  of  war,  he  became 
assistant  private  secretary  to  the  chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer,  under  Sir  John  (later  first  Viscount) 
*Simon  and  Sir  H.  Kingsley  *Wood.  In  1941,  on 
promotion,  he  returned  to  dealing  with  the 
problems  of  defence  equipment.  After  the  w  ar  he 
was  again  appointed  to  the  chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer's  private  office,  serving  as  principal 
private  secretary  (1945-9) to  Hugh  (later  Baron) 
*Dalton  and  later  Sir  Stafford  *Cripps.  During 
this  time  the  Treasury  had  the  tasks  of  returning 
to  peacetime  levels  of  expenditure,  earning  the 
reorganization  of  the  Civil  Service,  and  handling 
the  Labour  government's  economic  policies  of 
Keynesianism  and  nationalization. 

In  1949  Trend  became  an  under-secretary  at 
the  Treasury  and  assumed  responsibility  for  the 
home  finance  division.  In  1953  he  moved  to  the 
central  economic  planning  staff  until  his  Treas- 
ury service  was  interrupted  in  1955  for  a  year  in 
the  office  of  the  lord  privy  seal,  then  R.  A. 
*Buder  (later  Baron  Butler  of  Saffron  Walden), 


455 


Trend 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


followed  by  three  years  (1956-9)  as  deputy 
secretary  to  the  cabinet,  the  secretary  to  the 
cabinet  then  being  Sir  Norman  *Brook  (later 
Baron  Normanbrook).  Much  of  the  day-to-day 
running  of  the  affairs  of  the  cabinet  secretariat 
was  Trend's  responsibility.  He  returned  to  the 
Treasury  in  1959  as  third  secretary  and  became 
second  secretary  a  year  later.  On  Brook's  retire- 
ment at  the  end  of  1962,  he  became  secretary  to 
the  cabinet. 

In  this  capacity  Trend  served  under  four 
prime  ministers,  Harold  *Macmillan,  Alec  Dou- 
glas-Home, Harold  Wilson,  and  Edward  Heath, 
and  proved  himself  a  civil  servant  who  ably  gave 
an  independent,  balanced  brief  to  his  political 
masters  regardless  of  their  party  colour.  In  par- 
ticular he  accepted  responsibility  for  keeping 
them  informed  and  advised  on  all  nuclear  mat- 
ters, both  civil  and  military,  and  maintained 
contacts  on  their  behalf  at  the  highest  level  with 
other  governments  involved.  He  also  played  a 
major  part  in  organizing  the  Commonwealth 
conferences  in  conjunction  with  the  cabinet  sec- 
retaries of  other  member  countries.  His  activities 
reflected  Britain's  position  in  the  Common- 
wealth. He  retired  in  1973. 

An  interesting  side  to  Trend's  service  in  the 
Treasury  is  that  from  his  early  days  he  undertook 
the  work  of  the  accounting  office  for  the  secret 
vote.  His  responsibility  was  to  secure  value  for 
money  in  expenditure  on  MI5  and  MI6,  but  at 
the  same  time  to  ensure  the  safeguarding  of  these 
services.  This  experience  was  put  to  good  use  in 
1974-5,  when  he  carried  out  an  official  investiga- 
tion into  allegations  that  Sir  Roger  *Hollis  had 
been  an  agent  for  the  Soviet  Union.  He  was 
unable  to  reach  a  definite  decision. 

In  1974  Trend  became  a  life  peer.  Between 
1973  and  1983  he  was  rector  of  Lincoln  College, 
Oxford,  and  from  1975  to  1983  a  pro-vice- 
chancellor  of  the  university.  He  served  as  chair- 
man of  the  trustees  of  the  British  Museum  from 
1979  to  1986  and  was  a  member  of  the  advisory- 
council  on  public  records  (1974-82).  He  died 
holding  three  other  prominent  offices:  chairman 
of  the  managing  trustees  of  the  Nuffield  Founda- 
tion (from  1980),  president  of  the  Royal  Com- 
monwealth Society  (from  1982),  and  high  bailiff 
of  Westminster  Abbey  and  searcher  of  the  sanc- 
tuary (from  1983),  where  during  World  War  II 
he  had  been  a  fire-watcher. 

Trend  had  a  formidable  intellect  which  he 
used  to  penetrate  at  once  to  the  heart  of  any 
problem.  At  the  same  time  he  possessed  a  con- 
structive and  positive  approach,  which  could  set 
out  with  absolute  clarity  the  possible  alternative 
courses  of  action  in  any  given  situation.  His 
minutes  of  meetings  recorded  the  proceedings 
and  conclusions  with  precision  and  accuracy.  He 
never  gave  the  least  indication  to  those  present, 
either  by  word  or  by  facial  expression,  of  his 


personal  views  or  feelings.  Tall  and  serious,  he 
responded  to  the  humour  of  others  but  seldom 
followed  it  up  with  his  own.  Everyone  who  dealt 
with  him  knew  that  in  all  circumstances  his 
conduct  would  undeniably  be  correct.  If  to  some 
outsiders  he  may  have  appeared  somewhat  strait- 
laced  in  Whitehall,  at  Oxford  it  was  apparent  to 
everyone  that  he  was  thoroughly  enjoying  him- 
self. With  an  unchallengeable  academic  record 
from  his  undergraduate  years  he  could  hold  his 
own  in  any  assembly.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
completely  relaxed  in  the  company  of  young 
people,  stimulating  them  with  his  conversation 
and  sharing  his  views  with  theirs.  If  in  Whitehall 
it  was  sometimes  said  that  Trend  tended  to  be 
academic  in  his  approach,  at  Oxford  he  was 
regarded  as  very  much  a  man  of  the  world. 

Trend  was  appointed  CVO  (1953),  CB  (1955), 
KCB  (1962),  and  GCB  (1968).  He  was  sworn  of 
the  Privy  Council  in  1972  and  became  an  hon- 
orary fellow  of  Merton  College  in  1964.  He  was 
given  honorary  degrees  by  Oxford  (DCL,  1969), 
St  Andrews  (LL  D,  1974),  and  Loughborough 
(D.Litt.,  1984). 

In  1949  Trend  married  Patricia  Charlotte, 
daughter  of  the  Revd  Gilbert  Shaw,  by  pro- 
fession a  barrister  and  later  a  priest.  They  had  a 
daughter  and  two  sons,  one  of  whom,  Michael, 
was  elected  MP  for  Windsor  and  Maidenhead  at 
the  general  election  of  1992.  Trend  died  21  July 
1987  at  his  London  home  in  Rochester  Row, 
SWi. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Edward  Heath 

TRETHOWAN,    Sir    Games)    Ian    (Raley) 

(1922- 1 990),  journalist  and  broadcaster,  was 
born  20  October  1922  in  High  Wycombe,  the 
only  child  of  Major  James  Jackson  Raley  Tretho- 
wan,  MBE,  a  retired  army  officer,  who  combined 
a  life  in  business  and  army  welfare  with  writing 
about  sport,  and  his  wife,  Winifred  Timms. 
Trethowan  followed  in  his  father's  footsteps  to 
Christ's  Hospital,  where  he  displayed  only  mod- 
est academic  achievement,  leaving  at  the  age  of 
sixteen  to  pursue  a  career  in  journalism.  A  short 
spell  as  post-boy  at  the  Daily  Sketch  led  to  a 
reporting  job  on  the  Yorkshire  Post,  before  Tre- 
thowan joined  the  Fleet  Air  Arm  during  World 
War  II,  in  1941.  After  the  war  Trethowan 
rejoined  the  Post  in  1946,  working  for  its  London 
staff,  and  rising  rapidly  to  parliamentary  lobby 
correspondent.  There  his  meticulousness  began 
to  be  widely  noticed.  His  writing  was  mostly 
terse  and  to  the  point,  and  he  had  a  good  nose  for 
what  constituted  a  story.  He  also  developed  fine 
contacts  within  the  Tory  party,  about  which  he 
made  no  secret,  but  which  never  became  so 
blatant  as  to  diminish  Trethowan's  effectiveness 
as  a  chronicler  of  politics  across  the  board. 
Trethowan  moved  to  the  News  Chronicle  in 


456 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Trevelyan 


1955  and  from  there  was  tempted  by  (Sir) 
Geoffrey  Cox,  at  the  fledgeling  Independent 
Television  News,  to  take  an  on-screen  role 
(1958-63).  Trethowan  did  not  develop  into  a 
permanent  newscaster,  always  preferring  to 
involve  himself  in  a  little  administration.  He 
served  as  ITVs  deputy  editor,  before  moving  on 
to  the  larger  canvas  of  the  BBC  in  1963.  Tretho- 
wan's  main  work  at  the  BBC  was  again  political, 
dealing  both  with  Westminster  direct,  and  with 
the  broader  world  of  politics  through  the  weekly 
programme,  Gallery.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
political  commentator  for  the  Economist  (1953-8 
and  1965-7)  and  The  Times  (1967-8). 

In  1968  Baron  *Hill  of  Luton,  an  old  political 
comrade  and  now  chairman  of  the  BBC,  needed 
a  new  managing  director  for  BBC  Radio  to 
succeed  F.  G.  Gillard,  the  veteran  correspondent 
and  administrator.  Trethowan,  somewhat  to  his 
surprise,  was  asked  to  apply.  He  was  offered  the 
job  and  took  it — in  part,  he  recorded,  because  he 
knew  he  would  never  be  top-flight  on  television. 
'Not  a  star,'  (Sir)  Huw  *Wheldon  had  told  him, 
firmly  but  with  kindness. 

Trethowan  skilfully  negotiated  the  pitfalls  of 
radio  management  (1969-75).  Radios  1,  2,  3,  and 
4  were  introduced  with  less  pain  than  had  been 
anticipated.  In  1976  he  was  switched  back  to 
television,  this  time  as  managing  director,  as  part 
of  a  deliberate  grooming  for  the  top  job.  He 
succeeded  Sir  Charles  *Curran  as  director- 
general  in  late  1977.  In  his  own  view  he  had 
had  'a  lot  of  luck'. 

In  his  first  years  at  the  top,  he  was  fortunate 
that  his  chairman  was  Sir  Michael  (later  Baron) 
*Swann,  a  clubbable  man  of  clear  view.  In 
Swann's  opinion,  the  BBC  would  work  best  if 
the  director-general  did  the  driving,  while  the 
chairman  and  his  board  assisted  in  reading  the 
map.  Although  Trethowan  was  sometimes  sus- 
pected by  radical  broadcasters  of  acting  purely  as 
the  'thirteenth  governor',  his  own  memoir.  Split 
Screen,  analyses  in  some  detail  a  relationship  of 
sturdy  delicacy  and  shows  why  it  worked  well. 
The  political  world  was  sufficiently  convinced 
both  to  renew  the  BBC  charter,  and  to  sustain 
the  value  of  the  licence  fee  even  during  difficult 
inflationary  times.  Trethowan  suffered  a  heart 
attack  in  1979,  but  recovered  to  continue  in  office 
until  his  official  retirement  in  1982. 

Unlike  most  BBC  directors-general,  Tretho- 
wan had  a  full  and  active  life  beyond  the  BBC. 
He  pursued  his  second  love,  the  turf,  as  chair- 
man of  the  Horserace  Betting  Levy  Board 
(1982-90),  took  a  directorship  at  Barclays  Bank 
(1982-7),  and  eventually  re-emerged  in  commer- 
cial television  as  director  (1986-7),  and  then 
chairman  (1987-90)  of  Thames  TV.  There  con- 
troversy followed  him  over  the  1988  programme. 
Death  on  the  Rock,  which  asked  hard  questions 
about  the  killing  of  three  IRA  terrorists.  Tretho- 


wan stood  by  the  programme  and  diverted  much 
of  the  political  animus.  He  again  drew  on  that 
firm  but  unfailing  courtesy,  which  had  stood  him 
in  good  stead  in  all  his  broadcasting  and  journal- 
istic endeavours.  He  had  a  clear  vision  of  the 
proper  province  of  both  commentators  and  those 
commentated  upon,  and  throughout  his  career 
this  enabled  him  to  defuse  potentially  explosive 
editorial  challenges.  Although  in  appearance 
both  unassertive  and  unassuming,  he  would 
stand  his  ground,  his  determination  deepening 
with  each  twist  and  turn  of  external  pressure. 

Among  his  other  activities,  Trethowan  was  a 
trustee  of  Glyndebourne  Arts  Trust  from  1982 
and  of  the  British  Museum  from  1984,  a  gover- 
nor of  the  Ditchley  Foundation  from  1985,  and 
on  the  board  of  the  British  Council  (1980-7). 
The  University  of  East  Anglia  gave  him  an 
honorary  DCL  (1979)  and  he  was  knighted  in 
1980. 

Trethowan's  life  was  cut  short  by  the  onset  of 
motor  neurone  disease,  which  he  bore  with  good 
grace,  even  in  its  latter  wheelchair  stages.  In  1950 
he  married  Patricia,  daughter  of  Colonel  John 
Elliott  Nelson,  retired  army  officer.  They  had  no 
children.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1963 
and  in  the  same  year  he  married  Carolyn,  daugh- 
ter of  Alfred  Brian  Challen  Reynolds,  retired 
army  officer  and  company  director.  They  had 
three  daughters,  and  it  was  Trethowan's  greatest 
consolation  that  he  lived  to  see  them  into  matur- 
ity. He  died  12  December  1990  in  the  Cromwell 
Hospital,  London. 

[Ian  Trethowan,  Split  Screen:  Memoirs,  1984;  personal 
knowledge.]  Brian  Wenham 

TREVELYAN,  Julian  Otto  (1910-1988), 
painter  and  printmaker,  was  born  20  February 
1910  in  Leith  Hill,  Surrey,  the  only  surviving 
child  (a  first  son  had  died  at  the  age  of  two  in 
1909  and  a  daughter  had  died  in  infancy)  of 
Robert  Calverley  Trevelyan,  classical  scholar  and 
poet  (the  son  of  the  historian  Sir  George  Otto 
*Trevelyan  and  brother  of  the  historian  George 
Macaulay  *Trevelyan),  and  his  Dutch  wife 
Elizabeth,  daughter  of  Jan  des  Amorie  van  der 
Hoeven,  of  The  Hague.  He  was  educated  at 
Bedales  School  and  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  completed  two  years  of  the  English 
tripos  (obtaining  a  second  class,  division  II,  in 
part  i,  1930)  before  leaving,  without  part  ii  of  his 
degree,  to  study  painting  in  Paris. 

At  Cambridge  Trevelyan  identified  himself 
with  the  Modernist  group  associated  with  the 
magazine  Experiment,  which  included  (Sir)  Wil- 
liam *Empson,  Jacob  *Bronowski,  Humphrey 
•Jennings,  and  Kathleen  Raine.  Through  Jen- 
nings, he  was  introduced  to  French  painting  and 
Surrealist  ideas.  In  Paris,  after  a  false  start  at  the 
Academie  Moderne  run  by  Fernand  Leger  and 


457 


Trevelyan 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Amedee  Ozenfant,  he  enrolled  at  the  printmak- 
ing  workshop  run  by  Stanley  William  *Hayter 
(later  Atelier  17),  and  immersed  himself  in  the 
cosmopolitan  nocturnal  life  of  Montparnasse, 
counting  among  his  friends  Massimo  Campigli, 
Vieira  da  Silva,  and  Alexander  Calder.  His  train- 
ing under  Hayter  was  technically  and  creatively 
rigorous,  and  he  worked  alongside  such  major 
contemporaries  as  Joan  Miro,  Max  Ernst,  Pablo 
Picasso,  and  John  Buckland-Wright.  His  etch- 
ings of  this  period  are  wittily  Surrealistic. 

In  1935  Trevelyan  established  himself  at  Dur- 
ham Wharf  on  the  Thames  at  Hammersmith, 
where  he  was  to  live  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  Here, 
in  the  mid- 1930s,  he  made  his  first  distinctively 
original  works.  Painted  and  scratched  on  wood 
and  slate,  these  spiky  linear  images  of  whimsical 
buildings  and  transparent  cities  reflect  an  aware- 
ness of  Paul  Klec  and  Joan  Miro,  but  their  quirky 
invention  is  entirely  personal,  as  is  their  dream- 
like juxtaposition  of  image  and  sign.  Paintings 
and  etchings  in  this  style  were  selected  for  the 
1936  International  Surrealist  Exhibition  at  the 
New  Burlington  Galleries,  London,  and  Tre- 
velyan continued  afterwards  to  take  part  in 
English  Surrealist  manifestations  and  exhibi- 
tions. His  first  one-man  show  was  held  at  the 
Lefevre  Galleries  in  1935.  In  1937-8  he  partici- 
pated in  Mass  Observation,  run  by  Tom  •Harris- 
son,  as  a  photographer,  artist,  and  observer  in 
Bolton  and  Blackpool,  making  plein-air  collage 
landscapes  of  newspaper  scraps,  ephemera,  and 
coloured  paper,  in  which  the  fragments  of  the 
printed  word  relate  ironically  to  the  topographies 
depicted.  In  late  1938,  inspired  by  the  expressive 
authenticity  of  'unprofessional  painting',  and 
excited  by  the  infernal  landscapes  of  the  Pot- 
teries, he  adopted  a  deliberately  gauche  painterly 
manner  and  a  vehement  colourism.  This  expres- 
sionist style  matched  his  response  to  the  vitality 
and  violence  of  industrialism,  and  later  to  the 
fevered  atmosphere  of  London  during  the  blitz 
of  1940,  the  year  in  which  he  joined  the  Royal 
Engineers  as  a  camouflage  officer. 

In  1943  Trevelyan  was  invalided  out  of  the 
army  on  psychiatric  grounds.  His  painting  in  the 
1940s  became  more  impressionistic  and  atmos- 
pheric, the  handling  lighter  and  less  emphatically 
primitivist,  his  colours  brighter  and  fresher.  The 
best  paintings  of  this  period,  the  townscapes, 
riverscapes,  and  interiors  of  the  late  1940s,  have 
a  newly  sophisticated  looseness  of  touch,  a  tonal 
subtlety  and  compositional  sureness  influenced 
by  French  painting,  especially  by  Pierre  Bon- 
nard.  During  the  1950s  he  moved  towards  linear 
depiction  and  decorative  colour,  a  simplification 
related  to  a  renewed  commitment  to  etching, 
which  he  taught  at  Chelsea  School  of  Art  from 
1950  to  i960,  and  at  the  Royal  College  of  Art 
from  1955  to  1963.  This  developed  into  the 
distinctive  schematic  stylization  of  his  late  man- 


ner, in  which  sharply  delineated  flat  planes  of 
colour  are  deployed  across  the  canvas  in  jigsaw- 
like patterns  to  effect  evocative  distillations  of 
mood  and  locale.  Unpretentious  and  charming, 
this  later  work  avoids  false  naivety  by  disciplined 
design  and  a  persistent  visual  wit.  As  a  painter 
Trevelyan  was  modest  in  ambition  and  achieve- 
ment, but  his  work  was  distinguished  always  by 
an  authentic  innocence  of  eye,  and  a  spirit  by 
turns  passionate,  ironic,  and  humorous.  A  bril- 
liantly inventive  etcher,  his  linear  technique  and 
imaginative  texturing,  often  using  found  materi- 
als and  objects,  established  him  as  one  of  the 
finest  printmakers  of  his  generation.  He  was  a 
much  loved  and  influential  teacher. 

Trevelyan  was  a  tall,  long-faced,  and  hand- 
some man,  whose  sweetness  of  manner  disguised 
a  mercurial  temperament.  From  a  distinguished 
family  he  inherited  a  wide  culture  and  a  love  of 
friendship;  parties  at  Durham  Wharf,  especially 
on  the  day  of  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  boat 
race,  were  famous.  He  travelled  widely  through- 
out his  life,  constantly  recording  his  impressions 
in  paint,  but  remained  profoundly  attached  to  his 
studio  home  by  the  Thames.  In  1963  he  suffered 
an  unidentified  viral  infection  of  the  brain,  which 
badly  affected  his  speech;  with  regret  he  had  to 
give  up  teaching,  driving,  and  playing  the  oboe. 
He  soon  returned  to  etching,  and  later  to  paint- 
ing. He  was  made  a  senior  fellow  of  the  Royal 
College  of  Art  and  an  honorary  senior  royal 
academician  (both  1986).  He  had  a  mini-retro- 
spective exhibition  at  the  New  Grafton  Gallery 
in  1977  and  his  work  is  represented  in  the  Tate 
Gallery  and  in  many  public  collections. 

In  1934  Trevelyan  married  Ursula  Frances 
Elinor,  potter,  the  daughter  of  Bernard  Richard 
Meirion  *Darwin,  golfing  journalist.  Their  son, 
Philip  Erasmus,  was  born  in  1943.  This  marriage 
ended  in  divorce  in  1949,  and  in  195 1  he  married 
(Adye)  Mary,  painter,  daughter  of  (Harry)  Vin- 
cent Fedden,  sugar  broker.  There  were  no  chil- 
dren of  the  second  marriage.  Trevelyan  died  in 
Hammersmith  12  July  1988. 

[Julian  Trevelyan,  Indigo  Days  (autobiography),  1957; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Mel  Gooding 

TRINDER,     Thomas     Edward     ('Tommy') 

(1909- 1 989),  comedian,  was  born  24  March  1909 
in  Streatham,  London,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of 
two  sons  and  one  daughter  of  Thomas  Henry 
Trinder,  tram  driver  and  baker,  and  his  wife, 
Jean  Mills.  Educated  at  Queensborough  Road 
School  and  St  Andrew's,  Holborn,  he  left  school 
early  to  work  as  an  errand  boy  at  Smithfield  meat 
market.  Giving  up  his  job  at  the  age  of  twelve  he 
toured  South  Africa  with  a  variety  company,  and 
then  in  the  following  year,  1922,  he  won  a  talent 
competition  at  Collins's  Music  Hall,  Islington, 
which  led  to  a  week's  engagement.  He  worked  in 


458 


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Turnbull 


a  touring  show,  Will  Murray's  Casey's  Court, 
using  the  name  Red  Nirt  (his  own  name  back- 
wards) and  played  the  halls  for  seventeen  years 
before  reaching  the  London  Palladium  in  1939  in 
Band  Waggon.  For  the  next  eleven  years  he 
played  there  regularly,  first  as  a  supporting  act  in 
Top  of  the  World  (1940),  with  Bud  'Flanagan  and 
Chesney  Allen,  and  Gangway  (1941),  with  Ben 
Lyon  and  Bebe  Daniels,  and  then  topping  the 
bill  in  Best  Bib  and  Tucker  (1942),  Happy  and 
Glorious  (1944-6),  which  with  938  performances 
became  the  longest  running  of  all  Palladium 
shows,  Here,  There  and  Everywhere  (1947),  and 
Starlight  Rendezvous  (1950). 

Trinder  had  a  long,  thin  face,  a  jutting  chin, 
and  a  wide  smile;  he  always  wore  a  trilby  hat, 
even  with  evening  dress.  Soon  after  he  arrived  at 
the  Palladium,  he  invested  £265  a  week  for  two 
weeks  to  advertise  his  chin  on  twenty-five  strate- 
gically sited  London  hoardings.  All  but  one  read 
4If  it's  laughter  you're  after,  Trinder's  the  name. 
You  lucky  people!'  The  odd  one  out,  opposite 
Aldgate  station,  was  printed  in  Hebrew.  With  his 
shovel-like  jaw,  ready  grin,  quick-fire  topical 
humour,  and  'You  lucky  people'  catch-phrase, 
Trinder  became  one  of  the  most  popular  of 
variety  entertainers. 

His  film  career  began  in  1939,  but  it  was  not 
until  his  fifth  film,  Sailors  Three  (1940),  with 
Claude  Hulbert  and  Michael  Wilding,  that  he 
made  a  mark.  Of  his  fifteen  films,  The  Foreman 
Went  to  France  (1941),  The  Bells  Go  Doom  (1943), 
and  Champagne  Charlie  (1944),  in  which  he 
played  Victorian  music-hall  star  George  Ley- 
bourne,  are  the  most  notable. 

In  1943  he  was  singled  out  in  the  House  of 
Commons  for  criticism  for  not  having  worked 
overseas  for  ENSA  (Entertainments  National 
Service  Association),  a  criticism  which  ignored 
the  fact  that  he  had  been  entertaining  troops  at 
home  since  the  outbreak  of  war.  He  later  became 
the  first  major  star  to  visit  Italy  and  in  1946  took 
the  last  ENSA  party  to  the  Far  East.  It  was 
Trinder  who  gave  ENSA  its  soubriquet  'Every 
Night  Something  Awful'.  Trinder  holds  a  record 
unlikely  to  be  beaten  of  playing  the  most  West 
End  theatres  in  a  single  night.  During  the 
London  blitz,  when  audiences  had  to  remain  in 
their  seats  during  air  raids  and  Trinder  was  at  the 
Palladium,  he  drove  round  the  West  End  and 
managed  to  play  a  ten-minute  spot  in  seventeen 
theatres  before  the  all-clear  sounded. 

Known  as  the  Mr  Woolworth  of  show  busi- 
ness, he  could  sometimes  be  earthy,  though 
never  crude,  and  he  hated  bad  language.  When 
he  arrived  at  Scapa  Flow  to  entertain  the  Royal 
Navy  he  found  the  padre  sitting  with  his  back  to 
the  stage  watching  the  audience  to  see  who 
laughed.  He  invariably  worked  alone  without  the 
aid  of  stooges,  props,  or  even  a  microphone,  and 
frequently  without  a  script,  relying  on  his  ready 


wit.  He  was  noted  for  his  ability  to  deal  with 
hecklers.  When  he  opened  his  act  at  the  Embassy 
Qub  with  his  usual  'Trinder's  the  name',  a 
morose  Orson  Welles,  having  that  day  been 
divorced  from  Rita  Hayworth,  growled  'Well, 
change  it',  to  which  Trinder  retorted  'Is  that  an 
offer  of  marriage?' 

In  1955  he  became  the  first  host  of  Sunday 
Night  at  the  London  Palladium,  one  of  the  most 
successful  television  variety  shows.  He  fell  out 
with  producer  Yal  Parnell  and  left  the  show;  his 
career,  although  he  rarely  stopped  working, 
became  a  series  of  one-night  stands,  overseas 
tours,  and  pantomimes  in  the  provinces.  A  firm 
favourite  of  the  royal  family,  he  appeared  before 
the  queen  mother  at  the  1980  Royal  Yariety 
Show,  in  what  must  have  been  the  oldest  chorus 
line,  when  thirteen  artists,  including  Arthur 
*Askey,  Stanley  *Holloway,  Richard  'Murdoch, 
Chesney  Allen,  and  Trinder,  with  a  combined 
age  of  891  years,  danced  and  sang  their  way- 
through  Flanagan  and  Allen's  'Strollin'. 

A  lifelong  supporter  of  Fulham  Football  Qub, 
Trinder  was  on  the  board  for  many  years, 
becoming  chairman  in  1955,  a  post  he  held  for 
twenty-one  years  despite  being  forced  to  apolo- 
gize publicly  for  cracking  jokes  at  his  players' 
expense.  He  was  appointed  CBE  in  1975  for  his 
services  to  charity  (he  was  thrice  chief  rat  of  the 
show  business  charity  the  Water  Rats). 

He  married  Gwyn  ('Toni'),  daughter  of  Major 
Gilbert  Arthur  Lancelyn  Green,  of  the  Royal 
Field  Artillery.  There  was  one  daughter  of  the 
marriage.  Trinder  died  10  July  1989  in  St  Peter's 
Hospital,  Chertsey. 

[John  Fisher,  Funny  Way  to  Be  a  Hero,  1973;  The 
Times,  11  July  1989;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  Richard  Fawkes 

TURNBULL,  Sir  Alexander  Cuthbert  (1925- 
1990),  obstetrician  and  gynaecologist,  was  bom 
in  Aberdeen  18  January  1925,  the  elder  son 
(there  were  no  daughters)  of  George  Harley 
Turnbull,  sales  manager,  and  his  wife,  Anne 
Whyte  Cuthbert.  He  was  educated  at  Robert 
Gordon's  College  in  Aberdeen,  Merchant  Tay- 
lors' School  in  Crosby,  and  Aberdeen  Grammar 
School,  where  he  was  modern  dux  in  1942.  He 
entered  the  University  of  Aberdeen  in  the  same 
year  to  read  medicine  and  graduated  MB,  Ch.B. 
in  1047.  He  then  did  his  national  service  in  the 
army,  spending  part  of  the  time  in  India.  His 
early  general  medical  and  specialist  training  took 
place  in  Aberdeen.  He  was  awarded  a  Medical 
Research  Council  scholarship  in  1951. 

Turnbull  had  by  then  come  under  the  influ- 
ence of  (Sir)  Dugald  *Baird,  who  made  him  his 
lecturer  at  Aberdeen  in  1955.  In  1957  he  became 
senior  lecturer  in  the  University  of  Dundee  and 
an  honorary  consultant  obstetrician  and  gynae- 
cologist to  the  Dundee  Teaching  Hospitals,  only 


459 


Turnbull 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


to  return  to  a  similar  position  in  the  University  of 
Aberdeen  in  1961.  In  1966  he  graduated  Ml) 
with  honours  from  the  same  university  and 
gained  the  Thursfield  award  for  the  best  thesis  of 
the  year. 

Turnbull  was  appointed  to  the  chair  of  obstet- 
rics and  gynaecology  in  the  Welsh  National 
School  of  Medicine  in  Cardiff  in  1966.  In  1973 
he  was  invited  to  become  Nuffield  professor  of 
obstetrics  and  gynaecology  in  the  University  of 
Oxford,  to  work  within  the  new  John  Radcliffe 
Maternity  Hospital.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
Oriel  College,  Oxford,  in  the  same  year. 

Early  in  his  career  he  developed  a  scientific 
and  clinical  interest  in  the  physiology  and  patho- 
logy of  labour.  During  his  time  as  senior  lecturer 
in  Aberdeen,  he  formed  a  highly  productive 
professional  association  with  Anne  Anderson, 
which  lasted  until  her  death  in  1983.  In  this 
synergistic  scientific  collaboration,  it  was  fre- 
quently she  who  translated  his  exciting  and  novel 
ideas  into  successful  projects.  Basic  observations 
on  the  mechanisms  of  labour  were  matched 
by  important  clinical  studies  on  'premature' 
(pre-term)  labour,  and  safer  pharmacological 
interventions  to  induce  and  stimulate  labour. 
Turnbull  developed  an  infusion  pump  designed 
to  give  sufficient  oxytocin  to  cause  the  uterus  to 
contract.  The  decade  of  the  1970s  had  been 
associated  with  an  increasingly  uncritical  trend 
towards  induction  and  acceleration  of  labour  by 
uterine  stimulants  and  Turnbull  participated  in 
an  interview  for  the  BBC  television  programme 
Horizon  on  the  induction  of  labour.  He  was 
portrayed  as  an  arch-interventionist — a  gross 
misrepresentation  of  his  caring  and  conservative 
nature.  Deeply  hurt  by  this,  and  using  data 
collected  at  his  instigation  in  Cardiff  between 
1964  and  1973,  he  undertook  a  critical  review  of 
his  research  and  clinical  approach,  deciding  that 
the  scientific  evidence  indeed  showed  no  real 
benefit  to  women  or  babies  from  induction.  In 
the  years  that  followed,  an  increasing  amount  of 
research  from  his  team  reinforced  this  con- 
servative view.  From  1973  to  1984  Turnbull 
played  a  major  role  in  the  influential  triennial 
confidential  enquiry  into  maternal  mortality.  He 
was  a  prolific  author  of  original  scientific  papers 
and  books. 

Turnbull  influenced  a  generation  of  young 
doctors  and  scientists,  many  of  whom  later  held 
eminent  positions  at  home  and  abroad;  they  felt 
great  esteem  and  affection  for  him.  He  travelled 
widely  and  had  friends  in  every  part  of  the  world. 
He  became  a  member  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Obstetricians  and  Gynaecologists  in  1954,  a  fel- 
low in  1966,  and  was  vice-president  from  1983  to 
1986.  In  1 98 1  he  was  awarded  the  Semmelweiss 
medal  of  the  Hungarian  Society  for  Gynaeco- 
logy. In  1990,  not  long  before  his  untimely  death, 
he  received  the  Sir  Eardley  Holland  medal  of 


the  RCOG  and  the  rarely  conferred  honorary 
fellowship,  in  recognition  of  his  outstanding 
lifelong  contribution  to  obstetrics  and  gynaeco- 
logy. Turnbull  was  appointed  CBE  in  1982  and 
knighted  in  1988.  He  was  awarded  an  honorary 
D.Sc.  of  the  University  of  Leicester  in  1989. 

Turnbull  was  strikingly  handsome,  with  his 
aquiline  nose,  warm  but  penetrating  blue  eyes, 
and,  in  his  later  years,  a  profusion  of  white  hair. 
His  athletic  build  was  rounded  by  middle  age 
before  being  ravaged  by  his  illness.  Despite  his 
talents  and  achievements,  he  had  an  underlying 
feeling  of  insecurity  and  always  needed  to  drive 
himself  a  bit  harder.  As  a  result  of  not  wanting  to 
hurt  anybody,  he  found  it  difficult  to  say  'no'. 
His  innate  drive  helped  greatly  in  his  courageous 
ten-year  fight  with  cancer.  In  1953  he  married 
Elizabeth  Paterson  Nicol  ('Elsie'),  daughter  of 
Alexander  Bell,  farmer.  Herself  a  doctor,  she 
collaborated  in  his  early  research  work.  They  had 
one  daughter  (a  doctor)  and  one  son.  Turnbull 
died  18  August  1990  in  Oxford  from  the  late 
consequences  of  oesophageal  cancer. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

Gordon  Stirrat 

TURNER,  Dame  Eva  (1892-1990),  soprano,  was 
born  10  March  1892  in  Oldham,  Lancashire,  the 
elder  child  and  only  daughter  of  Charles  Turner, 
chief  engineer  of  a  cotton  mill,  and  his  wife, 
Elizabeth  Park.  She  was  educated  at  Werneth 
Council  School  until  she  was  ten,  when  her 
father  moved  to  Bristol  to  take  up  an  appoint- 
ment as  manager  of  another  mill  in  the  south- 
west of  England.  There  she  heard  her  first  opera, 
performed  by  the  Royal  Carl  Rosa  Opera  Com- 
pany, and  so  struck  was  she  by  this  that  she  was 
determined  to  become  a  singer  herself.  Her 
parents  were  musical  and  gave  her  every 
encouragement,  sending  her  for  lessons  to  Daniel 
Rootham,  who  taught  (Dame)  Clara  *Butt.  Her 
studies  were  continued  at  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Music  in  London  from  191 1  to  191 5,  during 
which  time  she  was  briefly  betrothed.  In  1915  she 
joined  the  chorus  of  the  Royal  Carl  Rosa  Opera 
Company  and  entered  her  new  life  with  enthu- 
siasm and  with  the  serious  determination  and 
commitment  that  were  to  characterize  her  life. 
When  not  singing  in  the  chorus,  she  never  lost  an 
opportunity  to  observe  other  performers  from 
the  wings,  studying  the  action  and  learning  the 
soprano  repertory.  Anxious  for  progress,  she 
badgered  the  management  to  find  her  roles  and 
she  soon  made  her  solo  debut  as  the  page  in 
Tannhduser. 

But  she  was  still  not  satisfied  and  on  the  advice 
of  the  company's  principal  tenor  she  began  to 
work  with  an  Australian  singer,  Richard  Broad, 
who  had  recently  joined  the  management  of  the 
Carl  Rosa.  He  had  sung  as  a  bass  under  Hans 
Richter  at  Covent  Garden  but  it  was  as  an 


460 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Turner 


authority  on  voice  production  that  he  was  better 
known.  This  proved  to  be  a  most  successful 
relationship  and  Broad  continued  as  her  coach, 
adviser,  and  friend  until  his  death  some  twenty- 
five  years  later. 

The  small  parts  became  larger  and  by  1920 
she  was  assuming  dramatic  roles  as  her  voice 
increased  in  power  and  weight.  In  that  year  the 
company  gave  a  four-week  season  at  Covent 
Garden,  in  which  Eva  Turner  sang  Santuzza 
(Cavalleria  Rusttcana),  Musetta  (La  Boheme), 
Leonora  (//  Trovatore),  Butterfly  {Madame  But- 
terfly), Antonia  ( The  Tales  of  Hoffmann),  and 
Venus  (Tannhduser).  The  Times  critic  described 
her  Leonora  as  promising.  Another  Covent  Gar- 
den season  followed  a  provincial  tour  in  192 1. 
Tosca  and  Lohengrin  were  two  operas  added  to 
her  repertory  that  year.  In  1922  she  appeared  as 
Eva  in  The  Mastersingers  with  the  Carl  Rosa  at 
Covent  Garden  and  won  a  favourable  review 
from  The  Times. 

In  1924  the  Carl  Rosa  was  at  the  Scala 
Theatre,  London,  for  a  four  weeks'  season, 
which  was  to  be  a  turning-point  in  her  career. 
Amongst  other  roles  she  sang  Butterfly  on  3 
June,  a  performance  with  which  The  Times  did 
not  find  entire  favour  but  which  so  impressed 
Ettore  Panizza,  Arturo  Toscanini's  assistant  at 
La  Scala,  Milan,  that  he  asked  her  to  sing  to  the 
maestro.  She  auditioned  successfully  and  was 
offered  Freia  and  Sieglinde  in  the  1924-5  Scala 
season.  Her  characteristic  loyalty  persuaded  her 
to  tell  the  Scala  that  she  was  not  free  to  accept 
because  of  her  Carl  Rosa  contract.  However,  she 
was  released  from  that  and  she  spent  the  inter- 
vening period  learning  Italian  and  her  roles  in 
that  language  in  preparation  for  her  debut,  as 
Freia  in  Das  Rheingold,  conducted  by  Vittorio 
Gui. 

Thus  began  the  most  important  part  of  her 
career  and  a  love  affair  with  Italy,  one  of  the 
outcomes  of  which  was  the  Italianate  colouring, 
with  strongly  enunciated  consonants,  that  she 
applied  to  her  speaking  voice.  She  was  then  to 
sing  in  many  Italian  cities,  including  Brescia, 
where  she  first  sang  Turandot  with  conspicuous 
success.  This  became  the  role  with  which  she  was 
most  identified,  although  from  all  accounts  her 
portrayal  of  Aida  was  equally  outstanding.  She 
built  and  settled  in  a  villa  on  Lake  Lugano. 

By  now  Eva  Turner's  international  career  was 
developing  rapidly,  with  appearances  in  Europe 
and  in  North  and  South  America.  She  returned 
to  Covent  Garden  in  1928  in  a  season  managed 
by  the  Covent  Garden  Syndicate  and  scored  a 
major  triumph  with  the  press  and  public  with 
Turandot.  Nobody  was  prepared  for  such  a 
magnificent  performance.  Nothing  could  then 
hold  her  back  and  with  her  glorious  voice  she 
took  a  leading  place  in  the  seasons  at  Covent 
Garden  and  abroad  until  the  outbreak  of  war  in 


1939.  Small  of  stature,  Eva  Turner  had  a  vocal 
command  which  was  astonishing,  with  a  voice  of 
extraordinary  sumptuousness  and  steadiness  that 
could  project  through  the  loudest  orchestral 
sound  without  any  loss  of  quality.  She  sur- 
mounted all  the  technical  challenges  of  the  Ger- 
man and  Italian  repertoire  and  left  her  audiences 
spellbound.  Turner's  colossal  success  did  much 
to  encourage  British  opera  singers,  who  at  that 
time  were  probably  more  noted  for  dependability 
than  brilliance  and  rarely  given  chances  to  prove 
anything  else.  An  English  name  was  a  handicap 
and  Eva  Turner  was  urged  to  change  hers.  Proud 
of  her  Lancastrian  roots,  she  refused. 

Undoubtedly  the  war  deprived  her  of  the  final 
climax  to  her  career,  including  the  conquering  of 
audiences  at  the  Metropolitan  in  New  York. 
After  a  performance  of  Turandot  in  Brescia  in 
1940  she  returned  to  England,  where  she  spent 
the  war  singing  in  concerts  for  the  armed  forces 
and  the  radio,  and  in  the  Proms.  A  staunch 
patriot,  this  was  what  she  believed  she  needed  to 
do  and  she  declined  invitations  to  work  in 
America. 

In  the  1947  and  the  1948-9  seasons  at  Covent 
Garden  she  joined  the  newly  formed  company 
for  Turandot,  in  which  once  again  she  astonished 
and  thrilled  the  public  and  press.  Then,  in  1949, 
she  accepted  an  invitation  to  teach  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oklahoma  for  one  year  and  stayed  for 
ten.  After  that  she  returned  to  London  to  teach 
at  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music.  Teaching  occu- 
pied her  for  several  more  years  and  she  passed  on 
to  man)-  singers,  established  and  young  alike,  her 
wealth  of  experience,  with  her  inimitable  gen- 
erosity but  also  with  a  ferocious  expectation  of 
hard  work  and  high  standards  in  return.  For  her 
it  was  serious  work  which  produced  the  results, 
however  talented  the  individual.  President  of  the 
Wagner  Society  from  1971  to  1985,  she  was 
appointed  DBE  in  1962.  She  was  FRAM  (1928), 
FRCM  (1974),  an  honorary  citizen  of  the  state  of 
Oklahoma  (1982),  and  a  first  freeman  of  Oldham 
(1982).  She  was  awarded  an  honorary  D.Mus. 
from  Manchester  (1979)  and  Oxford  (1984)  and 
became  an  honorary  fellow  of  St  Hilda's  College, 
Oxford  (1984). 

Well  into  her  nineties  and  still  immaculately 
groomed  and  handsome,  she  maintained  her 
enthusiasm  and  capacity  for  work,  serving  on 
committees  and  lecturing  endlessly  to  music 
clubs  and  societies.  She  was  constantly  to  be  seen 
at  opera  performances  and  concerts,  travelling 
and  coaching  with  an  eagerness  and  display  of 
energy  that  left  many  breathless.  She  never 
married,  probably  because  she  believed  she  could 
not  find  the  time  for  the  kind  of  relationship  that 
marriage  demanded.  She  led  an  intensely  busy- 
life,  ably  assisted  by  Ann  Ridyard,  her  com- 
panion and  secretary  for  thirty-five  years,  whose 


461 


Turner 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


descent  into  senile  dementia  caused  Eva  Turn- 
er's last  years  to  be  burdensome.  Eva  Turner 
died  16  June  1990  in  the  Devonshire  Hospital, 
Marylebone,  London. 

[Record  Collector,  vol.  II,  no.  2,  Feb. /March  1957; 
John  Steane,  The  Grand  Tradition,  1974;  Royal  Opera 
House  programme  note  by  Harold  Rosenthal  for  con- 
cert celebrating  Eva  Turner's  ninetieth  birthday,  14 
March  1982;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Tooley 

TUTIN,  Thomas  Gaskell  (1008- 1987),  botan- 
ist, was  born  21  April  1908  in  Kew,  Surrey,  the 
only  son  and  elder  child  of  Frank  Tutin,  bio- 
chemist, and  his  wife,  Jane  Ardern.  He  was 
educated  at  Cotham  Grammar  School,  Bristol, 
and  Downing  College,  Cambridge,  where  he 
gained  a  third  class  in  part  i  (1929)  and  a  second 
in  part  ii  (1930)  of  the  natural  sciences  tripos. 
As  an  undergraduate  he  was  much  involved  with 
the  Cambridge  Natural  History  Society  and, 
amongst  many  other  activities,  he  participated  in 
a  botanical  expedition  to  the  Azores  in  1929. 
After  graduation,  Tutin  continued  in  Cambridge 
working  on  fossil  plants  from  Greenland.  He 
went  on  biological  expeditions  to  southern  Spain 
and  Spanish  Morocco  (1931),  British  Guiana 
(1933),  and  Lake  Titicaca  (Peru /Bolivia,  1937), 
the  last  of  these  resulting  in  his  important 
publication  on  the  development  and  stability  of 
lake  plant  communities  ('The  Hydrosere  and 
Current  Concepts  of  the  Climax',  Journal  of 
Ecology,  vol.  xxix,  1941). 

On  his  return  from  Peru,  in  1938,  Tutin  held 
a  part-time  post  as  a  demonstrator  at  King's 
College,  London,  before,  in  1939,  accepting  an 
assistant  lectureship  in  the  University  of  Man- 
chester. There,  in  addition  to  teaching  and  noc- 
turnal fire-watching  duties  during  World  War  II, 
he  further  developed  his  interests  in  lake  algae 
begun  during  the  Titicaca  expedition.  This  led  to 
frequent  visits  to  the  research  station  at  Wray 
Castle  on  Lake  Windermere,  where  he  met  his 
future  wife.  In  1942  Tutin  joined  the  geo- 
graphical section  of  the  Admiralty's  naval  in- 
telligence division  in  Cambridge,  which  was 
producing  a  new  series  of  geographical  hand- 
books for  wartime  use.  In  1944  he  was  appointed 
lecturer  in  charge  of  the  department  of  botany  at 
Leicester  University  College,  becoming  the  first 
professor  of  botany  when  university  status  was 
granted  by  royal  charter  in  1947.  For  the  next 


twenty  years  he  carried  out  the  manifold  duties 
of  his  post,  conceived  and  developed  the  uni- 
versity botanic  garden,  and  built  up  one  of  the 
more  important  university  herbaria  of  flowering 
plants  in  the  kingdom.  In  1967  Tutin  became  the 
first  occupant  of  the  new  chair  of  plant  taxonomy 
in  Leicester,  from  which  he  retired  in  1973  to  be 
awarded  the  titles  of  professor  emeritus  and 
university  research  fellow. 

Shortly  after  World  War  II  Tutin  took  after- 
noon tea  with  (Sir)  Arthur  G.  *Tansley,  the 
doyen  of  British  ecology,  who  suggested  that  a 
modern  account  of  the  flowering  plants  and  ferns 
of  Britain  was  urgently  needed.  With  character- 
istic verve,  Tutin,  together  with  A.  R.  *Clapham 
and  E.  F.  *  Warburg,  wrote  Flora  of  the  British 
Isles  (1952,  3rd  edn.  1987).  At  the  eighth  Inter- 
national Botanical  Congress  in  Paris  (1954),  par- 
ticipants drew  attention  to  the  need  for  an  overall 
treatment  of  the  plants  of  Europe.  Tutin,  again, 
gathered  together  a  group  of  friends  who  galva- 
nized the  European  botanical  community  into 
producing  the  first  comprehensive  account  of  the 
higher  plants  of  Europe.  Flora  Europaea  was 
published  in  five  volumes  between  1964  and 
1980. 

Tutin  wrote  over  sixty  scientific  papers  and 
took  a  leading  part  in  writing  thirteen  books  on 
the  plants  of  Britain  and  the  rest  of  Europe.  In 
1977  he  was  awarded  the  gold  medal  by  the 
Linnean  Society  of  London,  whilst  in  1982  he 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  for  his 
considerable  contributions  to  the  furtherance  of 
plant  taxonomy.  The  University  of  Dublin 
awarded  him  an  honorary  Sc.D.  in  1979. 

Tutin  was  of  medium  height,  with  a  robust 
frame  and  a  mop  of  grey-white  hair.  He  enjoyed 
working  in  his  garden,  his  glass  of  beer,  Mozart, 
and,  occasionally,  playing  his  flute;  always,  how- 
ever, there  was  his  intellectual  backbone  of  steel. 
In  1942  he  married  a  palaeoecologist,  Winifred 
Anne,  daughter  of  Albert  Roger  Pennington, 
Post  Office  supervisor;  they  had  a  son  and  three 
daughters.  She  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1979.  Tutin  died  in  Leicester  7 
October  1987. 

[A.  R.  Clapham  in  H.  E.  Street,  Essays  in  Plant 
Taxonomy,  1978,  pp.  xi-xviii;  A.  D.  Bradshaw  in 
Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society, 
vol.  xxxviii,  1992;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] D.  M.  Moore 


462 


u 


URQUHART,  Robert  Elliott  (1901-1988), 
major-general,  was  born  in  Shepperton  on 
Thames  28  November  1901,  the  eldest  in  the 
family  of  three  sons  and  one  daughter  of  Alex- 
ander Urquhart,  MD,  physician,  and  his  wife, 
Isabel  Gillespie.  After  attending  St  Paul's  School 
and  the  Royal  Military  College,  Sandhurst,  he 
was  commissioned  as  a  second  lieutenant  in  the 
Highland  Light  Infantry  in  1920.  Two  years  at 
the  Staff  College,  Camberley  (1936-7),  were 
followed  by  staff  appointments  in  India — staff 
captain  (1938),  deputy  adjutant  and  quarter- 
master-general at  army  headquarters  (1939-40), 
and  deputy  assistant  adjutant-general  and 
AA&QMG  (3rd  division,  1 940-1),  until  he  was 
given  command  of  the  2nd  battalion  of  the  Duke 
of  Cornwall's  Light  Infantry  in  1941.  In  1942  he 
became  general  staff  officer  grade  1  of  the  51st 
Highland  division  and  went  through  the  cam- 
paign in  North  Africa  which  destroyed  the  Afrika 
Korps.  He  was  given  command  of  231st  brigade 
in  Malta  in  1943,  and  its  distinguished  perform- 
ance in  Sicilv  and  Italv  brought  him  appointment 
to  the  DSO! 

He  was  then  brigadier  general  staff  of  XII 
Corps  and  was  chosen  in  1944  for  command  of 
the  1st  Airborne  division.  He  led  it  in  Operation 
Market  Garden,  which  was  designed  to  cross 
three  main  river  obstacles  in  Holland  in  Sep- 
tember 1944  and  to  join  up  with  XXX  Corps 
arriving  from  the  south,  to  swing  through  into 
the  German  industrial  heartland.  Since  Urquhart 
was  over  six  feet  tall,  of  robust  build,  and 
possibly  at  forty-two  rather  too  old  for  parachut- 
ing, he  moved  into  battle  by  glider.  He  faced 
immediate  difficulties.  British  troops  arrived  in  a 
piecemeal  fashion  over  three  days  and  had  to 
move  five  miles  to  their  allotted  positions  around 
Arnhem.  Their  route  was  blocked  by  German 
armour  reorganizing  after  Normandy,  and,  to 
compound  the  difficulties,  the  Germans  captured 
the  plans  of  the  entire  operation  on  the  body 
of  an  American  soldier  shot  down  in  a  glider. 
Communications  were  rarely  satisfactory  and  the 
weather  was  atrocious,  making  air  support  and 
replenishment  difficult.  The  worst  stroke  of  ill 
luck  was  Urquhart's  enforced  absence  (he  was 
obliged  to  take  refuge  in  the  attic  of  a  house 
surrounded  by  German  troops)  from  his  head- 
quarters for  thirty-six  hours  soon  after  his  arri- 


val, when  decisive  command  was  imperative  and 
was  lacking.  Urquhart  made  mistakes:  the  high 
ground  at  Wester  Bouwing,  for  example,  dom- 
inating the  divisional  bridgehead,  and  the  heavy 
ferry  at  Heveadorp  were  never  secured,  but  he 
fought  a  great  battle.  The  high  morale  of  the 
troops  under  his  command  reflected  his  own,  but 
the  battle  of  Arnhem  was  a  defeat  for  the  British 
and  the  advance  of  XXX  Corps  was  delayed.  The 
remnants  of  Urquhart's  division,  withdrawn  on 
25  September  1944  across  the  Lower  Rhine, 
numbered  some  2,600  men  of  the  10,000  he  had 
brought  in. 

Urquhart,  appointed  CB  after  Arnhem  (1044), 
was  next  used  to  command  an  ad  hoc  airborne 
force,  styled  1st  Airborne  division,  which  was 
sent  to  Norway  to  rescue  King  Haakon,  but  his 
division  was  never  reconstituted  and  was  dis- 
banded in  November  1045.  He  became  a  colonel 
in  1945  and  major-general  in  1946.  He  was 
awarded  the  Netherlands  Bronze  Lion  (1944) 
and  Norwegian  Order  of  St  Olaf  (1945). 

Urquhart's  career  thereafter  puzzled  and  dis- 
appointed many  who  knew  his  qualities.  For 
fourteen  months  while  the  Territorial  Army  was 
being  reorganized  he  was  its  director-general 
(1945-6).  He  was  general  officer  commanding 
1 6th  Airborne  division,  Territorial  Army  (1947- 
8),  and  commander,  Lowland  District  (1948-50). 
In  1950  he  was  given  command  of  17th  Gurkha 
division  in  Malaya  and  in  the  same  year  became 
general  officer  commanding  Malaya.  He  moved 
to  Austria  in  1952  for  three  years  as  GOC-in-C 
British  troops,  in  an  agreeable  if  uninspiring 
assignment,  which  was  his  last  in  the  service. 
From  1954  he  was  colonel  of  his  regiment,  the 
Highland  Light  Infantry,  but  when  the  Army 
Council  decreed  its  amalgamation  with 
the  Royal  Scots  Fusiliers  in  1957  he  became 
embroiled  in  a  disagreement,  which  concerned 
style,  title,  and  above  all  dress.  Would  the  new 
regiment  be  in  kilt  or  trews?  The  two  colonels 
negotiated  an  agreement,  with  the  lord  lyon's 
support,  that  the  kilt  should  be  worn  with  the 
tartan  dress  Erskine.  The  War  Office  insisted  on 
trews  and  both  colonels  had  to  go  (1958). 

After  Urquhart's  retirement  from  the  army  in 
December  1955  he  lived  for  some  years  at 
Drymen  in  Stirlingshire  and  thereafter  at  Big- 
ram,  Port  of  Menteith,  nearby.  In  1957  he  joined 


463 


Urquhart 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  Davy  &  United  Engineering  Co.,  where  his 
sound  judgement  and  administrative  experience 
found  useful  scope,  first  as  personnel  manager 
and  then  as  director,  in  an  industrial  environ- 
ment whose  technical  aspects  were  not  perhaps 
among  his  deepest  interests.  He  moved  into 
complete  retirement  in  1970. 

In  1939  Urquhart,  always  known  as  'Roy', 
married  Pamela,  daughter  of  Brigadier  William 
Edmund  Hunt  Condon,  of  the  Indian  Army. 
They  had  one  son  and  three  daughters.  Urquhart 
died  13  December  1988  at  his  home  in  Port  of 
Menteith. 

[R.  E.  Urquhart,  Arnhem,  1958;  Sir  John  Hackett, 
/  Was  a  Stranger,  1977;  private  information;  personal 
knowledge.]  John  Hackett 

UTLEY,  Thomas  Edwin  ('Peter')  (1921-1988), 
political  philosopher  and  journalist,  was  born  1 
February  1921  in  Hawarden,  Flint,  the  second  of 
five  children  (two  sons,  two  daughters,  and  one 
deceased  in  infancy)  of  Thomas  Cooper,  chemist, 
of  West  Derby,  Liverpool,  and  his  wife,  Emily 
Utley.  In  193 1  he  was  adopted  by  his  maternal 
aunt,  Anne  Utley,  by  whose  surname  he  was 
thenceforward  known.  He  was  born  blind  in  one 
eye  owing  to  infantile  glaucoma  and  lost  the  sight 
of  the  other  eye  at  the  age  of  nine,  but,  with  the 
help  of  a  series  of  amanuenses,  courageous  deter- 
mination, and  a  prodigious  memory,  offset  this 
handicap  almost  completely  in  adult  life.  Edu- 
cated privately,  Utley  took  first-class  honours  in 
both  parts  i  (1941)  and  ii  (1942)  of  the  history 
tripos  at  Corpus  Christi  College,  Cambridge. 

Utley  joined  the  Royal  Institute  of  Inter- 
national Affairs  (Chatham  House)  in  1942,  as 
secretary  to  the  Anglo-French  relations  postwar 
reconstruction  group,  and  worked  there  until 
1944,  when  he  became  a  temporary  foreign 
leader  writer  for  one  year.  From  1945  to  1947  he 
was  foreign  leader  writer  at  the  Sunday  Times. 
He  spent  a  year  at  the  Observer  in  1947-8,  and 
then  rejoined  The  Times  as  a  leader  writer.  He 
stayed  there  for  six  years,  becoming  associate 
editor  of  the  Spectator  in  1954-5.  I"  J955  ne 
began  life  as  a  freelance  journalist  and  broad- 
caster, until  in  1964  he  joined  the  Daily  Tele- 
graph as  a  leader  writer.  He  was  that  newspaper's 
chief  assistant  editor  in  1986-7.  From  1987  till 
his  death  a  year  later  he  was  obituaries  editor  and 
a  columnist  at  The  Times. 

His  frequently  signed  articles  on  political  sub- 
jects gained  for  him  a  widespread  reputation  as  a 
political  philosopher,  and  during  his  later  years 
he  was  regarded  as  its  most  articulate  and  reflec- 
tive exponent  by  that  wing  of  the  Conservative 
party  which  designated  itself  distinctively  as  high 
Tory.  The  party  in  general  during  the  last 
twenty  years  of  his  life  was  influenced  more  than 
it  might   have   cared   to  admit  by   the   views 


expressed  in  Utley's  leading  and  other  articles  in 
the  Daily  Telegraph. 

Never  inclined  to  inhabit  an  ivory  tower, 
Utley  served  as  chairman  of  the  Paddington 
Conservative  Association  in  1977-9  (president, 
1979-80)  and  as  consultant  director  (1980-8)  of 
the  research  department  of  Conservative  Central 
Office;  but  his  only  venture  into  practical  poli- 
tics, when  he  contested  Antrim  North  at  the 
general  election  of  February  1974  against  the 
sitting  Democratic  Unionist  member,  Ian  Pais- 
ley, proved  abortive.  Northern  Ireland  was  one 
of  the  many  subjects  to  which  he  brought  his 
ability  to  provide  policy  with  a  well-developed 
structure  of  logically  sustainable  argument;  but 
this  quality  was  most  practically  effective  during 
the  premiership  (1979-90)  of  Margaret  (later 
Baroness)  Thatcher,  who  held  him  in  high 
regard.  In  some  degree  he  paved  the  way  intel- 
lectually for  the  changes  in  the  direction 
of  Conservative  policy  which  she  initiated  and 
implemented.  He  also  had  an  unswerving  reli- 
gious belief,  and  regretted  changes  to  the  Church 
of  England  which  would  damage  its  careful 
compromises. 

A  collection  of  Utley's  signed  publications 
appeared  after  his  death  under  the  title  A  Tory 
Seer  (ed.  Charles  Moore  and  Simon  Heffer, 
1989).  His  own  books  included  Modern  Political 
Thought  (1952),  Not  Guilty:  the  Conservative 
Reply  (1957),  Occasion  for  Ombudsman  (1961), 
Your  Money  and  Your  Life  (1964),  Enoch  Powell: 
the  Man  and  his  Thinking  (1968),  and  Lessons  of 
Ulster  (197 5).  His  influence  was  magnified  by  the 
spellbinding  effect  which  his  fluent  and  incis- 
ive discourse  produced,  especially  upon  young 
hearers.  It  was  not  without  significance  that  the 
group  of  younger  officials  who  sat  at  his  feet 
at  the  Conservative  research  department  became 
known  as  the  'Utley  play  school'. 

Utley  was  of  striking,  if  frail,  appearance;  and 
those  introduced  to  him  sensed  no  disposition  on 
his  part  to  conceal  the  severity  of  the  disability 
under  which  he  laboured.  He  wore  a  black  patch 
over  his  right  eye.  An  inveterate  smoker,  unable 
to  see  where  he  flicked  his  ash,  he  caused  Mrs 
Thatcher  to  bob  up  and  down  from  her  chair  to 
move  the  ashtray  in  order  to  preserve  the  car- 
pets. 

He  married  in  1951  Brigid  Viola  Mary, 
younger  daughter  of  Dermot  Michael  Macgregor 
*Morrah,  journalist,  historian,  and  Arundel  her- 
ald extraordinary.  There  were  two  sons  and  two 
daughters  of  the  marriage.  Utley  was  overtaken 
by  a  cancer-induced  stroke  while  working  at  his 
home,  and  died  the  following  evening  at  the 
Cromwell  Hospital,  London  SW7,  21  June 
1988. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  Enoch  Powell 


464 


V 


VAN  DAMM,  Sheila  (1922-1987),  car  rally 
driver  and  director  of  the  Windmill  theatre, 
London,  was  born  17  January  1922  in  Gloucester 
Terrace,  west  London,  the  youngest  of  three 
daughters  (there  were  no  sons)  of  Vivian  Van 
Damm  and  his  wife,  Natalie  Lyons.  Although 
her  father  had  sponsored  motor-cycle  speedway 
events  in  the  1920s,  before  inheriting  the  Wind- 
mill theatre  and  initiating  its  format  of  non-stop 
revues,  Sheila's  upbringing  in  an  all-girl  Jewish 
family  generated  no  interest  in  motoring  beyond 
her  training  as  a  Women's  Auxiliary  Air  Force 
driver.  She  subsequently  trained  privately  as  a 
pilot  and  joined  the  Royal  Air  Force  Volunteer 
Reserve  after  World  War  II. 

As  a  promotional  stunt  for  the  Windmill 
theatre,  Sheila  Van  Damm  was  persuaded  in 
November  1950  to  enter  her  first  motor  sporting 
event,  the  MCC-Dai/y  Express  Car  Rally,  driving 
a  factory-prepared  Sunbeam  Talbot,  which  her 
father  had  persuaded  the  Rootes  Group  to  enter 
carrying  the  words  'Windmill  Girl'  on  the  side 
of  the  car.  Navigated  by  her  sister  Nona,  she 
claimed  third  place  in  the  ladies'  section — a 
performance  which  so  impressed  the  Rootes 
team  manager  Norman  Garrard  that  he  invited 
her  to  join  Nancy  Mitchell  and  'Bill'  Wisdom  to 
form  an  all-women  crew  of  a  Hillman  Minx  in 
the  195 1  Monte  Carlo  Rally.  She  claimed  further 
success  in  the  1951  RAC  Rally,  when  she  won 
the  ladies'  prize  for  closed  cars  under  1,500  cc  at 
the  wheel  of  her  own  Hillman  Minx.  This  was 
the  only  occasion  on  which  she  competed  as  a 
private  entrant.  Subsequendy,  she  would  drive 
facton-  cars  entered  by  the  Rootes  Group. 

Her  first  major  success  was  in  the  1952  Motor 
Cycling  Club  Rally,  when  she  won  the  ladies' 
prize  in  a  Sunbeam  Talbot.  Despite  disappoint- 
ment in  the  1953  Monte  Carlo  Rally,  when  a 
series  of  punctures  forced  her  out  of  contention, 
she  soon  afterwards  entered  the  record  books, 
outpacing  her  more  illustrious  team-mate  Stir- 
ling Moss  to  set  a  class  record  for  2-3-litre  cars, 
driving  the  prototype  Sunbeam  Alpine  sports  car 
at  an  average  of  120.135  m.p.h.  at  Jabbeke  in 
Belgium. 

Described  in  a  contemporary  report  as  'a  fresh 
faced  woman,  possessed  of  an  infectious  sense  of 
fun',  Sheila  Van  Damm  had  an  ebullient  and 
outgoing  personality  which  masked  a  fearsomely 


competitive  and  determined  approach  to  her 
sport.  The  1953  Alpine  Rally,  one  of  Europe's 
toughest  events,  saw  her,  co-driven  by  Anne 
Hall,  not  only  win  the  Coupe  des  Dames,  but 
also  one  of  the  coveted  Coupes  des  Alpes,  for 
finishing  the  event  without  gaining  penalty 
marks  for  lateness. 

Van  Damm  competed  in  the  Great  American 
Mountain  Rally  before  claiming,  with  Anne  Hall, 
another  Coupe  des  Dames  in  the  1954  Tulip 
Rally  of  Holland,  a  performance  that  also  saw  her 
winning  outright  the  ten-lap  race  around  the 
Zandvoort  circuit.  Winning  a  further  ladies' 
award  in  the  1954  Viking  Rally  in  Norway 
successfully  clinched  the  Ladies'  European 
championship  for  Van  Damm  and  Hall,  a  feat 
that  they  were  set  to  repeat  again  in  1955,  after 
starting  the  season  in  fine  style  by  gaining  a 
Coupe  des  Dames  after  five  years  of  trying,  on 
the  Monte  Carlo  Rally. 

Despite  covering  over  14,000  miles  a  year  on 
rallies,  Sheila  Van  Damm  still  managed  to  com- 
bine motor  sport  with  helping  her  father  run  the 
Windmill  theatre.  However,  in  October  1955  she 
asked  Sir  William  (later  first  Baron)  *Rootes  to 
release  her  to  devote  her  efforts  more  fully  to  the 
theatre.  Her  final  rally  for  the  Rootes  team  was 
the  1956  Monte  Carlo,  in  which  she  overcame 
myriad  problems  to  finish,  but  without  award- 
winning  success.  She  was  also  invited  to  partner 
Le  Mans  driver  Peter  Harper  at  the  wheel  of  a 
Sunbeam  Rapier  in  the  1956  Mille  Miglia  road 
race.  Despite  the  severity  of  the  event,  she 
maintained  intact  her  record  of  finishing  even- 
event  which  she  started  in  her  five-year  career. 
Averaging  66.37  m.p.h.,  she  and  Harper  won 
their  class. 

Van  Damm  published  her  autobiography,  No 
Excuses,  in  1957.  In  1958  she  was  appointed  the 
first  honorary  colonel  of  the  Warwickshire  and 
Worcestershire  battalion  of  the  Women's  Royal 
Army  Corps  (Territorial  Army).  She  maintained 
her  contacts  with  the  motoring  world  as  presi- 
dent of  the  Doghouse  Club  for  motor-racing 
wives  and  ladies  and  later  as  president  of  the 
Sunbeam  Talbot  Owners'  Club.  Her  first  love, 
however,  remained  the  Windmill  theatre.  She 
continued  its  wartime  reputation  as  'the  theatre 
that  never  closed'  and  its  revue  format,  support- 
ing young  comedians  including  Peter  *Sellers, 


465 


Van  Damm 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Tony  *Hancock,  (Sir)  Harry  Secombe,  and 
Bruce  Forsyth.  She  inherited  the  Windmill  from 
her  father  on  his  death  in  i960  and  energetically 
presided  over  the  theatre  for  a  further  four 
years,  before  relinquishing  the  battle  against  the 
advancing  tide  of  strip  shows  and  permissive 
cinemas  in  the  Soho  area,  which  forced  it  to  close 
in  1964. 

Sheila  Van  Damm  was  well  built,  with  dark 
hair  and  a  round  face.  She  never  married  and  in 
later  life  moved  to  West  Chiltington  in  rural 
Sussex,  where  with  her  sister  Nona  she  enjoyed 
running  a  small  farm  and  stables,  in  addition  to 
helping  the  handicapped  as  a  fund-raiser  for  the 
International  Spinal  Research  Trust.  She  died  of 
cancer  at  the  London  Clinic  23  August  1987  and 
was  subsequently  commemorated  by  a  memorial 
service  at  the  west  London  synagogue. 

[Sheila  Van  Damm,  No  Excuses  (autobiography),  1957; 
The  Times,  25  August  1987;  Classic  C  Sportscar  Maga- 
zine, November  1987;  private  information.] 

Stephen  Slater 

VAUGHAN-THOMAS,  (Lewis  John)  Wyn- 
ford  ( 1 908-1 987),  author  and  broadcaster,  was 
born  15  August  1908  in  Swansea,  the  second  of 
three  sons  (there  were  no  daughters)  of  Dr  David 
Vaughan  Thomas,  professor  of  music,  and  his 
wife,  Morfydd  Lewis.  He  attended  Swansea 
Grammar  School,  where  he  just  overlapped  with 
Dylan  Thomas,  the  poet,  of  whom  he  became  a 
close  friend.  He  won  a  history  exhibition  to 
Exeter  College,  Oxford,  and  obtained  a  second 
class  in  modern  history  in  1930. 

Having  graduated  at  the  depths  of  the  depres- 
sion Vaughan-Thomas  (he  had  added  Vaughan 
to  his  name)  made  a  precarious  living  by  lectur- 
ing. In  1933  he  became  keeper  of  manuscripts 
and  records  at  the  National  Library  of  Wales  and 
in  1934  area  officer  of  the  south  Wales  council  of 
social  services.  In  1937  he  joined  the  outside 
broadcasts  department  of  the  BBC's  office  at 
Cardiff,  in  order  to  be  close  to  the  girl  he  was  to 
marry  ten  years  later.  Outside  broadcasts  were 
then  the  only  BBC  programmes  where  words 
spoken  were  not  read  from  a  script.  The  chal- 
lenging task  of  an  outside  broadcast  commentator 
was  to  convert  an  event,  as  it  unfolded,  into  vivid 
words  and  structured  sentences  which  imme- 
diately conveyed  the  scene  visually  to  audiences 
who  could  only  use  their  ears. 

Vaughan-Thomas  was  a  dark-haired,  some- 
what chubby  man  of  great  vitality.  His  natural 
effervescence,  his  Celtic  eloquence,  his  humour, 
and  his  well-stocked  mind  soon  brought  him  to 
the  fore  as  a  commentator  on  major  occasions  in 
both  English  and  Welsh.  He  gave  the  Welsh 
commentary  on  the  coronation  of  King  George 
VI.  On  the  outbreak  of  war  he  transferred  to  the 
London  outside  broadcasts  department  as  a 
home  front  reporter  and  in  1942,  after  covering 


the  blitz,  he  became  a  war  correspondent.  He  was 
the  first  BBC  reporter  to  fly  in  a  Lancaster 
bomber  on  a  night  raid  on  Berlin  (1943).  The 
bomb  run  which  he  brilliantly  described,  as  the 
aircraft  was  caught  by  the  German  searchlights 
and  dodged  the  flak,  gave  listeners  a  vivid  picture 
of  the  gruelling  perils  the  RAF  crews  endured. 

Later  he  recorded  memorable  dispatches  on 
the  Anzio  beachhead  and  covered  the  liberation 
of  Rome.  He  also  'liberated'  the  vineyards  of 
Burgundy,  remarking  typically,  'We  had  three 
marvellous  days  in  a  cellar  and  I  emerged  with 
the  Croix  de  Guerre'  (1945).  The  closing  stages 
of  the  war  found  him  in  Hamburg,  broadcasting 
from  the  studio  which  William  *Joyce,  Lord 
Haw-Haw,  had  been  using  only  days  before.  He 
visited  the  Belsen  concentration  camp  shortly 
after  it  was  opened  and  was  outraged  by  the 
assault  on  human  dignity  that  he  found  there. 

For  the  next  three  decades  Vaughan-Thomas 
was  a  leading  commentator  on  state  occasions, 
most  notably  the  wedding  of  Princess  Elizabeth 
to  the  duke  of  Edinburgh.  He  covered  the 
granting  of  independence  to  India  and  many 
similar  celebrations  as  former  colonial  territories 
hauled  down  the  Union  Jack.  He  went  on  over- 
seas tours  with  the  royal  family.  He  took  the 
popularity  of  his  broadcasts  in  his  stride.  In  his 
television  commentary  at  the  memorial  service  in 
Westminster  Abbey  for  Richard  *Dimbleby  he 
said:  'Ours  is  a  transient  art,  our  words  and 
pictures  make  a  powerful  immediate  impact,  and 
then  fade  as  if  they  never  had  been.' 

He  was  happier  as  a  performer  on  radio  than 
on  television,  but  in  1967  he  became  a  leading 
member  of  the  group  headed  by  the  fifth  Baron 
*Harlech,  which  was  unexpectedly  awarded  the 
franchise  for  the  commercial  television  channel 
serving  Wales  and  the  west  of  England. 
Vaughan-Thomas  became  the  first  director  of 
programmes  for  Harlech  Television  (HTV)  in 
Cardiff  and  three  years  later  was  promoted  to  be 
executive  director  of  HTV.  His  return  to  Wales 
brought  him  into  active  participation  in  the 
affairs  of  the  principality.  He  was  a  director  of 
the  Welsh  National  Opera,  chairman  of  the 
Council  for  the  Preservation  of  Rural  Wales,  and 
an  honorary  druid  (1974).  He  was  also  a  governor 
of  the  British  Film  Institute  (1977-80). 

He  wrote  a  number  of  books,  especially  about 
the  countryside.  He  continued  to  broadcast  radio 
talks  about  the  changing  seasons  and  made 
regular  forays  to  London  where  he  would  regale 
his  friends  with  scatological  limericks  involving 
complicated  Welsh  place-names,  composed  by 
himself.  He  had  an  infectious  good  humour. 

Vaughan-Thomas  became  OBE  in  1974,  CBE 
in  1986,  and  an  honorary  MA  of  the  Open 
University  in  1982.  In  1946  he  married  Char- 
lotte, daughter  of  John  Rowlands,  civil  servant. 


466 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Vernon 


There  was  one  son  of  the  marriage,  who  became 
a  film  director.  Vaughan-Thomas  died  in  Fish- 
guard 4  February  1987. 

[W.  Vaughan-Thomas,  Trust  to  Talk  (autobiography), 
1980;  Leonard  Miall  (ed.),  Richard  Dimbleby,  Broad- 
caster, 1066;  The  Times,  5  February  1087;  Independent, 
6  February  1987;  Vaughan-Thomas  papers  in  National 
Library  of  Wales;  private  information;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Leonard  Miall 

VERNON,  Philip  Ewart  (1905-1987),  professor 
of  educational  psychology,  was  born  6  June  1905 
in  Oxford,  the  second  of  three  children  and  elder 
son  of  Horace  Middleton  Vernon,  physiologist 
and  fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  and  his 
wife,  Katherine  Dorothea,  daughter  of  the  Revd 
William  Ewart,  of  Bishop  Cannings,  Wiltshire. 
He  was  educated  at  the  Dragon  School  in 
Oxford,  Oundle,  and  St  John's  College,  Cam- 
bridge, where  he  graduated  with  first-class  hon- 
ours in  physics,  chemistry,  and  physiology  in 
1926  (natural  sciences  tripos,  part  i)  and  in  1927 
with  a  first  in  psychology  (moral  sciences  tripos, 
part  ii).  He  then  completed  a  Ph.D.  on  the 
psychology  of  musical  appreciation.  Vernon  was 
a  good  amateur  musician,  possessing  perfect 
pitch  and  able  to  play  the  piano,  oboe,  organ,  and 
horn. 

WTiile  a  research  student  at  St  John's  College 
in  1927,  he  won  a  Rockefeller  fellowship  for 
study  in  America.  In  1929  he  worked  at  Yale  on 
personality  assessment  and  spent  a  year  at  Har- 
vard with  Gordon  Allport.  From  193 1  to  1933  he 
was  a  research  and  teaching  fellow  at  St  John's, 
which  he  left  to  work  as  a  child  psychologist 
at  the  Maudsley  Hospital,  London.  There  he 
gained  important  practical  experience,  which 
infused  his  work.  In  1935  he  was  appointed  head 
of  the  department  of  psychology  in  the  Jordanhill 
Training  Centre,  Glasgow,  which  trained  teach- 
ers. In  1938  he  became  head  of  Glasgow  Uni- 
versity's department  of  psychology.  He  remained 
there  until  1947,  working  also  at  the  War  Office 
and  Admiralty  on  personnel  selection.  In  1949  he 
was  appointed  to  the  professorship  of  educational 
psychology  in  the  Institute  of  Education,  Uni- 
versity of  London.  He  retired  from  that  post  in 
1968  to  take  up  a  professorship  of  educational 
psychology  in  the  University  of  Calgary,  Alberta, 
Canada,    from    which    he    retired    officially    in 

1975 

Vernon  was  an  outstanding  educational  psy- 
chologist, who  specialized  in  psychometrics,  the 
measurement  of  human  abilities  and  personality. 
His  work  was  notable  for  his  exceptional  ability 
to  synthesize  in  a  balanced  and  fair-minded 
manner  large  quantities  of  apparently  disparate 
findings.  In  addition,  the  clarity  of  his  writing 
enabled  generations  of  students,  both  in  educa- 


tion and  psychology,  to  understand  the  statistical 
problems  and  complexities  which  render  mental 
measurement  such  a  difficult  subject  for  many 
teachers. 

In  the  field  of  human  abilities  Vernon  synthe- 
sized two  apparently  opposing  views,  those  of  the 
British  psychologists,  who  stressed  the  import- 
ance of  a  single  general  factor  of  ability,  and  the 
Americans,  who  thought  that  there  were  a  num- 
ber of  separate  human  abilities.  He  showed  that  a 
hierarchical  ordering  of  abilities  with  a  broad 
general  reasoning  factor  and  important  group 
factors  such  as  verbal  and  spatial  ability  would  fit 
the  results.  He  also  attempted  to  elucidate  the 
environmental  and  genetic  factors  underlying 
general  intelligence  and  his  argument  that  there 
was  a  considerable  genetic  determination  is  gen- 
erally accepted  in  the  light  of  more  recent  data. 

Unlike  many  psychometrists,  Vernon  believed 
that  psychological  findings  should  be  applied  to 
real-life  situations.  His  writing  was  aimed  at 
teachers  and  educationists  in  the  hope  that  high 
standards  of  measurement  would  be  employed  in 
education — always,  it  should  be  noted,  for  the 
good  of  the  children.  During  World  War  II  his 
work  for  the  War  Office  on  officer  selection 
hugely  improved  selection  procedures.  In  1949 
he  published,  with  J.  B.  Parry,  Personnel  Selection 
in  the  British  Forces.  Among  his  other  books  were 
The  Measurement  of  Abilities  (1040),  Personality 
Tests  and  Assessments  (1953),  Intelligence  and  Cul- 
tural Environment  (1969),  and  Intelligence:  Hered- 
ity and  Environment  (1979). 

Vernon  was  awarded  the  D.Sc.  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  London  and  was  a  fellow  of  the 
American  Psychological  Association,  life  fellow 
of  the  Canadian  Psychological  Association,  and 
honorary  fellow  of  the  British  Psychological 
Society,  of  which  he  was  the  president  in  1954-5. 
In  1980  he  received  an  honorary  LL  D  from  the 
University  of  Calgary. 

Vernon  was  a  shy  and  highly  introverted 
person  who  rarely  seemed  to  relax.  He  was  a 
tall  man  with  an  impressive  demeanour  and  an 
almost  military  bearing.  Like  his  books  he 
appeared  to  be  supremely  rational,  although  he 
was  human  enough  not  to  abandon  smoking 
despite  the  respiratory  problems  which  first 
led  him  to  Calgary.  His  choice  of  psychology 
may  well  have  been  influenced  by  his  father, 
who  abandoned  his  fellowship  at  Oxford  to 
alleviate  the  conditions  of  factory  workers  and 
who  effectively  became  an  industrial  psycho- 
logist. His  older  sister,  Magdalen  Vernon,  also 
became  a  professor  of  psychology,  at  Reading 
University. 

In  1938  he  married  a  schoolteacher,  Annie 
Craig,  daughter  of  Robert  Gray,  solicitor.  In 
1946  she  met  an  early  death  through  ill  health 


467 


Vernon  D.N.B.  1986-19% 

and  in  1947  he  married  Dorothy  Anne  Fairley,  specialist  in  human  intelligence.  Vernon  died  of 

an   educational   psychologist  and   daughter  of  cancer  in  Calgary,  Alberta,  28  July  1987. 

William  Alexander  Lawson,  a  civil  and  marine  [Obituary  in  Bulletin  of the  British  Psychological  Society, 

engineer.  They  had  one  child,  Philip  Anthony,  a  vol.  xl,  1087;  personal  knowledge.]          Paul  Kline 


468 


w 


WALL,  Max  (1908- 1990),  comic  entertainer  and 
actor,  was  born  Maxwell  George  Lorimer  12 
March  1908  at  37  Glenshaw  Mansions,  Brixton 
Road,  Brixton,  London,  the  second  of  the  three 
children,  all  sons,  of  John  Gillespie  Lorimer, 
music-hall  artiste,  formerly  of  Forres,  Scotland, 
and  his  wife  Maud  Clara,  dancer  and  singer,  the 
daughter  of  William  and  Maud  Mitchison  of 
Newcastle  upon  Tyne,  both  music-hall  enter- 
tainers. He  had  sporadic  schooling  of  a  disjointed 
kind,  being  brought  up  in  the  music-hall  theatre 
by  his  parents,  who  were  known  as  Jack  Lorimer 
and  Stella  Stahl.  He  was  first  taken  on  stage,  in  a 
kilt,  at  the  age  of  two.  Later  he  changed  his  name 
to  Max  Wall  by  deed  poll. 

After  the  break  up  of  his  parents'  marriage  and 
the  death  of  his  father,  Max  Wall  began  his  long 
show-business  career.  At  the  age  of  fourteen  he 
made  his  stage  debut  in  Mother  Goose  (1922), 
and,  much  encouraged  by  his  stepfather,  Harry 
Wallace — from  whom  he  took  his  stage  sur- 
name — he  soon  became  a  fully  fledged  pro- 
fessional entertainer,  concentrating  on  eccentric 
dance  routines  and  funny  walks.  He  made  his 
first  London  appearance  in  1925  at  the  London 
Lyceum  in  The  London  Revue.  Thereafter  he 
appeared  in  several  musical  comedies  and  revues, 
including  (Sir)  C.  B.  *Cochran's  One  Dam  Thing 
After  Another  (1927),  and  he  appeared  in  the  1930 
and  1950  Royal  Variety  performances.  He  now 
established  himself  as  a  prominent  music-hall 
artiste,  variously  billed  as  'the  boy  with  the 
obedient  feet'  or  'Max  Wall  and  his  independent 
legs'.  He  served  in  the  Royal  Air  Force  from 
1 94 1  to  1943,  when  he  was  invalided  out  on 
account  of 'anxiety  neurosis',  and  returned  to  the 
musical  stage. 

With  his  inventive  patter,  he  also  enjoyed 
radio  success,  notably  in  Hoopla!  (1944),  Our 
Shed  (in  which  he  popularized  the  character  of 
Humphrey,  1946),  and  Petticoat  Lane  (1949).  He 
next  had  a  major  success  as  Hines  in  the  musical 
The  Pajama  Game  (1955),  and  soon  starred  in  his 
first  television  series,  The  Max  Wall  Show  (1956). 
He  had  also  perfected  his  role  as  Professor 
Wallofski,  a  weird  spidery  figure  of  a  musical 
clown,  clad  in  black  tights,  straggling  wig,  a  short 
dishevelled  jacket,  and  monstrously  huge  boots. 
His  idols  were  the  clown  Grock  and  Groucho 
Marx. 


By  now  the  old  variety  theatre  was  in 
decline,  and,  with  domestic  problems  also  tak- 
ing some  toll,  Max  Wall  had  a  lean  period, 
during  which  he  mainly  played  dates  in  north- 
ern clubland.  In  1966  his  mordant  style  found 
fresh  opportunites  on  the  legitimate  stage,  first 
as  Pere  Ubu  in  Ian  Cuthbertson's  adaptation 
of  Ubu  Roi  (1966),  and  then,  inter  alia,  in 
Arnold  Wesker's  The  Old  Ones  (1972),  as 
Archie  Rice  in  John  Osborne's  The  Entertainer 
(1974),  and  in  Samuel  Beckett's  Krapp's  Last 
Tape  (1975)  and  Waiting  for  Godot  (1980).  He 
also  appeared,  in  1973,  in  Cockief,  a  musical 
version  of  C.  B.  Cochran's  life,  and  the  Inter- 
national Herald  Tribune  said  he  was  'quite  sim- 
ply, the  funniest  comedian  in  the  world'.  He 
acted  in  several  films,  for  instance  as  Flintwich 
in  Little  Dorrit  (1087). 

In  1974  he  first  produced  what  was  to  become 
a  famous  one-man  show  with  songs,  Aspects  of 
Max  Wall.  In  his  later  years  he  became  some- 
thing of  a  cult  entertainer  and  in  1975  published 
his  autobiography,  The  Fool  on  the  Hill.  He  was 
a  fluent  mime,  hilarious  and  eccentric  dancer, 
competent  musician,  and  acidic  stand-up  come- 
dian. His  stage  persona  had  an  air  of  melancholy, 
even  of  cynicism,  and  his  countenance  was 
clown-like,  with  glaring  eyes,  a  prominent  nose, 
and  leering  mouth. 

Following  an  unstable  upbringing,  he  married, 
in  1942,  Marion  Ethel  ('Pola')  Pollachek,  dancer, 
the  divorced  wife  of  Thomas  Patrick  Charles  and 
daughter  of  Alexander  Pollachek,  mechanical 
engineer,  who  ran  a  sponge  rubber  business  in 
Islington.  They  had  four  sons  and  one  daughter. 
The  marriage  was  dissolved,  with  colourful 
attendant  publicity,  in  1956,  and  Wall  became 
estranged  from  his  family.  In  the  same  year  he 
married  a  beauty  queen,  Jennifer  Chimes,  of 
north  Staffordshire,  daughter  of  John  William 
Schumacher,  master  plumber.  That  marriage 
was  dissolved  in  1969,  and  he  had  a  third,  and 
extremely  brief,  third  marriage,  to  Christine 
Clements,  in  1970,  which  was  dissolved  in 
1972. 

Max  Wall  rarely  sought  the  camaraderie  of 
show  business  in  his  later  years,  and,  despite 
considerable  wealth,  lived  almost  as  a  recluse  in  a 
bedsitting  room  in  south  London.  He  died  in  the 
Westminster  Hospital,  London,  22  May  1990, 


469 


Wall 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


having  fractured  his  skull  in  a  fall  outside  a 
London  restaurant. 

[Max  Wall,  The  Fool  on  the  Hill  (autobiography),  1975; 
The  Times,  Guardian,  and  Independent,  23  May  1990; 
Theatre  Museum,  I^ndon;  private  information.] 

Eric  Midwinter 

WARNER,  Reginald  Ernest  ('Rex')  (1905- 
1986),  novelist,  classicist,  and  translator,  was 
born  9  March  1905  in  Amberley,  Gloucester- 
shire, the  only  child  of  the  Revd  Frederic  Ernest 
Warner,  vicar  ('of  the  modernist  persuasion')  of 
Amberley,  and  his  schoolteacher  wife  Kathleen, 
daughter  of  Arthur  Aston  Luce,  philo- 
sopher. He  was  educated  first  at  St  George's 
School,  Harpenden,  and  then  at  Wadham  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  which  he  entered  with  an  open 
scholarship  in  classics  in  1923,  in  spite  of  having 
been,  according  to  his  tutor,  (Sir)  Maurice 
*Bowra,  ill  taught  at  school,  so  that  he  'found  in 
Greek  and  Latin  all  the  charms  of  novelty'.  No 
doubt  better  taught  at  Wadham,  he  took  a  first 
class  in  classical  honour  moderations  in  1925,  but 
suffered  a  nervous  breakdown  in  the  following 
year  and,  after  leaving  Oxford  for  a  time, 
returned  to  take  a  third  class  in  English  in 
1928. 

Among  his  Oxford  contemporaries  and  friends 
were  the  poets  W.  H.  *Auden  and  (Sir)  Stephen 
Spender,  and  particularly  Cecil  *Day-Lewis, 
who  was  at  the  same  college  and  willing  to  share 
in  some  degree  his  athletic  as  well  as  his  literary 
enthusiasms.  Warner — tall,  strongly  built,  and 
vigorous — captained  a  Wadham  rugby  team  of 
which  Day-Lewis  was  a  member,  and  always 
retained  his  interest  in  and  taste  for  energetic 
sporting  pursuits.  Day-Lewis,  in  his  autobio- 
graphy The  Buried  Day  (i960),  recalls  his  friend's 
'Homeric  boisterousness',  which  did  not  fade 
with  the  passing  years. 

Warner's  entry  upon  the  literary  scene  was  not 
immediate.  On  leaving  Oxford  he  took  teaching 
appointments  in  various  schools,  including  at  one 
stage,  in  1933,  a  post  in  Egypt.  His  debut,  when 
it  came  in  1937,  was  auspicious.  His  Poems, 
published  in  that  year,  made  no  great  mark,  and 
in  later  years  verse  was  only  a  small  part  of  his 
prolific  output.  But  it  was  also  in  1937  that  there 
appeared  his  novel  The  Wild  Goose  Chase,  written 
mainly  in  Egypt,  and  this  strikingly  original  work 
made  an  immediate  impression.  His  tale  of  three 
brothers  and  their  quest  in  an  unnamed  country 
for  the  wild  goose,  symbol  of  hope  and  personal 
regeneration,  was  rightly  seen  as  akin  to  the  work 
of  Franz  Kafka;  but  it  drew  also  on  elements 
of  classical  mythology,  and  even  of  fairy  tale, 
in  a  manner  genuinely  new  in  English  fiction. 
The  Professor  (1938)  was  a  very  different  work, 
a  touching  and  almost  purely  naturalistic  apo- 
logy for  traditional  liberalism  confronted,  dis- 
astrously, with  totalitarian  amoralism.   In    The 


Aerodrome  (1941)  he  reverted  in  part  to  a  non- 
realistic,  expressionist  technique.  Generally 
regarded  as  his  best  novel,  this  deeply  gloomy 
work  also  sees  human  values  collapsing  before  a 
rising  tide  of  nihilistic  materialism.  Warner  had 
never  shared  the  Marxist  enthusiasms  of  his 
student  contemporaries,  and  saw  communist  dic- 
tatorship as  scarcely  preferable  to  the  fascist 
variety.  His  own  position  is  vigorously  stated  in 
his  book  of  essays,  The  Cult  of  Power  (1946). 

After  a  brief  spell  of  service  with  the  Allied 
Control  Commission  in  Berlin  Warner  became 
director  (1945-7)  °f  tne  British  Institute  in 
Athens.  Later  he  held  academic  appointments  in 
America,  chairs  at  Bowdoin  College  in  1962-3 
and  at  the  University  of  Connecticut  from  1964 
to  1974.  He  was  awarded  the  Greek  Royal  Order 
of  the  Phoenix  (1963),  an  honorary  D.Litt.  of 
Rider  College  (1968),  and  an  honorary  fellowship 
of  his  Oxford  college,  Wadham  (1973). 

From  1945  his  output  of  fiction,  criticism, 
translations,  and  particularly  retellings  of  clas- 
sical legend  and  history,  was  unceasing — some 
thirty  publications  in  as  many  years.  But,  after 
his  rather  slight  novel  Escapade  (1953),  it  mostly 
took  the  form  of  what  he  himself  called  'uncrea- 
tive  writing' — writing  based  rather  on  classical 
and  historical  scholarship  than  on  imaginative 
invention.  The  quality  of  the  work,  however,  was 
unfailingly  high.  Imperial  Caesar  (i960)  won  the 
Tait  memorial  prize,  and  special  mention  should 
be  made  of  his  version  of  the  Confessions  of  St 
Augustine  (1963),  and  of  his  translations  of 
Aeschylus,  Euripides,  Thucydides,  and  Plu- 
tarch. 

He  was  married  three  times,  in  unusual  cir- 
cumstances. In  1929  he  married  Frances  Cha- 
mier,  daughter  of  Frank  Grove,  civil  engineer, 
who  was  much  employed,  before  World  War  I,  in 
railway  construction  in  China.  They  had  two 
sons  and  a  daughter.  This  marriage  was  dissolved 
in  1949  and  in  the  same  year  he  married  Barbara 
Judith,  divorced  wife  of  the  third  Baron  •Roths- 
child and  daughter  of  St  John  Hutchinson, 
barrister  and  recorder  of  Hastings;  they  had  a 
daughter.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in  1962 
and  in  1966  he  remarried  Frances  Chamier 
Warner,  his  former  wife.  He  died  at  Anchor 
House,  St  Leonard's  Lane,  Wallingford,  24  June 
1986. 

[Sir  Maurice  Bowra,  Memories,  1966;  Cecil  Day-Lewis, 
The  Buried  Day,  i960;  personal  knowledge.] 

G.J.  Warnock 

WATES,  Sir  Ronald  Wallace  (1907- 1986), 
builder  and  benefactor,  was  born  in  Mitcham  4 
June  1907,  the  second  child  in  the  family  of  three 
sons  and  one  daughter  of  Edward  Wates,  builder, 
and  his  wife,  Sarah  Holmes.  He  was  educated 
at  Emanuel  School,  Wandsworth,  to  which  he 
remained  affectionately  loyal,  becoming  a  gover- 


470 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Watt 


nor  and  generous  benefactor.  Leaving  school  at 
sixteen,  he  worked  in  an  estate  agency  while 
qualifying  as  a  surveyor  in  1928  (later  FRICS) 
before  joining  the  family  building  firm,  of  which 
he  became  a  director  in  1931.  Founded  jointly  by 
Wates's  father,  Edward,  early  in  the  twentieth 
century,  by  the  1920s  the  firm  was  well  placed  to 
take  advantage  of  the  suburban  growth  in  south 
London  between  the  wars.  A  good  range  of  well- 
built  houses  was  offered,  and  output  rose  to  2,000 
a  year. 

Edward  Wates's  three  sons  were  responsible 
for  the  business's  expanding  to  become  one  of 
the  largest  family-owned  firms  in  the  country. 
The  eldest,  Norman,  was  undoubtedly  the  domi- 
nant force,  but  Ronald's  sound  financial  sense, 
feel  for  property,  and  organizing  ability-  played  an 
important  part.  The  youngest,  Allan,  was  largely 
responsible  for  a  skilled  and  contented  work- 
force. Tight  family  control  and  a  united  external 
front  were  maintained. 

During  World  War  II  Wates  carried  out  much 
high  priority  work  and  a  significant  development 
in  the  firm  was  the  successful  fulfilment  of  a 
major  wartime  contract  for  sections  of  Mulberry 
harbour,  made  for  the  1944  Normandy  landings. 
In  the  postwar  years  the  firm's  reputation  grew 
as  its  activities  widened,  extending  to  contract 
housing,  tower  blocks.  City  redevelopment,  and 
other  large-scale  construction  projects.  Wates's 
contribution  lay  in  his  keen  eye  for  a  valuable  site 
and,  increasingly,  his  City  contacts.  In  1969 
Wates  unexpectedly  took  over  as  chairman  when 
his  brother  Norman  died  suddenly.  It  was  not  an 
easy  time.  In  a  family  firm,  there  was  little  career 
structure;  the  next  generation,  with  new  ideas, 
was  waiting  in  the  wings,  but  not  yet  deemed 
ready.  Subordinating  his  other  interests,  Wates 
held  the  fort  solidly  until  1973,  when  Norman's 
eldest  son  Neil  *Wates  took  over  as  chairman  and 
he  became  president. 

Wates's  influence  and  interests  had  been 
growing  steadily.  A  lifelong  Conservative,  he  was 
a  member  of  Wandsworth  borough  council 
(1937-46)  and  London  county  council  (1949- 
52).  He  was  made  a  freeman  of  the  City  of 
London  in  1945  and  a  JP  for  inner  London  in 
1947.  He  acquired  the  art  of  public  speaking  and 
was  a  good  raconteur.  He  became  master  of  the 
Worshipful  Company  of  Innholders  (1978-9), 
was  a  fellow  of  the  Institute  of  Building,  and  a 
governor  of  the  Brixton  School  of  Building;  he 
also  gave  his  time  to  many  other  activities  in 
support  of  the  industry.  He  was  for  many  years 
chairman  of  the  Royal  School  for  the  Blind, 
Leatherhead  (1971-82);  a  council  member  of 
King's  College  Hospital  medical  school;  a  trustee 
of  the  Historic  Churches  Preservation  Trust;  and 
a  member  of  the  Church  Commissioners'  com- 
mittee on  redundant  churches.  In  1966  he  and 
his  two  brothers  established  from  their  personal 


resources  the  Wates  Foundation,  dedicated  to 
improving  the  quality  of  life,  especially  for  the 
disadvantaged  young.  By  1990  its  annual  income 
was  £1.3  million. 

Rubicund  and  dapper,  with  a  twinkle  in  his 
eye,  Wates  was  a  congenial  companion  at  ease 
with  everyone.  Careful  of  the  pennies,  he  was 
shrewd  and  sound  on  large  issues.  He  was,  in 
every  sense,  a  builder  for  both  his  firm  and  his 
family.  He  became  a  rich  man  but  remained 
engagingly-  modest.  Of  strong  Christian  faith,  he 
had  a  natural  concern  for  others  and  a  respect  for 
traditional  values,  relishing  all  that  was  best  in 
his  country's  heritage.  In  193 1  he  married  a 
childhood  friend,  Phyllis  Mary,  daughter  of 
Harry  Trace,  innkeeper.  The  marriage  was 
exceptionally  happy — Wates's  equable  tempera- 
ment played  its  part  in  this.  They  had  four  sons. 
In  1947  they  acquired  the  Manor  House,  Head- 
ley,  where  Wates  put  down  roots.  He  became 
absorbed  in  the  upbringing  of  his  children, 
passing  on  to  them  his  love  of  horses  and  field 
sports.  He  farmed  with  enjoyment,  hunted  until 
he  was  seventy,  and  became  a  popular  member  of 
the  old-established  Surrey  Club.  He  was  an 
involved  and  generous  benefactor  to  his  parish 
church,  of  which  he  was  church  warden  and 
treasurer,  to  Guildford  Cathedral  (council  mem- 
ber) and  to  Surrey  University  (foundation  fellow, 
and  D.Univ.  1975).  In  1972  he  was  made  an 
honorary  fellow  of  University  College  London. 
He  was  knighted  in  1975  for  his  charitable  and 
philanthropic  services  and  was  made  deputy 
lieutenant  for  Surrey  in  1981.  He  died  of  a 
cerebral  thrombosis  in  Ashtead  Hospital  25 
January  1986.  The  value  of  his  will,  after  allow- 
ing for  liabilities,  but  before  inheritance  tax,  was 
£1,124,010. 

[The  Times,  21  February  1986;  private  information; 
personal  knowledge]  John  Moreton 

WATT,  (John)  David  (Henry)  (1932-1987), 
journalist,  was  born  9  January  1932  in  Edin- 
burgh, the  only  son  and  second  of  three  children 
of  the  Revd  John  Hunter  Watt  and  his  wife 
Helen  Garioch,  daughter  of  Reuben  Bryce, 
accountant.  His  childhood  years  were  spent  prin- 
cipally in  Kent,  where  his  father  was  vicar  of 
Boxley,  near  Maidstone.  He  was  educated  at 
Marlborough  College,  doing  two  years'  national 
service  with  the  Royal  Artillery  (partly  in  the 
canal  zone  and  after  that  on  secondment  to  the 
Mauritian  Guard),  before  going  up  to  Hertford 
College,  Oxford,  with  a  classics  scholarship  in 
195 1.  He  obtained  second-class  honours  in  both 
classical  honour  moderations  and  literae  human- 
tores  (1953  and  1956).  He  had  only  just  taken 
moderations  when  his  university  career  was 
interrupted  by  his  falling  victim  to  poliomyelitis. 
The  effects  were  to  stay  with  him  all  his  life — 
bringing  a  slightly  lopsided  look  to  his  previously 


47i 


Watt 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


tall,  erect  figure,  with  his  left  arm  hanging  limply 
by  his  side.  He  was  seldom  without  pain,  which 
he  bore  with  remarkable  stoicism.  He  continued 
to  experience  breathing  difficulties,  involving  in 
later  years  the  regular  use  of  a  portable  respira- 
tor. Nevertheless,  the  illness  forged  and  shaped 
his  whole  character,  transforming  a  conventional, 
public  school,  games-playing  product  into  the 
acerbic  possessor  of  one  of  the  shrewdest  minds 
and  sharpest  pens  in  British  political  journal- 
ism. 

Polio  also  gave  him  his  start  as  a  writer.  His 
first  published  article  was  called  simply  'Last 
Gasp'  and  appeared  in  the  Spectator  of  1 4  Octo- 
ber 1955,  when  he  had  just  ceased  undergoing 
treatment  in  an  iron  lung.  It  was  a  detached 
description  of  what  it  felt  like  to  live,  as  he  put  it, 
in  'a  long  box,  monstrous  and  coffin-like,  with 
bellows  attached'.  As  a  piece  of  spare,  cool  prose, 
it  sufficiently  impressed  the  Spectator's  editor, 
Ian  Gilmour  (later  Baron  Gilmour  of  Craigmil- 
lar),  for  Watt  to  be  offered  a  job  when,  a  year 
later,  he  left  Oxford.  He  spent  two  years 
(1956-7)  with  the  Spectator,  ostensibly  as  the 
paper's  dramatic  critic,  but  in  reality  as  the  office 
dogsbody.  In  1958  he  moved  to  the  Scotsman  as 
its  London-based  diplomatic  correspondent  and 
from  there  was  tempted  in  i960  to  rejoin  a 
revamped  Daily  Herald  as  its  Common  Market 
correspondent.  A  year  later  the  Herald  passed 
into  the  ownership  of  the  International  Publish- 
ing Corporation  and  Watt  did  not,  under  the  new 
proprietorship,  linger  long.  Instead,  he  went 
back  to  the  Spectator,  this  time  in  the  rather 
grander  capacity  of  political  correspondent 
(1962-3). 

It  was  his  second  coming  at  the  Spectator  that 
marked  Watt's  real  arrival  as  an  influential  jour- 
nalist. After  a  brief  flowering  with  Henry  •Fair- 
lie — and  a  rather  longer  one  with  Bernard 
Levin — the  Spectator's  political  commentary  had 
become  spasmodic  and  patchy.  In  less  than  a  year 
and  a  half  Watt  provided  it  with  consistency, 
coherence,  wit,  and  intelligence.  It  was  no 
surprise  when,  towards  the  end  of  1963,  the 
Financial  Times  snapped  him  up  to  be  its  corre- 
spondent in  Washington. 

Although  without  any  economic  training, 
Watt  soon  vindicated  his  selection,  becoming  in 
the  words  of  the  Financial  Times'^  own  official 
history,  'the  pick  of  the  [paper's]  foreign  corre- 
spondents'. Starting  from  scratch,  he  rapidly- 
built  up  an  impressive  network  of  sources, 
prompting  the  International  Monetary  Fund 
once  to  complain  that  it  had  to  read  a  London 
newspaper  to  discover  what  was  going  into  its 
own  minutes.  But  he  was  equally  penetrating  in 
covering  American  politics  and  by  1967  had 
returned  to  London — and  to  the  important 
appointment  as  political  editor  of  the  paper.  The 
next  ten  years,  in  which  his  Friday  column  came 


to  be  recognized  as  the  best-informed  example  of 
'insider'  journalism  in  Britain,  probably  repre- 
sented the  high  point  of  Watt's  influence  over 
public  affairs. 

By  1977,  having  been  disappointed  in  his  bids 
for  two  editorships  (the  Economist  in  1974  and 
the  Observer  in  1975),  Watt  had  become  bored. 
He  had  grown  tired,  as  he  characteristically 
phrased  it,  of  'turning  the  prayer  wheel'.  So, 
when  the  offer  came  in  1978  to  take  over 
from  (Sir)  Andrew  *Shonfield  as  director  of  the 
Royal  Institute  of  International  Affairs  (Chatham 
House),  he  accepted  it.  He  was  afterwards  to 
regret  doing  so.  Cut  off  from  its  Foreign  Office 
subvention,  Chatham  House  was  going  through  a 
difficult  phase  and  its  new  director  had  little 
appetite  for  fund-raising.  It  was  with  some  relief 
that  he  laid  down  his  burden  at  the  end  of  his 
five-year  term. 

While  at  Chatham  House,  Watt  had  already- 
put  a  toe  back  into  journalism,  writing  a  weekly 
column  in  The  Times  from  1981  until  his  death. 
He  had  been  a  visiting  fellow  of  All  Souls  in 
1972-3  and  was  a  research  fellow  there  in 
1 98 1 -3 — appointments  which  gave  him  great 
pleasure,  as  did  his  joint  editorship  of  the  Polit- 
ical Quarterly  from  1979  to  1985.  He  was  once 
described  as  having  'a  clergy-boned  face',  and  it 
was  typical  of  this  aspect  of  his  personality  that 
he  should  have  served  on  the  board  of  visitors  of 
Wandsworth  prison  for  five  years  (1977-81).  In 
the  last  period  of  his  life  he  also  became  a  highly- 
valued  political  consultant  to  the  multinational 
company,  Rio  Tinto  Zinc,  which,  a  year  after  his 
death,  established  a  prize  for  journalism  in  his 
memory. 

In  1968  he  married  Susanne,  daughter  of 
Frank  ('Fritz')  Adolf  Burchardt,  statistician  and 
fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford;  they  had 
four  sons.  Watt  died  27  March  1987  at  his 
country  cottage  in  Lewknor  near  Oxford,  after, 
on  a  stormy  night,  picking  up  an  electric  cable 
that  turned  out  to  be  live.  He  was  instantly 
electrocuted. 

[David  Kynaston,  The  Financial  Times:  a  Centenary 
History,  1988;  Ferdinand  Mount  (ed.),  The  Inquiring 
Eye:  the  Writings  of  David  Watt,  1988;  private  informa- 
tion; personal  knowledge.]  Anthony  Howard 

WAYNE,  Sir  Edward  Johnson  (1902- 1990), 
physician,  was  born  3  June  1902  in  Leeds,  the 
elder  child  and  only  son  of  William  Wayne,  chief 
surveyor  to  a  building  society,  of  Roundhay, 
Leeds,  and  his  wife,  Ellen  Rawding,  of  Leaden- 
ham,  Lincolnshire.  He  attended  Leeds  Central 
High  School  and  then  entered  Leeds  University 
as  Akroyd  scholar,  graduating  with  first-class 
honours  in  chemistry  in  1923.  At  Manchester 
University  he  worked  on  the  intermediary- 
metabolism  of  the  fatty  acids  with  H.  S.  Raper, 
obtaining  a  Ph.D.  in  1925.  It  was  at  this  point 


472 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Week 


that  his  instincts  led  him  to  medicine,  and  he 
returned  to  Leeds  in  1926  to  complete  a  medical 
course.  He  graduated  MB,  Ch.B.  in  1929  with 
first-class  honours  and  was  awarded  the  Hey  gold 
medal,  as  the  most  distinguished  graduate  of  the 
year. 

In  193 1  he  became  an  assistant  in  the  depart- 
ment of  clinical  research  in  University  College 
Hospital,  London,  under  the  directorship  of  Sir 
Thomas  Lewis,  and  he  carried  out  some  of  the 
earliest  trials  with  digoxin  and  an  investigation 
into  angina.  In  1934  he  was  appointed  to  the 
chair  of  pharmacology  and  therapeutics  in  the 
University  of  Sheffield.  He  became  FRCP  in 
1937  and  MD  in  1938.  In  this  pre-war  period  he 
coped  with  his  university  teaching  commitment 
as  well  as  his  clinical  duties.  He  had  one  lecture- 
ship, to  which  he  appointed  (Sir)  Hans  *Krebs,  a 
refugee  from  Nazi  Germany.  Krebs  completed 
his  work  on  the  citric  acid  cycle,  for  which  he 
obtained  the  Nobel  prize. 

During  World  War  II  Wayne's  clinical  duties 
were  expanded  by  his  appointment  as  physician 
to  the  Children's  Hospital,  Sheffield,  and  to  the 
Emergency  Medical  Services.  He  also  had  his 
private  practice.  After  the  war  he  became  once 
again  a  full-time  professor  of  therapeutics.  He 
was  appointed  chairman  of  the  joint  formulary 
committee  of  the  British  Medical  Association 
and  the  Pharmaceutical  Society,  and  later  chair- 
man of  the  British  Pharmacopoeia  Commission 
(1958-63),  which  gave  him  unrivalled  experience 
in  the  assessment  of  drugs.  He  recruited  able 
young  men  returning  from  the  armed  forces  to 
his  department.  At  last  his  flair  for  directing 
clinical  research  was  able  to  reach  its  full  poten- 
tial. His  collaboration  with  his  team  led  to 
advances  in  the  use  of  radioiodine  in  the  diag- 
nosis and  treatment  of  thyroid  disease,  as  well  as 
the  use  of  angiography  and  cardiac  catheteriza- 
tion for  cardiac  disease. 

In  1954  he  was  appointed  regius  professor  of 
the  practice  of  medicine  at  Glasgow  University, 
which  had  a  purpose-built  clinical  research 
building  (the  Gardiner  Institute)  attached  to  the 
professorial  wards  of  the  Western  Infirmary. 
Wayne  was  determined  to  continue  his  successful 
run  in  Sheffield  and  the  Gardiner  Institute  was 
the  ideal  vehicle  for  his  ambitions.  From  1953  till 
his  retirement  in  1967  he  sparked  off  and  encour- 
aged research  in  a  number  of  areas — in  his  own 
field  of  thyroid  disease,  cardiovascular  disease, 
osteoporosis,  and  blood  disorders.  He  developed 
and  encouraged  the  use  of  tapes  and  slide-tapes 
as  ancillaries  for  clinical  teaching.  Coming  from 
Sheffield  he  gradually,  but  successfully,  inte- 
grated himself  into  the  life  and  work  of  Scottish 
medicine. 

From  1954  to  1967  he  was  honorary  physician 
to  the  queen  in  Scotland  and  in  1958  he  was 
recruited    to    the    Medical    Research    Council, 


becoming  chairman  of  the  clinical  research  board 
(1960-4).  In  1959  he  was  elected  Sims  com- 
monwealth travelling  fellow  and  with  his  wife 
visited  most  of  the  medical  schools  in  Canada. 
He  was  knighted  in  1964  and  became  an  hon- 
orary D.Sc.  of  Sheffield  in  1967,  the  year  he 
retired  to  Chipping  Campden  in  the  Cotswolds. 
After  fourteen  years  he  and  his  wife  went  to  live 
with  their  son's  family  at  Lingwood  near  Great 
Yarmouth. 

Wayne  was  one  of  the  new  breed  of  full-time 
clinical  scientific  professors  which  evolved  in  the 
mid-twentieth  century.  His  training  as  a  young 
man  in  chemistry,  biochemistry,  and  clinical 
science,  and  his  appointment  to  various  drug 
committees,  gave  him  a  unique  opportunity  to 
perceive  and  contribute  to  the  therapeutic  revo- 
lution. His  drive  and  ability  to  attract  younger 
men  of  merit  allowed  him  to  promote  and 
superintend  important  advances.  He  was  chair- 
man of  the  BMA  committee  on  alcohol  and  road 
accidents  from  1948  and  his  work  on  this  topic 
for  two  decades  was  responsible  for  the  govern- 
ment's introduction  of  the  blood  alcohol  limit  of 
80  mg  per  100  ml  of  blood  (Road  Safety  Act, 
1967). 

Of  medium  height,  \\  ayne  had  a  sturdy  frame 
with  slender  limbs.  He  had  iron  grey  hair 
brushed  back  to  show  a  good  forehead,  and  was 
strong-jawed  and  clean  shaven  until  late  in  life, 
when  he  sported  a  grey  beard  which  finally 
completed  the  mellow,  venerable  image.  He  was 
dynamic  and  his  movements  were  mercurial, 
matching  his  quick  enquiring  mind.  He  kept 
those  round  him  on  their  toes,  but  he  was  usually 
sensitive  to  their  feelings,  employing  his  York- 
shire wit  in  the  most  effective  way.  A  man  of 
wide  reading,  he  enjoyed  short  poems  and  had  a 
great  love  of  music.  In  1932  he  married  Honora 
Nancy  (died  1992),  a  teacher  of  classics  and 
daughter  of  David  Halloran,  schoolteacher.  They 
had  a  son,  who  became  a  consultant  physician, 
and  a  daughter.  Wayne  died  19  August  1990  in 
the  James  Paget  Hospital,  Gorleston,  near  Great 
Yarmouth,  from  heart  failure. 

[Munk's  Roll,  vol.  ix.  1094;  British  Medical  Journal,  vol. 
ccci,  1090,  p.  604;  Lancet,  vol.  2.  1990,  p.  932; 
Guardian,  22  August  1090;  private  information;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Abraham  Goldberg 

WECK,  Richard  (1913-1986),  civil  engineer,  was 
born  5  March  19 13  in  Franzenbad,  Bohemia,  the 
elder  son  and  eldest  of  three  children  of  Francis 
Week,  manager  of  a  small  restaurant,  and  his 
wife,  Katie  Dauber.  His  early  life  was  frugal,  for 
his  mother  and  younger  sister  died  early,  and  he 
had  to  care  for  his  younger  brother  and  become 
accustomed  to  casual  teaching  work.  Despite 
these  set-backs  he  entered  the  Technical  Uni- 
versity of  Prague  to  study  civil  and  structural 
engineering  in    1931,   and   graduated   in    1936. 


473 


Week 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


After  he  had  gained  some  practical  experience 
from  1937  to  1938,  he  was  engaged  with  Pro- 
fessor J.  Fritzsche  in  research  on  plastic  theories 
of  structural  analysis  and  design.  His  life  at  this 
stage  was  dominated  by  the  problems  of  his 
native  country  (which  had  become  Czechoslova- 
kia in  191 8),  and  the  adjacent  Nazi  rise  to  power, 
so  that  it  is  not  surprising  that  he  should  have 
become  a  student  activist,  founding  a  Democratic 
Liberal  society  and  engaging  with  the  anti-fascist 
student  movement.  When  Czechoslovakia  was 
annexed  by  Germany  in  1938,  he  and  fifteen 
similar  activists,  with  the  help  of  leading  mem- 
bers of  the  British  Liberal  party,  were  secretly 
evacuated  to  Britain,  where  Week  was  joined  by 
his  wife. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-six,  already  with  worldly 
experience,  and  having  a  sparkling,  seductively 
iconoclastic  temperament,  he  was  soon  deeply 
involved  in  the  war  effort.  He  gave  technical 
assistance  to  foundries,  and  then  edited  a  hand- 
book for  welded  structural  steelwork  on  behalf  of 
the  Institute  of  Welding,  thereby  both  improving 
his  English  and  meeting  the  institute's  originator 
J.  F.  (later  Baron)  *Baker.  When  Baker  became 
professor  of  mechanical  sciences  at  Cambridge  in 
1943,  Week  joined  him,  as  his  research  assistant, 
in  teaching,  research,  and  later  in  expanding  the 
British  Welding  Research  Association  (BWRA). 
Their  most  pressing  wartime  research  task  was  to 
understand  and  correct  the  mysterious  blight  of 
brittle  fractures  in  welded  steel  ship  hulls,  which 
threatened  the  transatlantic  supply  lifeline  to  an 
extent  only  masked  by  submarine  torpedo  losses. 
His  seminal  research  on  welding  residual  stresses 
was  rewarded  with  a  Cambridge  Ph.D.  in  1948, 
and  matched  by  metallurgical  research  con- 
ducted by  Dr  Constance  Tipper  at  the  same 
laboratory.  Both  co-operated  in  this  work  for 
more  than  a  decade,  but  Week  increasingly 
turned  his  attention  to  fatigue  testing  of  welded 
structures;  both  saw  the  culmination  of  their 
efforts  even  later,  in  the  successful  placement  and 
service  of  welded  steel  oil  platforms  in  the  hostile 
environment  of  the  North  Sea. 

Meanwhile,  driven  by  the  excessive  bulk  and 
noisy  operation  of  his  testing  machines,  Week 
sought  an  outstation  site,  and  discovered  the 
derelict  Abington  Hall  estate  nearby,  which  then 
offered  the  desired  space  and  remoteness.  It  soon 
became  the  home  of  BWRA,  of  whose  fatigue 
laboratory  he  had  been  head  since  1946,  and  a 
purpose-built  fatigue  testing  laboratory  was 
added  in  1952,  the  first  of  several  buildings  there 
to  employ  the  new  plastic  methods  of  Baker. 
Week  served  BWRA  at  this  juncture,  but 
returned  to  Cambridge  as  a  lecturer  in  195 1,  and 
stayed  there  until  1957,  creating  a  postgraduate 
course,  which  was  both  well  supported  and 
influential.  He  did,  however,  continue  to  live  at 
Abington  until  his  death. 


He  was  appointed  in  1957  as  director  of 
research  at  BWRA,  and  as  director-general  of  the 
Institute  of  Welding  and  BWRA  when  they  were 
merged  as  the  Welding  Institute  in  1968.  At  the 
time  of  his  retirement  in  1977  the  latter  body  had 
expanded  greatly,  and  acquired  a  reputation  for 
quality  of  service,  confirmed  by  the  substantial 
proportion  of  its  revenue  drawn  from  overseas, 
and  in  particular  from  the  USA,  Japan,  and 
Europe.  Week  was  also  for  six  years  a  visiting 
industrial  professor  at  Imperial  College,  London 
(1968-74),  and  from  1976  he  added  a  com- 
plementary post  in  the  department  of  civil 
engineering. 

The  international  outlook  of  Richard  Week 
gained  respect  and  recognition  in  the  Inter- 
national Institute  of  Welding,  where  for  more 
than  a  decade  he  was  chairman  of  the  commis- 
sion devoted  to  the  study  and  control  of  welding 
residual  stresses.  He  was  a  competent  linguist, 
embracing  German,  Spanish,  Russian,  and  later 
Japanese,  and  his  many  publications  (he  wrote 
over  sixty  articles)  reflect  this.  His  style  as  a 
leader  was  fearless  and  outspoken,  but  always 
both  courteous  and  generous.  He  was  appointed 
CBE  in  1969,  FRS  in  1975,  and  F.Eng.  in  1976. 
He  also  held  honorary  fellowships  of  the  Welding 
Institute,  the  Institution  of  Mechanical  Engin- 
eers, and  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers. 
An  array  of  medals  for  distinguished  services 
included  the  Bessemer  gold  medal  of  the  Metals 
Society  (1975). 

Week  was  naturalized  in  1946.  In  1933  he 
married  Katie,  daughter  of  Karl  Bartl,  master 
tailor  and  cutter.  They  were  a  mutually  devoted 
couple;  although  without  children,  they  treas- 
ured those  of  others.  Week  had  a  serious  heart 
attack  in  March  1971.  He  was  an  expert  grower 
of  exotic  plants.  He  had  been  typically  in  search 
of  gifts  on  9  January  1986  when  he  collapsed  and 
died  of  a  second  heart  attack  on  the  train  return- 
ing to  Cambridge  from  London. 

[A.  A.  Wells  and  E.  G.  West  in  Biographical  Memmrs  of 
Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxii,  1986;  personal 
knowledge.]  A.  A.  Wki.i.s 

WEX,  Bernard  Patrick  (1922-1990),  civil 
engineer,  was  born  24  April  1922  in  Acton, 
London,  the  only  child  of  Julius  Wex,  a  lace 
merchant  from  Germany,  who  had  gone  to 
England  in  1900,  taken  British  nationality  in 
191 1,  and  in  the  same  year  married  Gertrude 
Brady,  a  fashion  saleswoman.  His  father  died  of 
pneumonia  two  weeks  before  he  was  born,  and 
his  mother  went  to  live  with  her  mother  in 
Acton.  He  attended  Acton  County  Grammar 
School,  where  he  showed  all-round  prowess, 
matriculating  in  1938.  On  the  outbreak  of  World 
War  II  his  desire  to  become  a  Royal  Air  Force 
pilot  was  thwarted  by  minor  astigmatism.  After 
attending  Sandhurst,  in  1943  he  became  a  tank 


474 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Wheatcroft 


commander  (lieutenant)  in  the  Royal  Armoured 
Corps  (23rd  Hussars).  Having  suffered  pleurisy 
and  pneumonia  in  1944,  he  was  transferred  to 
administrative  work  until  demobilization  as  cap- 
tain in  March  1047.  That  October  he  was 
accepted  by  Imperial  College,  London,  to  read 
civil  engineering  and  he  graduated  in  1950  with 
first-class  honours,  being  top  of  his  year  and 
winning  the  Unwin  medal. 

He  immediately  started  work  with  Freeman 
Fox  &  Partners  under  (Sir)  Gilbert  'Roberts  and, 
later,  Oleg  *Kerensky.  His  early  work  included 
Auckland  harbour  bridge  (built  in  1955-9)  an^ 
schemes  for  the  1000m  Severn  and  Forth  suspen- 
sion spans.  He  gained  site  experience  on  the 
600MW  Castle  Donington  power  station.  Design 
work  on  another  power  station  was  followed  by- 
six  i77m-span  oil  pipeline  suspension  bridges  in 
India,  and  a  further  series  of  bridges  to  cam' 
high-pressure  gas  in  Pakistan,  including  the 
1770m  multi-span  river  Sutlej  crossing,  which 
was  built  entirely  in  one  dry  season. 

Appointed  a  partner  in  Freeman  Fox  in  1969, 
he  oversaw  construction  of  the  M5  Avonmouth 
bridge  and  took  charge  of  the  newly  authorized 
Humber  bridge  project.  This  had  originally  been 
studied  by  the  firm  in  1927-8  and  proposed  as  a 
single  i372m-span  by  Sir  Ralph  *Freeman  in 
1935.  Wex  directed  its  final  design  and  construc- 
tion, adopting  'slip-formed'  concrete  for  the 
towers,  rather  than  steel,  thus  making  substantial 
cost  savings.  He  also  used  novel  methods  for 
sinking  the  south  tower  and  anchorage  founda- 
tions through  40m  of  water  and  silt  to  reach  the 
Kimmeridge  clay.  The  construction  period  coin- 
cided with  unprecedented  inflation  and  worsen- 
ing industrial  relations,  which  caused  severe 
delays  and  mounting  costs.  Undaunted,  Wex 
piloted  client  and  contractors  through  to  a 
supremely  successful  conclusion.  The  bridge  was 
opened  by  Queen  Elizabeth  II  on  17  July  1981. 
At  1410m  its  main  clear  span  was  the  world's 
longest  by  1 10m.  Wex  was  appointed  OBE  in  the 
1982  New  Year  honours  list. 

Although  the  Humber  bridge  was  Wex's 
crowning  achievement,  he  packed  much  else  into 
the  decade  of  the  1970s,  including  the  cable- 
stayed  box-girder  Myton  swing  bridge  in  Hull 
and  a  slender  165m  concrete  arch  bridge  in 
South  Africa.  In  1979  he  prepared  a  design  for 
one  of  six  contractors  bidding  in  competition  for 
the  proposed  river  Foyle  bridge  near  London- 
derry, Northern  Ireland.  His  graceful  234m-span 
twin-steel  box-girder  scheme  was  judged  the 
winner  for  appearance  by  the  Royal  Fine  Art 
Commission  and  was  also  the  lowest  priced.  The 
bridge  was  completed  in  October  1984. 

Wex  led  the  seven-year  inquiry  into  the  1969 
collapse  of  the  381m  Emley  Moor  television 
mast,  and  served  energetically  on  many  technical 
committees  and  on  the  council  of  the  Welding 


Institute.  He  contributed  much  to  the  work  of 
the  International  Association  for  Bridge  and 
Structural  Engineering,  chairing  its  British 
group  and  technical  committees;  it  made  him  an 
honorary  member  in  1990.  He  helped  to  found 
the  Steel  Construction  Institute  in  1986  and 
remained  its  chairman  until  shortly  before  his 
final  illness.  He  wrote  sixteen  papers  on  six 
subjects,  eleven  of  them  between  1976  and  1984, 
which  were  published  in  ten  countries,  and  he 
delivered  many  lectures  at  home  and  abroad. 

With  his  lifelong  enthusiasm,  unquenchable 
good  humour,  and  first-class  brain,  Wex  became 
a  most  proficient  and  successful  creator  of 
bridges,  the  equal  of  any  of  his  time.  He  was  a 
perfectionist  in  all  he  attempted,  becoming  a 
skilful  photographer  and  cabinet-maker.  He  was 
elected  a  member  of  the  Institution  of  Gvil 
Engineers  (ICE)  in  1956  (fellow,  1968),  and  a 
fellow  of  the  Welding  Institute,  where  he  also 
took  the  practical  welding  course,  in  1972.  In 
1982  he  was  elected  to  the  Fellowship  (later 
Royal  Academy)  of  Engineering,  and  awarded 
the  fellowship  of  the  City  and  Guilds  Institute. 
In  1985  he  won  the  ICE's  Telford  gold  medal 
and  became  a  fellow  of  the  Institution  of  Struc- 
tural Engineers. 

Wex  was  tall,  of  athletic  build,  fair-skinned 
with  blond  hair  (which  mostly  disappeared  in  his 
early  twenties),  good-looking,  and  of  extrovert 
personality.  In  1945  he  married  Sheila  Evelyn 
Lambert,  the  widow  of  Malcolm  Kingsbury 
Lambert,  RAF  pilot,  and  daughter  of  Peter 
Thompson,  a  builder  in  north-west  London.  It 
was  a  very  happy  marriage,  of  which  there  were 
two  sons.  Wex  died  31  July  1990  in  St  Bartho- 
lomew's Hospital,  London,  while  undergoing 
chemotherapy  treatment  for  myeloid  leukaemia. 

[Freeman  Fox  records  in  archives  of  Acer  Group  Ltd.; 
information  from  Wex's  widow  and  colleagues;  per- 
sonal knowledge.]  Ralph  Freeman 

WHEATCROFT,  George  Shorrock  Ash- 
combe  (1905-1987),  professor  of  English  law  at 
the  London  School  of  Economics,  was  born  29 
October  1905  in  Derby,  the  eldest  of  three 
children,  a  son  and  two  daughters,  of  Hubert 
Ashcombe  Wheatcroft,  solicitor,  and  his  wife 
Jane  Eccles,  daughter  of  a  Liverpool  cotton 
broker.  He  was  educated  at  Rugby  School  and 
New  College,  Oxford,  taking  a  third  in  mathe- 
matical moderations  in  1924  and  a  second  in 
jurisprudence  in  1926.  He  qualified  as  a  solicitor 
in  1929. 

Always  known  as  Ash,  he  had  several  success- 
ful careers.  The  first  was  from  1929  to  195 1  as  a 
practising  solicitor  in  his  father's  firm,  Corbin, 
Greener  &  Cook  of  52  Bedford  Row,  London, 
with  which  he  had  been  articled.  This  was 
interrupted  by  war  service  in  1940-5  with  the 
Royal  Army  Service  Corps,  during  the  North 


475 


Wheatcroft 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


African  and  Italian  campaigns,  a  period  which 
included  the  task  of  running  the  port  of  Naples 
for  a  year.  He  was  twice  mentioned  in  dispatches 
and  was  released  with  the  honorary  rank  of 
lieutenant-colonel.  On  returning  to  practice  he 
specialized  in  company  law  and  estate  duty. 

His  second  career,  from  1951  to  1959,  was  as 
master  of  the  Supreme  Court  (Chancery  Divi- 
sion), where  he  was  widely  respected  by  those 
who  appeared  before  him.  Although  this  would 
have  been  a  full-time  job  for  most  people,  he 
regarded  it  as  a  part-time  occupation  which  left 
him  free  to  write  and  build  up  his  reputation  in 
taxation.  His  first  book,  The  Taxation  of  Gifts  and 
Settlements  (1953),  might  claim  to  be  the  first 
book  on  tax  planning.  In  1956  he  founded  the 
first  scholarly  journal  on  taxation,  the  British  Tax 
Review,  which  he  edited  until  1971,  when  he 
became  consulting  editor.  A  significant  event, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  his  later  life,  was  his 
teaching  of  the  first  university  course  in  England 
on  taxation,  at  the  London  School  of  Economics 
in  1957.  In  1959  he  founded  a  tax  discussion  and 
dining  society,  the  Addington  Society,  the  mem- 
bership of  which  was  limited  to  sixty,  with 
roughly  equal  representation  from  solicitors,  bar- 
risters, accountants,  and  economists.  His  third 
career,  which  naturally  followed,  was  as  pro- 
fessor of  English  law  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics  from  1959  to  1968,  during  which  he 
specialized  in  tax  law  and  built  up  an  inter- 
national reputation.  He  played  a  full  part  in 
administering  the  law  department,  being  its  con- 
venor, and  during  this  period  he  also  wrote  The 
Law  of  Income  Tax,  Surtax  and  Profits  Tax  (1962) 
and,  with  A.  E.  W.  Park,  Wheatcroft  on  Capital 
Gains  Taxes  (1967).  His  fourth  and  final  career 
was  as  a  director  and  vice-chairman  of  Hambro 
Life  Assurance,  later  known  as  Allied  Dunbar 
Assurance.  Outside  his  work,  he  was  an  excellent 
chess  player,  representing  England  at  Stockholm 
in  1937  and  serving  as  president  of  the  British 
Chess  Federation,  and  bridge  player. 

His  contribution  to  taxation  law  was  immense. 
Not  only  did  he  teach  the  first  tax  course  at 
London  University,  but  he  did  the  same  in 
Oxford  and  Cambridge,  and  such  courses  spread 
rapidly.  In  1972  a  survey  showed  that  tax  law  was 
taught  in  thirty-two  of  the  forty-one  institutions 
offering  law  degrees,  and,  by  the  time  of  Wheat- 
croft's  death,  it  would  have  been  a  matter  of 
comment  if  any  similar  institution  failed  to  offer 
such  a  course.  Perhaps  the  previous  neglect  of 
tax  law  as  a  subject  for  academic  study  stemmed 
from  its  being  a  statute-based  branch  of  law 
compared  to  the  traditional  judge-made  common 
law,  which  is  the  basis  of  the  study  of  law  at 
universities.  Wheatcroft  demonstrated  that  this 
statutory  basis  did  not  imply  any  lack  of  princi- 
ples, and  that,  on  the  contrary,  the  statutory  basis 
was  its  virtue,  particularly  for  postgraduates  with 


a  thorough  grounding  in  other  branches  of  the 
law,  for  whom  academic  tax  study  formed  an 
excellent  start  to  subsequent  tax  practice.  Cer- 
tainly attitudes  had  changed  completely  by  the 
time  of  his  death.  Among  his  other  innovations 
was  the  founding  of  a  course  to  help  economists 
and  lawyers  understand  each  other's  views  on 
tax  law,  a  subject  they  were  approaching  from 
different  points  of  view.  As  a  tall  and  solidly- 
built  person  he  made  a  commanding  lecturer, 
who  delighted  in  difficult  problems.  He  was 
appointed  honorary  fellow  of  the  LSE  in  1976 
and  of  University  College,  Buckingham,  in  1978; 
he  received  an  honorary  LL  D  at  Buckingham  in 

1979; 

His  writings,  which  included  standard  works 
on  income  tax,  capital  gains  tax,  and  corporation 
tax,  together  formed  the  British  Tax  Encyclopedia 
published  by  Sweet  &  Maxwell  (1962,  loose- 
leaf),  and  he  also  wrote  books  on  VAT  (value 
added  tax),  many  of  them  later  updated  by 
succeeding  authors.  He  wrote  many  articles  on 
all  aspects  of  taxation.  He  was  honorary  adviser 
to  Customs  and  Excise  on  the  introduction  of 
VAT. 

In  1930  he  married  Mildred  Susan  (died 
1978),  daughter  of  Canon  Walter  Lock,  DD, 
formerly  warden  of  Keble  College,  Oxford.  They 
had  two  sons  and  a  daughter.  His  wife  had  a 
first-class  Oxford  degree  in  philosophy,  politics, 
and  economics,  and  worked  on  management 
research,  and  also  on  economic  intelligence  at  the 
British  embassy  in  Washington,  where  she  had 
taken  the  family  during  the  war.  Wheatcroft  died 
in  Berkhamsted  2  December  1987. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

J.  F.  Avkry  Jones 

WHELDON,  Sir  Huw  Pyrs  (1916-1986),  broad- 
caster, was  born  7  May  19 16  at  his  grand- 
mother's home  in  Prestatyn,  the  eldest  in  a 
family  of  two  sons  and  two  daughters  of  (Sir) 
Wynn  Powell  Wheldon,  solicitor  and  civil  ser- 
vant, and  his  wife,  Margaret  ('Megan')  Edwards. 
His  father  worked  in  David  Lloyd  George's  law 
practice  before  World  War  I,  had  a  brave  military 
career,  and  went  on  to  become  registrar  of  the 
University  College  of  North  Wales  in  Bangor 
and  then  permanent  secretary  to  the  Welsh 
department  of  the  Ministry  of  Education.  Huw 
Wheldon  was  educated  at  Friars  School,  Bangor 
(he  did  not  speak  English  until  he  was  seven)  and 
later  at  the  London  School  of  Economics  and 
Political  Science  where  he  gained  a  B.Sc.(Econ.) 
in  1938.  He  joined  the  staff  of  the  Kent  education 
committee,  and  then  war  interrupted  his  career. 
Enlisting  in  the  East  Kent  Regiment  as  a  private, 
he  was  commissioned  into  the  Royal  Welch 
Fusiliers  (1940),  and  volunteered  to  join  the 
airborne  forces.  He  served  in  both  the  1st  and  6th 
Airborne  divisions,  ending  the  war  as  a  major  in 


476 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Wilkinson 


the  Royal  Ulster  Rifles,  having  won  the  MC 
shortly  after  D-Day  in  1944. 

In  1046  he  became  director  of  the  Arts  Coun- 
cil in  Wales,  and  in  1049  joined  the  directorate  of 
the  Festival  of  Britain.  He  helped  to  ensure  the 
festival  reached  all  of  Britain,  and  for  his  work  he 
was  appointed  OBE  in  1952,  the  year  he  joined 
the  BBC  as  publicity  officer,  television.  He 
wanted  to  be  involved  in  programmes  and  first 
made  his  mark  on  the  screen  as  the  presenter  of 
the  children's  programme,  All  Your  Own.  He 
became  a  national  figure  when  he  devised  a 
conkers  competition  that  drew  58,000  conkers 
from  all  over  Britain.  In  1954  he  was  appointed 
senior  producer,  television  talks,  although  he  had 
never  directed  or  produced  a  programme.  His 
first  series  was  Men  in  Battle  with  Lieutenant- 
General  Sir  Brian  *Horrocks,  and  his  second 
Orson  Welles 's  Sketchbook. 

From  1958  to  1964  he  devised,  edited,  and 
presented  Monitor,  the  first  arts  programme  on 
television.  In  this  pioneering  fortnightly  pro- 
gramme he  introduced  a  growing  audience  to 
major  artists,  in  numbers  and  range  remarkable 
for  its  time.  He  built  around  him  a  team  of 
talented  people,  including  John  Schlesinger,  Ken 
Russell,  Humphrey  Burton,  David  Jones,  Patrick 
Garland,  and  Melvyn  Bragg.  He  required  of  all 
his  programmes  fidelity  and  attention  to  the 
subject,  to  the  audience,  and  to  the  integrity  of 
the  programme  maker. 

Inevitably,  he  progressed  to  the  most  senior 
posts  in  BBC  television:  he  was  the  first  tele- 
vision producer  to  become  controller  of  pro- 
grammes (1965-8)  and  he  was  the  first  holder  of 
the  new  post  of  managing  director  (1969-75). 
This  was  the  time  when  BBC  television  was  at 
its  best  with  some  remarkable  series  (Civilisa- 
tion with  Sir  Kenneth  (later  Baron)  *Clark, 
The  Ascent  of  Man  with  Jacob  *Bronowski,  and 
Alistair  Cooke's  America),  challenging  drama, 
refreshing  comedy,  and  lively  current  affairs  and 
sports  programmes.  Despite  the  restrictions  of 
his  office  (concerned  with  the  BBC's  strategy, 
standards,  and  finances),  programmes  and  pro- 
gramme makers  were  what  Wheldon  cared  about 
most.  In  his  own  phrase,  he  wished  programmes 
to  'give  delight  and  insight'.  Although  he  was  a 
candidate  for  the  post  of  director-general  when 
Sir  Hugh  *Greene  retired,  the  BBC  governors, 
led  by  Baron  *Hill  of  Luton,  preferred  to  give 
the  job  to  someone  with  a  lower  profile,  (Sir) 
Charles  *Curran.  Wheldon  served  him  loyally  as 
his  deputy  until  his  own  retirement  in  1976,  the 
year  he  was  knighted. 

Three  factors  helped  to  shape  Wheldon's  life: 
Wales  and  the  advantages  of  a  close-knit  family 
life,  the  army  and  its  discipline,  and  the  BBC  and 
its  creative  ethos.  They  gave  him  a  reference  for 
language  and  for  institutions  and  for  the  need  to 
protect  them  and  keep  them  alive.  Wheldon  was 


a  tall  man,  slightly  stooped.  It  was  his  face  that 
was  remarkable:  piercing  eyes,  a  pointed  chin,  a 
hawk's  nose.  He  was  the  most  generous  and 
companionable  of  men,  the  best  and  sometimes 
longest  teller  of  stories,  and  he  had  an  enormous 
zest  for  life. 

After  he  left  the  BBC,  he  returned  to  pro- 
gramme making  and  wrote  and  presented  the 
Royal  Heritage  series  (1977)  and  Destination 
D-Day  (1984),  on  the  fortieth  anniversary  of  the 
Allied  landings  in  Normandy.  He  became  an 
honorary  fellow  (1973)  and  chairman  of  the  court 
of  governors  of  the  London  School  of  Economics 
(1975-85).  He  was  the  president  of  the  Royal 
Television  Society  (1979-85)  and  received  every 
honour  possible  in  television.  From  1976  he  was 
a  trustee  of  the  National  Portrait  Gallery  and 
from  1983  a  trustee  of  the  Royal  Botanic  Gar- 
dens, Kew.  He  had  five  honorary  doctorates, 
from  Ulster  (1975),  Wales  (1978),  London 
(1984),  Loughborough  (1985),  and  the  Open 
University  (1980),  which  he  helped  to  estab- 
lish. 

In  1956  he  married  Jacqueline  Mary  (died 
1993),  the  daughter  of  Hugh  Clarke,  who  had  a 
tool  designing  business  in  Chiswick.  They  had 
one  son  and  two  daughters.  Their  family  house 
in  Richmond  was  an  exceptionally  happy  home 
and  he  died  there,  from  cancer,  14  March 
1986. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.]  Pall  Fox 

WILKINSON,  James  Hardy  (1919-1986), 
mathematician,  was  born  27  September  1919  in 
Strood,  Kent,  the  third  child  in  the  family  of  two 
sons  and  three  daughters  of  James  William  Wilk- 
inson, dairyman,  and  his  wife,  Kathleen  Char- 
lotte Hardy.  The  family,  impoverished  when 
their  dairy  business  failed  in  the  1930s,  was  close 
and  happy.  As  a  boy,  Wilkinson's  exceptional 
qualities  secured  him  a  Foundation  scholarship 
to  Sir  Joseph  Williamson's  Mathematical  School 
in  Rochester  before  he  was  eleven.  He  won  a 
major  scholarship  to  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge, which  he  entered  just  after  his  seven- 
teenth birthday  in  1936.  He  won  college  prizes  in 
1937  and  1939  for  being  the  most  distinguished 
student  of  his  year  in  any  subject,  became  a 
wrangler  in  pan  ii  of  the  mathematics  tripos  in 
1938,  and  took  his  part  iii  in  1939. 

After  World  War  II  broke  out  in  1939,  Wilk- 
inson, together  with  other  leading  young  math- 
ematicians, was  drafted  into  the  Ministry  of 
Supply.  After  working  mainly  on  pedestrian 
calculations,  he  sought  a  more  demanding  math- 
ematical environment  as  soon  as  the  war  ended. 
In  May  1946  he  joined  the  mathematics  division 
of  the  National  Physical  Laboratory,  where  E.  T. 
Goodwin  led  a  desk  machine  computing  section, 
and  where  A.  M.  *Turing  was  busy  designing 


477 


Wilkinson 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


the  automatic  computing  engine  (ACE).  After  a 
brief  spell  of  desk  machine  work  Wilkinson 
devoted  himself  to  Turing's  machine.  The  ACE 
project  was  hampered  by  erratic  leadership  from 
Turing  and  misdirection  from  above.  But  after 
Turing's  departure  in  1948  and  the  establish- 
ment of  a  new  NPL  regime,  Wilkinson  took  a 
leading  role  in  the  development  of  a  modified 
machine,  known  as  Pilot  ACE;  this  proved  highly 
successful  from  its  inception  in  May  1950.  In 
that  year  Wilkinson  was  promoted  to  principal 
scientific  officer  and  by  1974  he  had  become  chief 
scientific  officer. 

The  results  that  Wilkinson  obtained  from 
programmes  run  on  the  Pilot  ACE  and  later 
machines  spurred  him  to  develop  new  analytical 
and  numerical  techniques.  In  succeeding  years  he 
described  the  fruits  of  his  research  in  publications 
which  came  to  form  the  very  foundation  of 
numerical  linear  algebra.  He  wrote  over  100 
papers  and  was  the  author  of  Rounding  Errors  in 
Algebraic  Processes  (1963)  and  the  monumental 
The  Algebraic  Eigenvalue  Problem  (1965).  In  i960 
George  Forsythe  of  Stanford,  one  of  the  most 
eminent  numerical  analysts  of  his  generation, 
wrote  'In  my  opinion  Wilkinson  is  single-hand- 
edly responsible  for  the  creation  of  almost  all  of 
the  current  body  of  scientific  knowledge  about 
the  computer  solution  of  the  problems  of  linear 
algebra.'  This  judgement  was  made  when  Wilk- 
inson's most  productive  period  still  lay  in  the 
future.  He  spent  his  working  life  at  NPL,  but  also 
made  many  visits  to  the  USA.  In  particular  he 
was  an  annual  consultant  to  the  Argonne  National 
Laboratory  for  some  twenty  years,  a  visiting 
professor  at  Ann  Arbor,  Michigan  (1957- 
73),  and  a  professor  at  Stanford  (1977-84).  His 
lectures  were  legendary;  his  meticulous 
clarity  owed  much  to  painstaking  preparation 
concealed  by  a  highly  individual,  informal  deliv- 
ery. 

He  obtained  an  Sc.D.  from  Cambridge  in 
1962.  He  was  elected  FRS  in  1969,  and  in  the 
following  year  became  the  first  person  ever  to 
receive  both  the  A.  M.  Turing  award  of  the 
Association  for  Computing  Machinery  and  the  J. 
von  Neumann  award  of  the  Society  for  Industrial 
and  Applied  Mathematics  in  the  same  year.  In 
the  next  fifteen  years  honours  and  distinctions 
(including  honorary  doctorates  from  Brunei, 
1971,  Heriot-Watt,  1973,  Waterloo,  1978,  and 
Essex,  1979)  came  regularly.  Posthumous  hon- 
ours included  the  establishment  of  the  J.  H. 
Wilkinson  fellowship  at  Argonne,  and  also  the 
triennial  Wilkinson  prize  sponsored  jointly  by 
NPL,  the  Numerical  Algorithms  Group,  and 
Argonne. 

Wilkinson  was  a  jovial,  round-faced,  ruddy- 
complexioned  man,  once  described  as  having  'all 
the  aspects  of  a  sailor  on  shore  leave  and  ready  to 


do  the  town'.  He  certainly  had  a  great  capacity 
for  enjoying  himself  and  his  ready  wit  enlivened 
any  gathering.  He  appeared  to  be  interested  in 
everything  and  everybody;  boredom  was  impos- 
sible in  his  company.  Of  his  specific  interests, 
perhaps  the  greatest  outside  mathematics  was 
music,  of  which  his  knowledge  was  wide  and 
profound.  He  was  also  very  knowledgeable  about 
the  wines  with  which  he  entertained  his  friends 
and  which  he  consumed  with  such  pleasure. 
Very  many  people  felt  that  they  knew  Wilkinson, 
though  in  fact  few  knew  him  well;  beneath  the 
jocularity  he  was  a  very  private  individual. 

In  1945  he  married  Heather  Nora,  daughter  of 
William  Henry  Ware,  buyer  for  a  drapery  ware- 
house. They  had  a  daughter,  who  died  in  1978, 
and  a  son.  Wilkinson  died  at  his  home  in 
Teddington  5  October  1986,  from  a  heart 
attack. 

[L.  Fox  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal 
Society,  vol.  xxxiii,  1987;  personal  knowledge.] 

Charles  Clenshaw 

WILKINSON,  Sir  (Robert  Francis)  Martin 

(1911-1990),  stockbroker,  was  born  4  June  191 1 
in  Blackheath,  London,  the  elder  son  and  eldest 
of  four  children  of  (Sir)  Robert  Pelham  Wilk- 
inson, a  partner  of  de  Zoete  &  Gorton  from  191 3 
to  i960  and  deputy  chairman  of  the  Stock 
Exchange  from  1936  to  1946,  and  his  wife, 
Phyllis  Marion  Bernard.  He  was  educated  at 
Repton  School. 

He  joined  de  Zoete  &  Gorton  straight  from 
school  in  1930  and  became  a  partner  in  1936, 
having  become  a  member  of  the  Stock  Exchange 
in  1933.  During  World  War  II  he  served  in  the 
Royal  Air  Force  in  radar  intelligence  in  Northern 
Ireland  and  Italy,  and  at  Bushey  Priory,  attaining 
the  rank  of  squadron  leader.  He  returned  to  de 
Zoete  &  Gorton  after  the  war  and  was  elected  to 
the  council  of  the  Stock  Exchange  in  1959.  He 
became  deputy  chairman  in  1963  and  was  elected 
chairman  in  1965,  having  acted  as  chairman  for 
the  year  before  he  took  office,  when  he  stood  in 
for  the  third  Baron  Ritchie  of  Dundee  during  his 
illness.  He  became  senior  partner  of  de  Zoete  & 
Bevan  following  the  merger  of  his  firm  with 
David  A.  Bevan  &  Simpson  in  1970.  He  retired 
from  the  chairmanship  of  the  Stock  Exchange  in 
March  1973  and  from  de  Zoete  &  Bevan  in 
1976. 

Wilkinson  chaired  the  Stock  Exchange  during 
a  difficult  period.  It  was  a  time  when  inter- 
national pressures  were  beginning  to  exert  influ- 
ence and  reform  was  becoming  necessary.  He 
was  himself  not  a  natural  reformer,  being  steeped 
in  the  traditions  of  the  Exchange  and  the  City. 
He  was,  however,  open  to  ideas  of  reform  and  he 
encouraged  his  younger  colleagues  to  come  for- 


478 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Williams 


ward  with  them.  He  grasped  ideas  quickly  and 
thoroughly  and  was  a  natural  leader  in  the 
implementation  of  change. 

During  his  period  of  office  the  settlement  of 
Stock  Exchange  business  was  centralized,  and 
stock  exchanges  throughout  the  United  King- 
dom and  the  Republic  of  Ireland  came  together 
in  one  organization.  These  two  changes  were 
interlinked.  A  single  market  authority  was  es- 
sential. Only  one  exchange  could  achieve  the 
most  efficient  system  of  settlement  and  transfer 
of  securities  which  was  recommended  by  the 
City-wide  Heasman  committee  in  1970.  The 
exchanges  were  amalgamated  in  1973  and  this 
achievement  led  to  the  full  computerization  of 
the  settlement  procedures  after  Wilkinson's 
retirement.  Furthermore,  only  one  exchange 
could  ensure  the  imposition  of  the  best  regu- 
latory standards  across  the  whole  country  and 
thus  satisfy  investors  that  their  business  was 
being  fairly  conducted  and  settled. 

During  Wilkinson's  term  of  office  the  Stock 
Exchange's  historic  building,  which  had  been 
extended  many  times  on  the  same  site  since  1801, 
was  pulled  down  and  rebuilt,  an  extensive  project 
which  required  the  full  backing  of  the  voting 
members.  He  patiently  achieved  the  necessary 
backing,  explaining  how  essential  the  rebuilding 
was  for  the  efficiency  of  the  market  place  and 
particularly  its  worldwide  communications. 

Other  reforms  during  his  tenure  of  office 
included  the  abolition  of  the  requirement  of 
British  nationality  for  membership  of  the  Stock 
Exchange,  the  relaxation  of  some  of  the  restric- 
tions preventing  member  firms  from  competing 
in  overseas  markets,  the  easing  of  restraints  on 
advertising,  the  tightening  of  the  financial 
reporting  requirements  imposed  on  firms,  the 
admission  of  women  to  the  membership  and  to 
the  trading  floor,  and  the  introduction  of  rules 
which  allowed  firms  for  the  first  time  to  seek 
external  capital  through  the  formation  of  limited 
partnerships  or  companies.  These  reforms  arose 
from  the  need  for  Stock  Exchange  firms  to  be 
internationally  competitive.  It  was  no  mean 
achievement  to  lead  the  Exchange  through  these 
changes  in  the  face  of  much  internal  criticism 
from  members  who  preferred  to  think  of  the 
Exchange  more  as  a  club  than  an  international 
market  place. 

Wilkinson's  years  in  office  were  also  difficult 
because  attitudes  in  Westminster  towards  the 
City  of  London  and  to  the  Exchange  were 
hostile.  Politicians  were  apt  to  describe  the 
Exchange  as  a  'casino'  and  to  draw  unflattering 
comparisons  between  the  paper  shuffling  of  stock 
markets  and  the  real  world  of  manufacturing 
industry.  Wilkinson  continued  the  work  of  his 
predecessors  in  encouraging  a  greater  public 
knowledge  of  the  workings  and  raison  d'etre  of 


the  Exchange.  He  did  not  enjoy  such  public 
platforms,  being  himself  a  very  private  man,  but 
he  was  not  afraid  to  stand  up  and  do  his  public 
duty  as  chairman.  He  left  his  listeners  in  no 
doubt  about  the  role  of  the  Exchange  as  the 
market  through  which  industry  could  raise  long- 
term  risk  capital  and  as  the  regulatory  authority 
which  demanded  high  standards  of  disclosure 
from  listed  companies  and  financial  probity  and 
ethical  behaviour  from  its  members,  thus  serving 
the  interests  of  investors.  He  was  a  major  influ- 
ence on  the  introduction  of  legislation  to  make 
insider  trading  a  criminal  offence,  having  initi- 
ated this  with  a  speech  (of  which  he  gave  his 
colleagues  no  prior  warning)  in  which  he  said  it 
was  'no  better  than  theft'. 

Wilkinson  served  as  chairman  of  two  invest- 
ment trusts — Aitifund  (1976-81)  and  the  City  of 
London  Brewery  Trust  (1977-8).  He  was  the 
seventh  generation  of  his  family  to  be  a  livery- 
man of  the  Worshipful  Company  of  Needle- 
makers.  He  was  knighted  in  1969. 

He  was  of  medium  height,  well  built,  and  well 
groomed.  His  movements  and  gestures  were 
restrained,  almost  self-conscious.  His  somewhat 
aquiline  features  could  be  severe,  but  they  fre- 
quendy  relaxed  into  a  ready,  impish  smile.  When 
he  retired  he  lived  part  of  the  year  near  Cortona 
in  Italy  and  indulged  his  passion  for  gardening  at 
his  home  in  England  while  continuing  to  act  as 
consultant  to  de  Zoete  &  Bevan.  In  1946  he 
married  Dore  Esme,  daughter  of  William  John 
Arendt,  timber  trader.  They  had  three  daugh- 
ters. Wilkinson  died  22  January  1990  in  Pembury 
Hospital,  Kent. 

[Stock  Exchange  archives  in  the  Guildhall  Library; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

Nicholas  Goodison 

WILLIAMS,  (George)  Emlyn  (1905-1987), 
actor  and  dramatist,  was  born  26  November  1905 
at  Pen-y-Ffordd,  Mostyn,  Clwyd  (then  Flint- 
shire), the  eldest  of  the  three  surviving  sons  (two 
older  children,  a  boy  and  a  girl,  died  in  infancy) 
of  Richard  Williams,  an  ex-navy  stoker  become 
greengrocer,  of  Ffynnongroyw,  Clwyd,  and  his 
wife  Mary,  a  former  maidservant,  daughter  of 
Job  Williams,  collier,  of  Treuddyn,  Mold.  He 
was  educated  at  Holywell  County  School  and  St 
Julien,  Switzerland,  before  winning  an  open 
scholarship  to  Christ  Church,  Oxford.  At  Holy- 
well County  School  he  had  met  Miss  Sarah 
Cooke,  the  senior  mistress,  on  whose  character 
and  personality  he  drew  for  much  of  Miss 
Moffett  in  The  Corn  Is  Green.  She  encouraged 
him,  fostered  his  gift  for  languages,  paid  for  his 
stay  in  Switzerland,  entered  him  for  the  Oxford 
scholarship,  gave  him  much  financial  support, 
and  remained  a  lifelong  friend.  At  Oxford  he  did 


479 


Williams 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


little  work,  spending  his  time  acting  with  the 
Oxford  University  Dramatic  Society  and  writing 
plays.  In  1926  he  suffered  a  nervous  breakdown 
before  his  final  examinations,  mainly  due  to  an 
emotional  friendship  with  a  fellow  undergradu- 
ate (his  autobiography  is  frank  about  his  bisexu- 
ality).  He  sat  his  finals  in  1927,  when  he  was 
already  a  professional  actor,  and  took  a  second 
class  in  modern  languages.  Williams  was  stage- 
struck,  captivated  by  a  glamorous  popular  theatre 
in  which,  through  hard  work  and  professional 
commitment,  he  became  a  dominant  figure. 
Though  he  acquired  great  sophistication  he 
remained,  essentially,  the  daringly  optimistic, 
emotional,  and  single-minded  romantic  who  had 
worked  his  way  up  from  humble  beginnings. 

When  an  undergraduate  his  one-act  play,  Vigil 
(1925)  and  a  full-length  drama,  Full  Moon 
(1927),  were  performed  at  the  Playhouse  theatre, 
Oxford.  In  London,  after  impressing  with  Glam- 
our (1928)  and  A  Murder  Has  Been  Arranged 
(1930),  he  had  his  first  commercial  success  with 
The  Late  Christopher  Bean  (1933),  an  adaptation 
of  Sidney  Howard's  English  version  of  Fauchois' 
Prenez  Garde  a  la  Peinture.  Night  Must  Fall 
(1935)  ran  for  over  400  performances;  The  Corn 
Is  Green  (1938)  was  very  popular  in  both  London 
and  New  York.  His  numerous  plays  include  The 
Druid's  Rest  (1944),  a  Welsh  comedy  in  which  the 
young  Richard  *Burton  made  his  debut,  The 
Wind  of  Heaven  (1945),  and  Someone  Waiting 
(1953).  He  wrote  features  for  radio  and  one  play, 
Pepper  and  Sand  (1947),  and  two  plays  for 
television,  A  Blue  Movie  (1968)  being  the  better 
known.  His  film-scripts  include  The  Citadel 
(1938),  in  collaboration,  and  The  Last  Days  of 
Dolwyn  (1949). 

His  professional  acting  career  began  in  1927, 
at  the  Savoy,  with  a  small  part  in  And  So  To  Bed 
by  J.  B.  *Fagan.  His  first  success  was  as  Angelo 
in  Edgar  'Wallace's  On  the  Spot  (1930).  In  a  long 
West  End  career  he  often  starred  in  his  own 
plays:  he  was  a  hit  as  Dan  in  Night  Must  Fall  and 
an  even  greater  one  as  Morgan  Evans  in  The  Corn 
Is  Green.  In  1937  he  appeared  in  Shakespeare  at 
the  Old  Vic.  He  was  Sir  Robert  Morton  in  (Sir) 
Terence  *Rattigan's  The  Winslow  Boy  (1946).  At 
Stratford  in  1956  he  played  Angelo,  Shylock,  and 
Iago.  In  1955  he  was  Hjalmar  Ekdal  in  The  Wild 
Duck;  he  was  Sir  Thomas  More  in  the  New  York 
production  of  ,4  Man  for  All  Seasons  (1962).  His 
films  included  The  Last  Days  of  Dolwyn  (1949), 
Ivanhoe  (1952),  The  Deep  Blue  Sea  (1955),  The 
L-Shaped  Room  (1962),  and  David  Copperfield 
(1969). 

In  195 1  he  began  his  acclaimed  readings  from 
Charles  *Dickens,  performing  all  over  the  world 
until  he  was  well  over  eighty.  From  1955  he 
performed  a  second  one-man  show,  as  Dylan 
Thomas  in  A  Boy  Growing  Up.  A  third,  based  on 


the  writings  of  H.  H.  *Munro  ('Saki'),  began  at 
the  Apollo  in  1977. 

In  1 96 1  he  published  the  best-selling  George: 
an  Early  Autobiography;  its  sequel,  Emlyn,  fol- 
lowed in  1973.  His  interest  in  the  psychology  of 
murderers  led  to  Beyond  Belief  (1967),  on  the 
'Moors  murderers',  and  to  Dr.  Crippen's  Diary 
(1987). 

Given  the  high  intellectual  promise  of  Wil- 
liams's beginnings  his  career  is  disappointing.  He 
was  a  fine  popular  actor  with  lucid  diction  and  a 
'mesmeric'  stage  presence.  But,  though  he  had  a 
success  in  The  Wild  Duck  and  as  a  'superbly 
dangerous'  Iago,  his  classical  roles  generally 
received  mixed  reviews.  He  was  a  determinedly 
commercial  dramatist,  with  little  interest  in  the 
avant-garde  or  in  exploring  social  or  political 
issues.  His  subjects  were  the  psychology  of 
murder  and  the  supernatural,  the  conflict 
between  innocence  and  experience,  and  the  rela- 
tionship between  Wales  and  the  outside  world. 
But,  too  often,  his  desire  for  immediate  effect  led 
to  melodrama,  sentimentality,  or  theatrical  clev- 
erness. His  portrayal  of  Welsh  people  tended  to 
stereotype;  claims  that,  in  his  Welsh  plays,  he 
perfected  a  rich  poetic  language  reminiscent  of 
J.  M.  *Synge  are  overstated.  However,  with  such 
plays  as  A  Murder  Has  Been  Arranged,  Night 
Must  Fall,  and  Someone  Waiting  he  contributed 
to  the  psychological  thriller;  his  portrayal  of 
ordinary  people,  particularly  the  rural  Welsh, 
widened  the  narrow  social  range  of  West  End 
'drawing-room'  plays.  Above  all,  his  fine  com- 
mand of  the  dramatist's  craft  made  him  a  highly 
successful  entertainer.  His  was  the  age  of  the 
well-made,  middle-brow  drama  and  the  abrupt 
changes  in  British  theatre  during  the  1950s,  the 
advent  of  Samuel  Beckett  and  John  Osborne, 
effectively  ended  his  writing  for  the  stage.  Night 
Must  Fall  and  The  Corn  Is  Green  are  occasionally 
revived  and  remain  staple  fare  for  amateurs,  but 
he  is  now  better  remembered  for  his  brilliantly 
accurate  impersonation  of  Dickens  the  public 
reader. 

His  greatest  literary  achievement  is  George,  a 
moving  and  detailed  recreation  of  his  childhood 
and  adolescence  in  north  Wales  and  an  important 
study  of  a  'scholarship  boy'  in  the  1920s.  George 
is  one  of  this  century's  finest  autobiographies. 

Williams's  family  was  poor  and  Welsh-speak- 
ing. He  remained  proud  of  his  roots  and  retained 
his  Welsh.  His  upbringing  made  him  careful 
with  money;  he  died  a  wealthy  man.  He  was  an 
FRSL,  received  an  honorary  LL  D  at  the  Uni- 
versity College  of  North  Wales,  Bangor,  in  1949, 
and  was  appointed  CBE  in  1962.  During  his 
early  career  he  lived  with  a  fellow-actor,  Bill 
Cronin-Wilson,  who  died  in  1934.  In  1935  he 
married  Mary  Marjorie  ('Molly')  (died  1970), 
formerly  an  actress,  who  was  divorced  from  the 
barrister,  Cecil  Caradoc  ('Jack')  Carus-Wilson. 


480 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Williams 


They  had  two  sons.  Mary's  father  was  Theodore 
Walter  O'Shann,  chartered  accountant. 

Emlyn  Williams  died  25  September  1987,  of 
cancer,  at  his  London  home,  123  Doverhouse 
Street,  SW3. 

[Emlyn  Williams,  George  (autobiography),  1961,  and 
Emlyn,  1973;  Richard  Findlater  (K.  B.  F.  Bain),  Emlyn 
Williams,  1956;  Don  Dale-Jones,  Emlyn  Williams,  1979; 
James  Harding,  Emlyn  Williams,  a  Life,  1993;  The 
Times,  26  September  1987;  information  from  John 
Atterbury.]  James  A.  Da  vies 

WILLIAMS,  Kenneth  Charles  (1026-1088), 
actor  and  comedian,  was  born  22  February  1926 
at  Bingfield  Street,  off  the  Caledonian  Road, 
London,  the  younger  child  and  only  son  of 
Charles  George  Williams,  manager  of  a  hair- 
dressing  salon  in  Marchmont  Street,  King's 
Cross,  London,  and  his  wife,  Louisa  Alexandra 
Morgan,  who  assisted  in  the  hairdresser's.  He 
had  theatrical  aspirations  from  an  early  age, 
although  his  father,  a  Methodist,  had  a  hatred  of 
loose  morals  and  effeminacy  and  thought  the 
theatre  epitomized  both.  The  young  Kenneth 
Williams,  on  the  other  hand,  found  acting 
'instinctive,  involuntary  and  authentic',  attri- 
butes which  marked  his  theatrical  career  in 
later  years.  He  received  his  formal  education  at 
Lyulph  Stanley  School,  Mornington  Crescent, 
and  from  1940  studied  at  the  Bolt  Court  School 
of  Lithography  in  Fleet  Street,  where  he  trained 
as  a  draughtsman. 

Called  up  for  national  service  in  the  army  in 
1944,  he  served  as  a  sapper  in  the  cartography 
section  of  the  Royal  Engineers  and  later  as  a 
poster  designer  and  actor  in  CSE  (Combined 
Services  Entertainment),  when  stationed  in  Sin- 
gapore. There,  in  company  with  such  aspiring 
actors,  playwrights,  and  directors  as  Stanley 
Baxter,  Peter  Nichols,  and  John  Schlesinger,  his 
theatrical  aspirations  hardened  and  developed, 
and  he  toured  army  bases  in  the  Far  East  in  the 
revue  At  Your  Service. 

He  was  demobilized  in  1947  and  by  1948  had 
become  an  established  actor  in  various  repertory 
companies,  playing  many  different  roles.  By  the 
early  1950s  he  had  established  his  versatility.  He 
made  his  debut  in  films  in  a  small  part  in  the 
1952  production  of  Trent's  Last  Case.  In  the  same 
vear  he  made  his  first  television  appearance  in 
The  Wonderful  Visit,  by  H.  G.  *Wells,  in  which 
he  played  the  Angel.  This  was  followed  by  more 
repertory.  In  1954  he  played  the  Dauphin  in 
G.  B.  *Shaw's  St  Joan,  which  led  to  his  becom- 
ing the  ubiquitous  'funny  voice'  man  in  the 
BBC  radio  success,  Hancocks  Half  Hour. 

In  the  theatre  success  followed  success  with 
Orson  Welles's  production  of  Moby  Dick  (1955), 
Hotel  Paradiso  (1956)  with  (Sir)  Alec  Guinness, 
Share  My  Lettuce  (1957),  Pieces  of  Eight  (1959), 
and   One  Over  the  Eight  (1957).   Then,  most 


importantly,  with  (Dame)  Maggie  Smith,  to 
whom  he  was  devoted,  he  acted  in  Peter  Schaff- 
er's  The  Private  Ear  and  The  Public  Eye  (double 
bill,  1962),  followed  by  Gentle  Jack  (1963)  with 
Dame  Edith  *Evans,  and  Loot  (1965)  by  Joe 
*Orton,  with  whom  Kenneth  Williams  devel- 
oped a  warm  friendship.  Later  came  Captain 
Brassbound's  Conversion  (1971),  with  Ingrid  Berg- 
man. His  one  flop  was  the  1956  production  of 
Sandy  Wilson's  musical  The  Buccaneer,  about  a 
boys'  magazine,  in  which  Williams  played  the 
editor. 

In  1958  he  appeared  in  his  first  Cany-  On  film, 
Carry  on  Sergeant,  subsequently  becoming  a 
regular  and  playing  in  twenty-four  Carry  On 
films,  all  of  them  low  farces.  On  radio  he  went 
from  Hancock's  Half  Hour  to  Beyond  Our  Ken  in 
1958,  and  later  to  Round  the  Home  in  1965, 
where  his  brilliant  characterizations  contributed 
considerably  to  the  show's  success.  In  1968  he 
became  the  star  of  the  radio  quiz  Just  a  Minute, 
a  game  in  which  the  panellists  are  asked  to  talk  on 
a  given  topic  'without  repetition,  deviation,  or 
hesitation'.  Williams  duly  astonished  chairman, 
cast,  and  listeners  with  his  knowledge,  erudition, 
humour,  grasp  of  language,  and  simulated  out- 
rage when  told  he  had  deviated.  One  could 
hardly  imagine  him  hesitating. 

Williams,  camp,  slim,  and  dapper,  was  an 
amazingly  versatile  performer,  able  to  switch 
from  the  vulgarities  of  the  Carry  On  films  and 
the  louche  characters  of  Round  the  Home  to  more 
serious  roles  in  plays  by  Jean  Anouilh,  Shake- 
speare, and  Shaw.  In  addition  he  could  be  a 
sparkling  raconteur,  as  he  showed  in  the  1966-7 
television  series  International  Cabaret,  where  his 
long  monologues  happily  punctuated  the  mun- 
dane procession  of  jugglers  and  acrobats.  He  was 
also  a  capable  chat  show  guest,  always  ready  with 
a  new  anecdote,  and  on  more  than  one  occasion 
successfully  deputized  for  Terry  Wogan  as  chat 
show  host. 

The  public  persona  of  a  loud,  brash,  verbose 
vulgarian  was  very  different  from  his  private  life, 
which  was  solitary,  fastidious,  and  intellectual. 
He  never  married.  His  attitude  to  sex  was 
ambivalent,  for  while  he  accepted  his  homosexual 
tendencies  he  found  it  difficult  to  consummate 
sexual  relationships  with  either  men  or  women. 
His  writings  included  the  books  Acid  Drops 
(theatrical  anecdotes,  1980),  Back  Drops  (per- 
sonal anecdotes,  1983),  and  his  autobiography 
Just  Williams  (1985).  His  diaries  were  published 
posthumously  in  1993. 

In  the  last  entry  in  his  diary,  14  April  1988,  he 
complained  of  'immense'  exhaustion,  pains  in  the 
back,  and  stomach  trouble.  He  had  never  been 
physically  robust,  had  a  history  of  health  prob- 
lems, and  it  is  likely  he  died  as  a  result  of 
accidentally  taking  an  overdose  of  painkillers. 


481 


Williams 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Williams  died  in  his  sleep  at  his  home  in  Marl- 
borough House,  Osnaburgh  Street,  London,  15 
April  1988. 

[Kenneth  Williams,  Just  Williams,  an  Autobiography, 
1985;  Russell  Davies  (ed.),  The  Kenneth  Williams  Dia- 
ries, 1993,  and  The  Kenneth  Williams  Letters,  1994; 
personal  knowledge.]  Barry  Took 

WILLIAMS,  Raymond  Henry  (1921-1988), 
writer  and  teacher,  was  born  31  August  1921  in 
Pandy,  near  Abergavenny,  the  only  child  of 
Henry  Joseph  Williams,  railway  signalman,  of 
Pandy,  and  his  wife  (Esther)  Gwendolene, 
daughter  of  James  Bird,  farm  bailiff.  He  was 
educated  at  King  Henry  VIII  Grammar  School 
in  Abergavenny  and  then  went,  in  1939  on  a  state 
scholarship,  to  read  English  at  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge.  In  part  i  of  the  tripos  (1941)  he 
gained  a  second  class  (division  II).  He  was  called 
up  in  1 94 1,  commissioned  in  1942,  and  fought 
with  No.  21  Anti-Tank  Regiment  in  the  Nor- 
mandy campaign  and  on  to  the  Kiel  canal.  He 
attained  the  rank  of  captain. 

In  October  1945  he  returned  to  Cambridge 
and  took  first-class  honours  in  part  ii  of  the 
tripos  in  1946.  Although  he  briefly  considered  a 
research  degree,  Williams  entered  the  world  of 
adult  education  as  a  staff  tutor  of  the  Oxford 
University  Extra-Mural  Delegacy  (1946-61).  He 
was  based  in  East  Sussex.  He  had  married,  in 
1942,  Joyce  ('Joy')  Mary  (died  1991),  daughter  of 
Charles  Dalling,  coal  factor,  of  Barnstaple.  They 
had  met  at  Cambridge  when  the  London  School 
of  Economics  was  evacuated  there  during  the 
war.  They  had  two  sons  and  one  daughter.  Joy 
Williams  was  a  central  influence  on  her  hus- 
band's life  and  work.  Later  she  was  concerned 
with  direct  research  for  his  books  but  throughout 
she  was  intimately  involved  with  the  evolution  of 
his  ideas  and  the  publication  of  his  numerous 
books.  It  was  a  deep  and  formidable  partner- 
ship. 

Although  never  a  pupil  of  F.  R.  *Leavis, 
Williams  was  influenced  by  Leavis's  emphasis  on 
the  life-enhancing  properties  of  a  close  reading  of 
literature.  To  this  end  he  founded  and  edited, 
with  Clifford  Collins  and  Leavis's  pupil  Wolf 
Mankowitz,  The  Critic  and  Politics  and  Letters 
(which  absorbed  the  former)  in  1947-8.  It  was  an 
uneasy  marriage  of  socialist  politics  with  cultural 
perspectives  derived  from  Leavis.  Despite  severe 
disappointments  with  the  wider  social  impact  of 
any  such  approach,  then  and  later,  Williams 
consistently  returned  to  the  themes  and  prin- 
ciples of  these  early  years.  This  firmness  of 
purpose  and  integrity  of  behaviour,  no  less  than 
an  attractive  diffidence  and  a  generosity  of  spirit, 
were  commented  upon  by  all  who  met  him 
throughout  his  lifetime.  The  public  and  private 
persona  were  all  of  a  piece. 

His  first  published  books  were  on  film  and 


drama,  notably  Drama  from  Ibsen  to  Eliot  (1952), 
and  heralded  a  lifelong  concern  with  the  manner 
in  which  the  form  of  literary  works,  no  less  than 
their  content,  was  directly  affected  by  the  mater- 
ial changes  wrought  by  social  history.  However, 
the  key  aspect  of  his  work  in  the  1950s  was  his 
study  of  the  connection  between  'culture'  and 
'society',  which  was  brought  to  its  first  conclu- 
sion in  his  path-breaking  Culture  and  Society 
(1958).  Its  dissection  of  the  meaning  that  British 
writers,  and  a  wider  society,  had  given  to  the 
word  'culture',  since  industrialization  and  under 
the  pressures  of  democratic  changes,  had  an 
immediate  impact.  It  can  be  seen  now  as  the 
main  progenitor  of  the  cultural  studies  which 
would  flourish  from  the  late  1960s.  Williams 
followed  it  up  with  the  important,  though  very 
different,  volumes,  The  Long  Revolution  (1961), 
a  provocative  analysis  of  the  interconnection 
between  institutions,  education,  and  ideas  in 
Britain,  and  The  Country  and  the  City  (1973), 
which  used  wide-ranging  literary  studies  to  dis- 
pute the  notion  of  accepted  boundaries  between 
the  rural  and  urban  experience.  All  his  critical 
writing  challenged  conventional  boundaries  of 
thought  and  their  academic  compartmentaliza- 
tion.  The  techniques  of  modern  technology, 
advertising,  and  mass  communications  were,  in  a 
number  of  suggestive  books,  analysed  as  carefully 
as  poems  and  novels  had  once  been. 

In  1 96 1  he  moved  back  to  Cambridge  as  a 
lecturer  in  English  and  a  fellow  of  Jesus  College, 
and,  from  1967  to  1974,  reader  in  drama.  He 
received  a  Cambridge  Litt.D.  in  1969  and  was 
made  the  university's  first  professor  of  drama  in 
1974,  retiring  in  1983.  Honours  and  appoint- 
ments were  many:  membership  of  the  Arts 
Council  (1976-8),  honorary  doctorates  from  the 
universities  of  Wales  (1980)  and  Kent  (1984), 
and  from  the  Open  University  (1975),  and  visit- 
ing professorships  in  Europe  and  the  USA.  He 
deeply  affected  a  younger  generation  through 
weekly  book  reviews  in  the  Guardian  and 
revealed  a  keen  interest  in  television,  for  which 
he  wrote  plays  and  presented  documentary  films, 
in  a  regular  column  in  the  Listener.  His  writing 
had  made  him  a  dominant  figure,  though  slightly 
distanced  in  some  respects,  on  the  so-called  'new 
left'.  In  1967  he  largely  edited  the  May  Day 
Manifesto  (a  Pelican  Special  in  1968),  a  spirited 
but  doomed  attempt  to  redirect  the  merely  prag- 
matic stance  of  the  contemporary  Labour  party 
by  reinvigorating  the  broader  Labour  movement 
with  a  sense  of  its  socialist  traditions  and  poten- 
tial. Williams  was  active  for  a  time  in  that  party 
but  more  readily  committed  himself  to  wider  left 
causes,  such  as  the  Campaign  for  Nuclear  Dis- 
armament. From  the  1970s,  as  in  his  innovative 
interview/autobiography,  Politics  and  Letters 
(1979),  he  called  himself  a  'Welsh  European',  a 
coupling   as    neat   and    as    provocative   as    the 


482 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Willing 


phrases  he  used  to  signify  his  work,  'cultural 
materialism'  and  'structure  of  feeling'.  The 
whole  corpus  had  established  him,  in  his  own 
lifetime,  as  a  major  socialist  thinker.  Steadfasdy, 
Towards  2000  (1983)  rebutted  nostalgia  and 
defeatism. 

He  insisted  that  his  fiction  and  better-known 
non-fiction  writing  should  be  seen  as  a  unity.  He 
had  made  his  impressive  debut  as  a  novelist  with 
Border  Country  (i960);  the  first  of  a  Welsh 
trilogy,  Second  Generation  (1964);  and  The  Fight 
for  Manod  (1979),  in  which  his  own  individual 
background  and  general  forces  external  to  it, 
were  given  shape.  The  Volunteers  (1978)  was  a 
political  thriller  of  the  near  future,  and  Loyalties 
(1985)  an  indictment  of  political  thrill-seekers  of 
the  near  past.  Two  volumes  of  an  incomplete 
historical  novel,  about  the  people  of  his  native 
Black  Mountains  from  the  Ice  Age  to  the  pre- 
sent, appeared  posthumously  in  1989  and  1991. 
Their  startling  ability  to  be  both  realistic  and 
experimental  in  tone  again  broke  the  mould  at 
the  very  end  of  a  life  that  had  been  heroically 
dedicated  to  the  proposition  that  'culture  is 
ordinary'. 

His  tall,  rather  upright  figure  and  long,  etched 
face  were  instandy  recognizable  at  conferences 
where,  without  ever  striving  for  effect,  he  never 
failed  to  hold  an  audience.  He  was  often  said  to 
look  'like  a  countryman'  rather  than  a  don  and 
certainly  the  pipe,  the  rather  deliberate  drawl 
which  was  not  quite  a  burr,  and  an  unpretentious 
manner  of  dress  and  bearing  all  added  to  the 
image.  Williams  died  26  January  1988  at  his 
home  in  Saffron  Walden. 

[Independent \  28  January  1988;  Guardian,  27  January 
1988;  Raymond  Williams,  Politics  and  Letters,  1979; 
private  information;  personal  knowledge.]  Dai  Smith 

WILLIAMS,  Winifred  (1907-1990),  author  and 
poet.  [See  Strong,  Patience.] 

WILLING,  Victor  James  Arthur  (1928-1988), 
artist,  was  born  15  January  1928  in  Alexandria, 
Egypt,  the  only  child  of  George  Willing,  pro- 
fessional soldier  (captain),  and  his  wife,  Irene 
Cynthia  Tomkins.  He  spent  the  first  four  years 
of  his  life  in  Egypt  and,  briefly,  in  Malta. 
Although  he  never  consciously  introduced  the 
landscape  of  his  childhood  into  his  art,  the 
paintings  which  made  his  reputation  are  notable 
for  their  sense  of  windless  heat,  bright  light, 
vacant  horizons,  and  undecorated  enclosures. 
Through  most  of  the  1930s  Willing  went  to 
schools  in  various  parts  of  southern  England, 
including  the  Isle  of  Wight,  but  he  enjoyed  a 
more  settled  education  during  World  War  II  at 
the  Royal  Grammar  School,  Guildford  (1940-5), 
where  he  won  the  art  prize.  As  a  national 
serviceman  (1946-8)  he  gained  a  commission  in 
the  Royal  Artillery  and,  during  this  time,  was 


confirmed  in  his  ambition  to  be  an  artist  by  the 
Victoria  and  Albert  Museum's  pioneer  showing 
in  England  of  an  exhibition  of  work  by  Pablo 
Picasso  and  Henri  Matisse  (1946).  The  force  of 
Picasso's  work,  which  he  subsequently  compared 
to  being  'trapped  in  a  stall  with  a  stallion', 
particularly  impressed  him.  On  demobilization 
he  was  for  a  year  at  Guildford  Art  School  before 
being  accepted  by  the  Slade  School  of  Art, 
London  University,  where  he  spent  four  years 

(I949-53)- 

He  had  a  rebellious  streak  and  was  admired  by 
his  contemporaries  at  the  Slade — an  outstanding 
intake,  which  included  Michael  Andrews  and 
Euan  Uglow — for  his  talent  and  intellectual  zest, 
even  being  singled  out  by  the  influential  critic 
David  Sylvester  as  'the  spokesman  for  his  gen- 
erarion'.  He  soon  made  friends  in  avant-garde 
circles,  most  influenrially  for  his  painting  with 
(H.  G)  Rodrigo  *Moynihan  and  Francis  Bacon. 
In  1955  he  had  a  well-received  first  one-man 
show  at  Erica  Brausen's  Hanover  Gallery,  where 
Bacon  exhibited. 

This  bright  start  as  a  painter  was  consolidated 
by  his  reputation  as  an  intellectual.  It  is  typical 
that  his  first,  unpublished,  article  was  preoccu- 
pied with  the  romantic  and  existential  notion  of 
the  artist  as  hero,  dandy,  and  gambler.  It  proved 
a  false  dawn.  In  195 1  he  had  married  a  girlfriend 
since  school-days,  Hazel,  daughter  of  Harold 
Norman  Whittington,  FRICS,  chartered  sur- 
veyor. By  the  mid-1950s  the  marriage  was  failing 
and  in  December  1956  he  left  for  Portugal  to  live 
with  the  painter  Paula  Rego,  whom  he  had  met  at 
the  Slade.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Jose  Figueira 
Rego,  electrical  engineer.  He  continued  to  work 
but,  by  his  own  exacting  standards,  the  results 
were  not  exhibitable  and  his  loss  to  art  seemed 
permanent  when  he  took  on  the  management  of 
his  father-in-law's  business  after  the  latter's 
death. 

This  coincided  with  the  diagnosis  that  he  was 
suffering  from  multiple  sclerosis  and  when  the 
Portuguese  revolution  of  1974  left  the  family 
affairs  in  chaos  he  settled  in  London  with  his 
wife  (he  had  married  Paula  Rego  in  1959,  the 
year  of  his  divorce  from  Hazel  Whittington)  and 
their  children — Caroline  (born  1956),  Victoria 
(born  1959),  and  Nicholas  (born  1961).  He  took 
a  room  in  a  condemned  school  in  Stepney  for  a 
peppercorn  rent  and  began  to  paint  with  renewed 
intensity ,  stimulated  by  the  knowledge  that  time 
was  short.  Because  he  could  only  stand  with  the 
aid  of  a  stick,  for  long  periods  he  merely  sat  and 
stared.  In  states  of  reverie  pictures  would  appear 
on  the  wall  facing  him.  They  were  so  vivid  he 
called  them  'visions';  and  as  soon  as  they  were 
over  he  would  draw  them,  later  enlarging  some 
into  oil  paintings.  He  exhibited  the  results  in 
1978  at  the  ADl  (Artist  Information  Registry) 
Gallery. 


483 


Willing 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


The  visions  were  the  first  pictures  he  felt 
'exclusive  to  himself  and  met  with  immediate 
critical  success.  Even  after  they  disappeared, 
their  effect  remained.  His  last  decade  was  a 
professional  triumph.  In  1980  he  received  a 
Thorne  scholarship  and  in  1982  was  made  uni- 
versity artist  in  residence  at  Cambridge.  There 
followed  public  exhibitions  at  the  Serpentine  and 
Whitechapel  galleries — the  latter  a  major  retro- 
spective in  1986;  and  his  pictures  entered  several 
important  collections,  including  those  of  the  Arts 
Council  and  Tate  Gallery.  Even  when  greatly 
paralysed  he  managed  to  complete  a  series  of 
powerful  imaginative  portraits,  entitled  'Heads', 
exhibited  at  the  Karsten  Schubert  Gallery 
(1987). 

All  Willing's  paintings  came  from  his  large 
legacy  of  drawings,  which  he  showed  independ- 
ently at  the  Hobson  Gallery  (1983),  Bernard 
Jacobson  Gallery  (1983,  1984,  and  1985),  and  the 
Hayward  Gallery  Annual  (sponsored  by  the  Arts 
Council)  (1985).  His  most  celebrated  paintings 
are  imaginative  representations  of  empty  rooms 
or  deserted  locations,  pregnant  with  the  presence 
of  humans  but  never  showing  people.  As  in  the 
work  of  Bacon,  there  is  often  a  sense  of  existen- 
tial anguish  played  out  on  a  stage;  but  in  Willing 
the  drama  is  usually  one  of  suspense  and  expecta- 
tion. 'Place  with  a  Red  Thing'  (1980,  Tate 
Gallery)  is  an  explicit  exception,  a  masterpiece  of 
ambiguity  because  of  its  clarity.  A  strange  red 
form  dripping  and  burgeoning  dominates  a 
space.  'Cythere'  (1983,  private  collection)  is  also 
exceptional  in  showing  a  violently  coloured  plant 
simultaneously  blooming  and  dying  in  front  of  a 
formal  arrangement  of  cubic  forms,  apparently 
artificially  lit  against  an  indigo  sky  or  backdrop. 
In  pencil  and  brush  Willing's  handling  is  always 
expressive.  His  colours  combine  to  enforce  a 
sense  of  unease  just  as  his  geometry  always 
avoids  the  right  angle.  His  interest  in  stacked 
formal  structures  was  realized  in  some  sculptures 
towards  the  end  of  his  life  and  he  had  unfulfilled 
plans  to  turn  his  fascination  with  the  idea  of  the 
'aedicula'  or  'shelter',  a  place  of  refuge  or  retreat, 
into  three  dimensions. 

Willing  was  slightly  built,  but  with  wide 
shoulders,  sleek,  handsome,  and,  unlike  most 
artists,  neatly  dressed.  He  had  an  air  of  danger 
which  made  him  a  magnetic  presence.  He  was 
given  to  quick,  sudden  movements  and  was  a 
skilful  and  energetic  dancer,  with  a  sense  of 
rhythm  he  brought  to  his  painting.  He  died  at 
home  in  Hampstead,  London,  of  multiple  scler- 
osis, 1  June  1988. 

[Victor  Willing,  a  Retrospective  Exhibition  ^52-85, 
Whitechapel  Art  Gallery,  1986;  Karsten  Schubert  (ed.), 
Victor  Willing:  Selected  Writings  and  Two  Conversations 
with  John  McEwen,  Karsten  Schubert  Ltd.,  1093; 
personal  knowledge.]  John  McEwen 


WILSON,  Sir  Graham  Selby  (1 895-1987), 
medical  bacteriologist,  was  born  10  September 
1895  in  Newcastle  upon  Tyne,  the  youngest  in 
the  family  of  two  daughters  and  a  son  of  Ralph 
Graham  Wilson,  confectioner,  and  his  wife, 
Caroline  Elizabeth  Dalgliesh.  He  was  educated  at 
various  schools,  including  Mill  Hill  School  and 
Epsom  College,  and  entered  King's  College, 
London,  in  19 12.  On  the  outbreak  of  war  in  19 14 
he  joined  the  clinical  school  at  Charing  Cross 
Hospital,  where  he  qualified  MRCS,  LRCP  in 
19 1 6;  he  joined  the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps 
and  served,  latterly  as  a  captain  and  specialist  in 
bacteriology,  until  1920. 

Returning  from  active  service  to  Charing 
Cross  Hospital,  Wilson  joined  the  department 
headed  by  W.  W.  C.  *Topley,  with  whom  he  was 
to  work  for  nearly  twenty  years  and  who  was  a 
great  source  of  inspiration  to  him.  Together  they 
moved  to  the  University  of  Manchester  in  1923. 
In  1927  Wilson  became  reader  in  bacteriology  at 
the  University  of  London  and  in  1930  he  was 
appointed  professor  of  bacteriology  as  applied  to 
hygiene  at  the  newly  established  London  School 
of  Hygiene  and  Tropical  Medicine. 

In  Manchester  Wilson  commenced  studies 
of  the  hygiene  of  milk  and  demonstrated  the 
frequency  with  which  untreated  milk  was  con- 
taminated with  disease-producing  bacteria.  He 
became  an  ardent  advocate  of  pasteurization, 
demonstrating  not  only  the  efficacy  of  the  pro- 
cess in  ridding  milk  of  dangerous  bacteria,  but 
also  the  enormous  cost — in  life  and  illness — of 
the  mass  consumption  of  untreated  milk;  sadly  it 
was  many  years  before  the  national  authorities 
were  convinced. 

In  the  two  or  three  years  prior  to  the  outbreak 
of  war  in  1939  Wilson  assisted  Topley  in  for- 
mulating plans  for  an  emergency  bacteriological 
service,  to  be  mobilized  in  the  event  of  war  to 
help  control  the  epidemics  of  infectious  disease 
that  were  expected  to  result  from  the  mass 
movement  of  people  and  the  damage  due  to  air 
raids.  The  Emergency  Public  Health  Laboratory 
Service  (EPHLS)  started  to  function  in  Sep- 
tember 1939.  The  epidemics  did  not,  in  fact, 
occur,  but  Wilson,  inspired  by  Topley,  saw  the 
opportunity  to  develop  a  laboratory  service  that 
would  be  able  to  assist  medical  officers  of  health 
in  the  diagnosis  and  control  of  the  infections  that 
were  endemic  in  the  population.  He  proceeded  to 
develop  the  EPHLS  towards  that  end,  and  in 
1 94 1  he  was  formally  appointed  its  director,  a 
position  that  he  held,  through  its  metamorphosis 
into  the  permanent  Public  Health  Laboratory 
Service,  until  he  retired  in  1963.  During  the 
postwar  years  he  created  a  service  comprising  at 
one  time  nearly  sixty  area  laboratories,  many  of 
which  were  housed  in  buildings  that  he  himself 
had  very  largely  designed,  and  a  central  reference 


484 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Windsor 


laboratory,  with  a  great  international  reputa- 
tion. 

At  both  Manchester  and  London,  Topley  and 
Wilson  ran  postgraduate  courses  for  a  diploma  in 
bacteriology  which  provided  unrivalled  educa- 
tion in  medical  and  public  health  bacteriology. 
Arising  out  of  this  teaching  came  the  invitation  to 
write  a  major  postgraduate  textbook  and  Topley 
and  Wilson's  Principles  of  Bacteriology  and  Immu- 
nity, first  published  in  1929  and  continuing 
through  seven  editions  with  Wilson  in  charge, 
became  and  remained  an  excellent  text.  Wilson 
was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  College  of 
Physicians  in  1930  and  of  the  Royal  Society  in 
1978,  knighted  in  1962,  and  received  numerous 
medals,  honorary  fellowships,  and  other  awards, 
among  them  an  honorary  LL  D  from  Glasgow 
University  (1962). 

Physically,  Wilson  had  a  spare  build  and 
penetrating  blue  eyes;  he  rarely  leavened  scien- 
tific or  administrative  discussions  with  much 
humour,  though  he  could  lighten  his  conversa- 
tion delightfully  when  right  outside  his  working 
environment.  If  one  adjective  characterized  him 
it  would  be  'meticulous'.  It  marked  his  work  in 
the  laboratory,  his  vision  of  planning  and  his 
work  in  designing  both  buildings  and  laboratory- 
methods,  and  his  mastery  of  the  English  lan- 
guage. It  also  affected  his  social  manner:  he  was 
meticulous  in  never  mixing  professional  and 
social  activities.  Indeed,  even  after  many  years  of 
professional  collaboration,  he  was  reluctant  to 
accept  social  invitations  from  his  colleagues.  He 
was  also  secretive,  never  revealing  his  plans  until 
they  were  complete,  even  to  his  chief  admin- 
istrative staff,  and  refusing  always  to  have  a 
deputy,  for  fear  that  there  might  be  premature 
leaks  of  proposals  under  discussion. 

In  1924  Wilson  married  Mary  Joyce  (died 
1976),  daughter  of  Alfred  Ayrton,  banker,  of 
Chester.  They  had  two  sons,  one  of  whom  was 
adopted.  Wilson  was  an  active  gardener  and  a 
great  lover  of  old  churches,  which  he  would 
prefer  to  reach  on  a  bicycle.  He  used  his  bicycle 
whenever  possible  on  the  occasion  of  his  annual 
visits  to  the  laboratories,  and  he  maintained  well 
into  his  eighties  a  tradition  of  cycling  100  miles 
on  or  near  his  birthday  each  year.  He  was  also  a 
deeply  religious  man  w  ho  served  for  twenty  years 
as  churchwarden  at  St  Anne's  Brookfield.  in 
Highgate.  He  died  5  April  1987  in  the  West- 
minster Hospital,  London. 

[E.  S.  Anderson  and  Sir  Robert  Williams  in  Biograph- 
ical Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiv, 
1988;  private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

R.  E.  O.  Williams 

WINDSOR,  (Bessie)  Wallis,  Duchess  of  Wind- 
sor ( 1 896-1 986),  wife  of  the  former  King 
*Edward  VIII,  was  born  19  June  1896  in  Blue 
Ridge  Summit,  Pennsylvania,  the  only  child  of 


Teackle  Wallis  Warfield,  an  unsuccessful  busi- 
nessman, and  his  wife,  Alice  Montague.  The 
Warrields  and  Montagues  were  of  distinguished 
Southern  stock,  but  Wallis's  parents  were  poor 
relations  and  her  father  died  when  she  was  only 
five  months  old.  She  spent  her  childhood  in 
cheese-paring  poverty,  resentfully  aware  that  her 
friends  could  afford  nicer  clothes  and  more  lavish 
holidays.  It  seems  reasonable  to  trace  to  this 
early  deprivation  the  acquisitive  streak  which 
so  strongly  marked  her  character. 

Though  her  jaw  was  too  heavy  for  her  to  be 
counted  beautiful,  her  fine  violet-blue  eyes  and 
petite  figure,  quick  wits,  vitality,  and  capacity  for 
total  concentration  on  her  interlocutor  ensured 
that  she  had  many  admirers.  When  only  nineteen 
she  fell  in  love  with  a  naval  aviator,  Lieutenant 
Earl  Winfield  Spencer  (died  1950),  son  of  Earl 
\\  infield  Spencer,  a  member  of  the  Chicago 
Stock  Exchange,  and  married  him  on  8  Novem- 
ber 1916.  It  proved  a  disastrous  match.  Spencer's 
promising  career  disintegrated  as  he  took  to 
drink  and  Wallis,  whose  tolerance  of  weakness 
was  never  conspicuous,  became  increasingly- 
alienated.  While  they  were  in  Washington  in 
1922  they  decided  to  separate  and  when  Spencer 
was  given  command  of  a  gunboat  in  the  Far  East, 
she  remained  behind,  enjoying  a  flamboyant 
liaison  with  an  Argentine  diplomat. 

In  1924  she  joined  her  husband  in  China,  but 
the  reunion  was  not  a  success  and  they  divorced 
in  December  1927.  By  then  she  had  already  won 
the  affections  of  Ernest  Aldrich  Simpson,  whose 
own  marriage  was  breaking  up,  the  businessman 
son  of  an  English  father  (Ernest  Simpson,  ship- 
broker  and  head  of  the  firm  of  Simpson,  Spence, 
&  Young)  and  an  .American  mother.  She  joined 
him  in  London,  where  he  was  managing  the 
office  of  his  family  shipping  company ,  and  they 
married  on  2  July  1928.  Most  of  their  friends 
were  in  the  American  colony  in  London;  among 
them  Benjamin  Thaw  of  the  US  embassy,  his 
wife  Consuelo,  and  her  younger  sister  Thelma, 
Viscountess  Furness.  Lady  Furness  was  at  that 
time  mistress  of  the  prince  of  Wales,  and  it  was 
in  her  house  at  Melton  Mowbray  that  Mrs 
Simpson,  on  10  January  1931,  met  the  man  who 
was  to  become  her  third  husband — Edward 
Albert  Christian  George  Andrew  Patrick  David, 
the  eldest  child  of  King  *George  V.  He  was 
called  David  by  his  friends  and  family. 

The  precise  nature  of  Mrs  Simpson's  appeal 
to  the  prince  of  Wales  could  only  be  understood 
by  him;  probably  he  hardly  understood  it  him- 
self. It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  by  early  1934  the 
prince  had  become  slavishly  dependent  on  her 
and  was  to  remain  so  until  he  died.  The  courtiers 
at  first  thought  that  this  was  just  another  of  his 
recurrent  infatuations,  but  throughout  1935  they 
became  increasingly  alarmed  as  her  role  became 


485 


Windsor 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


more  prominent  and  impinged  on  the  perform- 
ance of  his  duties.  It  seems  unlikely  that  Mrs 
Simpson  seriously  entertained  the  possibility 
that  she  might  become  queen;  indeed,  all  the 
indications  are  that  she  enjoyed  her  role  of 
maitresse  en  titre  and  would  have  been  satisfied  to 
retain  it.  The  prince,  however,  convinced  himself 
that  his  happiness  depended  on  securing  Mrs 
Simpson  as  his  wife.  From  his  accession  to  the 
throne  on  20  January  1936  his  main  preoccupa- 
tion was  to  bring  this  about. 

Edward  VIH's  reign  was  marked  by  swelling 
scandal  as  his  relationship  with  Mrs  Simpson 
became  more  widely  known.  The  cruise  which 
the  couple  undertook  in  the  yacht  Nahlin  around 
the  eastern  Mediterranean  in  September  1936 
attracted  keen  interest  everywhere  except  in  the 
British  Isles,  where  the  press  maintained  a  dis- 
creet silence.  It  was,  however,  the  Simpsons' 
imminent  divorce  which  convinced  the  prime 
minister,  Stanley  *Baldwin  (later  first  Earl 
Baldwin  of  Bewdley),  that  he  was  faced  by  a 
serious  constitutional  crisis.  On  20  October  he 
confronted  Edward  at  the  king's  country  house, 
Fort  Belvedere,  but  it  was  only  a  month  later 
that  Edward  VIII  stated  categorically  that  he 
intended  to  marry  Mrs  Simpson.  Baldwin  was 
convinced  that  this  must  lead  to  abdication;  the 
king  played  with  the  idea  of  a  morganatic  mar- 
riage, a  solution  that  would  certainly  have 
appealed  to  Mrs  Simpson,  but  was  determined  to 
renounce  the  throne  if  that  was  the  price  he  had 
to  pay. 

Once  she  realized  that  marriage  to  her  would 
cost  the  king  his  throne,  Mrs  Simpson  tried  to 
change  his  resolve.  Anticipating  much  hostile 
publicity  when  the  story  broke  in  the  United 
Kingdom,  she  retreated  first  to  Fort  Belvedere, 
and  then  to  the  South  of  France.  From  there,  in 
a  series  of  distraught  telephone  calls,  she  tried  to 
persuade  Edward  not  to  abdicate,  even  if  this 
meant  giving  her  up.  She  accomplished  nothing; 
this  was  the  only  subject  on  which  she  was 
unable  to  dominate  her  future  husband. 

On  10  December  1936  Edward  VIII  abdicated, 
became  duke  of  Windsor,  and  went  into  exile. 
There  followed  six  months  of  separation  while 
Mrs  Simpson  was  waiting  for  her  decree  absolute 
(3  May  1937),  before,  on  3  June  1937,  the  couple 
were  married  at  the  Chateau  de  Cande  in  Tour- 
aine.  No  member  of  the  royal  family  was  present 
and  the  new  duchess,  on  doubtful  legal  grounds, 
was  denied  the  title  of  Her  Royal  Highness.  The 
refusal  of  her  husband's  relations  to  accept  her  as 
part  of  the  family  caused  embittered  and  undying 
resentment  in  the  duchess. 

Until  the  outbreak  of  war  the  Windsors  lived 
mainly  in  Austria  and  France.  The  duchess 
accompanied  her  husband  on  his  visit  to  Ger- 
many in  1937;  it  was  popularly  believed  that  she 
had  fascist  sympathies  and  it  has  even  been 


claimed  that  she  worked  for  German  intelligence, 
but  there  is  no  evidence  that  she  held  any 
considered  political  views,  still  less  indulged  in 
such  activities.  When  war  broke  out  in  1939  she 
returned  with  the  duke  to  Britain  and  then  to 
France.  When  the  Germans  overran  France  in 
June  1940  the  Windsors  escaped  into  Spain  and 
thence  to  Portugal.  From  there  they  left  for  the 
Bahamas,  where  the  duke  took  up  the  post  of 
governor  in  August  1940. 

The  duchess  hated  their  five  years  in  Nassau 
and  made  no  secret  of  her  views  to  those  close  to 
her,  but  on  the  whole  she  performed  the  duties  of 
governor's  lady  conscientiously  and  well.  She 
entertained  stylishly  and  went  through  the  rituals 
of  opening  bazaars  and  inspecting  hospitals  with 
unexpected  grace.  Her  happiest  weeks,  however, 
were  spent  on  shopping  expeditions  in  the 
United  States  and  she  was  much  criticized  for 
irresponsible  extravagance  at  a  time  when  Britain 
was  under  assault. 

After  the  war  the  Windsors  settled  in  France 
and  their  life  became  a  dreary — though  to  her, 
presumably,  satisfying — merry-go-round  featur- 
ing principally  Antibes,  Paris,  New  York,  and 
Palm  Beach.  The  duchess  entertained  lavishly 
and  was  counted  among  the  best  dressed  and 
fashionable  figures  in  international  society.  Some 
of  her  friends  were  raffish,  a  few  even  vicious, 
but  it  was  the  sterility  of  her  life  that  was  most 
remarkable.  Though  her  husband  resumed  a 
somewhat  cool  relationship  with  his  mother  and 
siblings,  the  duchess  was  never  received  by  the 
royal  family  and  remained  fiercely  hostile  to 
them.  In  1956  she  published  her  memoirs,  The 
Heart  Has  Its  Reasons,  an  on  the  whole  good- 
tempered  and  balanced  book,  which  was  largely- 
ghosted  but  still  reflected  fairly  her  wit  and 
considerable  common  sense.  When  the  duke  died 
on  28  May  1972  she  was  invited  to  Buckingham 
Palace,  but  it  was  too  late  for  the  reconciliation  to 
mean  much  to  her.  The  last  fourteen  years  of  her 
life  were  spent  in  increasing  decrepitude;  during 
the  final  five  she  lived  in  total  seclusion.  She  died 
at  her  home  near  Paris  24  April  1986  and  was 
buried  beside  her  husband  in  the  royal  burial 
ground  at  Frogmore. 

[Duchess  of  Windsor,  The  Heart  Has  Its  Reasons,  1956; 
Michael  Bloch,  Walks  and  Edward:  Letters  1931-1937, 
1986;  Ralph  G.  Martin,  The  Woman  He  Loved,  1974; 
private  information.]  Philip  Ziegler 

WINNER,  Dame  Albertine  Louisa  (1907- 
1988),  physician  and  administrator,  was  born  4 
March  1907  in  Coulsdon,  Surrey,  the  only  child 
of  Isidore  Winner  (who  had  changed  his  name 
from  Isidor  Wiener  on  leaving  The  Netherlands 
some  years  previously),  hide  merchant,  and  his 
wife,  Annie  Stonex.  She  was  brought  up  in 
London,  which  she  always  thought  of  as  essen- 
tially composed  of  villages,  and  lived  there  all 


486 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Winterbotham 


her  life.  She  was  educated  at  the  Francis  Holland 
School,  Clarence  Gate,  and  from  there  she  went 
to  University  College  London,  where  she  took  a 
B.Sc.  with  honours  in  physiology.  She  went  on 
to  study  medicine  at  University  College  Medical 
School,  qualifying  MB,  BS  in  1933  and  winning 
the  gold  medal.  An  outstanding  physician,  she 
also  became  MD  (1934),  MRCP  (1935),  and 
FRCP  (1959)- 

In  her  early  career  she  worked  with,  and  was 
much  influenced  by,  Sir  Thomas  *Lewis  and 
(Sir)  Francis  *Walshe.  From  the  latter  she 
gained  her  interest  and  skill  in  neurology,  which 
she  maintained  throughout  her  life,  culminating 
in  the  work  of  St  Christopher's  Hospice  with 
patients  in  the  terminal  stages  of  motor  neurone 
disease.  She  was  appointed  physician  to  the 
Elizabeth  Garrett  Anderson  Hospital  and  the 
Mothers'  Hospital  (1937)  but  in  1940  she  joined 
the  Royal  Army  Medical  Corps,  becoming  a 
lieutenant-colonel  and  later  consultant  to  the 
Women's  Services  (1946-70). 

Having  acquired  a  taste  for  administration,  she 
decided  to  become  a  medical  administrator  and 
joined  the  Ministry  of  Health,  where  she  worked 
from  1047  to  1967.  She  saw  the  introduction  of 
the  National  Health  Service  in  1948  and,  with 
her  intense  interest  in  each  individual  patient, 
was  especially  concerned  with  the  development 
of  services  for  the  long-term  sick  and  disabled. 
She  was  the  first  woman  to  become  deputy  chief 
medical  officer  of  health  (1962).  She  brought  a 
very  human  touch  to  the  detailed  implementa- 
tion of  administrative  developments.  At  this  time 
she  was  also  a  visiting  lecturer  at  the  London 
School  of  Economics  (1951-63).  Her  interest  was 
aroused  both  by  the  aims  for  the  disabled  of 
Group  Captain  (later  Baron)  Leonard  Cheshire 
and  (Dame)  Cicely  Saunders's  plans  for  a 
research  and  teaching  hospice  for  the  terminally 
ill.  Her  background  support  and  her  encourage- 
ment to  potential  supporters  of  the  projected 
plans  for  St  Christopher's  Hospice  in  south-east 
London,  the  first  in  the  modern  movement,  was 
invaluable.  When  she  retired  in  1967  she  went  on 
a  clinical  refresher  course  and  became  the  first 
deputy  medical  director  at  St  Christopher's.  She 
was  later  chairman  (1973)  and  finally  president 
(1985).  Her  clinical  and  administrative  skills  did 
much  to  establish  the  ensuing  hospice  movement 
on  a  sound  footing. 

She  became  Linacre  fellow  at  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Physicians  from  1967  to  1978,  being 
responsible  for  postgraduate  education  in  medi- 
cine. Her  experience  of  administration  was 
greatly  valued  as  a  vice-president  of  the  Medical 
Defence  Union  and  within  the  Disabled  Living 
Foundation.  She  was  president  of  the  Medical 
Women's  Federation  in  1971-2  and  editor  of  the 
MWF  newsletter  from  1973  to  1981.  She  was 
appointed  OBE  in  1945  and  DBE  in  1967. 


She  reckoned  that  she  had  enjoyed  at  least  five 
careers,  to  all  of  which  she  brought  her  vital 
interest  and  concern  for  people,  whether  they 
were  patients  or  fellow  workers.  She  never  mar- 
ried but  had  time  for  many  friends,  to  whom  she 
gave  unstinting  support  in  any  need.  In  her  early 
years  she  was  a  keen  sportswoman  and  she  drove 
a  Jaguar.  She  had  a  knowledgeable  love  of  opera 
and  a  capacity  for  adventurous  travelling  holi- 
days. Among  her  varied  acquisitions  was  a  valua- 
ble collection  of  Japanese  prints.  With  all  this  she 
had  her  lonely  and  vulnerable  side,  although  she 
could  appear  formidable.  Of  average  height  and 
robust  figure,  she  gave  the  impression  of  being 
larger  than  she  really  was  but  this  was  offset  by 
her  warm  smile.  From  her  integrity  stemmed  her 
capacity  for  the  attentive  and  skilful  kindness 
that  constitutes  the  very  best  moral  support, 
which  she  gave  so  generously.  For  many  years 
she  affirmed  her  agnosticism  while  holding  a 
great  regard  for  the  faith  of  others,  but  in  her 
later  years  she  became  committed  to  Judaism,  the 
faith  of  her  father.  After  a  long  illness  she  died  13 
May  1988  at  Lancaster  Lodge,  a  Wimbledon 
nursing  home,  where  she  was  kindly  and  skilfully 
cared  for  and  given  a  grand  party  for  her 
eightieth  birthday. 

[British  Medical  Journal,  vol.  ccxcvi,  1988;  Medical 
Women's  Federation  Newsletter,  summer  1088;  Inde- 
pendent and  Times,  24  May  1988;  personal  knowledge.] 

Cicely  Saunders 

WINTERBOTHAM,       Frederick       William 

(1897-1990),  airman  and  intelligence  officer,  was 
born  16  April  1897  in  Stroud,  Gloucestershire, 
the  younger  child  and  only  son  of  Frederick 
Winterbotham,  solicitor,  of  Painswick,  Glouces- 
tershire, and  his  wife,  Florence  Vernon  Graham. 
He  was  educated  at  Charterhouse.  On  the  out- 
break of  World  War  I  in  19 14  he  joined  the  Royal 
Gloucestershire  Hussars,  transferring  to  the 
Royal  Firing  Corps  when  it  was  formed  in  1916. 
The  following  year  he  was  taken  prisoner  after 
being  shot  down  during  a  dogfight  over  Pas- 
schendaele.  His  family  thought  he  was  dead,  for 
he  was  reported  as  killed  in  action,  and  he  was 
later  to  read  his  own  obituary  in  a  local  paper. 
Upon  his  release  in  19 18  he  went  to  Christ 
Church,  Oxford,  to  study  law,  taking  the 
shortened  course  for  returning  servicemen.  He 
obtained  his  BA  in  1920  (such  degrees  were 
unclassified). 

He  spent  nine  years  as  a  pedigree  stock- 
breeder, but  in  1929  had  a  complete  change  of 
career  when  the  deputy  chief  of  air  staff  drew 
him  into  MI6,  to  run  a  new  air  intelligence 
section.  From  1934  to  1938  he  spent  much  time 
in  Germany,  with  a  cover  story  that  he  was 
'persuading  people  in  Britain  to  see  things  the 
Nazi  way',  but  in  actuality  spying  on  German 
developments  in  air  warfare.   He  used  Baron 


487 


Winterbotham 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


William  de  Ropp  and  Alfred  Rosenberg  as  his 
main  contacts,  through  them  arranging  meetings 
with  Nazi  leaders,  from  Hitler  downwards.  He 
learned  much  by  listening,  but  was  disappointed 
by  the  reception  of  his  reports  in  Britain.  He 
later  wrote  about  this  period  in  Secret  and  Per- 
sonal (1969),  which  was  revised  as  The  Nazi 
Connection  (1978).  With  Sydney  Cotton  he 
developed  a  pioneer  system  of  high-altitude 
photo-reconnaissance,  which  was  to  be  extremely 
useful  in  World  War  II.  He  was  also  a  firm 
supporter  of  (Sir)  Barnes  *Wallis's  bouncing 
bomb,  being  instrumental  in  getting  it  taken 
seriously  by  the  air  staff,  who  sanctioned  the 
'dam buster'  raid. 

In  1940  Winterbotham  moved  to  the  Govern- 
ment Code  and  Cipher  School  (GC&CS)  at 
Bletchley  Park,  to  work  on  the  penetration  of 
German  ciphers  encoded  by  the  Enigma 
machine.  This  began  to  succeed  when  the  Luft- 
waffe signals  were  broken;  the  next  step  was  to 
convey  the  information  to  commanders  in  the 
field.  Winterbotham  devised  and  supervised  the 
special  liaison  units  of  young  officers  and  tech- 
nical sergeants  stationed  at  battle-command 
headquarters,  who  received  enciphered  radio 
messages  from  Bletchley  (Ultra)  and  communi- 
cated them  to  the  commanders.  He  was  also  the 
route  by  which  Ultra  intelligence  reached  the 
prime  minister.  His  other  role  was,  upon  (Sir) 
Winston  *Churchill's  instructions,  to  indoctri- 
nate American  commanders  before  they  could 
receive  Ultra  messages,  for  Churchill  was  con- 
cerned about  the  security  of  the  Ultra  system 
when  America  joined  the  war.  Winterbotham 
thus  became  known  to  and  respected  by  the 
American  military  leaders — Generals  Dwight 
Eisenhower,  Omar  Bradley,  and  Karl  Spaatz. 

The  Americans  soon  began  to  develop  their 
own  system  of  special  liaison  units.  In  March 
1944  the  Allies  signed  an  agreement  to  unify  the 
handling  of  Ultra  intelligence  throughout  the 
world.  That  this  happened  was  mainly  due  to 
Winterbotham.  The  'Ultra  secret'  was  never 
known  by  the  Germans.  It  is  ironic,  therefore, 
that  a  confidential  system  known  to  thousands 
who  honoured  their  wartime  oath  of  silence  was 
ultimately  revealed  by  Winterbotham  himself. 
This  corporate  act  of  silence  was  broken  in  1974, 
when  he  produced  The  Ultra  Secret,  which 
aroused  universal  interest.  Ultra  was  shown  to  be 
a  factor  of  the  highest  importance  in  the  Allied 
prosecution  of  the  war;  the  book  described  how 
World  War  II  was  really  won.  Winterbotham  was 
criticized  by  many  for  revealing  the  truth,  but  he 
had  had  the  text  of  his  book  vetted  by  the 
authorities,  who  finally  allowed  him  to  publish  it, 
though  they  did  not  endorse  it. 

In  1943  Winterbotham  was  appointed  CBE. 
From  1945  to  1948  he  worked  for  the  British 
Overseas  Airways  Corporation.  Thereafter  he 


ran  a  small  farm  in  Devon.  In  1989  he  produced 
his  autobiography,  The  Ultra  Spy.  He  was  a 
charming  and  companionable  man,  tall,  clean- 
shaven, with  a  fresh  complexion,  fair  hair,  and 
blue  eyes.  Distinctly  handsome,  he  had  a  dis- 
ciplined air.  In  1921  he  married  Erica,  daughter 
of  Frederick  John  *Horniman,  tea  merchant, 
MP,  and  founder  of  the  Horniman  Museum. 
They  had  one  son  and  two  daughters.  They  were 
divorced  in  1939  and  he  had  a  brief  second 
marriage,  which  lasted  until  1946.  In  1947  he 
married  Petrea,  formerly  wife  of  John  Jowitt, 
army  officer,  and  daughter  of  Alfred  Samuel 
Trant,  ironmonger,  of  Brixham,  Devon.  They 
had  one  daughter.  After  his  third  wife's  death  in 
1986  he  married  in  1987  Kathleen  Price,  an  old 
friend  from  his  youth.  Winterbotham  died  28 
January  1990  at  his  cottage  in  Tarrant  Gunville, 
Dorset. 

[F.  W.  Winterbotham,  The  Ultra  Secret,  1974,  The 
Nazi  Connection,  1978,  and  The  Ultra  Spy  (autobiog- 
raphy), 1989;  F.  H.  Hinsley  el  al.,  British  intelligence  in 
the  Second  World  War,  4  vols.,  1979-90;  Ronald  Lewin, 
Ultra  Goes  to  War,  1978;  R.  V.  Jones,  Most  Secret  War, 
1978;  private  information.]  C.  S.  Niciioi.i.s 

WITTRICK,  William  Henry  (1922-1986),  pro- 
fessor of  civil  engineering,  was  born  in  Hudders- 
field  29  October  1922,  the  elder  son  and  eldest  of 
four  children  of  Frank  Wittrick  (1894- 1960), 
who  had  been  wounded  during  World  War  I,  had 
a  variety  of  jobs,  and  finally  worked  for  an 
engineering  firm  in  Huddersfield,  and  his  wife 
Jessie,  the  eldest  child  of  Walter  Jury,  a  local 
builder.  Jessie  was  a  proficient  pianist  and,  prior 
to  her  marriage,  had  sung  in  the  Huddersfield 
Choral  Society.  Wittrick's  secondary  education 
was  at  Huddersfield  College  where,  because  of 
his  excellent  higher  school  certificate  results  in 
July  1939,  his  parents  were  persuaded  to  allow 
him  to  stay  for  another  year  to  try  for  a  Cam- 
bridge scholarship.  He  was  awarded  an  open 
exhibition  in  mathematics  at  St  Catharine's  Col- 
lege, while  he  later  resat  the  HSC,  obtaining  such 
outstanding  results  that  he  was  awarded  both  a 
state  scholarship  and  the  Jubilee  exhibition  of  the 
Huddersfield  education  committee,  thus  reliev- 
ing his  parents  of  further  financial  burdens. 
Because  of  the  war  he  decided  to  read  mechanical 
sciences,  in  which  he  achieved  first-class  honours 
in  the  tripos  in  1942,  after  only  two  years,  and 
the  award  of  the  Archibald  Denny  prize  for  the 
theory  of  structures. 

After  a  brief  spell  in  1942  with  the  Hawker 
Aircraft  Company,  he  was  interviewed  by  C.  P. 
(later  Baron)  *Snow,  the  archetypal  talent  spot- 
ter of  the  day,  and  sent  back  to  Cambridge  as 
a  junior  demonstrator  (1942-4).  After  another 
interview  in  October  1944  he  was  directed  to 
the  Royal  Aircraft  Establishment,  Farnborough, 
where  he  undertook  a  theoretical  investigation 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Wolpe 


into  the  possible  efficiency  of  'sandwich  con- 
struction \  which  resulted  in  the  first  of  his 
seventy-seven  research  publications. 

In  1945,  following  a  recommendation  by 
Professor  J.  F.  (later  Baron)  *Baker,  Wittrick 
accepted  an  invitation  to  become  a  senior  lecturer 
in  the  University  of  Sydney,  Australia.  There  he 
was  able  to  spend  considerable  time  on  research 
into  such  topics  as  the  coupling  between  torsion 
and  flexure  in  swept-back  wings,  and  the  elastic 
stability  of  panels  in  such  wings.  In  1953  he  spent 
six  months  at  the  California  Institute  of  Techno- 
logy with  Professor  Y.  C.  Fung  investigating  a 
structural  'boundary  layer'  at  the  free  edges  of 
thin  plates  in  the  large-deflexion  regime.  On  his 
return  to  Sydney  he  became  a  reader  in  1954  and 
in  1956  the  Lawrence  Hargrave  professor  of 
aeronautical  engineering.  His  most  important 
researches  at  that  time  were  to  determine  stress 
concentrations  around  uniformly  reinforced 
holes  of  various  shapes,  for  which  he  was 
awarded  the  Orville  Wright  prize  of  the  Royal 
Aeronautical  Society  (1961). 

In  1964  he  returned  to  England  to  accept  the 
chair  of  structural  engineering  at  Birmingham 
University,  where  his  main  research,  much  of  it 
in  co-operation  with  F.  W.  Williams,  was  to 
provide  aerospace  designers  with  the  means  to 
calculate  the  buckling  loads  or  the  natural  modes 
and  frequencies  of  vibration  of  thin-walled  pris- 
matic structures  subjected  to  uniform  biaxial 
compression  and  shear.  This  massive  under- 
taking lasted  about  fifteen  years  and  resulted  in 
over  twenty  publications.  It  involved  the  devel- 
opment of  novel  mathematical  techniques  and 
spawned  various  computer  programmes  that 
were  made  available  to  British  Aerospace, 
NASA,  and  all  major  aerospace  firms  in  the 
USA. 

In  1969  Wittrick  became  Beale  professor  of 
civil  engineering  at  Birmingham  University,  a 
post  he  held  until  his  retirement  in  1982.  He  was 
appointed  the  general  editor  of  the  Oxford  Engi- 
neering Science  series  of  books  and  monographs 
in  1972.  He  was  also  on  the  editorial  board  of  the 
Aeronautical  Quarterly  and  the  International  Jour- 
nal of  Mechanical  Sciences.  From  1980  to  1984  he 
served  on  the  British  National  Committee  for 
Theoretical  and  Applied  Mechanics  and  from 
1980  to  1986  on  the  general  assembly  of  the 
International  Union  of  Theoretical  and  Applied 
Mechanics. 

Wittrick  was  elected  a  fellow  of  the  Australian 
Academy  of  Science  in  1958  and  a  fellow  of  the 
Royal  Aeronautical  Society  in  1961.  He  was 
awarded  the  Sc.D.  degree  at  Cambridge  in  1967. 
In  1980  he  became  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society 
and  in  1981  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Academy  of 
Engineering.  He  was  also  awarded  honorary 
degrees  by  Chalmers  University  of  Technology 


at  Goteborg  in  Sweden  (1984)  and  by  the  Uni- 
versity of  Wales  (1985). 

Wittrick,  or  'Bill'  as  he  was  known  to  his  many 
friends,  had  a  cheerful  personality  and  was  the 
epitome  of  an  English  gentleman  in  family  and 
public  life.  One  cannot  envisage  him  having 
other  than  friendly  relations  with  all  who  knew 
him.  He  was  of  average  height  but  muscular 
build,  in  keeping  with  his  playing  fly  half  in 
rugby  while  at  college,  and,  in  later  years,  squash 
and  tennis.  He  had  a  ruddy  complexion  and 
brown  hair,  which  thinned  and  greyed  at  a 
relatively  early  age.  In  June  1945  he  married 
Joyce,  daughter  of  Arthur  Farrington,  wholesale 
food  merchant.  They  had  two  daughters.  Since 
about  1976  Wittrick  had  suffered  increasingly 
from  emphysema,  which  caused  his  death  2  July 
1986  at  Warwick  Hospital. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

E.  H.  Mansfield 

WOLPE,  Berthold  Ludwig  (1905-1989), 
graphic  artist  and  typographer,  was  born  29 
October  1905  in  Offenbach  am  Main,  the 
younger  son  and  third  child  of  Simon  Wolpe, 
dentist,  and  his  wife,  Agathe  Goldschmidt.  He 
was  educated  at  a  technical  school  (Realschule)  as 
he  was  good  even  then  at  metalwork  (through 
experience  in  his  father's  dental  laboratory).  He 
was  expected  to  become  an  engineer,  but  in  1924 
he  went  to  Offenbach  Art  School  and  began  his 
career.  He  worked  under  the  great  calligrapher 
Rudolf  Koch,  whose  assistant  he  was  from  1 929 
to  1934.  Their  association  is  celebrated  in  their 
book  Das  ABC-Biichlein  (1934,  English  edition 
1976),  an  elegant  little  collection  of  roman  and 
Gothic  alphabets  drawn  by  both  men.  He  learned 
goldsmith  work  under  Theodor  Wende  at  Pforz- 
heim Art  School  and  taught  in  both  Frankfurt 
and  Offenbach  from  1930  to  1933. 

In  1932  he  visited  London  and  met  Stanley 
•Morison,  who  was  interested  in  some  bronze 
lettering  of  Wolpe's  of  which  he  had  seen  photo- 
graphs. Morison  asked  Wolpe  to  design  a  print- 
ing type  of  capital  letters  in  the  same  style  for  the 
Monotype  Corporation.  This  was  the  birth  of 
'Albertus',  first  cut  in  1934  and  used  in  1935, 
which  quickly  became  the  most  widely  used 
display  face  (i.e.  for  advertising,  not  books)  in 
Britain.  Its  apparent  simplicity  made  it  look  easy 
to  copy,  or  reproduce  photographically,  and 
since  there  was  no  copyright  in  lettering,  it  was 
'stolen'  by  every  sign-writer  in  the  country  who 
had  any  taste.  It  appeared  everywhere  on  build- 
ings, shop  fronts  (e.g.  Austin  Reed),  vans,  paper 
bags,  and  posters,  and  if  Wolpe  had  been  paid  a 
royalty  for  every  time  it  was  used  (which  he 
should  have  been)  he  would  have  soon  become  a 
rich  man. 

Wolpe,  who  was  Jewish,  settled  in  England  in 
1935,  and  from  then  until  1040  worked  under 


489 


Wolpe 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Ernest  Ingham  at  the  Fanfare  Press  in  St  Mar- 
tin's Lane.  While  there  he  was  designing  a  lower- 
case for  Albertus,  issued  in  1938,  a  new  display 
face  'Tempest',  designed  for  Fanfare  in  1935,  a 
range  of  type  ornaments  for  Fanfare  published  in 
his  A  Book  of  Fanfare  Ornaments  (with  an  intro- 
duction by  James  *Laver)  in  1939,  a  new  text 
face  'Pegasus',  for  the  Monotype  Corporation 
(cut  only  in  16  pt.)  in  1937-40,  and  between  1935 
and  1939  a  series  of  innovative  typographic 
yellow  book  jackets,  printed  by  Fanfare,  for 
Gollancz.  He  applied  for  naturalization  in  1936, 
but  it  was  not  granted  until  1947,  and  in  1 940-1 
he  was  interned  in  Hays  Camp,  central  Aus- 
tralia. 

When  he  returned  to  Britain  in  194 1  he  moved 
to  the  publishers  Faber  &  Faber  in  charge  of 
jacket  design,  and  remained  there  until  his  retire- 
ment in  1975.  For  Fabers  Wolpe  designed  many 
books  and  more  than  1,500  jackets  and  covers. 
While  working  there,  he  also  taught  lettering 
one  day  a  week  at  Camberwell  School  of  Art 
(1949-53)  a"d  at  the  Royal  College  of  Art 
(1956-75),  and,  for  about  the  last  ten  years  of  his 
life,  he  ran  a  unique  lettering  course  at  the  City 
&  Guilds  of  London  School  of  Art.  In  1966  he 
was  invited  to  draw  a  new  masthead  for  The 
Times,  which  was  in  use  from  3  May  1966  to  20 
September  1970. 

Apart  from  his  work  as  a  designer  (which 
included  several  other  typefaces,  distinguished 
emblems  and  devices,  and  lettering  for  perma- 
nent and  ephemeral  use)  Wolpe  was  also  an 
author  and  scholar  of  printing  history  and  col- 
lector of  any  equipment  or  tools  connected  with 
writing,  lettering,  or  measuring.  He  was  vice- 
president  of  the  Printing  Historical  Society  in 
1977.  Among  his  books  was  Renaissance  Hand- 
writing (i960),  written  jointly  with  Alfred  •Fair- 
bank.  When  living  in  Chelsea,  he  found  on  a  stall 
next  door  to  his  house  a  metal  instrument 
thought  by  the  stallholder  to  be  something  surgi- 
cal, but  which  Wolpe  had  recognized  as  a  pair  of 
dividers,  later  established  to  be  earlier  than  any 
in  the  British  Museum.  The  bulging  briefcase  he 
used  for  carrying  work  to  and  from  home  was  apt 
to  be  full  of  newly  acquired  treasures. 

Whenever  Wolpe  rose  to  speak,  for  example  at 
the  Double  Crown  Club,  of  which  he  was  an 
honorary  member,  or  the  Printing  Historical 
Society,  he  always  produced,  with  his  diffident 
but  entrancing  smile,  something  wildly  unex- 
pected but  totally  apposite.  He  had  a  most 
striking  head,  with  a  big  nose,  which  should  have 
been  drawn  by  Daumier  or  Diirer.  It  was  in  fact 
drawn  by  Charles  Mozley  in  his  little  book, 
Wolperiana:  an  Illustrated  Guide  to  Bert  hold 
Wolpe,  published  by  the  Merrion  Press  for  his 
friends  in  i960.  This  book  also  contains  one  of 
the  best  photographs  of  him,  taken  outside  Fab- 
ers, by  Frank  Herrmann,  who  worked  there. 


Wolpe  was  made  a  Royal  Designer  for  Industry 
in  1959  and  appointed  OBE  in  1983.  In  1981 
he  was  Lyell  reader  in  bibliography  at  Oxford 
University.  The  Society  of  Designer-Craftsmen 
made  him  an  honorary  fellow  in  1984  and  the 
Royal  College  of  Art  awarded  him  an  honorary 
doctorate  in  1968.  He  had  retrospective  exhibi- 
tions at  the  Victoria  and  Albert  Museum  (1980), 
the  National  Library  of  Scotland  in  Edinburgh 
(1982),  and  the  Klingspor  Museum  in  Offenbach 

(1983)- 

In  November  1941  he  made  a  most  happy 
marriage  with  a  sculptress,  Margaret  Leslie, 
daughter  of  Leslie  Howard  Smith,  butcher,  of 
Lewes.  They  had  two  sons  and  two  daughters. 
Wolpe's  essential  Jewishness  was  expressed  in 
the  closeness  of  his  relationship  with  his  family. 
He  died  in  St  Thomas's  Hospital,  London,  after 
a  heart  attack,  5  July  1989. 

[Berthold  Wolpe:  a  Retrospective  Survey,  Victoria  and 
Albert  Museum  and  Faber  &  Faber,  1980;  private 
information;  personal  knowledge.]       Ruari  McLean 

WOOLLEY,    Sir    Richard     van    der    Riet 

(1906- 1 986),  astronomer,  was  born  24  April  1906 
in  Weymouth,  Dorset,  the  fourth  of  five  children 
of  Charles  Edward  Allen  Woolley,  paymaster 
rear-admiral  in  the  Royal  Navy,  and  his  wife, 
Julia  van  der  Riet,  of  Simonstown,  South  Africa. 
He  went  to  Allhallows  School,  Honiton,  Devon, 
from  19 1 9  to  1 92 1,  when  the  family  moved  to 
Cape  Town.  He  entered  its  university  to  study 
mathematics  and  physics,  and  by  the  age  of 
nineteen  he  had  the  degrees  of  B.Sc.  (1924)  and 
M.Sc.  (1925).  Reverting  to  undergraduate  status, 
in  1926  he  entered  Gonville  and  Cuius  College, 
Cambridge.  He  spent  his  first  summer  there  with 
the  scientific  expedition  led  by  H.  G.  ('Gino') 
*Watkins,  exploring  Edge  Island,  east  of  Spits- 
bergen. After  graduating  as  a  wrangler  in  the 
mathematical  tripos  (1928),  he  worked  from  1928 
to  1932  for  his  Ph.D.  under  Sir  Arthur  *Edding- 
ton,  spending  1929-31  at  Mt  Wilson  observa- 
tory, California,  as  a  Commonwealth  Fund 
fellow. 

In  1933  he  became  chief  assistant  to  the 
astronomer  royal,  (Sir)  Harold  Spencer  *Jones, 
at  the  Royal  Observatory,  Greenwich.  Seeking 
more  scope  for  initiatives  of  his  own,  he  returned 
to  Cambridge  in  1937  as  John  Couch  Adams 
astronomer.  From  1939  to  1955  he  was  Com- 
monwealth astronomer  and  director  of  Mt 
Stromlo  observatory,  Australia.  In  1940  the  Aus- 
tralian government  converted  the  observatory 
into  an  optical  munitions  factory,  with  Woolley 
as  director.  So  impressed  were  they  by  his 
unfolding  personality  and  resourcefulness  that 
they  also  made  him  head  of  the  army  inventions 
directorate.  His  resulting  acquaintance  with  lead- 
ers in  scientific  and  public  life  led  him  to  play  an 


490 


D.N.B.  1986-19% 


Wootton 


influential  pan  in  the  phenomenal  postwar  devel- 
opment of  Australian  science. 

From  1956  to  1971,  as  eleventh  astronomer 
royal  and  director  of  the  Royal  Greenwich 
Observatory  (RGO)  at  Herstmonceux,  Sussex, 
he  initiated  far-reaching  developments  in  British 
astronomy.  He  had  also  general  oversight  of  the 
Royal  Observatory,  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  from 
i960,  and  in  1971  the  British  and  South  African 
governments  concluded  an  agreement  whereby  it 
became  the  headquarters  of  a  new  South  African 
astronomical  observatory  (SAAO).  In  December 
1 97 1  Woolley  retired  from  the  Royal  Observa- 
tory, forthwith  becoming  director  of  SAAO.  He 
retired  in  December  1976. 

Woolley's  career  had  a  remarkable  coherence. 
His  aim  was  the  discovery  of  the  physical  con- 
stitution of  the  universe  and  the  way  in  which  the 
known  laws  of  physics  determine  its  operation. 
Pursuing  this  aim  on  three  different  continents, 
he  erected  large  telescopes  and  promoted  the 
education  and  training  of  astronomers,  thereby 
creating  the  environment  in  which  modern 
observational  astrophysics  could  flourish.  He  was 
honorary  professor  in  the  formative  years  of  the 
Australian  National  University  and  became  an 
active  visiting  professor  at  the  University  of 
Sussex  and  later  the  University  of  Cape  Town. 
He  created  vacation  courses  at  the  RGO,  where 
he  won  young  scientists'  interest  by  having  them 
join  in  doing  astronomy.  He  made  Stromlo  the 
leading  observatory  in  the  southern  hemisphere 
and  generated  the  concept  of  the  Anglo-Austra- 
lian telescope.  His  friendship  with  leaders  of 
Australian  science  and  government  eventually 
led  to  its  becoming  a  reality  on  Siding  Spring 
mountain.  He  strongly  supported  the  construc- 
tion there  of  the  UK  Schmidt  telescope.  At 
Herstmonceux  he  activated  construction  of  the 
Isaac  Newton  telescope.  When  it  was  inaugu- 
rated in  1967  it  was  the  largest  in  Europe  (it  was 
later  moved  to  Ua  Palma). 

Telescope  building  and  other  duties  were 
never  allowed  to  halt  Woolley's  own  observa- 
tional researches.  He  made  important  and 
pioneering  studies  of  the  passage  of  radiation 
through  both  stellar  and  terrestrial  atmospheres, 
the  temperature  of  the  sun's  corona,  the  statis- 
tical mechanics  of  star  clusters,  the  Magellanic 
clouds,  and  the  stars  within  seventy-five  light 
years  of  the  sun.  He  was  particularly  concerned 
with  determination  of  the  kinematics  and  dy- 
namics of  the  Galaxy  and  the  presence  of  'dark 
matter'  within  it.  The  resurgence  of  British 
optical  astronomy  and  the  related  developments 
in  Australia  and  South  Africa  owe  their  inception 
to  Woolley  and  the  telescopes  he  started.  He  was 
himself  neither  a  popularizer  nor  a  proponent  of 
revolutionary  ideas,  although  he  respected  some 
who  were. 

In  1952-8  he  was  vice-president  of  the  Inter- 


national Astronomical  Union,  and  in  1963-5 
president  and  in  1971  gold  medallist  of  the  Royal 
Astronomical  Society.  He  was  elected  a  fellow  of 
the  Royal  Society  in  1953  and  in  1956  an 
honorary  fellow  of  Gonville  and  Caius  College. 
He  was  master  of  the  Worshipful  Company  of 
Clockmakers  (1969)  and  had  honorary  degrees 
from  Melbourne  (1955),  Uppsala  (1956),  Cape 
Town  (1969),  and  Sussex  (1970).  He  was 
appointed  OBE  (1953)  and  knighted  in  1963. 

Woolley  was  about  six  feet  tall,  with  a  fine 
presence;  he  had  exceptional  friendliness  and 
charm  and  was  an  obvious  leader.  He  was  a  man 
of  open  spaces,  with  an  instinctive  feeling  for  the 
countryside  around  him.  On  Stromlo  he  kept 
horses  and  rode  a  lot,  and  he  enjoyed  walking  on 
Table  Mountain.  He  was  a  talented  pianist  and 
liked  country  dancing  and  bell  ringing.  He 
played  a  whole  range  of  ball  games  and  encour- 
aged others  to  participate. 

In  1932  he  married  Gwyneth  Jane  Margaret, 
daughter  of  Hugh  Harries  Meyier,  of  independ- 
ent means.  She  enhanced  his  love  of  the  arts  and 
greatly  supported  him  in  entertaining  guests.  He 
was  devastated  by  her  unexpected  death  in  1979 
in  Sussex.  His  health  suffered,  but  (Emily  May) 
Patricia,  widow  of  Ronald  Marples,  a  Royal  Air 
Force  gunner  missing  over  Malta,  and  daughter 
of  John  Mowiey,  mining  engineer,  helped  him 
back  to  normality.  She  became  his  second  wife  in 
1979  and  they  went  to  live  in  South  Africa, 
where  many  visiting  astronomers  enjoyed  their 
hospitality.  Patricia  died  in  1985.  At  the  end  of 
that  year  he  married  Sheila,  former  wife  of  David 
George  Gillham,  professor  of  English  at  Cape 
Town  University,  and  daughter  of  William 
Penry  Hammett,  shipping  agent.  Woolley  had  no 
children.  He  had  a  bad  fall  and  died  24  Decem- 
ber 1986  at  Somerset  West,  Cape  Province, 
South  Africa. 

[Sir  William  McCrea  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows 
of  the  Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxiv,  1988;  personal  know- 
ledge] William  McCrea 
Donald  Lynden-Bell 

WOOTTON,  Barbara  Frances,  Baroness 
Wootton  of  Abinger  (1897-1988),  professor  of 
social  studies,  was  born  14  April  1897  in  Cam- 
bridge, the  only  daughter  and  youngest  of  three 
children  of  James  Adam,  tutor  at  Emmanuel 
College,  Cambridge,  and  his  wife,  Adela  Marion 
Kensington,  classicist  and  a  fellow  of  Girton. 
Her  father  had  been  born  into  the  family  of  a 
farm  worker  in  Aberdeenshire,  whence  he  made 
his  way  by  scholarship  from  village  school  to 
Cambridge  University  and  a  degree  in  classics. 
Barbara  herself  w  as  healthy,  good-looking,  and 
precocious.  Her  father  died  when  she  was  ten 
and  he  only  forty-seven.  Her  best  schoolfriend 
died  at  school  and  her  brother  Arthur  in  war.  She 
was  then  widowed  by  war.  Her  husband,  John 


491 


Wootton 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Wesley  ('Jack')  Wootton,  a  research  student  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  the  son  of 
Arthur  Wootton,  from  a  Nonconformist  manu- 
facturing family  in  Nottingham,  was  a  friend  of 
her  elder  brother  Neil.  They  were  married  on 
5  September  19 17  and  had  thirty-six  hours 
together  before  she  saw  him  off  to  France  at 
Victoria  station.  He  died  of  wounds  on  11 
October  191 7  and  in  due  course  the  War  Office 
returned  to  her  his  blood-stained  uniform.  We 
can  reasonably  speculate  that  the  phobias  and 
obsessions  which  plagued  her  had  their  origins  in 
these  adversities.  Yet  she  herself  remained  reso- 
lutely pre-Freudian  in  her  attitudes  towards 
responsibility  in  the  face  of  disaster.  Utter  self- 
reliance  was  her  creed.  'We  would  do  better,'  she 
thought,  'to  encourage  children  from  the  earliest 
possible  age,  however  wretched  their  back- 
grounds, to  believe  that  they  are,  or  at  least  soon 
will  be,  masters  of  their  fates.' 

Though  she  prayed  earnestly  to  be  sent  away 
to  school  like  her  brothers,  she  did  not  escape  the 
home  nursery  until  at  thirteen  she  was  allowed  to 
enter  the  Perse  High  School  in  Cambridge  as  a 
day  pupil.  Her  mother  wanted  her  to  study 
classics  at  Girton  College  and  she  was  dutifully 
successful  in  the  entrance  examinations,  becom- 
ing a  candidate  for  the  first  part  of  the  tripos, 
even  though  her  strong  personal  inclination  was 
to  abandon  dead  languages  for  Alfred  *Marshall 
and  modern  economics.  As  her  final  examina- 
tions approached  she  succumbed,  apparently 
psychosomatically,  to  virulent  tonsillitis.  Her 
illness  caused  her  to  get  an  aegrotat  degree 
(19 1 8).  Liberation  from  the  well-intentioned 
matriarchal  dominion  of  her  childhood  began 
with  part  ii  of  the  tripos.  She  put  aside  the  Greek 
and  Latin  texts  and  turned  to  read  economics 
with  determined  enthusiasm.  She  gained  a  first 
class  in  19 19.  Yet,  ironically,  as  a  woman  she  was 
prevented  from  appending  BA  to  her  name. 

After  leaving  Cambridge  she  took  up  a 
research  studentship  at  the  London  School  of 
Economics.  In  1920  Girton  recalled  her  to  a 
fellowship  and  the  directorship  of  social  studies 
in  the  college,  and  the  board  of  economics  invited 
her  to  lecture  on  economics  and  the  State.  The 
University  of  Cambridge  at  this  time  did  not 
officially  allow  the  admission  of  women  and 
therefore  could  not  license  lectures  by  a  non- 
member.  (Sir)  Hubert  *Henderson  intervened 
gallantly,  offering  himself  as  the  advertised  lec- 
turer but  on  the  understanding  that  the  uni- 
versity would  add  in  brackets  that  the  lectures 
would  be  delivered  by  Mrs  Wootton. 

She  married  again  in  1935,  her  husband  being 
George  Percival  Wright,  the  son  of  Thomas 
Wright,  of  29  Prothero  Road,  London  SW6.  He 
was  her  colleague  in  adult  education  and  London 
government,  who  was  temporarily  a  cab  driver. 
There   was  no  permanent   peace,   for  Wright 


turned  out  to  be  a  'natural  polygamist',  who  kept 
a  succession  of  'secondary  wives'  round  the 
corner,  though  making  it  clear  to  each  that  his 
loyalty  to  Barbara  was  paramount.  She  nursed 
him  through  a  long  illness  till  he  died  of  cancer  in 
1964.  There  were  no  children  of  the  marriage. 

She  forsook  not  only  the  classics  but  also 
conventional  scholarship  and  institutional  reli- 
gion. Her  circumstances  and  her  temperament 
gradually  formed  her  into  a  rationalist,  an  agnos- 
tic, and  a  socialist — a  method,  a  philosophy,  and 
a  commitment  which  lent  steady  consistency  to  a 
long  professional  and  public  life.  Her  rationalism 
evolved,  no  doubt,  in  part  from  sheer  intellectual 
power  but  also  from  the  experience  of  bereave- 
ment and  the  illogicality  of  a  gifted  woman's 
place  in  her  society.  Her  agnosticism  was  nur- 
tured by  deep  scepticism  about  the  benevolence 
of  any  conceivable  deity  or  principle  of  cosmic 
order  in  World  War  I.  Her  socialism  was  rooted 
in  the  same  experiences  which  convinced  her 
that,  given  sympathy  for  others,  critical  reason 
was  the  only  road  to  salvation  on  this  earth. 

She  worked  for  the  research  department  of  the 
Labour  party  and  the  Trades  Union  Congress 
from  1922,  as  principal  of  Morley  College  from 
1926,  and  as  director  of  studies  for  tutorial 
classes  at  London  University  from  1927  until  she 
took  up  a  readership  at  Bedford  College  in  1944. 
In  1944  she  was  disappointed  in  a  competition 
for  the  chair  and  headship  of  the  department  of 
social  science  at  the  LSE,  which  went  to  T.  H. 
•Marshall.  Within  academe  her  preoccupation 
was  always  with  practical  problems.  She  was 
promoted  to  the  rank  of  professor  in  1948.  She 
became  an  acknowledged  expert  in  criminology, 
penology,  and  social  work,  writing  many  books 
on  those  subjects.  Her  Social  Science  and  Social 
Pathology  (with  V.  G.  Seal  and  R.  Chambers, 
1959)  remains  a  classic  in  the  application  of 
utilitarian  philosophy  and  empirical  sociology  to 
the  enlightened  management  of  society.  From 
1952  to  1957  she  was  Nuffield  research  fellow  at 
Bedford  College. 

She  became  an  outstandingly  vigorous  public 
figure.  She  was  a  governor  of  the  BBC  from  1950 
to  1956  and  served  on  four  royal  commissions 
(workmen's  compensation  1938-44,  the  press 
1947-9,  the  Civil  Service  1953-5,  an^  the  penal 
system  1964-6).  She  was  also  chairman  of  the 
Countryside  Commission  (1968-70).  Created  a 
life  peer  in  1958,  she  was  the  first  woman  to  sit 
on  the  woolsack  in  the  House  of  Lords,  as  deputy 
speaker  from  1967.  Her  ambivalence  to  the  upper 
chamber  surprised  some  democratic  socialists. 
She  recognized  that  it  was  'totally  indefensible  in 
a  democracy'.  'No  one  in  his  senses  would  invent 
the  present  house  if  it  did  not  already  exist... 
but... ancient  monuments  are  not  light-heartedly 
to  be  destroyed.'  More  generally  she  made  the 
best  of  the  institutions  she  found  and  was  unwill- 


492 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Wright 


ing  to  see  her  country  pay  the  price  in  misery 
to  ordinary  people  that  revolution  along  Stalinist 
lines  would  entail.  She  preferred  to  work  piece- 
meal and  her  sen  ice  as  a  justice  of  the  peace  for 
London,  to  which  she  was  appointed  in  1926  at 
the  age  of  twenty-nine,  that  is,  before  she  was 
entitled  as  a  woman  to  vote,  is  a  long  record  of 
humane  public  effort.  She  held  thirteen  honorary 
doctorates  and  was  made  a  CH  in  1977.  She  died 
11  July  1988  at  Holmesdale  Park,  Nutfield, 
Surrey,  admired  by  those  who  knew  her,  hon- 
oured by  a  Festschrift,  and  widely  revered  as  a 
woman  whose  steadfast  faith  was  in  argument 
and  persuasion  towards  a  socialist  common- 
wealth. 

[Philip  Bean  and  Vera  G.  Seal  (eds.),  Barbara  Wootton: 
Selected  Writings,  4  vols.,  1993;  Philip  Bean  and  D. 
Whynes  (eds.),  Barbara  Wootton:  Essays  in  her  Honour, 
1086;  Barbara  Wootton,  In  a  World  I  Never  Made, 
1967;  Terence  Morris,  'In  Memoriam:  Barbara  Woot- 
ton 1 897- 1 988',  British  Journal  of  Sociology ,  vol.  xl,  no. 
2,  June  1989;  personal  knowledge.]        A.  H.  Halsey 

WRIGHT,  Basil  Charles  (1907-1987),  docu- 
mentary film-maker  and  author,  was  born  12 
June  1907  in  Sutton,  Surrey,  the  only  son  (there 
were  also  younger  twin  sisters)  of  Major  Law- 
rence Wright,  TD,  and  his  wife,  Gladys  Mars- 
den,  and  was  brought  up  in  a  comfortably  well- 
off  middle-class  family.  He  was  educated  at 
Sherborne  School  and  entered  Corpus  Christi 
College,  Cambridge,  as  a  Mawson  scholar  in 
1926  to  read  classics.  He  took  a  first  in  part  i 
of  the  classical  tripos  (1928)  and  a  third  in  part  ii 
of  economics  (1929),  having  already  decided 
while  an  undergraduate  that  he  would  become 
either  a  poet,  dramatist,  or  film-maker. 

A  double  chance — he  had  happened  to  attend 
the  premiere  of  Drifters,  directed  by  John  *Grier- 
son,  the  first  'documentary'  film  in  the  particular 
British  definition  of  the  genre  (which  struck  him 
as  'the  sort  of  film  I  wanted  to  make'),  and 
Grierson  happened  to  have  seen  an  amateur  film 
of  his  while  looking  for  an  editor  to  work  in  his 
film  unit  at  the  Empire  Marketing  Board — 
determined  that  he  would  become  a  film-maker 
and  a  documentarist.  He  was  one  of  the  first  to 
join  the  small  band  of  documentarists  being 
gathered  together  at  the  EMB  and  he  remained 
throughout  his  professional  life  one  of  the  most 
devoted,  unquestioning,  and  faithful  members  of 
the  British  documentary  movement  and  a  fol- 
lower of  its  mercurial  and  magnetic  leader,  John 
Grierson.  He  followed  Grierson  to  the  GPO 
Film  Unit  in  1933;  he  resigned  when  Grierson 
was  pushed  out  in  1937,  and  co-founded  the 
Realist  Film  Unit,  an  independent  commission- 
ing and  production  unit  for  sponsored  produc- 
tions. In  1936  he  co-directed,  with  Ham  Watt, 
Night  Mail. 

He  joined  the  Film  Centre  in  1939  as  execu- 
tive producer,  a  post  he  retained  until   1944. 


During  this  time  of  war  (the  golden  age  of  the 
documentary  with,  for  once,  ample  resources 
available),  although  by  nature  a  personal  film- 
maker, he  worked  tirelessly  and  selflessly  as 
producer,  administrator,  and  adviser  to  no  fewer 
than  thirty-six  films,  which  were  directed  by 
others.  His  creative  contribution  to  many  of 
these  was  substantial,  including  to  some  of  the 
classics,  such  as  Diary  for  Timothy  (1946). 

He  finished  the  war  as  producer  in  charge  of 
the  Crown  Film  Unit  (1945)  and  adviser  to  the 
director-general  of  the  Ministry  of  Information. 
This  should  have  provided  him  with  the  means 
for  resuming  his  creative  career,  but  he 
responded  unhesitatingly  to  Grierson's  call  to 
join  him  at  International  Realist  in  New  York. 
This  was  an  abortive  attempt  by  Grierson  to 
restart  his  own  production  career  after  leaving 
Canada  in  the  wake  of  revelations  by  Igor  *Gou- 
zenko  about  Soviet  infiltration.  W'right  then 
followed  Grierson  to  Unesco  and  devoted  his 
energies  again  primarily  to  paperwork. 

His  creative  career  restarted  in  1953,  although 
he  sensed  that  he  was  now  too  old.  Only  six  more 
films  followed  before  his  swansong,  A  Place  for 
Gold,  in  i960.  He  devoted  the  remaining  twenty- 
seven  years  of  his  life  to  studying,  writing,  and 
teaching  about  film,  trying  to  keep  alive  the 
ideals  of  the  Griersonian  documentary.  He 
taught  at  the  University  of  Southern  California 
(1962-8),  was  senior  lecturer  in  film  history  at 
the  National  Film  School  (1971-3),  and  visiting 
professor  at  other  institutions  such  as  Temple 
University,  Philadelphia  (1977),  and  Houston 
University  (1978).  He  also  taught  film-making  in 
developing  countries,  and  held  many  honorific 
positions,  including  those  of  governor  of  the 
British  Film  Institute  (1953)  and  fellow  of  the 
British  Film  Academy  (1955). 

His  most  influential  and  important  film,  in 
some  ways  never  quite  matched  later,  came  early 
in  his  career.  Song  of  Ceylon  (1936),  which  won 
the  gold  medal  and  prix  du  gouvernement  at 
Brussels,  put  the  British  documentary  movement 
on  the  map,  showing  that  film  could  be  an  art 
form,  the  first  time  the  British  film  was  recog- 
nized in  that  way.  Of  his  other  films,  Children  at 
School  (1938)  and  The  Immortal  Land  (1959,  for 
which  he  was  awarded  the  Council  of  Europe 
award)  are  perhaps  the  most  representative  of  his 
special  poetic  and  aesthetic  gifts,  as  well  as  his 
technical  mastery  of  the  craft  of  documentary 
film-making.  In  1936  he  was  awarded  the  gold 
cross  of  the  Royal  Order  of  King  George  I  of 
Greece. 

As  a  film-maker,  his  contribution  to  the  devel- 
opment of  the  documentary  lies  essentially  in 
bringing  to  it  an  aesthetic  sensitivity.  He  was 
widely  recognized  as  the  'poet  of  the  documen- 
tary movement'.  However,  the  insistence  of 
Grierson  on  public  service  and  his  strident,  if  not 


493 


Wright 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


always  consistent,  opposition  to  his  documentar- 
ists  being  'aestheticky'  and  personal,  prevented 
those  poetic  shoots  from  their  full  flowering.  As 
the  critic  David  Thomson  fairly  said,  Wright's 
work  at  its  best  was  sensitive,  graceful,  and 
pictorial,  but  it  was  also  without  dynamic  per- 
sonality or  heart. 

As  a  writer  he  contributed  greatly  to  the 
critical  and  theoretical  debates  essential  to  the 
development  of  the  documentary  movement, 
especially  during  World  War  II,  when  through 
the  pages  of  the  Documentary  Newsletter  he  took 
over  part  of  the  role  of  the  intellectual  leader  of 
the  documentary  movement  while  Grierson  was 
in  Canada.  He  was  film  critic  of  the  Spectator  and 
Sight  and  Sound  in  the  late  1940s.  He  published 
two  books,  The  Use  of  the  Film  (1948)  and  The 
Long  View  (1974),  the  latter  one  of  the  classic 
histories  of  the  cinema  from  an  aesthetic  per- 
spective. 

Basil  Wright  had  an  attractive  personality,  at 
once  cultured,  scholarly,  and  sensitive,  and  yet 
efficiently  practical  and  with  a  quiet  sense  of 
humour.  His  lifelong  recreational  interests  were 
opera,  ballet,  and  gardening.  In  appearance  he 
was  of  medium  height,  with  a  lightly  built,  trim 
body  and  regular  features,  his  scholarly  appear- 
ance emphasized  by  dark-rimmed  spectacles.  He 
never  married  and  lived  for  the  latter  half  of  his 
life  with  a  long-time  companion,  Kassim  Bin 
Said,  at  Little  Adam  Farm,  Frieth,  Henley  on 
Thames.  He  died  14  October  1987  at  Little 
Adam  Farm,  of  bronchopneumonia  and  cerebral 
atrophy. 

[David  Thomson,  A  Biographical  Dictionary  of  the 
Cinema,  1975;  G.  Roy  Levin,  Documentary  Explorations, 
1 971;  information  from  members  of  the  documentary 
movement  and  others;  personal  knowledge.] 

Nicholas  Pronay 

WYNDHAM  GOLDIE,  Grace  Murrell  (1900- 
1986),  television  producer.  [See  Goldie,  Grace 
Murrell  Wyndham.] 

WYNNE,  Greville  Maynard  (1919-1990),  busi- 
nessman and  intelligence  agent,  was  born  19 
March  19 19  in  Wrockwardine  Wood,  east  of 
Shrewsbury,  Shropshire,  the  only  son  to  grow  up 
of  Ethelbert  Wynne,  plater,  and  his  wife,  Ada 
Pritchard.  He  had  three  elder  sisters;  an  elder 
brother  had  died  aged  one  in  191 5.  He  was 
brought  up  at  Ystradymynach,  a  mining  village  a 
dozen  miles  north  of  Cardiff,  where  his  father 
was  a  foreman  in  an  engineering  works.  His 
mother  died  when  he  was  fourteen.  He  worked  in 
his  middle  teens  as  an  electrician,  and  took 
evening  courses  in  engineering  at  Nottingham 
University. 

Called  up  into  the  army  in  1939,  he  spent  the 
war  as  a  sergeant  in  the  Field  Security  Police, 
looking  after  elementary  security  in  various  parts 
of  Great  Britain.  He  acquired  the  vocabulary  of 


the  Intelligence  Corps,  in  which  he  served.  On 
being  demobilized  in  1946  he  married,  on  21 
September,  at  St  Anne's,  Wandsworth,  Sheila 
Margaret,  daughter  of  Gordon  Beaton,  chemist. 
They  had  a  son. 

He  already  described  himself,  on  his  marriage 
certificate,  as  a  consulting  engineer — a  trade  in 
which  he  made  himself  useful  to  exporters,  with 
whom  lay  the  country's  best  hope  of  staying 
solvent.  In  a  decade  and  a  half  he  built  up  a 
profitable  small  business,  and  came  to  specialize 
in  assisting  exports  to  eastern  Europe,  then 
under  rigid  communist  control  from  Moscow. 
He  occasionally  visited  the  USSR  to  forward  his 
clients'  interests.  He  was  a  short,  stocky  man, 
with  a  brisk,  cheerful  manner,  a  toothbrush 
moustache,  and  smooth  dark  hair. 

As  a  matter  of  routine,  MI6  (the  Secret 
Intelligence  Service)  briefed  many  British  busi- 
nessmen who  travelled  behind  the  iron  curtain 
about  points  for  which  they  might  like  to  look 
out  while  there;  Wynne  was  among  them. 
Chance  turned  him  into  an  important  pawn  in 
the  'great  game'.  Oleg  Penkovsky,  a  colonel  in 
Russian  secret  military  intelligence,  had  been 
demoted  from  work  he  enjoyed  in  Turkey  to  run 
a  Moscow  committee  that  enquired  into  scien- 
tific matters — a  cover  for  industrial  espionage 
against  the  capitalist  powers.  Entirely  disillu- 
sioned with  the  Soviet  regime,  Penkovsky  sought 
to  change  sides,  and  through  several  intermedi- 
aries approached  the  American  Central  Intelli- 
gence Agency,  without  securing  a  response.  He 
then  approached  Wynne,  who  informed  MI6, 
which  decided  to  take  the  case  up,  and  to  handle 
it  jointly  with  the  CIA.  MI6  accepted  Wynne  as 
one  of  the  conduits  through  which  material  could 
from  time  to  time  be  passed  to  and  from  Pen- 
kovsky. 

Some  of  this  material  was  of  world  strategic 
importance,  for  it  enabled  the  Americans  to 
outface  the  Russians  in  the  Cuban  missile  crisis 
of  1962.  Shortly  thereafter,  Wynne,  who  may 
have  shown  unprofessional  enthusiasm  at  finding 
himself  in  Penkovsky's  presence,  unaware  of  the 
strictness  with  which  Soviet  citizens  kept  watch 
on  each  other,  was  abruptly  arrested  in  Budapest, 
on  2  November  1962.  He  discovered  after  he  had 
been  flown  to  Moscow  that  Penkovsky  was 
already  in  jail.  After  nine  months'  intermittent, 
fierce  interrogation,  the  two  were  given  a  public 
show  trial  there  on  7-1 1  May  1963. 

Wynne  stuck  to  his  cover  story  that  he  was  a 
simple  businessman,  admitting  to  having  carried 
packets,  but  denying  any  knowledge  of  their 
contents.  Penkovsky  was  sentenced  to  death, 
Wynne  to  eight  years.  After  less  than  a  year  of 
hideous  discomfort  at  Vladimir,  some  120  miles 
east  of  Moscow,  Wynne  was,  again  abruptly, 
flown  to  Berlin  and  exchanged  for  a  leading 


494 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Wynne 


Soviet  agent,  Conon  Molody  ('Gordon  Lons- 
dale'), early  on  22  April  1064.  The  exchange 
received  a  torrent  of  publicity  in  the  free  world's 
news  media.  MI6  and  the  CIA  paid  Wynne  over 
$200,000  compensation. 

His  wife  had  stood  by  him  loyally;  but  his 
marriage  swiftly  broke  up.  He  went  off  to 
Majorca  with  his  secretary,  Johanna  Hermania, 
the  daughter  of  Dirk  van  Buren,  civil  servant. 
They  married  on  31  July  1970  at  Kensington 
register  office;  his  first  wife  had  divorced  him  in 
1968.  There  were  no  children  of  the  second 


marriage.  Wynne  wrote  two  books,  to  try  to  make 
money  out  of  what  had  happened  to  him:  The 
Man  from  Moscow,  a  life  of  Penkovsky  and 
himself  (1967),  and  the  much  more  fanciful  The 
Man  from  Odessa  (1981),  in  which,  for  example, 
he  claimed  to  have  held  an  army  commission, 
which  he  never  did.  He  never  went  back  to 
business  and  died  of  cancer  in  the  Cromwell 
Hospital,  Kensington,  27  February'  1990. 

[Greville  Wvnne,  The  Man  from  Moscow,  1967;  J.  L. 
Schechetr  and  P.  S.  Deriabin,  The  Spy  Who  Saved  the 
World,  1992;  private  information.]      M.  R.  D.  Foot 


495 


Y 


YONGE,  Sir  (Charles)  Maurice  (i  899-1 986), 
marine  biologist,  was  born  9  December  1899  at 
Silcoates  School,  near  Wakefield,  Yorkshire,  the 
younger  child  and  only  son  of  John  Arthur 
Yonge,  headmaster  of  the  school,  and  his  wife, 
Sarah  Edith  Carr.  Silcoates  School  was  a  private 
establishment  which  Maurice  joined  as  a  pupil  in 
1908.  As  the  son  of  the  headmaster  he  did  not 
enjoy  his  schooling.  Shy,  sensitive,  with  a  stam- 
mer, he  became  ever  more  self-conscious  and 
isolated.  Influenced  by  his  mother,  he  found 
solace  in  reading  and  developed  a  lifelong  love  of 
history.  He  left  school  at  seventeen  and  for  a  year 
read  history  at  Leeds  University.  In  191 8  he  was 
commissioned  into  the  Green  Howards,  only  to 
be  demobilized  shortly  afterwards.  For  one  glori- 
ous summer  he  read  modern  history  at  Lincoln 
College,  Oxford,  but  then,  believing  it  important 
to  take  up  a  more  practical  subject,  persuaded  his 
father  to  let  him  study  forestry  at  Edinburgh,  a 
city  he  had  loved  visiting  with  his  mother. 

The  forestry  degree  included  courses  in  nat- 
ural history  and  these  turned  his  interests  to 
zoology.  In  his  second  year,  after  spending  Easter 
at  the  Marine  Station,  Millport,  'in  unspeakable 
weather  and  living  conditions  of  the  crudest',  he 
returned  'a  committed  marine  biologist'.  In  1922 
he  completed  a  degree  in  zoology  with  distinc- 
tion and  was  awarded  the  Baxter  natural  science 
scholarship. 

Yonge  spent  a  further  two  years  in  Edinburgh 
working  for  his  Ph.D.  on  the  physiology  of 
digestion  in  marine  invertebrates.  He  met  Lance- 
lot *Hogben,  who  suggested  that  the  clam  Mya 
might  be  of  interest.  That  remark  led  Yonge  to 
world  renown  for  his  studies  on  the  bivalve 
molluscs.  During  the  year  1924-5  a  Carnegie 
research  scholarship  took  him  to  Naples,  and  on 
his  return  he  joined  the  staff"  of  the  Marine 
Biological  Association  at  Plymouth,  where  for 
two  years  (1925-7)  he  worked  mainly  on  feeding 
in  oysters.  These  remained  a  special  interest, 
which  was  expressed  in  his  book  Oysters  (i960). 
At  Plymouth  also  he  joined  with  (Sir)  Frederick 
*Russell  in  writing  The  Seas  (1928),  a  classic  that 
inspired  budding  marine  biologists  of  the  1930s 
and  1940s. 

In  1927  Yonge  was  invited  to  Cambridge  as 
Balfour  student,  with  the  initially  hidden  object 
of  his  leading  the  Great  Barrier  Reef  expedition, 


then  being  planned  in  some  confusion.  The  same 
year  he  married  a  medical  student  he  had  met 
in  postgraduate  days,  Martha  Jane  ('Mattie'), 
daughter  of  Robert  Torrance  Lennox,  of  New- 
milns,  Ayrshire.  They  married  on  30  June  1927, 
the  day  after  Yonge  was  awarded  his  D.Sc. 
degree.  Mattie  joined  the  expedition  as  medical 
officer;  both  the  marriage  and  the  expedition  of 
1928-9  were  resounding  successes. 

From  Australia  Yonge  returned  to  Plymouth 
as  physiologist.  After  three  years  he  was  disen- 
chanted with  his  progress  and  accepted  the  chair 
of  zoology  at  Bristol  in  1933.  In  1944  he  became 
regius  professor  of  zoology  at  Glasgow.  By  then 
with  immense  determination  he  had  controlled 
his  stammer  and  become  a  most  effective  lecturer 
and  administrator. 

Initially  at  Glasgow  there  was  great  sadness, 
for  his  wife,  who  had  spent  the  war  years  away 
from  Bristol  with  the  children  (a  son  and  daugh- 
ter), became  seriously  ill,  required  brain  surgery, 
and  died  shortly  afterwards  in  1945.  Thereafter 
Yonge  wrote  The  Sea  Shore  (1949),  which  he 
dedicated  to  her.  In  1954  he  married  Dr  Phyllis 
Greenlaw  ('Phyll')  Fraser,  helminthologist  and 
daughter  of  Douglas  Morrison  Milne  Fraser, 
physician,  of  Eastry,  Kent.  They  had  one  son. 

Now  in  demand  nationally  and  internationally, 
Yonge  chaired  the  colonial  fisheries  advisory 
committee,  served  on  the  Natural  Environment 
Research  Council,  was  vice-president  of  the 
Scottish  Marine  Biological  Association,  and  was 
twice  on  the  council  of  the  Royal  Society.  He  was 
one  of  a  few  who  controlled  British  biological 
science  between  1950  and  1970.  In  1964  he 
resigned  his  chair  at  Glasgow,  remaining  as 
research  fellow  until  1970.  In  1965  he  and  his 
wife  set  up  house  in  Edinburgh  and  on  his 
retirement  in  1970  he  became  an  honorary 
research  fellow  in  zoology  at  the  University  of 
Edinburgh.  The  circle  was  complete,  but  his 
scientific  output  and  travel  continued  until  his 
Parkinson's  disease  became  too  disabling  when 
he  was  eighty-three. 

Although  his  overwhelming  concern  lay  with 
molluscs,  Yonge  published  sufficient  work  on 
corals  and  decapod  Crustacea  to  have  been 
lauded  for  this  alone.  His  output  of  popular 
marine  science  was  also  immense,  for  he  had  a 
journalistic  bent  and  at  Oxford  had  considered 


496 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Young 


journalism  as  a  career.  He  kept  up  historical 
interests,  amassed  a  fine  library,  and  indulged  in 
carpentry. 

Yonge  was  a  fellow  of  the  Royal  Society  of 
Edinburgh  (1045,  president  1970-3)  and  of  Lon- 
don (1946)  (Darwin  medal,  1968).  He  was 
appointed  CBK  in  1954  and  knighted  in  1967. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  Royal  Danish  Academy 
of  Sciences  (1956)  and  had  honorary  degrees 
from  the  universities  of  Bristol  (1959),  Heriot- 
Watt  (1971),  Manchester  (1975),  and  Edinburgh 
(1983).  His  last  scientific  paper  was  published 
three  days  before  he  died  in  Edinburgh,  17 
March  1986. 

[B.  Morton  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of  the 
Royal  Society,  vol.  xxxviii,  1992;  personal  knowledge] 

John  A.  Allen 

YOUNG,  Sir  Frank  George  (1908-1988),  bio- 
chemist and  educationist,  was  born  25  March 
1908  at  2  Bond  Street,  Holford  Square,  Clerken- 
well,  the  eldest  in  the  family  of  two  sons  and  one 
daughter  of  Frank  Edgar  Young,  solicitor's  clerk, 
and  his  wife,  Jane  Eleanor  Pinkney.  His  child- 
hood years  were  spent  in  Clerkenwell  and  Dul- 
wich.  He  was  educated  at  Alleyn's  School, 
Dulwich,  and  University  College  London, 
graduating  with  first-class  honours  in  chemistry 
in  1929.  He  rowed  for  both  college  and  uni- 
versity. 

On  graduation  he  decided  to  take  up  bio- 
chemistry and  joined  the  department  of  physi- 
ology, pharmacology,  and  biochemistry  at 
University  College.  He  obtained  his  Ph.D.  in 
1933.  He  was  a  Beit  memorial  research  fellow  at 
University  College  (1932-3  and  1935-6)  and  in 
between  at  Aberdeen  and  Toronto.  In  1936  he 
moved  to  the  National  Institute  for  Medical 
Research  in  London  as  a  member  of  the  scientific 
staff.  Within  a  year  he  had  discovered  that  a 
permanent  form  of  diabetes  could  be  induced  in 
suitable  species  of  animal  by  a  short  period  of 
injection  of  extracts  of  the  anterior  lobe  of  the 
pituitary  gland.  This  discovery  was  of  major 
importance,  because  it  was  the  first  time  that 
permanent  diabetes  had  been  induced  by  a  natu- 
ral substance  (later  to  be  identified  by  him  as  the 
pituitary  growth  hormone).  His  work  from  1936 
to  1952,  on  this  theme  and  on  other  aspects  of  the 
regulation  of  growth  and  metabolism  by  hor- 
mones, gave  him  a  substantial  national  and  inter- 
national reputation. 

In  1942  he  left  the  National  Institute  to 
become  professor  of  biochemistry  at  St  Thomas's 
Hospital  Medical  School  (1942-5)  and  then  at 
University  College  London  (1945-9).  In  1949  he 
was  appointed  to  the  Sir  William  Dunn  pro- 
fessorship of  biochemistry  at  Cambridge,  where 
he  stayed  until  his  retirement  in  1975.  From 
about  1952  onwards  he  abandoned  personal 
research  and  teaching  and  concentrated  increas- 


ingly on  educational,  scientific,  and  medical 
affairs  in  Cambridge  and  at  national  and  inter- 
national level.  Two  major  themes  were  the  needs 
of  postgraduate  students  and  relations  between 
medicine  and  the  sciences.  In  Cambridge  Young 
was  among  the  first  to  recognize  the  need  for 
postgraduate  colleges,  and  with  the  senior  tutor 
of  Corpus  Christi  (Michael  McCrum)  he  set  out 
in  1956  to  advocate  their  establishment.  Their 
campaign  bore  fruit  in  1963,  when  the  found- 
ing of  Darwin  College,  with  Young  as  its  first 
master,  was  announced;  and  in  1964,  with  the 
report  of  the  council  of  the  senate  which  led  to 
the  establishment  of  Wolfson  College.  Young 
was  a  highly  successful  first  master  of  Darwin 
(1964-76).  He  also  played  a  decisive  part  in  the 
founding  of  the  Cambridge  University  clinical 
school  in  1975.  He  was  a  member  of  the  royal 
commission  on  medical  education  (1965-8), 
which  provided  the  opportunity,  and  as  chair- 
man (1969-75)  of  the  school  planning  commit- 
tee, brought  the  opportunity  to  fruition.  He 
served  on  the  Medical  Research  Council,  the 
council  and  other  committees  of  the  Royal  Soci- 
ety, committees  of  the  Department  of  Health,  the 
Ciba  Foundation,  and  the  medical  and  scient- 
ific section  of  the  British  Diabetic  Association 
(founding  chairman),  and  as  president  of  the 
European  Association  for  the  Study  of  Diabetes 
and  of  the  International  Diabetes  Federation. 
He  was  knighted  in  1973.  He  had  intended  to 
resume  laboratory  research  on  retirement,  but  a 
serious  episode  of  food  poisoning  in  1977 
impaired  his  mobility  and  made  this  imprac- 
tical. 

He  was  elected  FRS  in  1949  and  his  scientific 
achievements  were  further  recognized  by  the 
Croonian  lectureship  of  the  Royal  Society  (1962), 
the  Banting  lectureships  of  the  British  and 
American  Diabetic  Associations  (1948  and  1950), 
the  Upjohn  award  of  the  American  Endocrine 
Society  (1963),  and  honorary  degrees  from  the 
universities  of  Chile  (Catolica)  (1950),  Mont- 
pelier  (1959),  Aberdeen  (1965),  and  Zimbabwe 

(1975)- 

Young  was  a  tall,  broad-shouldered  man, 
whose  vitality  showed  in  his  face.  In  1933  he 
married  Ruth  Eleanor,  daughter  of  Thomas 
Turner,  a  Home  Office  civil  servant,  of  Becken- 
ham,  Kent.  He  and  Ruth  were  fellow  students  at 
University  College  (she  qualified  in  medicine 
after  a  general  sciences  degree).  They  had  three 
sons,  and  one  daughter,  who  died  in  1988.  Ruth 
was  a  staunch  supporter  of  his  activities  in 
Cambridge  and  elsewhere  and  her  services  to 
Darwin  were  recognized  with  an  honorary  fel- 
lowship in  1989.  Young  died  20  September  1988 
in  the  Evelyn  Nursing  Home,  Cambridge. 

[Sir  Philip  Randle  in  Biographical  Memoirs  of  Fellows  of 
the  Royal  Society,  vol.  ravi,  1900;  personal  know- 
ledge.] Philip  Randle 


497 


Young 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


YOUNG,  George  Kennedy  (191 1-1990),  intelli- 
gence officer,  was  born  in  Dumfries  8  April  191 1, 
the  youngest  of  three  children  and  younger  son 
of  George  Stuart  Young,  grocer,  and  his  wife, 
Margaret  Kennedy.  He  was  brought  up  in  the 
Old  Covenanting  traditions  of  the  United  Free 
Church  to  which  his  parents  belonged.  He  was 
educated  at  Dumfries  Academy  and  St  Andrews 
University,  where  he  was  an  outstanding  figure, 
with  his  great  height,  red  hair,  outstanding 
intellectual  ability,  quick  wit,  and  strong  Inde- 
pendent Labour  party  views.  He  took  six  years  to 
obtain  his  degree,  during  which  he  spent  a  year 
each  at  Giessen  and  Dijon  universities,  and  he 
achieved  first-class  honours  in  both  French  and 
German  in  1934.  He  was  then  awarded  a  Com- 
monwealth scholarship  (1934-6)  to  Yale  Uni- 
versity, where  he  obtained  an  MA  in  political 
science. 

In  1936  he  joined  the  staff  of  the  Glasgow 
Herald,  which  he  left  in  1938  to  join  the  British 
United  Press.  When  war  was  declared  in  1939  he 
joined  the  King's  Own  Scottish  Borderers,  and 
was  commissioned  in  1940,  finally  achieving  the 
rank  of  lieutenant-colonel.  He  was  transferred  to 
field  security,  on  the  basis  of  a  rather  sketchy 
knowledge  of  Italian,  and  served  with  distinction 
in  the  Abyssinian  campaign,  being  mentioned  in 
dispatches  (1941).  He  joined  MI6  in  Cairo  in 
1943.  After  the  war  he  did  a  stint  as  British 
United  Press  correspondent  in  Berlin  in  1946. 
He  was  then  invited  to  rejoin  MI6  (1946)  and 
accepted.  His  first  job  was  to  investigate  the 
ramifications  of  German  penetration  of  British 
intelligence  activities  in  the  Low  Countries. 

Young  had  the  qualities  to  make  a  success  in 
this  field — a  deep  knowledge  of  and  interest  in 
politics,  a  first-class  brain,  a  gift  for  languages, 
and  an  ability  to  attract  the  loyalty  of  his  staff. 
After  stints  in  London  and  Vienna,  he  was 
posted  to  Cyprus  in  195 1  as  the  controller  of  all 
MI6  personnel  and  operations  in  the  Middle 
East.  This  task  he  discharged  with  a  firm  hand, 
and  in  the  process  became  a  believer  in  'covert 
action',  encouraged  in  this  by  the  success  in  1952 
of  MI6,  working  with  the  CIA,  in  restoring  the 
shah  of  Iran  to  his  throne.  As  the  Middle  East 
drifted  nearer  to  a  major  crisis  and  confrontation, 
some  people  in  London  became  anxious  about 
Young's  independent  plans.  Sir  Dick  White  had 
been  appointed  head  of  MI6,  and  Young  was 
recalled  to  London  late  in  1956.  He  was  put  in 
charge  of  that  part  of  the  office  concerned  with 
the  collation  and  distribution  of  intelligence.  In 
this  capacity  he  modernized  an  out-of-date  sys- 
tem, particularly  in  the  scientific  and  techno- 
logical field.  He  was  disappointed  that  he  was 
unable  to  acquire  an  unmanned  high-flying 
photo-reconnaissance  plane. 

After  the  resignation  of  Sir  James  *Easton  in 
1958  he  was  appointed  vice-chief  of  MI6,  with 


the  rank  of  under-secretary  in  the  Ministry  of 
Defence  from  i960.  He  became  much  involved 
in  the  Far  East,  studying  the  dangers  of  further 
involvement  by  the  Americans  in  Vietnam.  By 
the  end  of  the  1950s  his  political  views,  particu- 
larly on  racial  matters,  had  moved  so  far  to  the 
right  that  he  found  it  increasingly  difficult  to 
conform  to  official  policies,  whichever  of  the 
major  parties  was  in  power.  His  position  as  vice- 
chief  of  MI6  became  difficult  to  sustain,  and  it 
was  with  some  relief  on  both  sides  that  he 
resigned  in  1961. 

Shortly  afterwards  he  joined  the  merchant 
bankers  Kleinwort,  Benson.  He  worked  with 
them  more  or  less  full-time  from  1961  to  1976. 
The  two  banks  had  only  recently  amalgamated, 
and  had  decided  to  expand  their  overseas  busi- 
ness. Young's  international  contacts  enabled  him 
to  play  a  quasi-ambassadorial  role  in  this  expan- 
sion, particularly  in  Iran,  France,  and  Belgium. 
He  quickly  learned  the  broad  principles  of  bank- 
ing, but  was  not  involved  in  day-to-day  banking 
operations.  This  happy  arrangement  with  Klein- 
worts  suited  both  of  them.  It  gave  Young  space 
to  develop  his  increasing  interest  in  home  poli- 
tics, and  time  to  write  several  books  on  contem- 
porary problems.  These  included  Masters  of 
Indecision  (1962),  a  diatribe  against  Whitehall  in 
general  and  the  Foreign  Office  in  particular, 
Merchant  Banking  (1966),  Who  Is  My  Liege? 
(1972),  and  Subversion  (1984).  He  stood  as  Con- 
servative parliamentary  candidate  at  Brent  East 
in  1974 — a  gesture  of  principle  rather  than  polit- 
ical ambition. 

Young's  influence  on  many  people  lay  in  what 
he  was,  rather  than  what  he  achieved.  His  ability 
might  have  taken  him  to  the  top  in  several  fields. 
If  he  never  quite  succeeded  it  was  perhaps 
because,  while  his  views  on  policies  and  people 
were  strongly  held  and  pungently  expressed, 
they  were  often  unfashionable,  and  just  occasion- 
ally his  judgement  was  suspect.  Whether  politi- 
cally involved  with  the  left,  or  the  right,  his 
attraction  and  influence  lay  in  his  total  independ- 
ence of  outlook.  He  remained  at  heart  a  militant 
Scottish  Covenanter,  believing  deeply  in  the 
rights  of  the  individual  against  the  central  forces 
of  bureaucracy.  He  was  appointed  MBE  (1945), 
CMG  (1955),  and  CB  (i960). 

In  1939  he  married  Geryke,  daughter  of  Dr 
Martin  August  Gustav  Harthoorn,  a  distin- 
guished Dutch  lawyer,  who  had  spent  most  of  his 
life  in  Batavia,  Dutch  East  Indies;  there  were  no 
children.  They  remained  devoted  to  each  other. 
She  was  a  strong-minded  person  who  forcibly 
expressed  her  views  about  the  roles  of  different 
ethnic  groups.  It  is  hard  to  estimate  the  degree  of 
influence  she  had  over  Young's  change  from  the 
left-wing  student  of  the  1930s  to  a  powerful 
figure  in  the  right-wing  Monday  Club,  but  it  was 


498 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


Young 


substantial.  Young  died  in  the  Charing  Cross 
Hospital,  London,  9  May  1990. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge.] 

John  Bruce  Lockhart 

YOUNG,  Stuart  ( 1934-1986),  chartered  account- 
ant and  chairman  of  the  BBC  board  of  governors, 
was  born  23  April  1934  at  home  in  Stamford  Hill, 
London,  the  younger  child  and  younger  son  of 
Joseph  Young,  who  was  in  the  flour  business,  and 
his  wife,  Rebecca  ('Betty')  Sterling.  The  family 
were  religious  Jews  and  his  mother  made  him  very 
conscious  of  his  religious  and  charitable  duties. 
Indeed,  he  met  his  wife  on  a  charity  committee 
when  he  was  only  sixteen,  and  he  continued  to  be 
active  in  Jewish  and  other  charities  until  his  death. 
His  brother,  David,  later  became  Baron  Young  of 
Graffham.  He  was  educated  at  Woodhouse  Gram- 
mar School,  north  Finchley,  London,  left  school 
at  sixteen,  and  qualified  as  a  chartered  accountant 
in  1956. 

Young  was  a  highly  successful  accountant.  He 
set  up  his  own  practice  in  1958,  when  he  was 
only  twenty -four.  From  i960  he  was  the  senior 
partner  of  his  own  firm,  Hacker  Young.  He  was 
hard  working  and  decisive,  with  a  very  logical 
financial  mind.  In  the  early  1960s,  when  his 
practice  was  already  well  established,  he  began  to 
get  business  from  the  interests  of  Sir  Isaac 
Wolfson,  including  Great  Universal  Stores.  He 
became  a  director  of  many  companies,  including 
Tesco,  the  food  store  group  (from  1982),  and 
Caledonian  Airways  (from  1973). 

In  the  summer  of  198 1  Young  was  appointed 
a  governor  of  the  British  Broadcasting  Corpora- 
tion. From  the  beginning  of  his  term  he  was 
uneasy  about  what  he  regarded  as  the  financial 
laxity  and  overmanning  of  the  Corporation, 
though  he  felt  great  admiration  for  its  broad- 
casting quality.  This  contrast  between  financial 
concern  and  admiration  for  the  broadcast  prod- 
uct marked  his  work  both  as  a  governor  and  as 
chairman  of  the  BBC.  Within  a  few  weeks  the 
financial  concern  led  to  a  confrontation,  which  he 
won.  The  governors  had  to  approve  a  new 
contract  to  promote  BBC  sales  in  American 
television.  Young  and  another  governor  asked  to 
see  the  contract;  they  were  told  it  would  not  be 
customary,  and  that  Alasdair  Milne,  the  manag- 
ing director  of  television,  was  reluctant  to  agree. 
Young  told  the  chairman,  George  Howard  (later 
Baron  Howard  of  Henderskelfe),  that  he  would 
not  approve  a  contract  he  had  not  read,  where- 
upon he  was  shown  the  contract.  When 
Howard's  term  came  to  an  end  in  1983,  Young 
was  appointed  chairman  of  the  BBC  governors. 
Margaret  (later  Baroness)  Thatcher,  as  prime 
minister,  wanted  the  BBC  to  be  put  under  strong 
financial  control.  By  that  time  Alasdair  Milne 
had  succeeded  Sir  (J.)  Ian  *Trethowan  as  direc- 
tor-general.  Young  promoted  and  encouraged 


Michael  Checkland,  who  was  eventually  to  suc- 
ceed Milne  as  director-general,  as  the  member  of 
the  board  of  management  who  was  to  carry  out 
the  financial  reforms  he  considered  urgently 
necessary. 

Within  a  few  weeks  of  his  appointment  as 
chairman,  Young  suffered  the  first  symptoms  of 
the  lung  cancer  which  proved  fatal  to  him,  and 
his  whole  period  as  chairman  was  conducted 
under  this  disability,  which  he  bore  with  great 
courage.  His  illness  allowed  him  to  form  a 
personal  link  with  Alasdair  Milne,  whose  wife 
suffered  from  recurrent  cancer;  Milne  had  a 
sympathetic  understanding  of  Young's  condi- 
tion. Yet  Young  did  not  feel  that  Milne  had  an 
adequate  grasp  of  the  business  aspects  of  running 
so  large  a  corporation,  and  did  not  find  in  him 
the  partner  who  might  have  welcomed  necessary 
reforms.  If  he  had  been  in  better  health  he  might 
have  been  more  ruthless  in  dealing  with  prob- 
lems which  he  recognized.  None  the  less,  the 
reforms  and  demanning,  which  were  later  asso- 
ciated with  the  chairmanship  of  Marmaduke 
Hussey,  his  successor,  were  started  in  Young's 
rime. 

During  his  chairmanship,  which  he  regarded 
as  a  high  honour,  there  were  a  number  of  BBC 
crises  of  a  characteristic  kind.  One  was  the  libel 
action  which  arose  out  of  'Maggie's  Militant 
Tendency',  a  television  attack,  which  proved  to 
be  defamatory,  on  some  right-wing  Conservative 
MPs;  another  was  the  dispute  in  late  July  1985 
between  the  board  of  governors  and  the  board  of 
management  over  the  'Real  Lives'  interviews 
with  Irish  terrorists  (done  contrary  to  BBC 
producer  guidelines),  and  a  third  was  the  dis- 
missal of  Richard  Francis  as  managing  director, 
radio,  by  Alasdair  Milne.  In  all  of  these  matters 
Young  took  a  moderate  position,  trying  to  recon- 
cile the  warring  parties  in  the  interest  of  the  BBC 
as  a  whole.  His  period  as  chairman  was  circum- 
scribed by  his  illness;  instead  of  being  the  radical 
reforming  chairman  he,  and  Margaret  Thatcher, 
had  hoped,  he  could  only  start  to  turn  the  tide 
from  the  extravagant  BBC  triumphalism  of 
Howard  and  Milne  toward  the  neo-puritanism  of 
Hussey  and  John  Birt,  a  later  director-general. 
Young  was  courteous  and  friendly  to  his  col- 
leagues and  staff.  His  balanced  judgement  and 
diplomatic  approach  were  matched  by  firmness 
of  purpose. 

Young  did  much  charitable  work,  which 
included  aid  for  Israel;  he  was  the  treasurer  of  the 
Joint  Israel  appeal,  but  he  was  also  involved  in 
local  charities  in  north  London,  and  in  heritage 
appeals.  He  was  a  trustee  of  the  National  Gallery 
from  1980.  From  1977  he  was  a  member  of  the 
finance  and  investment  committee  of  Wolfson 
College,  Cambridge,  of  which  he  became  an 
honorary  fellow  in  1983.  He  was  six  feet  tall, 


499 


Young  D.N.B.  1986-1990 

good-looking,  and  always  well  dressed,  and  he  marriage.  Young  died  of  lung  cancer  at  his  home 

had  a  calm  and  friendly  expression.  His  two  in    Hampstead    Garden    Suburb,    29    August 

passions  were  chess  and  golf.  In  1956  he  married  1986. 

Shirley,  daughter  of  Harry  Aarons,  fashion  com-  [Private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

pany  director.  There  were  two  daughters  of  the  Rees-Mogg 


500 


z 


ZANGWILL,  Oliver  Louis  (19 13-1987),  a 
founder  of  neuropsychology,  was  born  29  Octo- 
ber 19 1 3  in  East  Preston,  Sussex,  the  youngest  of 
three  children  and  second  son  in  the  family  of 
Israel  *Zangwill,  the  Anglo-Jewish  literary  and 
political  figure,  and  his  wife,  Edith  Ayrton,  who 
was  active  in  the  establishment  of  the  League  of 
Nations.  A  cousin  was  the  painter  and  writer 
Michael  Ayrton,  the  common  grandfather  being 
the  physicist  William  *Ayrton,  FRS.  Oliver  was 
educated  at  University  College  School,  London 
(1928-31),  and  King's  College,  Cambridge, 
where  he  obtained  a  second  class  in  part  i  of  the 
natural  sciences  tripos  (1934)  and  a  first  in  part  ii 
of  the  moral  sciences  tripos  (1935). 

At  Cambridge  Zangwill  was  influenced  by 
(Sir)  Frederic  *Bartlett,  while  carrying  out 
experiments  on  recognition  and  memory.  With 
his  lifelong  friend  R.  C.  Oldfield,  he  wrote  a 
critique  of  the  celebrated  concept  of  mental 
schema  put  forward  by  Sir  Henry  *Head  and 
Bartlett.  Another  influence  was  J.  T.  McCurdy, 
who  intrigued  Zangwill  with  hypnosis,  which  he 
later  demonstrated  to  great  effect  on  his  students. 
Zangwill  studied  patients  with  Korsakoff  psycho- 
sis, his  paper  'Amnesia  and  the  Generic  Image' 
(Quarterly  Journal  of  Experimental  Psychology, 
vol.  ii,  1950)  remaining  significant  for  the  subject 
of  whether  semantic  memory  remains  intact  in 
amnesia.  There  is  a  story  of  a  Korsakoff  patient 
he  saw  each  week  when,  taking  a  pen  from  his 
pocket,  he  asked:  'Have  you  seen  this  before?' 
Every  week  the  patient  would  say  'No'.  At  the 
final  session  Zangwill  asked:  'Have  you  seen  me 
before?'  The  patient  replied:  'Are  you  the  man 
with  all  those  pens?' 

Zangwill  became  a  research  psychologist  at 
the  Brain  Injuries  Unit  in  Edinburgh  (1940-5), 
which  was  directed  by  Norman  Dott.  There  he 
did  original,  influential  work  on  the  psycho- 
logical effects  of  penetrating  wounds  to  the  brain. 
His  studies  of  cases  of  parietal  lobe  injury-,  with 
Andrew  Patterson,  led  to  his  interest  in  hemi- 
spheric specialization  and  the  complexities  of 
right/left-handedness.  His  central  aim  was  to  use 
clinical  abnormalities,  especially  symptoms  of 
localized  brain  damage,  to  suggest  how  the  nor- 
mal brain  functions. 

While  assistant  director  of  the  Institute  of 
Experimental  Psychology,  University  of  Oxford 


(1945-52),  Zangwill  promoted  the  teaching  of 
psychology  when  it  was  not  considered  a  major 
subject,  in  spite  of  its  importance  at  Cambridge. 
By  establishing  connections  with  the  National 
Institute  of  Neurology  in  Queen  Square,  Lon- 
don, and  the  Radcliffe  Infirmary  in  Oxford,  he 
introduced  a  generation  of  psychologists  to  the 
study  of  neurological  patients.  His  students 
included  George  Ettlinger,  John  McFie,  Mal- 
colm Piercy,  Maria  Wyke,  Elizabeth  Warrington, 
and  Brenda  Milner,  all  of  whom  became  distin- 
guished neuropsychologists.  Appointed  to  the 
Cambridge  chair  (1952-81),  with  a  fellowship  of 
King's  College,  in  his  inaugural  lecture  he 
defined  psychology  as  'the  study  of  behaviour', 
though  he  was  never  a  behaviourist.  Zangwill 
brought  Lawrence  Weiskrantz  from  America  to 
set  up  a  primate  laboratory,  with  far-reaching 
consequences,  especially  as  a  result  of  Weis- 
krantz's  continuing  work  as  professor  of  psycho- 
logy at  Oxford. 

Zangwill  took  a  major  part  in  setting  up  the 
Experimental  Psychology  Group,  which  was 
very  influential,  though  it  was  sometimes  criti- 
cally described  as  an  elitist  Cambridge  and 
Oxford  club.  It  became  the  larger  Experimental 
Psychology  Society,  with  its  quarterly  Journal, 
which  Zangwill  edited  from  1958  to  1966,  serv- 
ing also  on  the  editorial  board  of  Neuropsycho- 
logia  (1963-81).  His  An  Introduction  to  Modern 
Psychology  (1950)  set  out  pathways  to  be  fol- 
lowed. He  also  wrote  Amnesia  (1966)  and  edited, 
with  W.  H.  Thorpe,  Current  Problems  in  Animal 
Behaviour  (1961). 

Zangwill  was  elected  FRS  in  1977.  He  had 
honorary  degrees  from  Stirling  (1979)  and  St 
Andrews  (1980).  He  held  the  honorary  post  of 
visiting  psychologist  at  the  National  Hospital  for 
Nervous  Diseases  (1947-79),  and  had  close  con- 
nections with  European  clinical  neurology  and  in 
the  United  States,  with  Hans-Lukas  Teuber  at 
the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology. 

A  tall  stooping  figure,  with  dark  hair  and 
green-grey  eyes  that  looked  everywhere,  Zang- 
will had  an  elusive,  almost  haunted  personality 
with  moments  of  witty  appreciation.  He  had 
several  close  friendships  but  was  generally  a  very- 
private  person,  whose  thoughts  were  hard  to 
interpret  and  whose  decisions  were  often  unpre- 
dictable, though  not  lacking  in  shrewdness. 


50i 


Zangwill 


D.N.B.  1986-1990 


In  1947  he  married  Joy  Sylvia,  daughter  of 
Thomas  Moult,  poet.  They  had  one  son,  who 
died  in  infancy.  The  marriage  was  dissolved  in 
1976  and  in  the  same  year  he  married  Shirley 
Florence  Tribe,  daughter  of  Leonard  Frank 
Punter,  businessman.  They  had  one  adopted  son. 
Zangwill  died  in  Cambridge  12  October  1987, 
following  a  long  illness  in  which  he  succumbed 
to  the  losses  of  memory  that  had  so  much 
concerned  him  throughout  his  professional  life. 
[Personal  knowledge.]  Richard  Gregory 

ZULUETA,  Sir  Philip  Francis  de  (1925-1989), 
civil  servant  and  businessman,  was  born  in 
Oxford  2  January  1925,  the  only  child  of  Francis 
(Francisco  Maria  Jose)  de  *Zulueta,  regius  pro- 
fessor of  civil  law  and  fellow  of  All  Souls  College, 
Oxford,  and  his  wife  Marie  Louise,  daughter  of 
Henry  Alexander  Lyne  Stephens.  His  childhood 
was  spent  in  Oxford,  where  his  parents  had  a 
house  in  Norham  Road.  His  father  was  of  distin- 
guished Spanish  descent  and  a  cousin  of  Cardinal 
Merry  de  Val,  the  secretary  of  state  at  the 
Vatican,  but  took  British  nationality  in  order  to 
fight  in  World  War  I.  De  Zulueta  was  educated 
at  the  Dragon  School,  Oxford,  and  the  Roman 
Catholic  Beaumont  College,  from  where  he  won 
a  scholarship  to  New  College,  Oxford.  After 
taking  a  wartime  second  class  in  modern  history 
in  1943  he  joined  the  Welsh  Guards  the  same 
year  and  served  with  the  regiment  in  north-west 
Europe  until  1947,  participating  in  the  liberation 
of  Brussels  with  the  Guards  Armoured  division 
and  attaining  the  rank  of  captain.  Thus  did  he 
gain  early  experience  of  two  institutions  to  which 
he  was  to  remain  loyal  throughout  his  life:  the 
Brigade  of  Guards  and  the  Roman  Catholic 
church. 

Returning  to  New  College  in  1947,  de  Zulueta 
studied  jurisprudence  but  found  it  hard  to  settle 
down  to  study  after  the  war  and  in  1948  left  with 
a  third-class  degree.  After  Oxford  he  read  for  the 
bar,  with  the  encouragement  of  his  father,  who 
was  a  strong  influence  on  him.  However,  he 
decided  not  to  proceed  with  his  legal  studies  and 
joined  the  Foreign  Service  in  1949,  serving  in 
Moscow  from  1950  to  1952  as  private  secretary 
to  the  ambassador,  Sir  David  *  Kelly.  Returning 
to  London,  he  became  resident  clerk  at  the 
Foreign  Office;  then  in  1955  he  began  his  long 
association  with  three  prime  ministers  when  Sir 
Anthony  *Eden  (later  the  Earl  of  Avon)  took  him 
to  10  Downing  Street  as  one  of  his  two  private 
secretaries  for  foreign  affairs. 

He  soon  showed  great  aptitude  for  this  work 
and  after  Harold  *Macmillan  (later  the  first  Earl 
of  Stockton)  became  prime  minister  in  1957  de 
Zulueta  was  the  only  representative  of  the  For- 
eign Office  among  the  private  secretaries.  He 
stayed  on  with  Sir  Alec  Douglas-Home  (later 
Baron  Home  of  the  Hirsel)  from  October  1963  to 


October  1964,  but  of  all  his  masters  it  was 
Macmillan  with  whom  he  built  up  the  greatest 
rapport,  admiring  his  style  of  government,  intel- 
lect, and  wit  and  accompanying  him  often  on 
foreign  tours.  Macmillan  came  to  depend  upon 
de  Zulueta's  loyalty,  calm  in  a  crisis,  knowledge 
of  the  main  foreign-policy  issues  of  the  time,  and 
linguistic  ability,  using  him  as  an  interpreter  at 
several  of  his  meetings  with  Charles  de  Gaulle. 
'Philip  knows  my  mind,'  he  observed,  and  he 
remarked  teasingly  on  de  Zulueta's  gravitas, 
determination,  and  strength  of  personality,  for 
with  the  intelligence  and  fundamental  kindness 
came  a  tendency  to  be  impatient  with  the  foolish 
or  the  slow.  In  Macmillan's  resignation  honours 
list  of  1963  de  Zulueta  was  given  a  knighthood. 

In  1964,  having  always  been  interested  in 
financial  affairs  and  feeling  that  a  diplomatic 
posting  might  be  an  anticlimax  after  his  years  in 
10  Downing  Street,  de  Zulueta  left  the  Foreign 
Office  for  the  City.  Here  he  spent  a  six-month 
training  period  before  joining  Philip  Hill-Hig- 
ginson,  Erlangers.  He  was  a  director  of  the  newly 
merged  Hill  Samuel  from  1965  to  1972.  In  1973 
he  joined  Antony  Gibbs  Holdings,  serving  as 
chief  executive  from  1973  to  1976  and  chairman 
from  1976  to  1 98 1.  He  was  made  chairman  of 
Tanks  Consolidated  Investments  in  1983  and  a 
director  of  the  Belgian  Societe  Generate  when 
that  company  took  over  Tanks  in  1982.  In  1984 
he  became  a  director  of  Abbott  Laboratories  of 
Chicago.  Among  his  outside  interests  were  the 
Franco-British  Council,  the  Institute  of  Direc- 
tors, and  the  Trilateral  Commission.  Increasingly 
he  suffered  from  serious  heart  trouble. 

De  Zulueta  was  extremely  hard  working  and 
energetic,  deriving  much  self-confidence  from 
an  exceptionally  happy  family  life.  Tall,  dark- 
haired,  thickset,  always  immaculately  dressed, 
quiet  of  voice,  and  often  leaning  forward  slightly 
in  a  rather  courtly  way  to  catch  every  nuance  of 
the  conversation,  he  had  an  urbane,  formidable 
presence  and  high  standards;  the  morality  and 
certainty  of  his  strong  religious  faith  never  left 
him.  Beneath  this,  however,  lay  humour  and 
sympathy,  qualities  particularly  evident  at  his 
homes  in  London  and  later  at  Eastergate  in  West 
Sussex,  where  he  was  a  relaxed  and  generous 
host.  In  1984  he  became  an  officer  of  the  Legion 
of  Honour. 

In  1955  he  married  Marie-Louise,  daughter  of 
James  Bryan  George  Hennessy,  second  Baron 
Windlesham;  they  had  a  daughter  and  a  son.  De 
Zulueta  died  15  April  1989  on  board  a  British 
Airways  flight,  when  returning  from  a  business 
trip  to  the  United  States.  He  had  a  fatal  coronary 
thrombosis  as  the  aeroplane  was  coming  in  to 
land  at  London. 

[Private  information;  personal  knowledge] 

Max  Egremont 


502 


OCCUPATIONAL    INDEX 


Writing 
Braine,  John 
Chatwin,  Bruce 
Dahl,  Roald 
Dennis,  Nigel 

Du  Maurier,  Dame  Daphne 
Durrell,  Lawrence 
Gibbons,  Stella 
Graham,  W.  S. 
Grigson,  Jane 
Hewitt,  John 
Isherwood,  Christopher 
Jameson,  Storm 
Jennings,  Paul 
Lancaster,  Sir  Osbert 
Laski,  Marghanita 
Lehmann,  John 
Lehmann,  Rosamond 
Maclean,  Alistair 
Nicholson,  Norman 
Reed,  Henry 
Scott,  Sir  Peter 
Sitwell,  Sir  Sacheverell 
Smart,  Elizabeth 
Streatfeild,  Noel 
Strong,  Patience 
Sykes,  Christopher 
Warner,  Rex 
Williams,  Raymond 

Scholarship 
Ashmole,  Bernard 
Aver,  Sir  Alfred 
Blunt,  C.  E. 
Braithwaite,  Richard 
Brenan,  Gerald 
Burrow,  Thomas 
Cecil,  Lord  David 
Cheney,  C.  R. 
Daniel,  Glyn 
De  Beer,  Esmond 
Ellmann,  Richard 
Evans,  George  Ewart 
Finley,  Sir  Moses 
Francis,  Sir  Frank 
Gardner,  Dame  Helen 
Gray,  Basil 
Grice,  Paul 
Hancock,  Sir  Keith 
Hunt,  Norman  Crowther 

(Lord  Crowther-Hunt) 
Meiggs,  Russell 
Momigliano,  Arnaldo 
Morris,  Charles  (Lord 

Morris  of  Grasmere) 
Mynors,  Sir  Roger 


Myres,  Nowell 
Oakeshott,  Michael 
Oakeshott,  Sir  Walter 
Pacht,  Otto 
Piper,  Sir  David 
Roberts,  Colin 
Shackleton,  Robert 
Svme,  Sir  Ronald 
Taylor,  A.  J.  P. 

Government 

a)  Politics 
Acland,  Sir  Richard 
Boothby,  Robert  (Lord 

Boothby) 
Brockway,  Fenner  (Lord 

Brockway) 
Cazalet-Keir,  Thelma 
Gaitskell,  Dora  (Baroness 

Gaitskell) 
King,  Horace  (Lord 

Maybray-King) 
Lee,  Jennie  (Baroness  Lee  of 

Asheridge) 
Macmillan,  Harold  (Earl  of 

Stockton) 
O'Neill,  Terence  (Lord 

O'Neill  of  the  Maine) 
Paget,  Reginald  (Lord  Paget 

of  Northampton) 
Peart,  Frederick  (Lord  Peart) 
Ross,  William  (Lord  Ross  of 

Marnock) 
Sandys,  Duncan  (Lord 

Duncan-Sandys) 
Shinwell,  Emanuel  (Lord 

Shinwell) 
Silkin,  John 
Soames,  Christopher  (Lord 

Soames) 
Stewart,  Michael  (Lord 

Stewart  of  Fulham) 
Stonehouse,  John 

b)  Civil  Service  and  Local 
Government 

Colville,  Sir  John 
Cook,  Sir  William 
Hall,  Robert  (Lord 

Roberthall) 
Laithwaite,  Sir  Gilbert 
Marre,  Sir  Alan 
Part,  Sir  Antony 
Sylvester,  A.  J. 
Trend,  Burke  (Lord  Trend) 
Zulueta,  Sir  Philip  de 


c)  Central  Government 
and  Diplomacy 

Berthoud,  Sir  Eric 
Caccia,  Harold  (Lord  Caccia) 
Figgures,  Sir  Frank 
James,  Morrice  (Lord  Saint 

Brides) 
Millar,  F.  R.  H.  (Lord 

Inchyra) 
O'Neill,  Sir  Con 
Pilcher,  Sir  John 

d)  Colonial  Government 
and  Administration 

Abell,  Sir  George 
Foot,  Hugh  (Lord  Caradon) 
Gibbs,  Sir  Humphrey 
Johnston,  Sir  Charles 
Moon,  Sir  Penderel 

The  Management  of 
Society' 

a)  Social  Sciences, 
Economics,  Psychology, 
and  Anthropology 

Blacking,  John 

Bum,  Duncan 

Clark,  Colin 

Elias,  Norbert 

Glass,  Ruth 

Hicks,  Sir  John 

Himmelweit,  Hilde 

Jewkes,  John 

Kahn,  Richard  (Lord  Kahn) 

Kaldor,  Nicholas  (Lord 

Kaldor) 
Leach,  Sir  Edmund 
Paish,  Frank 
Savers,  Richard 
Vernon,  Philip 
Zangwill,  Oliver 

b)  Trade  Unions 
Basnett,  David  (Lord 

Basnett) 
Boyd,  Sir  John 
Cousins,  Frank 
Fisher,  Alan 
Kevs,  William 
Plant,  Cyril  (Lord  Plant) 

c)  Social  Services  and 
Charities 

Aves,  Dame  Geraldine 
Baxter,  Kathleen 
Bramwell-Booth,  Catherine 
Kirkley,  Sir  Leslie 


503 


OCCUPATIONAL    INDEX 


Lacey,  Janet 

Lane-Fox,  Felicity  (Baroness 

Lane-Fox) 
Ramsey,  Dorothea 
Seebohm,  Frederic  (Lord 

Seebohm) 
Wootton,  Barbara  (Baroness 

Wootton  of  Abinger) 
Winner,  Dame  Albertine 

Music 

Abraham,  Gerald 

Arnold,  Denis 

Berkeley,  Sir  Lennox 

Coke,  Gerald 

Du  Pre,  Jacqueline 

Flicker,  Peter  Racine 

Goodall,  Sir  Reginald 

Goossens,  Leon 

Harrison,  Frank 

Kentner,  Louis 

Loss,  Joe 

Matthews,  Denis 

Moore,  Gerald 

Ogdon,  John 

Pears,  Sir  Peter 

Pritchard,  Sir  John 

Rubbra,  Edmund 

Semprini 

Solomon 

Sorabji,  Kaikhosru 

Thalben-Ball,  Sir  George 

Turner,  Dame  Eva 

Theatre,  Cinema,  Ballet, 
and  Entertainment 

Albery,  Sir  Donald 
Anstey,  Edgar 
Ash  ton,  Sir  Frederick 
Baddeley,  Hermione 
Bennett,  Jill 
Carreras,  Sir  James 
Clarke,  T.  E.  B. 
Clements,  Sir  John 
Croft,  Michael 
Dexter,  John 
Edwards,  Jimmy 
Gingold,  Hermione 
Grant,  Cary 
Greenwood,  Joan 
Halliwell,  Leslie 
Harrison,  Sir  Rex 
Helpmann,  Sir  Robert 
Howard,  Trevor 
Lillie,  Beatrice 
Lockwood,  Margaret 
MacColl,  Ewan 
Manvell,  Roger 
Marshall,  Arthur 
Murdoch,  Richard 
Neagle,  Dame  Anna 


Olivier,  Laurence  (Lord 

Olivier) 
Powell,  Michael 
Pressburger,  Emeric 
Quayle,  Sir  Anthony 
Shaw,  Glen  Byam 
Terry-Thomas 
Trinder,  Tommy 
Wall,  Max 
Williams,  Emlyn 
Williams,  Kenneth 
Wright,  Basil 

Art,  Design,  and 
Photography 

Bawden,  Edward 
Buhler,  Robert 
Cockerell,  Sydney 
Coldstream,  Sir  William 
Collins,  Cecil 
Ede,  Jim 
Emett,  Rowland 
Fuller,  Peter 
Hassall,  Joan 
Hayter,  Stanley 
McBean,  Angus 
Middleditch,  Edward 
Moore,  Henry 
Moynihan,  Rodrigo 
Parkinson,  Norman 
Pouncey,  Philip 
Reilly,  Paul  (Lord  Reilly) 
Scott,  William 
Spear,  Ruskin 
Tinling,  Ted 
Topolski,  Feliks 
Trevelyan,  Julian 
Willing,  Victor 
Wolpe,  Berthold 

Architecture 
Banham,  Reyner 
Fry,  Maxwell 
Goldfinger,  Erno 
Lubetkin,  Berthold 

Education 

Chester,  Sir  Norman 

Clegg,  Sir  Alec 

Fulton,  J.  S.  (Lord  Fulton) 

Gould,  Sir  Ronald 

Hamilton,  Walter 

Howarth,  Tom 

Logan,  Sir  Douglas 

Pedley,  Robin 

Peterson,  Alec 

Russell,  Dora 

Scupham,  John 

Religion 

Armstrong,  John 


Bliss,  Kathleen 
Butler,  Christopher 
Dwyer,  George 
Fleming,  Launcelot 
Jasper,  Ronald 
Milford,  Theodore 
Moorman,  John 
Ramsey,  Michael  (Lord 

Ramsey  of  Canterbury) 
Rupp,  Gordon 
Slack,  Kenneth 

Earth  Sciences 
Kent,  Sir  Peter 
Shotton,  Frederick 
Steers,  James 

Life  Sciences.  See  also 
Medicine 

Chibnall,  Albert 
Dickens,  Frank 
Downie,  Allan 
Fell,  Dame  Honor 
Ford,  Edmund 
Humphrey,  John 
Matthews,  Sir  Bryan 
Matthews,  L.  Harrison 
Medawar,  Sir  Peter 
Miles,  Sir  Ashley 
Parkes,  Sir  Alan 
Robertson,  Alan 
Smith,  Sir  Eric 
Swann,  Michael  (Lord 

Swann) 
Tinbergen,  Nikolaas 
Wilson,  Sir  Graham 
Yonge,  Sir  Maurice 

Physics,  Meteorology,  and 
Mathematics 

Adams,  J.  Frank 
Bell,  John 
Cosslett,  Ellis 
Jeffreys,  Sir  Harold 
Merrison,  Sir  Alec 
Ratcliffe,  J.  A. 
Skyrme,  Tony 
Wilkinson,;.  H. 
Woolley,  Sir  Richard 

Botany,  Gardening,  Soil 

Science,  and 

Conservation 
Clapham,  Roy 
Gilmour,  John 
Harley,  Jack 
Holttum,  Eric 
Hutchinson,  Sir  Joseph 
Manton,  Irene 
Mather,  Sir  Kenneth 
Thrower,  Percy 
Tutin,  Thomas 


504 


OCCUPATIONAL    INDEX 


Chemistry  and 

Metallurgy 
Anderson,  J.  S. 
Bergel,  Franz 
Bulbring,  Edith 
Davies,  Duncan 
Hey,  Donald 
Robertson,  J.  M. 
Rose,  F.  L. 
Young,  Sir  Frank 

Engineering  and  Naval 

Architecture 
Arup,  Sir  Ove 
Barlow,  Harold 
Bishop,  Richard 
Bowden,  Vivian  (Lord 

Bowden) 
Collar,  Roderick 
Harding,  Sir  Harold 
Issigonis,  Sir  Alec 
Lockspeiser,  Sir  Ben 
Owen,  Robert 
Sopwith,  Sir  Thomas 
Week,  Richard 
Wex,  Bernard 
Wittrick,  William 

Medicine,  Veterinary 
Science,  and  Dentistry 

Andrewes,  Sir  Christopher 
Baird,  Sir  Dugald 
Bowlby,  John 
Bull,  Sir  Graham 
Clayton,  Sir  Stanley 
Cochrane,  Archibald 
Cockayne,  Dame  Elizabeth 
Cuthbertson,  Sir  David 
Donald,  Ian 
Dreyer,  Rosalie 
Dudgeon,  Alastair 
Fox,  Sir  Theodore 
Hunt,  John  (Lord  Hunt  of 

Fawley) 
Illingworth,  Ronald 
Laing,  R.  D. 
McElwain,  Timothy 
Macfarlane,  Gwyn 
Macintosh,  Sir  Robert 
McKeown,  Thomas 
Maegraith,  Brian 
Mitchell,  J.  S. 
Piatt,  Sir  Harry 
Pochin,  Sir  Edward 
Pond,  Sir  Desmond 
Riches,  Sir  Eric 
Robertson,  Sir  Alexander 
Sellors,  Sir  Thomas 
Sheehan,  Harold 
Sinclair,  Hugh 
Steptoe,  Patrick 


Turnbull,  Sir  Alexander 
Wayne,  Sir  Edward 

Law,  Police,  Prisons,  and 

Criminality 
Cross,  Geoffrey  (Lord  Cross 

of  Chelsea) 
Elwyn  Jones,  Frederick 

(Lord  Elwyn-Jones) 
Fraser,  Ian  (Lord  Fraser  of 

Tullybelton) 
Gardiner,  Gerald  (Lord 

Gardiner) 
Hamson,  C.  J. 
Lane,  Dame  Elizabeth 
Pearce,  Edward  (Lord 

Pearce) 
Phillips,  O.  Hood 
Russell,  Charles  Ritchie 

(Lord  Russell  of  Killowen) 
Sargant,  Thomas 
Schmitthoff,  Clive 
Shaw,  C.  J.  D.  (Lord 

Kilbrandon) 
Sieghart,  Paul 
Silkin,  Sam  (Lord  Silkin  of 

Dulwich) 
Smith,  Sir  Thomas 
Stevenson,  Sir  Melford 
Wheatcroft,  G.  S.  A. 

Business,  Industry, 

Finance,  Printing,  and 

Publishing 
Atkins,  Sir  William 
Cave,  Sir  Richard 
Cayzer,  Anthony 
Chancellor,  Sir  Christopher 
Chipperfield,  James 
Church,  Charles 
Cobbold,  Cameron  (Lord 

Cobbold) 
Elliot,  Sir  John 
Fairbairn,  Sir  Robert 
Ferranti,  Basil  de 
Forbes,  Sir  Archibald 
Fraser,  Sir  Hugh 
Granville,  Sir  Keith 
Hamilton,  Hamish 
Hurst,  Margery 
Johnson,  Sir  Henry- 
Jones,  Sir  Henry 
Keswick,  Sir  William 
Moores,  Cecil 
Robinson,  Sir  David 
Ross,  J.  Carl 
Runciman,  W.  L.  (Viscount 

Runciman  of  Doxford) 
Salomon,  Sir  Walter 
Samuel,  Harold  (Lord 

Samuel  of  Wych  Cross) 


Sosnow,  Eric 
Wates,  Sir  Ronald 
Wilkinson,  Sir  Martin 

Armed  Services 
Balfour,  Harold  (Lord 

Balfour  of  Inchrye) 
Bennett,  Donald 
Davis,  Sir  William 
Dickson,  Sir  William 
Glubb,  Sir  John 
Harding,  Allan  Francis  (Lord 

Harding  of  Petherton) 
Hopkins,  Sir  Frank 
Hull,  Sir  Richard 
Irving,  Sir  Edmund 
Lea,  Sir  George 
Martin,  Sir  Harold 
Mason,  Sir  Frank 
Stirling,  Sir  David 
Stockwell,  Sir  Hugh 
Urquhart,  Robert 

Sport,  Mountaineering, 

Exploration,  and  Travel 
Allen,  Sir  George  ('Gubby') 
Cotton,  Henrv 
Edrich,  Bill 
Farr,  Tommv 
Hasler,  H.  G.  ('Blondie') 
Hutton,  Sir  Leonard 
Jones,  Cliff 
Markham,  Beryl 
Mercer,  Joe 
Murless,  Sir  Noel 
Odell,  Noel 
Petersen,  Jack 
Revie,  Don 
Richards,  Sir  Gordon 
Rous,  Sir  Stanley- 
Van  Damm,  Sheila 

Journalism,  Broadcasting, 

and  Television 
Andrews,  Eamonn 
Boxer,  Mark 
Cawston,  Richard 
Cleverdon,  Douglas 
De  Manio,  Jack 
Fairlie,  Henry 
Goldie,  Grace  Wyndham 
Greene,  Sir  Hugh 
Halev,  Sir  William 
Hall,  Henry 
Hamilton,  Sir  Denis 
Harty,  Russell 


505 


OCCUPATIONAL    INDEX 


Hill,  Charles  (Lord  Hill  of 

Luton) 
Hopkinson,  Sir  Tom 
Hulton,  Sir  Edward 
Jacobson,  Sydney  (Lord 

Jacobson) 
King,  Cecil 
Madden,  Cecil 
Mitchell,  Denis 
Moore,  Charles  (Earl  of 

Drogheda) 
Morris,  Marcus 
Muggeridge,  Malcolm 
Russell,  Audrey 
Thomas,  Howard 


Trethowan,  Sir  Ian 
Utley,  T.  E. 

Vaughan-Thomas,  Wynford 
Watt,  David 
Wheldon,  Sir  Huw 
Young,  Stuart 

Secret  Service 
Cavendish-Bentinck,  Victor 

(Duke  of  Portland) 
Dunderdale,  Wilfred 
Easton,  Sir  James 
Fuchs,  Klaus 
Jones,  Sir  Eric 
Philby,  Kim 


Rothschild,  Victor  (Lord 

Rothschild) 
Stephenson,  Sir  William 
Teague-Jones,  Reginald 

(Ronald  Sinclair) 
Winterbotham,  F.  W. 
Wynne,  Greville 
Young,  George 

Miscellaneous 
Cooper,  Lady  Diana 
Hastings,  Francis  (Earl  of 

Huntingdon) 
Moore,  Doris  Langley 
Simpson,  Wallis  (Duchess  of 

Windsor) 


506 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 

TO  THE  BIOGRAPHIES  CONTAINED  IN  THE  SUPPLEMENTS 
OF  THE  DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 

1901-1990 


#  indicates  twentieth-century  entrants  to  the  Missing  Persons  volume  of  the  DNB. 


Abbev,  Edwin  Austin  1852-1911 

Abbey,  John  Roland  1894-1969 

Abbott,  Edwin  Abbott  1838-1926 

Abbott,  Eric  Symes  1906-1983 

Abbott,  Evelyn  1843-1901 

A  Beckett,  Arthur  William  1844-1909 

Abel,  Sir  Frederick  Augustus  1827-1902 

Abell,  Sir  George  Edmond 

Brackenbury  1904-1989 

Abell,  Sir  Westcott  Stile  1877-1961 

Aberconway,  Baron.  See 

McLaren,  Charles 

Benjamin  Bright  1850-1934 

Aberconway,  Baron.  See 

McLaren,  Henry  Duncan  1879-1953 

Abercorn,  Duke  of.  See 

Hamilton,  James  1838-1913 

Abercrombie,  Lascelles  1881-1938 

Abercrombie,  Sir  (Leslie) 

Patrick  1879-1957 

Abercrombie,  Michael  1912-1979 

Aberdare,  Baron.  See  Bruce, 

Clarence  Napier  1885-1957 

Aberdeen  and  Temair, 

Marquess  of.  See  Gordon, 

John  Campbell  1847-1934 

Aberdeen  and  Temair, 

Marchioness  of  (1857- 

1939).  See  under  Gordon, 

John  Campbell 
Aberhart,  William  1878-1943 

Abney,  Sir  William  de 

Wiveleslie  1843-1920 

Abraham,  Charles  John  1814-1903 

Abraham,  Gerald  Ernest  Heal         1904-1988 
Abraham,  William  1842-1922 

Abrahams,  Doris  Caroline. 

See  Brahms,  Caryl  1901  -1982 

Abrahams,  Harold  Maurice  1899-1978 

Abramsky,  Yehezkel  1886-1976 

Abu  Bakar  Tafawa  Balewa, 

Alhaji  Sir.  See  Tafawa 

Balewa  1912-1966 

Abul  Kalam  Azad,  Maulana. 

See  Azad  1888-1958 

Ackerley,  Joe  Randolph  #1896-1967 

Acland,  Sir  Arthur  Herbert 

Dyke  1847-1926 


Acland,  Sir  Richard  Thomas 

Dyke  1906-1990 

Acton,  Sir  Edward  1865-1945 
Acton,  John  Adams-.  See 

Adams-Acton  1830-1910 
Acton,  Sir  John  Emerich 

Edward  Dalberg,  Baron  1834-1902 
Acworth,  Sir  William 

Mitchell  1850-1925 

Adair,  Gilbert  Smithson  1896-1979 

Adam,  James  1860-1907 
Adam  Smith,  Sir  George.  See 

Smith  1856-1942 

Adami,  John  George  1862-1926 

Adams,  Sir  Grandev  Herbert  1898-1971 

Adams,  James  Williams  1839-1903 

Adams,  Sir  John  1857-1934 

Adams,  Sir  John  Bertram  1920-1984 

Adams,  John  Bodkin  1899-1983 

Adams,  Qohn)  Frank  1930-1989 
Adams,  John  Michael 

Geoffrey  Manningham 

('Tom')  1931-1985 

Adams,  Mary  Grace  Agnes  1898-1984 

Adams,  Sir  Walter  1906-1975 

Adams,  William  #1825-1904 
Adams,  William  Bridges-.  See 

Bridges-Adams  1889-1965 

Adams,  William  Davenport  1851-1904 
Adams,  William  George 

Stewart  1874-1966 

Adams-Acton,  John  1830-1910 

Adamson,  Sir  John  Ernest  1867-1950 

Adamson,  Robert  1852-1902 

Adcock,  Sir  Frank  Ezra  1886-1968 
Adderley,  Charles  Bowyer, 

Baron  Norton  1814-1905 
Addison,  Christopher, 

Viscount  1869-1951 
Adeane,  Michael  Edward, 

Baron  1910-1984 

Adler,  Hermann  1839-1911 

Adrian,  Edgar  Douglas,  Baron  1889-1977 

Adshead,  Stanley  Davenport  1868-1946 
AE,  pseudonym.  See  Russell, 

George  William  1867-1935 
Aga  Khan,  Aga  Sultan  Sir 

Mohammed  Shah  1877-1957 


507 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Agate,  James  Evershed  1877-1947 

Aglen,  Sir  Francis  Arthur  #1869-1932 

Agnew,  Sir  James  Wilson  1815-1901 

Agnew,  Sir  William  1825-1910 
Agnew,  Sir  William 

Gladstone  1898-1960 

Aide,  Charles  Hamilton  1826-1906 

Aikman,  George  1830-1905 

Ainger,  Alfred  1837-1904 

Ainley,  Henry  Hinchliffe  1879-1945 

Aird,  Sir  John  1833-1911 
Airedale,  Baron.  See  Kitson, 

James  1835-1911 
Aitchison,  Craigie  Mason, 

Lord  1882-1941 

Aitchison,  George  1825-1910 

Aitken,  Alexander  Craig  1895-1967 

Aitken,  John  #1839-1919 
Aitken,  William  Maxwell, 

Baron  Beaverbrook  1879-1964 

Akers,  Sir  Wallace  Alan  1888-1954 
Akers-Douglas,  Aretas, 

Viscount  Chilston  185 1  -1926 
Akers-Douglas,  Aretas, 

Viscount  Chilston  1876-1947 
Alanbrooke,  Viscount.  See 

Brooke,  Alan  Francis  1883-1963 
Albani,  Dame  Marie  Louise 

Cecilie  Emma  1852-1930 

Albery,  Sir  Bronson  James  1881-1971 
Albery,  Sir  Donald 

Rolleston  1914-1988 

Alcock,  Sir  John  William  1892-1919 
Aldenham,  Baron.  See  Gibbs, 

Henry  Hucks  1819-1907 
Alderson,  Sir  Edwin  Alfred 

Hervey  1859-1927 

Alderson,  Henry  James  1834-1909 
Aldington,  Edward  Godfree 

('Richard')  1892-1962 
Aldrich-Blake,  Dame  Louisa 

Brandreth  1865-1925 
Aldridge,  John  Arthur 

Malcolm  1905-1983 
Alexander,  Mrs,  pseudonym. 

See  Hector,  Annie  French  1825-1902 
Alexander,  Albert  Victor, 

Earl  Alexander  of 

Hillsborough  1885-1965 

Alexander,  Boyd  1873-1910 
Alexander,  (Conel)  Hugh 

(O'Donel)  1909-1974 

Alexander,  Sir  George  1858-1918 
Alexander,  Harold  Rupert 

Leofric  George,  Earl 

Alexander  of  Tunis  1 89 1  -1969 

Alexander,  Samuel  1859-1938 

Alexander,  William  1824-1911 
Alexander-Sinclair,  Sir 

Edwyn  Sinclair  1865-1945 

Alexandra,  Queen  1844-1925 


Alexandra  Victoria  Alberta 

Edwina  Louise  Duff, 

Princess  Arthur  of 

Connaught,  Duchess  of 

Fife 
Alger,  John  Goldworth 
Algeranoff,  Harcourt 
Algy,  Father.  See  Robertson, 

(William)  Strowan 

(Amherst) 
Alice  Mary  Victoria  Augusta 

Pauline,  Princess  of  Great 

Britain  and  Ireland  and 

Countess  of  Athlone 
Alington,  Baron.  See  Sturt, 

Henry  Gerard 
Alington,  Cyril  Argentine 
Alison,  Sir  Archibald 
Allan,  Sir  William 
Allbutt,  Sir  Thomas 

Clifford 
Allen,  Sir  Carleton  Kemp 
Allen,  George 
Allen,  Sir  George  Oswald 

Browning  ('Gubby') 
Allen,  (Herbert)  Warner 
Allen,  Sir  Hugh  Percy 
Allen,  Sir  James 
Allen,  John  Romilly 
Allen,  Norman  Percy 
Allen,  Percy  Stafford 
Allen,  Reginald  Clifford, 

Baron  Allen  of  Hurtwood 
Allen,  Robert  Calder 
Allenby,  Edmund  Henry 

Hynman,  Viscount  Allenby 

of  Megiddo 
Allerton,  Baron.  See  Jackson, 

William  Lawies 
Allies,  Thomas  William 
Allingham,  Margery  Louise 
Allman,  George  Johnston 
Alma-Tadema,  Sir  Lawrence 
Almond,  Hely  Hutchinson 
Altham,  Harry  Surtees 
Altrincham,  Baron.  See 

Grigg,  Edward  William 

Macleay 
Alverstone,  Viscount.  See 

Webster,  Richard  Everard 
Ambedkar,  Bhimrao  Ramji 
Ameer  Ali,  Syed 
Amery,  John 
Amery,  Leopold  Charles 

Maurice  Stennett 
Amherst,  William  Amhurst 

Tyssen-,  Baron  Amherst  of 

Hackney 
Amoroso,  Emmanuel  Ciprian 
Amory,  Derick  Heathcoat, 

Viscount 


1891-1959 
1836-1907 
1903-1967 


#1894-1955 


1883-1981 

1825-1904 
1872-1955 
1826-1907 
1837-1903 

1836-1925 
1887-1966 
1832-1907 

1902-1989 
1881-1968 
1869-1946 
1855-1942 
1847-1907 
1903-1972 
1869-1933 

1889-1939 
1812-1903 


1861-1936 

1840-1917 
1813-1903 
1904-1966 
1824-1904 
1836-1912 
1832-1903 
1888-1965 


1879-1955 

1842-1915 

1891-1956 

1849-1928 

#1912-1945 

1873-1955 


1835-1909 
1901-1982 

1899-1981 


508 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Amos,  Sir  (Percy)  Maurice 

(Maclardie)  Sheldon 
Ampthill,  Baron.  See  Russell, 

Arthur  Oliver  Villiers 
Ampthill,  Baron.  See  Russell, 

John  Hugo 
Amulree,  Baron.  See 

Mackenzie,  William 

Warrender 
Anderson,  Dame  Adelaide 

Mary 
Anderson,  Sir  Alan  Garrett 
Anderson,  Alexander 
Anderson,  Sir  Donald 

Forsyth 
Anderson,  Elizabeth  Garrett 
Anderson,  George 
Anderson,  Sir  Hugh  Ken- 
Anderson,  John,  Viscount 

Waverley 
Anderson,  (John)  Stuart 
Anderson,  Sir  Kenneth 

Arthur  Noel 
Anderson,  Dame  Kitty 
Anderson  (formerly 

Macarthur),  Mary  Reid 
Anderson,  Sir  Robert  Rowand 
Anderson,  Stanley  Arthur 

Charles 
Anderson  (formerly  Benson), 

Stella 
Anderson,  Tempest 
Anderson,  Sir  Thomas 

McCall 
.Anderson,  Sir  Warren 

Hastings 
Andrade,  Edward  Neville  da 

Costa 
Andrewes,  Sir  Christopher 

Howard 
Andrewes,  Sir  Frederick 

William 
Andrews,  Eamonn 
Andrews,  Sir  James 
Andrews,  John  Miller 
Andrews,  Thomas 
Andrews,  Sir  (William) 

Linton 
Angell,  Sir  (Ralph)  Norman 
Angus,  Joseph 
Angwin,  Sir  (Arthur) 

Stanley 
Annandale,  Thomas 
Anson,  Sir  William  Reynell 
Anstey,  Edgar  Harold 

Macfarlane 
Anstey,  F.,  pseudonym. 

See  Guthrie,  Thomas 

Anstey 
Anstey,  Frank 
Antai,  Frederick 


Antrim,  Earl  of.  See 

1872- 

-1940 

McDonnell,  Randal  John 

Somerled 

1911-1977 

1869- 

-1935 

Applegarth,  Robert 

#1834-1924 

Appleton,  Sir  Edward  Victor 

1892-1965 

1896- 

-1973 

Arber,  Agnes 

1879-1960 

Arber,  Edward 

1836-1912 

Arberry,  Arthur  John 

1905-1969 

1860- 

-1942 

Arbuthnot,  Sir  Alexander 

John 

1822-1907 

#1863- 

-1936 

Arbuthnot,  Forster  Fitzgerald 

1833-1901 

1877- 

-1952 

Arbuthnot,  Sir  Robert  Keith 

1864-1916 

1845- 

-1909 

Arch,  Joseph 

1826-1919 

Archer,  James 

1823-1904 

1906- 

-1973 

Archer,  William 

1856-1924 

1836- 

-1917 

Archer-Hind  (formerly 

1826- 

-1902 

Hodgson),  Richard  Dacre 

1849-1910 

1865- 

-1928 

Ardagh,  Sir  John  Charles 
Arden-Clarke,  Sir  Charles 

1840-1907 

1882- 

-1958 

Noble 

1898-1962 

1908- 

-1990 

Arden-Qose,  Sir  Charles 

Frederick 

1865-1952 

1891- 

-1959 

Ardilaun,  Baron.  See 

1903- 

-1979 

Guinness,  Sir  Arthur 

Edward 

1840-1915 

1880- 

-1921 

Arditi,  Luigi 

1822-1903 

#1834- 

-1921 

Ardizzone,  Edward  Jeffery 

Irving 

1900-1979 

1884- 

-1966 

Ardwall,  Lord.  See  Jameson, 

Andrew 

1845-1911 

1892- 

-1933 

Arendrup,  Edith 

#1846-1934 

#1846- 

-1913 

Argyll,  Duke  of.  See 
Campbell,  John  Douglas 

1836- 

-1908 

Sutherland 

1845-1914 

Arkell,  William  Joscelyn 

1904-1958 

1872- 

-1930 

Arkwright,  Sir  Joseph  Arthur 

1864-1944 

Arlen,  Michael 

1895-1956 

1887- 

-1971 

Arliss,  George 

1868-1946 

Armes,  Philip 

1836-1908 

1896- 

-1988 

Armfield,  Maxwell  Ashby 
Armitage,  Sir  Arthur 

1881-1972 

1859- 

-1932 

Llewellyn 

1916-1984 

1922 

-1987 

Armitage,  Ella  Sophia 

#1841-1931 

1877- 

-1951 

Armour,  John  Douglas 

1830-1903 

#1871- 

-1956 

Armstead,  Henry  Hugh 

1828-1905 

1847- 

-1907 

Armstrong,  Edward 
Armstrong,  Edward 

1846-1928 

1886- 

-1972 

Allworthy 

#1900-1978 

1872- 

-1967 

Armstrong,  Sir  George 

1816 

-1902 

Carlyon  Hughes 

1836-1907 

Armstrong,  Henry  Edward 

1848-1937 

1883- 

-1959 

Armstrong,  John  Ward 

1915-1987 

1838- 

-1907 

Armstrong,  Thomas 

1832-1911 

1843- 

-1914 

Armstrong,  William 
Armstrong,  William,  Baron 

1882-1952 

1907- 

-1987 

Armstrong  of  Sanderstead 

1915-1980 

Armstrong-Jones,  Sir  Robert 

1857-1943 

Arnold,  Sir  Arthur 

1833-1902 

1856 

-1934 

Arnold,  Denis  Midgley 

1926-1986 

1865- 

-1940 

Arnold,  Sir  Edwin 

1832-1904 

1887- 

-1954 

Arnold,  George  Benjamin 

1832-1902 

509 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Arnold,  Sir  Thomas  Walker 
Arnold,  William  Thomas 
Arnold-Forster,  Hugh 

Oakeley 
Arrol,  Sir  William 
Arthur  of  Connaught, 

Princess.  See  Alexandra 

Victoria  Alberta  Edwina 

Louise  Duff 
Arthur  Frederick  Patrick 

Albert,  prince  of  Great 

Britain 
Arthur  William  Patrick 

Albert,  Duke  of  Connaught 

and  Strathearn 
Arthur,  William 
Arup,  Sir  Ove  Nyquist 
Asche,  (Thomas  Stange 

Heiss)  Oscar 
Ashbee,  Charles  Robert 
Ashbourne,  Baron.  See 

Gibson,  Edward 
Ashbridge,  Sir  Noel 
Ashby,  Arthur  Wilfred 
Ashby,  Henry 
Ashby,  Dame  Margery 

Irene  Corbett.  See  Corbett 

Ashby 
Ashby,  Thomas 
Asher,  Alexander 
Ashfield,  Baron.  See  Stanley, 

Albert  Henry 
Ashford,  Margaret  Mary  Julia 

('Daisy') 
Ashley,  Evelyn 
Ashley,  Laura 
Ashley,  Wilfrid  William, 

Baron  Mount  Temple 
Ashley,  Sir  William  James 
Ashmead  Bartlett,  Sir  Ellis. 

See  Bartlett 
Ashmole,  Bernard 
Ashton,  Baron.  See 

Williamson,  James 
Ashton,  Sir  Frederick  William 

Mallandaine 
Ashton,  Thomas  Gair,  Baron 

Ashton  of  Hyde 
Ashton,  Thomas  Southcliffe 
Ashton,  Winifred,  'Clemence 

Dane' 
Ashwell,  Lena  Margaret 
Askey,  Arthur  Bowden 
Askwith,  George  Ranken, 

Baron 
Aslin,  Charles  Herbert 
Aspinall,  Sir  John  Audley 

Frederick 
Asquith,  Anthony 
Asquith,  Lady  Cynthia  Mary 

Evelyn 


1864-1930 

Asquith,  Cyril,  Baron  Asquith 

1852-1904 

of  Bishopstone 
Asquith,  Emma  Alice 

1890- 

1954 

1855-1909 

Margaret  ('Margot'), 

1839-1913 

Countess  of  Oxford  and 

Asquith 

1864- 

1945 

Asquith,  Herbert  Henry, 

Earl  of  Oxford  and 

1891-1959 

Asquith 
Asquith  of  Yarnbury, 
Baroness.  See  Bonham 

1852- 

-1928 

1883-1938 

Carter,  (Helen)  Violet 
Assheton,  Ralph,  Baron 

1887- 

-1969 

Clitheroe 

1901- 

-1984 

1850-1942 

Astbury,  Sir  John  Meir 

1860- 

-1939 

1819-1901 

Astbury,  William  Thomas 

1898- 

-1961 

1895-1988 

Aston,  Francis  William 

1877- 

-1945 

Aston,  Sir  George  Grey 

1861- 

-1938 

1871-1936 

Aston,  William  George 

1841- 

-1911 

1863-1942 

Astor,  John  Jacob,  Baron 

Astor  of  Hever 

1886- 

-1971 

1837-1913 

Astor,  Nancy  Witcher, 

1889-1975 

Viscountess 

1879- 

-1964 

1886-1953 

Astor,  Waldorf,  Viscount 

1879- 

-1952 

1846-1908 

Astor,  William  Waldorf, 

Viscount 

#1848- 

-1919 

Atcherley,  Sir  Richard 

1882-1981 

Llewellyn  Roger 

1904- 

-1970 

1874-1931 

Athlone,  Countess  of.  See 

1835-1905 

Alice  Mary  Victoria 

Augusta  Pauline 

1883- 

-1981 

1874-1948 

Athlone,  Earl  of.  See 
Cambridge,  Alexander 

1881-1972 

Augustus  Frederick 

1836-1907 

William  Alfred  George 

1874- 

-1957 

1925-1985 

Atholl,  Duchess  of.  See 
Stewart-Murray,  Katharine 

1867-1938 

Marjory 

1874- 

-1960 

1860-1927 

Atholstan,  Baron.  See 

Graham,  Hugh 

1848- 

-1938 

1849-1902 

Atkin,  James  Richard, 

1894-1988 

Baron 

1867- 

-1944 

Atkins,  Sir  Ivor  Algernon 

1869- 

-1953 

#1842-1930 

Atkins,  Sir  William  Sydney 

Albert 

1902- 

-1989 

1904-1988 

Atkinson,  Sir  Edward  Hale 

Tindal 

1878- 

-1957 

1855-1933 

Atkinson,  Edward  Leicester 

#1881- 

-1929 

1889-1968 

Atkinson,  John,  Baron 

1844- 

-1932 

Atkinson,  Robert 

1839- 

-1908 

1888-1965 

Atthill,  Lombe 

1827- 

-1910 

1872-1957 

Attlee,  Clement  Richard,  Earl 

1883- 

-1967 

1900-1982 

Attwell,  Mabel  Lucie 

1879- 

-1964 

Aubrey,  Melbourn  Evans 

1885- 

-1957 

1861-1942 

Auchinleck,  Sir  Claude  John 

1893-1959 

Eyre 

1884 

-1981 

Auden,  Wystan  Hugh 

1907- 

-1973 

#1851-1937 

Aumonier,  James 

1832- 

-1911 

1902-1968 

Austen,  Henry  Haversham 
Godwin-.  See 

1887-1960 

Godwin-Austen 

1834- 

-1923 

5io 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Austen,  Sir  William  Chandler 

Roberts-.  See 

Roberts- Austen  1843-1902 

Austen  Leigh,  Augustus  1840-1905 

Austin,  Alfred  1835-1913 

Austin,  Herbert,  Baron  1866-1941 

Austin,  John  Langshaw  191 1  -1960 
Aveburv,  Baron.  See 

Lubbock,  Sir  John  1834-1913 
Aves,  Dame  Geraldine 

Maitland  1898-1986 
Avon,  Earl  of.  See  Eden, 

(Robert)  Anthony  1897-1977 

A vory,  Sir  Horace  Edmund  1851-1935 

Ayer,  Sir  Alfred  Jules  1910-1989 

Ayerst,  William  1830-1904 

Aylmer,  Sir  Felix  Edward  1889-1979 

Aylward,  Gladvs  May  1902-1970 

Ayrton,  Hertha  #1854-1923 

Avrton,  Michael  1921-1975 

Ayrton,  William  Edward  1847-1908 

Azad,  Maulana  Abul  Kalam  1888-1958 
Azariah,  Samuel 

Vedanayakam  1874-1945 


Babington  Smith,  Sir  Henry. 

See  Smith  1863-1923 

Bacharach,  Alfred  Louis  1891-1966 
Backhouse,  Sir  Edmund 

Trelawny  1873-1944 
Backhouse,  Sir  Roger  Roland 

Charles  1878-1939 

Bacon,  Sir  Edmund  Castell  1903-1982 

Bacon,  John  Mackenzie  1 846  -1 904 
Bacon,  Sir  Reginald  Hugh 

Spencer  1863-1947 
Badcock,  Sir  Alexander 

Robert  1844-1907 
Baddeley,  Hermione  Youlanda 

Ruby  Clinton  1906-1986 
Baddeley,  Mountford  John 

Byrde  1843-1906 
Badeley,  Henrv  John 

Fanshawe,  Baron  1874-1951 
Baden-Powell,  Olave  St  Clair, 

Lady  1889-1977 
Baden-Powell,  Robert 

Stephenson  Smyth,  Baron  1857-1941 
Bader,  Sir  Douglas  Robert 

Steuart  1910-1982 
Bagnold,  Enid  Algerine,  Lady 

Jones  1889-1981 

Bagrit,  Sir  Leon  1902-1979 

Bailey,  Sir  Abe  1864-1940 

Bailey,  Cyril  1871-1957 

Bailey,  Sir  Donald  Coleman  #1901-1985 

Bailev,  Sir  Edward  Battersbv  1881-1965 

Bailev,  Frederick  Marshman  1882-1967 

Bailey,  Sir  George  Edwin  1879-1965 

Bailev,  John  Cann  1864-1931 


Bailey,  Kenneth  1909-1963 

Bailey,  Mary,  Lady  1890-1960 

Bailey,  Philip  James  1816-1902 
Bailhache,  Sir  Qement 

Meacher  1856-1924 
Baillie,  Charles  Wallace 

Alexander  Napier  Ross 

Cochrane-,  Baron 

Lamington  1860-1940 

Baillie,  Dame  Isobel  1895-1983 

Baillie,  Sir  James  Black  1872-1940 

Bain,  Alexander  1818-1903 

Bain,  Francis  William  1863-1940 

Bain,  Sir  Frederick  William  1889-1950 

Bain,  Robert  Nisbet  1854-1909 

Bainbridge,  Francis  Arthur  1874-1921 

Baines,  Frederick  Ebenezer  1832-1911 

Baird,  Andrew  Wilson  1842-1908 

Baird,  Sir  Dugald  1899-1986 

Baird,  John  Logie  1888-1946 

Bairnsfather,  Charles  Bruce  1888-1959 
Bairstow,  Sir  Edward 

Cuthbert  1874-1946 

Bairstow,  Sir  Leonard  1880-1963 

Bajpai,  Sir  Girja  Shankar  1891-1954 

Baker,  Sir  Benjamin  1840-1907 

Baker,  Sir  Geoffrev  Harding  1912-1980 

Baker,  Sir  George  Gillespie  1910-1984 

Baker,  Henry  Frederick  1866-1956 

Baker,  Sir  Herbert  1862-1946 

Baker,  Herbert  Brereton  1862-1935 
Baker,  James  Franklin 

Bethune-.  See 

Bethune-Baker  1861-1951 

Baker,  John  Fleetwood,  Baron  1901  -1985 
Baker,  Philip  John  Noel-, 

Baron  Noel-Baker.  See 

Noel-Baker  1889-1982 

Baker,  Shirley  Waldemar  1835-1903 
Balcarres,  Earl  of.  See 

Lindsav,  David  Alexander 

Robert  1900-1975 

Balcon,  Sir  Michael  Elias  1896-1977 
Baldwin,  Stanley,  Earl 

Baldwin  of  Bewdley  1867-1947 
Baldwin  Brown,  Gerard.  See 

Brown  1849-1932 
Balewa,  Alhaji  Sir  Abu  Bakar 

Tafawa.  See  Tafawa  Balewa  1912-1966 

Balfour,  Sir  Andrew  1873-1931 
Balfour,  Arthur,  Baron 

Riverdale  1873-1957 
Balfour,  Arthur  James,  Earl  of 

Balfour  1848-1930 

Balfour,  Ladv  Frances  1858-1931 

Balfour,  George  William  1823-1903 
Balfour,  Gerald  William,  Earl 

of  Balfour  1853-1945 
Balfour,  Harold  Harington, 

Baron  Balfour  of  Inchrye  1897-1988 

Balfour,  Henry  1863-1939 


5" 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Balfour,  Sir  Isaac  Bayley  1853-1922 

Balfour,  John  Blair,  Baron 

Kinross  1837-1905 

Balfour,  Sir  Thomas  Graham  1858-1929 

Balfour  of  Burleigh,  Baron. 

See  Bruce,  Alexander  Hugh         1849-1921 
Balfour-Browne,  William 

Alexander  Francis  1874-1967 

Ball,  Albert  1896-1917 

Ball,  Francis  Ellington  1863-1928 

Ball,  Sir  (George)  Joseph  1885-1961 

Ball,  Sir  George  Thomas 

Thalben-.  See  Thalben-Ball         1896-1987 
Ball,  John  1861-1940 

Ball,  Sir  Robert  Stawell  1840-1913 

Ballance,  Sir  Charles  Alfred  1856-1936 

Ballantrae,  Baron.  See 

Fergusson,  Bernard 

Edward  1911-1980 

Ballinger,  Sir  John  #1860-1933 

Ha  In  id,  Lord.  See  Lindsay, 

David  Alexander  Robert  1900-1975 

Balogh,  Thomas,  Baron  1905-1985 

Banbury,  Frederick  George, 

Baron  Banbury  of  Southam  1850-1936 

Bancroft,  Marie  Effie 

(formerly  Wilton),  Lady 

(1839-1921).  See  under 

Bancroft,  Sir  Squire 

Bancroft 
Bancroft,  Sir  Squire  Bancroft  1841-1926 

Bandaranaike,  Solomon  West 

Ridgeway  Dias  1899-1959 

Bandon,  Earl  of.  See  Bernard, 

Percy  Ronald  Gardner  1904-1979 

Banham,  (Peter)  Reyner  1922-1988 

Bankes,  Sir  John  Eldon  1854-1946 

Banks,  Sir  John  Thomas  1815P-1908 

Banks,  Leslie  James  1890-1952 

Banks,  Sir  William  Mitchell  1842-1904 

Bannerman,  Sir  Henry 

Campbell-.  See 

Campbell-Bannerman  1836-1908 

Banting,  Sir  Frederick  Grant  1891-1941 

Bantock,  Sir  Granville 

Ransome  1868-1946 

Barbellion,  W.  N.  P., 

pseudonym.  See  Cummings, 

Bruce  Frederick  1889-1919 

Barbirolli,  Sir  John  (Giovanni 

Battista)  1899-1970 

Barbour,  Sir  David  Miller  1841-1928 

Barcroft,  Sir  Joseph  1872-1947 

Bardsley,  John  Wareing  1 835 -1904 

Barger,  George  1878-1939 

Baring,  (Charles)  Evelyn, 

Baron  Howick  of  Glendale  1 903  -1973 

Baring,  Evelyn,  Earl  of 

Cromer  1841-1917 

Baring,  John,  Baron 

Revelstoke  #1863-1929 


Baring,  Maurice  1874-1945 
Baring,  Rowland  Thomas, 

Earl  of  Cromer  1877-1953 
Baring,  Thomas  George,  Earl 

ofNorthbrook  1826-1904 

Baring-Gould,  Sabine  1834-1924 

Barker,  Sir  Ernest  1874-1960 
Barker,  Harley  Granville 

Granville-.  See 

Granville-Barker  1877-1946 

Barker,  Sir  Herbert  Atkinson  1869-1950 
Barker,  Dame  Lilian 

Charlotte  1874-1955 

Barker,  Thomas  1838-1907 

Barkla,  Charles  Glover  1877-1944 

Barling,  Sir  (Harry)  Gilbert  1855-1940 
Barlow,  Harold  Everard 

Monteagle  1899-1989 
Barlow,  Sir  (James)  Alan 

(Noel)  1881-1968 

Barlow,  Sir  Thomas  1845-1945 
Barlow,  Sir  Thomas 

Dalmahoy  1883-1964 

Barlow,  William  Hagger  1833-1908 

Barlow,  William  Henry  1812-1902 

Barnaby,  Sir  Nathaniel  1829-1915 

Barnard,  Howard  Clive  1884-1985 

Barnard,  Joseph  Edwin  #1868-1949 

Barnardo,  Thomas  John  1 845  -1905 

Barnes,  Alfred  John  1 887  -1974 

Barnes,  Ernest  William  1874-1953 

Barnes,  George  Nicoll  1859-1940 

Barnes,  Sir  George  Reginald  1904-1960 
Barnes,  John  Gorell,  Baron 

Gorell  1848-1913 

Barnes,  John  Morrison  1913-1975 

Barnes,  Sir  Kenneth  Ralph  1878-1957 

Barnes,  Robert  1 8 1 7  -1 907 

Barnes,  Sydney  Francis  1873-1967 

Barnes,  Sir  Thomas  James  1888-1964 

Barnes,  William  Emery  1859-1939 
Barnetson,  William  Denholm, 

Baron  1917-1981 
Barnett,  Dame  Henrietta 

Octavia  Weston  1 85 1  -1 936 

Barnett,  Lionel  David  1 87 1  -1 960 

Barnett,  Samuel  Augustus  1844-1913 
Baroda,  Sir  Sayaji  Rao, 

Maharaja  Gaekwar  of  1863-1939 

Baron,  Bernhard  1850-1929 

Barr,  Archibald  1855-1931 

Barraclough,  Geoffrey  1908-1984 

Barrett,  Wilson  1846-1904 

Barrie,  Sir  James  Matthew  1 860  -1 937 

Barrington,  Rutland  1853-1922 
Barrington-Ward,  Sir 

Lancelot  Edward  1884-1953 
Barrington-Ward,  Robert 

McGowan  1891-1948 

Barron,  (Arthur)  Oswald  #1868-1939 

Barry,  Alfred  1826-1910 


5" 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Barry,  Ernest  James  1882-1968 

Barry,  Sir  Gerald  Reid  1898-1968 
Barry,  Sir  John  Wolfe  Wolfe-. 

See  Wolfe-Barry  1836-1918 

Barstow,  Sir  George  Lewis  1874-1966 
Bartholomew,  (John)  Eric. 

See  Morecambe,  Eric  1926-1984 

Bartholomew,  John  George  1860-1920 

Bartlet,  James  Vernon  1863-1940 
Bartlett,  (Charles)  Vernon 

(Oldfeld)  1894-1983 

Bartlett,  Sir  Ellis  Ashmead  1849-1902 
Bartlett,  Sir  Frederic 

Charles  1886-1969 
Bartley,  Sir  George 

Christopher  Trout  1842-1910 

Barton,  Sir  Edmund  1849-1920 

Barton,  John  1836-1908 

Barton,  Sir  Sidney  1876-1946 

Bashforth,  Francis  1819-1912 

Basnett,  David,  Baron  1924-1989 
Bass,  Michael  Arthur,  Baron 

Burton  1837-1909 
Bassett-Lowke,  Wenman 

Joseph  1877-1953 

Bastian,  Henry  Charlton  #1837-1915 

Bateman,  Henry  Mayo  1887-1970 

Bates,  CadwaUader  John  1853-1902 

Bates,  Herbert  Ernest  1905-1974 

Bates,  Sir  Percy  Elly  1879-1946 
Bateson,  Sir  Alexander 

Dingwall  1866-1935 

Bateson,  Mary  1865-1906 

Bateson,  William  1861-1926 
Bathurst,  Charles,  Viscount 

Bledisloe  1867-1958 

Batsford,  Harry  1880-1951 

Batten,  Edith  Mary  1905-1985 
Battenberg,  Prince  Louis 

Alexander  of.  See 

Mountbatten  1854-1921 

Bauerman,  Hilary  1835-1909 

Bawden,  Edward  1903-1989 
Bawden,  Sir  Frederick 

Charles  1908-1972 
Bax,  Sir  Arnold  Edward 

Trevor  1883-1953 

Baxter,  Lucy,  'Leader  Scott'  1837-1902 

Baxter,  (Mary)  Kathleen  1901-1988 

Bayley,  Sir  Steuart  Colvin  1836-1925 

Baylis,  Lilian  Mary  1874-1937 

Baylis,  Thomas  Henry  1817-1908 

Bayliss,  Sir  William  Maddock  1860-1924 

Bayliss,  Sir  Wyke  1835-1906 
Bayly,  Ada  Ellen,  'Edna 

Lyall'  1857-1903 

Bayly,  Sir  Lewis  1857-1938 

Baynes,  Norman  Hepburn  1877—1961 
Beach,  Sir  Michael  Edward 

Hicks,  Earl  St  Aldwyn.  See 

Hicks  Beach  1837-1916 


Beachcomber,  pseudonym.  See 

Morton,  John  Cameron 

Andrieu  Bingham  Michael  1893-1975 
Beadle,  Sir  (Thomas)  Hugh 

(William)  1905-1980 

Beaglehole,  John  Cawte  1901-1971 

Beale,  Dorothea  1 83 1  -1906 

Beale,  Lionel  Smith  1828-1906 
Beardmore,  William,  Baron 

Invernairn  1856-1936 
Bearsted,  Viscount.  See 

Samuel,  Marcus  1853-1927 
Beaton,  Sir  Cecil  Walter 

Hardy  1904-1980 
Beatrice  Mary  Victoria 

Feodore,  princess  of  Great 

Britain  1857-1944 

Beattie-Brown,  William  1 83 1  -1909 

Beatty,  Sir  (Alfred)  Chester  1875-1968 

Beatty,  David,  Earl  1871-1936 
Beatty,  Sir  Edward 

Wentworth  1877-1943 
Beauchamp,  Earl.  See  Lygon, 

William  1872-1938 
Beaufort,  Duke  of.  See 

Somerset,  Henry  Hugh 

Arthur  FitzRoy  1900-1984 

Beaumont,  Hughes  Griffiths  1908-1973 
Beaver,  Sir  Hugh  Eyre 

Campbell  1890-1967 

Beaver,  Stanley  Henry  1907-1984 
Beaverbrook,  Baron.  See 

Aitken,  William  Maxwell  1879-1964 

Beazley,  Sir  John  Davidson  1885-1970 
Beckett,  Sir  Edmund,  Baron 

Grimthorpe  1816-1905 

Beddoe,John  1826-1911 
Bedford,  Duke  of.  See 

Russell,  Herbrand  Arthur  1858-1940 
Bedford,  Duchess  of  (1865- 

1937).  See  under  Russell, 

Herbrand  Arthur 
Bedford,  William  Kirkpatrick 

Riland  1826-1905 

Bedson,  Sir  Samuel  Phillips  1886-1969 

Beecham,  Thomas  1820-1907 

Beecham,  Sir  Thomas  1879-1961 

Beeching,  Henry  Charles  1859-1919 

Beeching,  Richard,  Baron  1913-1985 
Beer,  Esmond  Samuel  de.  See 

De  Beer  1895-1990 
Beerbohm,  Sir  Henry 

Maximilian  ('Max')  1872-1956 

Beevor,  Charles  Edward  1854-1908 

Begin,  Louis  Nazaire  1840-1925 

Beilby,  Sir  George  Thomas  1850-1924 

Beit,  Alfred  1853-1906 

Beit,  Sir  Otto  John  1 865  -1930 

Beith,  John  Hay,  'Ian  Hay'  1876-1952 

Belcher,  John  1841-1913 

Beldam,  Asplan  #1841-1912 


5i3 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Belisha,  (Isaac)  Leslie  Hore-, 

Baron  Hore-Belisha.  See 

Hore-Belisha  1893-1957 

Bell,  Alexander  Graham  1847-1922 

Bell,  (Arthur)  Clive  (Heward)  1881-1964 

Bell,  Sir  Charles  Alfred  1870-1945 
Bell,  Charles  Frederic 

Moberly  1847-1911 
Bell,  Sir  Francis  Henry 

Dillon  1851-1936 

Bell,  George  Kennedy  Allen  1883-1958 
Bell,  Gertrude  Margaret 

Lowthian  1868-1926 

Bell,  Sir  (Harold)  Idris  1879-1967 
Bell,  Sir  Henry  Hesketh 

Joudou  1864-1952 

Bell,  Horace  1839-1903 

Bell,  Sir  Isaac  Lowthian  1816-1904 

Bell,  James  1824-1908 

Bell,  John  Stewart  1928-1990 

Bell,  Joseph  #1837-1911 

Bell,  Sir  Thomas  1865-1952 

Bell,  Valentine  Graeme  1839-1908 

Bell,  Vanessa  1879-1961 

Bellamy,  James  1819-1909 

Bellew,  Harold  Kyrle  1855-1911 

Bellman,  Sir  (Charles)  Harold  1886-1963 
Bello,  Sir  Ahmadu,  Sardauna 

ofSokoto  1910-1966 
Belloc,  Joseph  Hilaire  Pierre 

Rene  1870-1953 

Bellows,  John  1831-1902 

Beloe,  Robert  1905-1984 

Bemrose,  William  183 1  -1908 

Bendall,  Cecil  1856-1906 

Benham,  William  1831-1910 
Benn,  Sir  Ernest  John 

Pickstone  1875-1954 
Benn,  William  Wedgwood, 

Viscount  Stansgate  1877-1960 
Bennet-Clark,  Thomas 

Archibald  1903-1975 

Bennett,  Alfred  Rosling  #1850-1928 

Bennett,  Alfred  William  1833-1902 
Bennett,  Donald  Clifford 

Tyndall  1910-1986 

Bennett,  Edward  Hallaran  1837-1907 

Bennett,  (Enoch)  Arnold  1867-1931 

Bennett,  George  Macdonald  1892-1959 

Bennett,  Jack  Arthur  Walter  1911  -1981 
Bennett,  Sir  John  Wheeler 

Wheeler-.  See 

Wheeler-Bennett  1902-1975 

Bennett,  (Nora  Noel)  Jill  1929P-1990 
Bennett,  Peter  Frederick 

Blaker,  Baron  Bennett  of 

Edgbaston  1880-1957 
Bennett,  Richard  Bedford, 

Viscount  1870-1947 
Bennett,  Sir  Thomas 

Penberthy  1887-1980 


Benson,  Arthur  Christopher  1862-1925 

Benson,  Edward  Frederic  1867-1940 
Benson,  Sir  Francis  Robert 

(Frank)  1858-1939 
Benson,  Godfrey  Rathbone, 

Baron  Charnwood  1864-1945 
Benson,  Sir  Reginald  Lindsay 

('Rex')  1889-1968 

Benson,  Richard  Meux  1824-1915 

Benson,  Robert  Hugh  1871-1914 

Benson,  Stella.  See  Anderson  1892-1933 
Benson,  William  Arthur 

Smith  #1854-1924 

Bent,  Sir  Thomas  1838-1909 
Bentinck,  Victor  Frederick 

William  Cavendish-,  Duke 

of  Portland  1897-1990 

Bentley,  Edmund  Clerihew  1875-1956 

Bentley,  John  Francis  1839-1902 

Bentley,  Nicholas  Clerihew  1907-1978 

Bentley,  Phyllis  Eleanor  1894-1977 

Bentley,  Walter  Owen  #1888-1971 

Benton,  Sir  John  1850-1927 

Bentwich,  Norman  de  Mattos  1883-1971 
Beresford,  Lord  Charles 

William  De  La  Poer,  Baron  1846-1919 

Beresford,  Jack  1899-1977 

Bergel,  Franz  1900-1987 
Bergne,  Sir  John  Henry 

Gibbs  1842-1908 

Berkeley,  Sir  George  1819-1905 
Berkeley,  Sir  Lennox  Randal 

Francis  1903-1989 
Berkeley,  Randal  Mowbray 

Thomas  Rawdon,  Earl  of 

Berkeley  1865-1942 

Bernal,  Qohn)  Desmond  1901-1971 

Bernard,  Sir  Charles  Edward  1837-1901 

Bernard,  John  Henry  1860-1927 

Bernard,  Oliver  Percy  #1881-1939 
Bernard,  Percy  Ronald 

Gardner,  Earl  of  Bandon  1904-1979 

Bernard,  Thomas  Dehany  1815-1904 
Berners,  Baron.  See 

Tyrwhitt-Wilson,  Sir 

Gerald  Hugh  1883-1950 

Berney,  Margery.  See  Hurst  1913-1989 

Berry,  Sir  Graham  1822-1904 
Berry,  (James)  Gomer, 

Viscount  Kemsley  1883-1968 

Be/ry,  Sidney  Malcolm  1881-1961 
Berry,  William  Ewert, 

Viscount  Camrose  1879-1954 

Berthoud,  Sir  Eric  Alfred  1900-1989 
Bertie,  Francis  Leveson, 

Viscount  Bertie  of 

Thame  1844-1919 

Besant,  Annie  1847-1933 

Besant,  Sir  Walter  1836-1901 
Besicovitch,  Abram 

Samoilovitch  1891-1970 


5i4 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Bessborough,  Earl  of.  See 

Ponsonby,  Vere  Brabazon  1880-1956 

Besterman,  Theodore 

Deodatus  Nathaniel  #1904-1976 

Betham-Edwards,  Matilda 

Barbara.  See  Edwards  1836-1919 

Bethune-Baker,  James 

Franklin  1861-1951 

Betjeman,  Sir  John  1906-1984 

Betterton,  Henrv  Bucknall, 

Baron  Rushchffe  1872-1949 

Bevan,  Aneurin  1897-1960 

Bevan,  Anthonv  Ashley  1859-1933 

Bevan,  (Edward)  John  #1856-1921 

Bevan,  Edwvn  Robert  1870-1943 

Bevan,  William  Latham  1821-1908 

Beveridge,  William  Henry, 

Baron  1879-1963 

Bevin,  Ernest  1881-1951 

Bewlev,  Sir  Edmund 

Thomas  1837-1908 

Bhopal,  Hamidullah,  Nawab 

of  1894-1960 

Bhownaggree,  Sir  Mancherjee 

Merwanjee  1851-1933 

Bhutto,  Zulfikar  Ah  1928-1979 

Bicester,  Baron.  See  Smith, 

Vivian  Hugh  1867-1956 

Bickersteth,  Edward  Henrv  1825-1906 

Bidder,  George  Parker  1863-1953 

Biddulph,  Sir  Michael 

Anthony  Shrapnel  1823-1904 

Biddulph,  Sir  Robert  1835-1918 

Bidweu,  Shelford  1848-1909 

Biffen,  Sir  Rowland  Harrv  1874-1949 

Bigg,  Charles  1840-1908 

Bigge,  Arthur  John,  Baron 

Stamfordham  1849-1931 

Bigham,  John  Charles, 

Viscount  Mersey  1840-1929 

Bikaner,  Maharaja  Shri  Sir 

Ganga  Singh  Bahadur, 

Maharaja  of  1880-1943 

Biles,  Sir  John  Harvard  1854-1933 

Billing,  Noel  Pemberton  #1881-1948 

Bing,  Geoffrey  Henry  Cecil  1909-1977 

Bing,  Gertrud  1892-1964 

Binnev,  Sir  (Frederick) 

George  1900-1972 

Binnie,  Sir  Alexander 

Richardson  1839-1917 

Binnie,  William  James 

Eames  1867-1949 

Binyon,  (Robert)  Laurence  1869-1943 

Birch,  (Evelyn)  Nigel 

(Chetwode),  Baron  Rhyl  1906-1981 

Birch,  George  Henry  1842-1904 

Birch,  Sir  (James  Frederick) 

Noel  1865-1939 

Bird,  (Cyril)  Kenneth, 

'Fougasse'  1887-1965 


Bird,  Henry  Edward  1830-1908 

Bird,  Isabella  Lucy.  See 

Bishop  1831-1904 

Bird,  Sir  James  1883-1946 

Birdwood,  Sir  George 

Christopher  Molesworth  1832-1917 

Birdwood,  Herbert  Mills  1837-1907 

Birdwood,  William  Riddell, 

Baron  1865-1951 

Birkenhead,  Earl  of.  See 

Smith,  Frederick  Edwin  1872-1930 

Birkenhead,  Earl  of.  See 

Smith,  Frederick  Winston 

Furneaux  #1907-1975 

Birkett,  William  Norman, 

Baron  1883-1962 

Birlev,  Sir  Oswald  Hornby 

Joseph  1880-1952 

Birlev,  Sir  Robert  1903-1982 

Birmingham,  George  A., 

pseudonym.  See  Hannay, 

James  Owen  1865-1950 

Bin-ell,  Augustine  1850-1933 

Birrell,  John  1836-1901 

Biscoe,  Cecil  Earle  Tyndale-. 

See  Tvndale-Biscoe  1863-1949 

Bishop,  Edmund  1846-1917 

Bishop  (formerlv  Bird), 

Isabella  Lucy  1831-1904 

Bishop,  Richard  Evelvn 

Donohue  1925-1989 

Black,  Clementina  Maria  #1853-1922 

Black,  Dora  Winifred.  See 

Russell  1894-1986 

Black,  Sir  Misha  1910-1977 

Blackburn,  Helen  1842-1903 

Blackburne,  Joseph  Henry  1841-1924 

Blacker,  (Latham  Valentine) 

Stewart  1887-1964 

Blackett,  Sir  Basil  Phillott  1882-1935 

Blackett,  Patrick  Mavnard 

Stuart,  Baron  1897-1974 

Blacking,  John  Anthony 

RandoU  1928-1990 

Blackley,  William  Lewerv  1830-1902 

Blackman,  Frederick  Frost  1866-1947 

Blackman,  Geoffrey  Emett  1903-1980 

Blackman,  Vernon  Herbert  1872-1967 

Blackwell,  Sir  Basil  Henry  1889-1984 

Blackwell,  Elizabeth  1821-1910 

Blackwell,  Richard  1918-1980 

Blackwood,  Algernon  Henry  1869-1951 

Blackwood,  Frederick  Temple 

Hamilton-Temple, 

Marquess  of  Dufferin  and 

Ava  1826-1902 

Blaikie,  Walter  Biggar  #1847-1928 

Blair,  David  1932-1976 

Blair,  Eric  Arthur,  'George 

Orwell  1903-1950 

Blake,  Edward  1833-1912 


5i5 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Blake,  Dame  Louisa 

Brandreth  Aldrich-.  See 

Aldrich-Blake 
Blakenham,  Viscount.  See 

Hare,  John  Hugh 
Blakiston,  Herbert  Edward 

Douglas 
Blarney,  Sir  Thomas  Albert 
Bland,  Edith,  'E.  Nesbit' 
Bland,  John  Otway  Percy 
Bland-Sutton,  Sir  John.  See 

Sutton 
Blandford,  George  Fielding 
Blanesburgh,  Baron.  See 

Younger,  Robert 
Blaney,  Thomas 
Blanford,  William  Thomas 
Blatchford,  Robert  Peel 

Glanville 
Blaydes,  Frederick  Henry 

Marvell 
Bledisloe,  Viscount.  See 

Bathurst,  Charles 
Blennerhassett,  Sir  Rowland 
Blind,  Karl 
Bliss,  Sir  Arthur  Edward 

Drummond 
Bliss,  Kathleen  Mary  Amelia 
Blogg,  Henry  George 
Blom,  Eric  Walter 
Blomfield,  Sir  Reginald 

Theodore 
Blood,  Sir  Bindon 
Blood,  Sir  Hilary  Rudolph 

Robert 
Bloomheld,  Georgiana,  Lady 
Blouet,  Leon  Paul,  'Max 

O'Rell' 
Blount,  Sir  Edward  Charles 
Blumenfeld,  John  Elliot.  See 

Elliot,  Sir  John 
Blumenfeld,  Ralph  David 
Blumenthal,  Jacques  ('Jacob') 
Blumlein,  Alan  Dower 
Blunden,  Edmund  Charles 
Blunt,  Lady  Anne  Isabella 

Noel  (1837-1917).  See 

under  Blunt,  Wilfrid 

Scawen 
Blunt,  Anthony  Frederick 
Blunt,  Christopher  Evelyn 
Blunt,  Wilfrid  Scawen 
Blythswood,  Baron.  See 

Campbell,  Archibald 

Campbell 
Blyton,  Enid  Mary 
Boase,  Frederic 
Boase,  Thomas  Sherrer  Ross 
Bodda  Pyne,  Louisa  Fanny 
Bodington,  Sir  Nathan 
Bodkin,  Sir  Archibald  Henry 


Bodkin,  Thomas  Patrick 

1887- 

1961 

Bodley,  George  Frederick 

1827- 

1907 

1865- 

1925 

Bodley,  John  Edward 

Courtenay 

#1853- 

1925 

1911- 

-1982 

Bodley  Scott,  Sir  Ronald 

1906- 

-1982 

Body,  George 

1840- 

1911 

1862- 

-1942 

Boldero,  Sir  Harold  Esmond 

1884- 

-1951 

Arnison 

1889- 

1960 

1858- 

-1924 

Bols,  Sir  Louis  Jean 

1867- 

1930 

1863- 

-1945 

Bolton,  Arthur  Thomas 

#1864- 

-1945 

Bomberg,  David  Garshen 

1890- 

-1957 

1855- 

-1936 

Bompas,  Henry  Mason 

1829- 

-1911 

(1836-1909).  See  under 
Bompas,  William  Carpenter 

1861- 

-1946 

Bompas,  William  Carpenter 

1834- 

-1906 

1823- 

-1903 

Bonar,  James 

1852- 

-1941 

1832- 

-1905 

Bonar  Law,  Andrew.  See 

Law 

1858- 

-1923 

1851- 

-1943 

Bonavia-Hunt,  Henry  George. 

See  Hunt 

#1847- 

-1917 

1818- 

-1908 

Bond,  Sir  (Charles)  Hubert 

1870- 

-1945 

Bond,  Sir  Robert 

1857- 

-1927 

1867- 

-1958 

Bond,  William  Bennett 

1815- 

-1906 

1839- 

-1909 

Bondfield,  Margaret  Grace 

1873- 

-1953 

1826- 

-1907 

Bone,  James 

1872- 

-1962 

Bone,  Sir  Muirhead 

1876- 

-1953 

1891- 

-1975 

Bone,  Stephen 

1904- 

-1958 

1908- 

-1989 

Bone,  William  Arthur 

1871- 

-1938 

1876- 

-1954 

Bonham-Carter,  Sir  Edgar 

1870- 

-1956 

#1888- 

-1959 

Bonham  Carter,  (Helen) 
Violet,  Baroness  Asquith  of 

1856- 

-1942 

Yarnbury 

1887- 

-1969 

1842- 

-1940 

Bonney,  Thomas  George 
Bonney,  (William  Francis) 

1833- 

-1923 

1893- 

-1967 

Victor 

1872- 

-1953 

1822- 

-1905 

Bonwick,  James 

1817- 

-1906 

Boosey,  Leslie  Arthur 

1887- 

-1979 

1848- 

-1903 

Boot,  Henry  Albert  Howard 

1917- 

-1983 

1809- 

-1905 

Boot,  Jesse,  Baron  Trent 
Booth,  Catherine  Bramwell-. 

1850- 

-1931 

1898- 

-1988 

See  Bramwell-Booth 

1883- 

-1987 

1864- 

-1948 

Booth,  Charles 

1840- 

-1916 

1829 

-1908 

Booth,  Hubert  Cecil 

1871 

-1955 

#1903- 

-1942 

Booth,  Paul  Henry  Gore-, 

1896- 

-1974 

Baron  Gore-Booth.  See 

Gore-Booth 

1909 

-1984 

Booth,  William  ('General' 

Booth) 

1829 

-1912 

Booth,  William  Bramwell 

1856 

-1929 

1907- 

-1983 

Boothby,  Guy  Newell 

1867- 

-1905 

1904- 

-1987 

Boothby,  Robert  John 

1840- 

-1922 

Graham,  Baron 

1900- 

-1986 

Boothman,  Sir  John  Nelson 

1901 

-1957 

Borden,  Sir  Robert  Laird 

1854 

-1937 

1835 

-1908 

Borg  Olivier,  Giorgio 

1897- 

-1968 

(George).  See  Olivier 

1911 

-1980 

#1843- 

-1916 

Borthwick,  Algernon,  Baron 

1898 

-1974 

Glenesk 

1830 

-1908 

1832 

-1904 

Bosanquet,  Bernard 

1848- 

-1923 

1848 

-1911 

Bosanquet,  Sir  Frederick 

1862 

-1957 

Albert 

1837 

-1923 

516 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Bosanquet,  Helen 
Bosanquet,  Robert  Carr 
Bose,  Satyendranath 
Boswell,  John  James 
Boswell,  Percy  George 

Hamnall 
Bosworth  Smith,  Reginald. 

See  Smith 
Botha,  Louis 
Bottomley,  Gordon 
Bottomley,  Horatio  Wilham 
Boucherett,  Emilia  Jessie 
Boucicault,  Dion,  the 

younger 
Boughton,  George  Henry 
Boughton,  Rutland 
Boult,  Sir  Adrian  Cedric 
Boulting,  John 
Bourchier,  Arthur 
Bourchier,  James  David 
Bourdillon,  Sir  Bernard 

Henry 
Bourinot,  Sir  John  George 
Bourke,  Robert,  Baron 

Connemara 
Bourne,  Francis  Alphonsus 
Bourne,  Gilbert  Charles 
Bourne,  Henry  Richard  Fox 
Bourne,  Robert  Croft 
Bousfield,  Henry  Brougham 
Bovenschen,  Sir  Frederick 

Carl 
Bowater,  Sir  Eric  Vansittart 
Bowden,  (Bertram)  Vivian, 

Baron 
Bowden,  Frank  Philip 
Bowen,  Edmund  John 
Bowen,  Edward  Ernest 
Bowen,  Elizabeth  Dorothea 

Cole 
Bower,  Frederick  Orpen 
Bower,  Sir  John  Dykes.  See 

Dykes  Bower 
Bowes,  Robert 
Bowes-Lyon,  Claude  George, 

Earl  of  Strathmore  and 

Kinghorne 
Bowhill,  Sir  Frederick 

William 
Bowlby,  Sir  Anthony  Alfred 
Bowlby,  (Edward)  John 

(Mostyn) 
Bowler,  Henry  Alexander 
Bowles,  Thomas  Gibson 
Bowley,  Sir  Arthur  Lyon 
Bowman,  Sir  James 
Bowra,  Sir  (Cecil)  Maurice 
Boxer,  (Charles)  Mark 

(Edward),  'Marc' 
Boyce,  Sir  Rubert  William 
Boycott,  Arthur  Edwin 


#1860-1925 
1871-1935 
1894-1974 
1835-1908 

1886-1960 

1839-1908 
1862-1919 
1874-1948 
1860-1933 
1825-1905 

1859-1929 
1833-1905 
1878-1960 
1889-1983 
1913-1985 
1863-1927 
1850-1920 

1883-1948 
1837-1902 

1827-1902 
1861-1935 
1861-1933 
1837-1909 
1888-1938 
1832-1902 

1884-1977 
1895-1962 

1910-1989 
1903-1968 
1898-1980 
1836-1901 

1899-1973 
1855-1948 

1905-1981 
1835-1919 


1855-1944 

1880-1960 
1855-1929 

1907-1990 
1824-1903 
1842-1922 
1869-1957 
1898-1978 
1898-1971 

1931-1988 
1863-1911 
1877-1938 


Boyd  of  Merton,  Viscount. 

See  Lennox-Boyd,  Alan 

Tindal  1904-1983 

Boyd,  Henry  1831-1922 

Boyd,  Sir  John  McFarlane  1917-1989 

Boyd,  Sir  John  Smith  Knox  1891  -1981 

Boyd,  Sir  Thomas  Jamieson  1818-1902 
Boyd  Carpenter,  William.  See 

Carpenter  1841-1918 
Boyd  Orr,  John,  Baron.  See 

Orr,  John  Boyd  1880-1971 
Bovd-Rochfort,  Sir  Cecil 

Charles  1887-1983 
Boyle,  Constance  Antonina 

('Nina')  #1865-1943 

Bovle,  Sir  Courtenav  Edmund  1845-1901 

Boyle,  Sir  Edward  1848-1909 
Boyle,  Edward  Charles 

Gurney,  Baron  Boyle  of 

Handsworth  1923-1981 

Bovle,  George  David  1828-1901 

Boyle,  Richard  Vicars  1822-1908 
Boyle,  William  Henry  Dudley, 

Earl  of  Cork  and  Orrery  1873-1967 

Boys,  Sir  Charles  Vernon  1855-1944 

Brabazon,  Hercules  Brabazon  1821-1906 
Brabazon,  John  Theodore 

Cuthbert  Moore-,  Baron 

Brabazon  of  Tara  1884-1964 
Brabazon,  Reginald,  Earl  of 

Meath  1841-1929 
Bracken,  Brendan  Rendall, 

Viscount  1901-1958 

Brackenbury,  Sir  Henry  1837-1914 

Brackley,  Herbert  George  1894-1948 
Bradburv,  John  Swan  wick. 

Baron  "  1872-1950 
Braddock,  Elizabeth  Margaret 

('Bessie')  #1899-1970 
Braddon,  Sir  Edward 

Nicholas  Coventry  1829-1904 
Braddon,  Marv  Elizabeth.  See 

Maxwell  1837-1915 
Bradford,  Sir  Edward  Ridley 

Colborne  1836-1911 

Bradford,  Sir  John  Rose  1863-1935 

Bradley,  Andrew  Cecil  1851-1935 

Bradley,  Francis  Herbert  1846-1924 

Bradlev,  George  Granville  1821-1903 

Bradley,  Henry  1845-1923 
Bradwell,  Baron.  See  Driberg, 

Thomas  Edward  Neil  1905-1976 

Bragg,  Sir  William  Henry  1862-1942 
Bragg,  Sir  (William) 

Lawrence  1890-1971 

Braham,  John  Robert  Daniel  #1920-1974 

Brahms,  Caryl  1901-1982 

Braid,  James  1870-1950 

Brailsford,  Henry  Noel  1873-1958 

Brain,  Dennis  1921-1957 

Brain,  Walter  Russell,  Baron  1895-1966 


5i7 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Braine,  John  Gerard  1922-1986 
Braithwaite,  Dame  (Florence) 

Lilian  1873-1948 

Braithwaite,  Richard  Bevan  1900-1990 

Braithwaite,  Sir  Walter  Pipon  1865-1945 

Bramah,  Ernest  #1868-1942 
Brambell,  Francis  William 

Rogers  1901-1970 
Brampton,  Baron.  See 

Hawkins,  Henry  1817-1907 

Bramwell,  Sir  Byrom  1847-1931 
Bramwell,  Sir  Frederick 

Joseph  1818-1903 

Bramwell-Booth,  Catherine  1883-1987 

Brancker,  Sir  William  Sefton  1877-1930 
Brand,  Henry  Robert, 

Viscount  Hampden  1841-1906 
Brand,  Herbert  Charles 

Alexander  1839-1901 

Brand,  Robert  Henry,  Baron  1878-1963 

Brandis,  Sir  Dietrich  1824-1907 
Brandt,  Hermann  Wilhelm 

('Bill')  1904-1983 
Brangwyn,  Sir  Frank 

(Francois  Guillaume)  1867-1956 

Brassey,  Thomas,  Earl  1836-1918 

Bray,  Caroline  1814-1905 

Bray,  Sir  Reginald  More  1842-1923 
Brayley,  (John)  Desmond, 

Baron  1917-1977 

Brazil,  Angela  1868-1947 

Brearley,  Harry  #1871-1948 

Brenan,  (Edward  Fitz)  Gerald  1894-1987 

Brennan,  Louis  1852-1932 
Brentford,  Viscount.  See 

Hicks,  William  Joynson-  1865-1932 

Brereton,  Joseph  Lloyd  1822-1901 

Bressey,  Sir  Charles  Herbert  1874-1951 

Brett,  John  1831-1902 
Brett,  Reginald  Baliol, 

Viscount  Esher  1852-1930 

Brewer,  Sir  Alfred  Herbert  1865-1928 

Brewtnall,  Edward  Frederick  1846-1902 

Brian,  (William)  Havergal  1876-1972 
Bridge,  Sir  Cyprian  Arthur 

George  1839-1924 

Bridge,  Frank  1879-1941 

Bridge,  Sir  John  Frederick  1844-1924 
Bridge,  (Stephen  Henry) 

Peter  1925-1982 

Bridge,  Thomas  William  1848-1909 
Bridgeman,  Sir  Francis 

Charles  Bridgeman  1848-1929 
Bridgeman,  William  Clive, 

Viscount  #1864-1935 
Bridges,  Edward  Ettingdene, 

Baron  1892-1969 
Bridges,  Sir  (George)  Tom 

(Molesworth)  1871-1939 

Bridges,  John  Henry  1832-1906 

Bridges,  Robert  Seymour  1844-1930 


Bridges,  Sir  William  Throsby  1861-1915 

Bridges-Adams,  WiUiam  1889-1965 
Bridie,  James,  pseudonym.  See 

Mavor,  Osborne  Henry  1888-1951 

Bridson,  (Douglas)  Geoffrey  1910-1980 

Brierly,  James  Leslie  1881-1955 

Briggsjohn  1862-1902 
Bright,  Gerald  Walcan-, 

'Geraldo'.  See 

Walcan-Bright  1904-1974 

Bright,  James  Franck  1832-1920 

Bright,  William  1824-1901 

Brightman,  Frank  Edward  1856-1932 

Brightwen,  Eliza  1830-1906 
Brind,  Sir  (Eric  James) 

Patrick  1892-1963 
Brise,  Sir  Evelyn  John 

Ruggles-.  See 

Ruggles-Brise  1857-1935 
Brittain,  Sir  Henry  Ernest 

(Harry)  1873-1974 

Brittain,  Vera  Mary  1893-1970 
Britten,  (Edward)  Benjamin, 

Baron  1913-1976 
Broad,  Sir  Charles  Noel 

Frank  1882-1976 

Broad,  Charlie  Dunbar  1887-1971 
Broadbent,  Sir  William  Henry         1835-1907 

Broadhurst,  Henry  1840-1911 
Brock,  Sir  Osmond  de 

Beauvoir  1869-1947 

Brock,  Russell  Claude,  Baron  1903-1980 

Brock,  Sir  Thomas  1847-1922 
Brockway,  (Archibald) 

Fenner,  Baron  1888-1988 

Brodetsky,  Selig  1888-1954 

Brodie,  Sir  Israel  1895-1979 

Brodribb,  Charles  William  1878-1945 

Brodribb,  William  Jackson  1829-1905 

Brodrick,  George  Charles  1 83 1  -1903 
Brodrick,  (William)  St  John 

(Fremantle),  Earl  of 

Midleton  1856-1942 

Brogan,  Sir  Denis  William  1900-1974 
Bromby,  Charles  Hamilton 

(1843-1904).  See  under 

Bromby,  Charles  Henry 

Bromby,  Charles  Henry  1814-1907 

Bronowski,  Jacob  1908-1974 
Broodbank,  Sir  Joseph 

Guinness  1857-1944 
Brook,  Norman  Craven, 

Baron  Normanbrook  1902-1967 

Brooke,  Alan  England  1863-1939 
Brooke,  Alan  Francis, 

Viscount  Alanbrooke  1883-1963 
Brooke,  Basil  Stanlake, 

Viscount  Brookeborough  1888-1973 
Brooke,  Sir  Charles  Anthony 

Johnson  1829-1917 

Brooke,  Sir  Charles  Vyner  #1874-1963 


5i8 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Brooke,  Henry,  Baron  Brooke 

Browne,  Sir  Samuel  James 

1824- 

-1901 

of  Cumnor 

#1903- 

-1984 

Browne,  Sir  Stewart  Gore-. 

Brooke,  Rupert  Chawner 

1887- 

-1915 

See  Gore-Browne 

1883- 

-1%7 

Brooke,  Stopford  Augustus 

1832- 

-1916 

Browne,  Thomas 

1870- 

-1910 

Brooke,  Zachary  Nugent 

1883- 

-1946 

Browne,  William  Alexander 

Brookeborough,  Viscount.  See 

Francis  Balfour-.  See 

Brooke,  Basil  Stanlake 

1888- 

-1973 

Balfour-Browne 

1874- 

-1967 

Brooke-Popham,  Sir  (Henry) 

Browning,  Sir  Frederick 

Robert  (Moore) 

1878- 

-1953 

Arthur  Montague 

1896- 

-1965 

Brooking  Rowe,  Joshua.  See 

Browning,  Sir  Montague 

Rowe 

1837- 

-1908 

Edward 

1863- 

-1947 

Broom,  Robert 

1866- 

-1951 

Browning,  Oscar 

1837- 

-1923 

Brotherhood,  Peter 

1838- 

-1902 

Bruce,  Alexander  Hugh, 

Brough,  Bennett  Hooper 

1860- 

-1908 

Baron  Balfour  of  Burleigh 

1849- 

-1921 

Brough,  Lionel 

1836- 

-1909 

Bruce,  Charles  Granville 

1866- 

-1939 

Brough,  Robert 

1872- 

-1905 

Bruce,  Clarence  Napier, 

Broughton,  Rhoda 

1840- 

-1920 

Baron  Aberdare 

1885- 

-1957 

Brown,  Alexander  Crum 

#1838- 

-1922 

Bruce,  Sir  David 

1855- 

-1931 

Brown,  (Alfred)  Ernest 

1881- 

-1962 

Bruce,  Sir  George  Barclay 

1821- 

-1908 

Brown,  Sir  Arthur  Whitten 

1886- 

-1948 

Bruce,  Sir  Henry  Harvey 

1862- 

-1948 

Brown,  Douglas  Clifton, 

Bruce,  Stanley  Melbourne, 

Viscount  Ruffside 

1879- 

-1958 

Viscount  Bruce  of 

Brown,  Ernest  William 

1866- 

-1938 

Melbourne 

1883- 

-1967 

Brown,  Frederick 

1851- 

-1941 

Bruce,  Victor  Alexander,  Earl 

Brown,  George  Alfred,  Baron 

of  Elgin 

1849- 

-1917 

George-Brown 

1914- 

-1985 

Bruce,  William  Speirs 

1867- 

-1921 

Brown,  George  Douglas, 

Bruce  Lockhart,  Sir  Robert 

'George  Douglas' 

1869- 

-1902 

Hamilton.  See  Lockhart 

1887- 

-1970 

Brown,  Sir  (George)  Lindor 

1903- 

-1971 

Brundrett,  Sir  Frederick 

1894- 

-1974 

Brown,  Sir  George  Thomas 

1827- 

-1906 

Brunner,  Sir  John  Tomlinson 

#1842- 

-1919 

Brown,  Gerard  Baldwin 

1849- 

-1932 

Brunt,  Sir  David 

1886- 

-1965 

Brown,  Horatio  Robert 

Brunton,  Sir  Thomas  Lauder 

1844- 

-1916 

Forbes 

1854- 

-1926 

Brushfield,  Thomas  Nadauld 

1828- 

-1910 

Brown,  Ivor  John  Carnegie 

1891- 

-1974 

Bryant,  Sir  Arthur  Wynne 

Brown,  Sir  John 

1880- 

-1958 

Morgan 

1899- 

-1985 

Brown,  Joseph 

1809- 

-1902 

Bryant,  Sophie 

#1850- 

-1922 

Brown,  Oliver  Frank  Gustave 

1885- 

-1966 

Bryce,  James,  Viscount 

1838- 

-1922 

Brown,  Peter  Hume 

1849- 

-1918 

Brydon,  John  McKean 

1840- 

-1901 

Brown,  Spencer  Curtis.  See 

Brvher.  See  Ellerman,  (Annie) 

Curtis  Brown 

1906- 

-1980 

Winifred 

1894- 

-1983 

Brown,  Thomas  Graham 

1882- 

-1965 

Buchan,  Alastair  Francis 

1918- 

-1976 

Brown,  Sir  Walter  Langdon 

Buchan,  Alexander 

1829 

-1907 

Langdon-.  See 

Buchan,  Charles  Murray 

1891 

-1960 

Langdon-Brown 

1870- 

-1946 

Buchan,  John,  Baron 

Brown,  William 

1888- 

-1975 

Tweedsmuir 

1875- 

-1940 

Brown,  William  Francis 

1862- 

-1951 

Buchan-Hepburn,  Patrick 

Brown,  William  Haig.  See 

George  Thomas,  Baron 

Haig  Brown 

1823- 

-1907 

Hailes 

1901- 

-1974 

Brown,  William  John 

1894- 

-1960 

Buchanan,  George 

1827- 

-1905 

Brown,  William  Michael 

Buchanan,  George 

1890- 

-1955 

Court 

1918- 

-1968 

Buchanan,  Sir  George 

Browne,  Sir  Denis  John 

Cunningham 

1865- 

-1940 

Wolko 

#1892- 

-1967 

Buchanan,  Sir  George  Seaton 

1869 

-1936 

Browne,  Edward  Granville 

1862- 

-1926 

Buchanan,  Sir  George 

Browne,  George  Forrest 

1833- 

-1930 

William 

1854- 

-1924 

Browne,  Sir  James  Crichton- 

1840- 

-1938 

Buchanan,  James,  Baron 

Browne,  Sir  James  Frankfort 

Woolavington 

1849- 

-1935 

Manners 

1823 

-1910 

Buchanan,  Sir  John  Scoular 

1883- 

-1966 

Browne,  John  Francis 

Buchanan,  Robert  Williams 

1841 

-1901 

Archibald,  sixth  Baron 

Buchanan,  Walter  John  ('Jack') 

1890- 

-1957 

Kilmaine 

1902 

-1978 

Buck,  Sir  Peter  Henry 

1880- 

-1951 

519 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Buckland,  William  Warwick  1859-1946 

Buckle,  George  Earle  1854-1935 
Buckley,  Henry  Burton, 

Baron  Wrenbury  1845-1935 
Buckmaster,  Stanley  Owen, 

Viscount  1861-1934 

Buckton,  George  Bowdler  1 8 1 8  -1905 
Budge,  Sir  Ernest  Alfred 

Thompson  Wallis  1857-1934 

Buhler,  Robert  1916-1989 

Bulbring,  Edith  1903-1990 

Bulfin,  Sir  Edward  Stanislaus  1862-1939 

Bull,  Sir  Graham  MacGregor  1918-1987 

Bullard,  Sir  Edward  Crisp  1907-1980 

Bullard,  Sir  Reader  William  1885-1976 
Bulleid,  Oliver  Vaughan 

Snell  #1882-1970 

Bullen,  Arthur  Henry  1857-1920 

Bullen,  Frank  Thomas  #1857-1915 
Buller,  Arthur  Henry 

Reginald  1874-1944 

Buller,  Sir  Redvers  Henry  1839-1908 
Buller,  Reginald  Edward 

Manningham-  See 

Manningham-Buller  1905-1980 

Buller,  Sir  Walter  Lawry  1838-1906 

Bulloch,  William  1868-1941 
Bullock,  Sir  Christopher 

Llewellyn  1891-1972 

Bullock,  Sir  Ernest  1890-1979 
Bulman,  Oliver  Meredith 

Boone  1902-1974 
Bulwer,  Sir  Edward  Earle 

Gascoyne  1829-1910 
Bulwer-Lytton,  Victor 

Alexander  George  Robert, 

EarlofLytton  1876-1947 

Bunsen,  Ernest  de  1819-1903 
Bunsen,  Sir  Maurice  William 

Ernest  de.  See  de  Bunsen  1852-1932 

Bunting,  Basil  1900-1985 

Bunting,  Sir  Percy  William  1836-1911 

Burbidge,  Edward  1839-1903 

Burbidge,  Frederick  William  1847-1905 

Burbury,  Samuel  Hawksley  1831-1911 

Burch,  Cecil  Reginald  1901-1983 
Burdett-Coutts,  Angela 

Georgina,  Baroness  1814-1906 

Burdon,  John  Shaw  1826-1907 
Burdon-Sanderson,  Sir  John 

Scott  1828-1905 

Burge,  Hubert  Murray  1862-1925 
Burgess,  Guy  Francis  de 

Money  #1911-1963 
Burgh  Canning,  Hubert 

George  De,  Marquess  of 

Clanricarde  1832-1916 
Burghley,  Baron.  See  Cecil, 

David  George  Brownlow  1905-1981 

Burkitt,  Francis  Crawford  1864-1935 

Burn,  Duncan  Lyall  1902-1988 


Burn,  Robert  1829-1904 

Burn-Murdoch,  John  1852-1909 

Burnand,  Sir  Francis  Cowley  1836-1917 

Burne,  Sir  Owen  Tudor  1837-1909 

Burnell,  Charles  Desborough  1876-1969 

Burnet,  John  1863-1928 

Burnet,  Sir  John  James  1857-1938 

Burnett,  Sir  Charles  Stuart  1882-1945 
Burnett,  Frances  Eliza 

Hodgson  #1849-1924 
Burnett,  Dame  Ivy 

Compton-.  See 

Compton-Burnett  1884-1969 

Burnett,  Sir  Robert  Lindsay  1887-1959 
Burnett-Stuart,  Sir  John 

Theodosius  1875-1958 

Burney,  Sir  Cecil  1858-1929 
Burney,  Sir  (Charles) 

Dennistoun  1888-1968 
Burnham,  Baron.  See 

Levy-Lawson,  Edward  1833-1916 
Burnham,  Baron.  See 

Lawson,  Edward  Frederick  1890-1963 
Burnham,  Viscount.  See 

Lawson,  Harry  Lawson 

Webster  Levy-  1862-1933 
Burns,  Sir  Alan  Cuthbert 

Maxwell  1887-1980 

Burns,  Dawson  1828-1909 

Burns,  John  Elliot  1858-1943 

Burnside,  William  1852-1927 

Burra,  Edward  John  1905-1976 

Burrell,  Sir  William  1861-1958 
Burroughs  (afterwards 

Traill-Burroughs),  Sir 

Frederick  William  1831-1905 

Burrow,  Thomas  1909-1986 
Burrows,  Christine  Mary 

Elizabeth  1872-1959 

Burrows,  Sir  Frederick  John  1887-1973 

Burrows,  Montagu  1 8 1 9  -1 905 

Burrows,  Ronald  Montagu  #1867-1920 

Burt,  Sir  Cyril  Lodowic  1883-1971 

Burt,  Thomas  1837-1922 
Burton,  Baron.  See  Bass, 

Michael  Arthur  1837-1909 
Burton,  Sir  Montague 

Maurice  1885-1952 

Burton,  Richard  1925-1984 

Bury,  John  Bagnell  1861  -1927 

Bush,  Eric  Wheler  1899-1985 

Bushell,  Stephen  Wootton  1844-1908 

Busk,  Rachel  Harriette  1831-1907 
Bustamante,  Sir  William 

Alexander  1884-1977 

Butcher,  Samuel  Henry  1850-1910 

Butler,  Arthur  Gray  1831-1909 

Butler,  Arthur  John  1844-1910 
Butler,  Basil  Edward 

('Christopher')  1902-1986 

Butler,  (Christina)  Violet  #1884-1982 


520 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Butler,  Christopher.  See 

Butler,  Basil  Edward 
Butler,  Edward  Joseph 

Aloysius  (Dom  Cuthbert) 
Buder,  Sir  Edwin  John 
Buder,  Elizabeth  Southerden, 

Lady 
Buder,  Frank  Hedges 
Buder,  Sir  (George)  Geoffrey 

(Gilbert) 
Buder,  Sir  Harold  Beresford 
Buder,  Henry  Montagu 
Butler,  Sir  James  Ramsay 

Montagu 
Buder,  Josephine  Elizabeth 
Buder,  Sir  Montagu  Sherard 

Dawes 
Buder,  Reginald  Cotterell 
Buder,  Richard  Austen,  Baron 

Buder  of  Saffron  Walden 
Buder,  Sir  Richard  Harte 

Keatinge 
Buder,  Samuel 
Buder,  Sir  (Spencer) 

Harcourt 
Buder,  Sir  William  Francis 
Butlin,  Sir  Henry  Trentham 
Butlin,  Sir  William  Heygate 

Edmund  Colborne 
Butt,  Dame  Clara  Ellen 
Butterfield,  Sir  Herbert 
Butterworth,  George  Sainton 

Kaye 
Buxton,  Noel  Edward  Noel-, 

Baron  Noel-Buxton.  See 

Noel-Buxton 
Buxton,  Patrick  Alfred 
Buxton,  Sydney  Charles,  Earl 
Buxton,  Sir  Thomas  Fowell 
Buzzard,  Sir  (Edward) 

Farquhar 
Byam  Shaw,  Glencairn 

Alexander  ('Glen') 
Byers,  (Charles)  Frank,  Baron 
Byng,  Julian  Hedworth 

George,  Viscount  Byng  of 

Vimy 
Byrne,  Sir  Edmund 

Widdrington 
Byron,  Robert 
Bywater,  Ingram 


Qble,  (Alice)  Mildred 
Caccia,  Harold  Anthony, 

Baron 
Cadbury,  George 
Cadman,  John,  Baron 
Cadogan,  Sir  Alexander 

George  Montagu 
Cadogan,  George  Henry,  Earl 


1902-1986 

1858-1934 
#1874-1943 

1846-1933 
1855-1928 

1887-1929 
1883-1951 
1833-1918 

1889-1975 
1828-1906 

1873-1952 
1913-1981 

1902-1982 

1870-1935 
1835-1902 

1869-1938 
1838-1910 
1845-1912 

1899-1980 
1872-1936 
1900-1979 

1885-1916 


1869-1948 
1892-1955 
1853-1934 
1837-1915 

1871-1945 

1904-1986 
1915-1984 


1862-1935 

1844-1904 
1905-1941 
1840-1914 


1878-1952 

1905-1990 
1839-1922 
1877-1941 

1884-1968 
1840-1915 


Caillard,  Sir  Vincent  Henry 

Penalver 
Caine,  Sir  (Thomas  Henry) 

Hall 

Caine,  William  Sproston 
Caird,  Edward 
Caird,  George  Bradford 
Caird,  Sir  James 
Cairnes,  William  Elliot 
Cairns,  David  Smith 
Cairns,  Sir  Hugh  William 

Bell 
Caldecote,  Viscount.  See 

Inskip,  Thomas  Walker 

Hobart 
Caldecott.  Sir  Andrew 
Calder,  Peter  Ritchie,  Baron 

Ritchie-Calder 
Calderon,  George 
Calkin,  John  Baptiste 
Callaghan,  Sir  George  Asdey 
Callendar,  Hugh  Longbourne 
Callender,  Sir  Geoffrey 

Arthur  Romaine 
Callow,  William 
Callwell,  Sir  Charles  Edward 
Caiman,  William  Thomas 
Calthorpe,  Baron.  See 

Gough-Calthorpe, 

Augustus  Cholmondeley 
Calthorpe,  Sir  Somerset 

Arthur  Gough- 
Cam,  Helen  Maud 
Cambridge,  Duke  of.  See 

George  William  Frederick 

Charles 
Cambridge,  Alexander 

Augustus  Frederick 

William  Alfred  George, 

Earl  of  Athlone 
Cameron,  Sir  David  Young 
Cameron,  Sir  Donald  Charles 
Cameron,  Sir  (Gordon)  Roy 
Cameron,  (Mark)  James 

(Walter) 
Cameron,  Neil,  Baron 

Cameron  of  Balhousie 
Camm,  Sir  Sydney 
Campbell,  Archibald 

Campbell,  Baron 

Blythswood 
Campbell,  Beatrice  Stella 

(Mrs  Patrick  Campbell) 
Campbell,  Sir  David 
Campbell,  Donald  Malcolm 
Campbell,  Frederick 

Archibald  Vaughan,  Earl 

Cawdor 
Campbell,  Gordon 
Campbell,  (Ignatius)  Royston 

(Dunnachie)  ('Roy') 


1856-1930 

1853-1931 

1842-1903 
1835-1908 
1917-1984 
1864-1954 
1862-1902 
1862-1946 

1896-1952 


1876-1947 
1884-1951 

1906-1982 
1868-1915 
1827-1905 
1852-1920 
1863-1930 

1875-1946 
1812-1908 
1859-1928 
1871-1952 


1829-1910 

1864-1937 
1885-1968 


1819-1904 


1874-1957 
1865-1945 
1872-1948 
1899-1966 

1911-1985 

1920-1985 
1893-1966 


1835-1908 

1865-1940 

1889-1978 

#1921-1967 


1847-1911 
1886-1953 

1901-1957 


5" 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Campbell,  James  Henry 

Mussen,  Baron  Glenavy  1851-1931 

Campbell,  Sir  James  Macnabb  1846-1903 

Campbell,  Dame  Janet  Mary  1877-1954 

Campbell,  John  Charles  1894-1942 
Campbell,  John  Douglas 

Sutherland,  Duke  of  Argyll  1 845  -1914 

Campbell,  Lewis  1830-1908 

Campbell,  Sir  Malcolm  1885-1948 
Campbell,  Patrick  Gordon, 

Baron  Glenavy  1913-1980 

Campbell,  (Renton)  Stuart  1908-1966 

Campbell,  Sir  Ronald  Hugh  1883-1953 

Campbell,  William  Howard  1859-1910 
Campbell-Bannerman,  Sir 

Henry  1836-1908 
Campion,  Gilbert  Francis 

Montriou,  Baron  1882-1958 

Camps,  Francis  Edward  1905-1972 
Camrose,  Viscount.  See 

Berry,  William  Ewert  1879-1954 

Cannan,  Charles  1858-1919 

Cannan,  Edwin  1861-1935 

Canning,  Sir  Samuel  1823-1908 

Cannon,  Herbert  Graham  1897-1963 

Cannon,  Thomas  #1846-1917 

Canton,  William  1845-1926 

Cape,  Herbert  Jonathan  1879-1960 

Capel,  Thomas  John  1836-191 1 

Capes,  William  Wolfe  1834-1914 

Capper,  Sir  Thompson  1863-1915 
Caradon,  Baron.  See  Foot, 

Hugh  Mackintosh  1907-1990 
Carden,  Sir  Sackville 

Hamilton  1857-1930 

Cardew,  Michael  Ambrose  1901-1983 

Cardew,  Philip  1851-1910 
Cardus,  Sir  (John  Frederick) 

Neville  1889-1975 

Carey,  Rosa  Nouchette  1840-1909 

Carlile,  Wilson  1847-1942 

Carline,  Richard  Cotton  1896-1980 

Carling,  Sir  Ernest  Rock  1877-1960 
Carlisle,  Earl  of.  See  Howard, 

George  James  1843  -191 1 
Carlisle,  Countess  of.  See 

Howard,  Rosalind  Frances  1845-1921 

Carlyle,  Alexander  James  1861-1943 
Carlyle,  Benjamin  Fearnley 

(Dom  Aelred)  1874-1955 

Carlyle,  Sir  Robert  Warrand  1859-1934 

Carman,  William  Bliss  1861-1929 
Carmichael,  Sir  Thomas 

David  Gibson-,  Baron  1859-1926 
Carnarvon,  Earl  of.  See 

Herbert,  George  Edward 

Stanhope  Molyneux  1866-1923 

Carnegie,  Andrew  1835-1919 
Carnegie,  James,  Earl  of 

Southesk  1827-1905 

Carnell,  Edward  John  1912-1972 


Carnock,  Baron.  See 

Nicolson,  Sir  Arthur 
Caroe,  Sir  Olaf  Kirkpatrick 

Kruuse 
Caroe,  William  Douglas 
Carpenter,  Alfred  Francis 

Blakeney 
Carpenter,  Edward 
Carpenter,  George  Alfred 
Carpenter,  Sir  (Henry  Cort) 

Harold 
Carpenter,  Joseph  Estlin 
Carpenter,  Robert 
Carpenter,  William  Boyd 
Carr,  Sir  Cecil  Thomas 
Carr,  Edward  Hallett 
Carreras,  Sir  James  Enrique 
Carrington,  Dora  de 

Houghton 
Carrington,  Sir  Frederick 
Carritt,  (Hugh)  David 

(Graham) 
Carr-Saunders,  Sir  Alexander 

Morris 
Carruthers,  (Alexander) 

Douglas  (Mitchell) 
Carson,  Edward  Henry,  Baron 
Carte,  Dame  Bridget  D'Oyly. 

See  D'Oyly  Carte 
Carte,  Richard  D'Oyly 
Carter,  Sir  Edgar  Bonham-. 

See  Bonham-Carter 
Carter,  (Helen)  Violet 

Bonham,  Baroness  Asquith 

of  Yarnbury.  See  Bonham 

Carter 
Carter,  Howard 
Carter,  Hugh 
Carter,  John  Waynflete 
Carter,  Thomas  Thellusson 
Carton,  Richard  Claude 
Carton  de  Wiart,  Sir  Adrian 
Carus- Wilson,  Eleanora  Mary 
Carver,  Alfred  James 
Cary,  Arthur  Joyce  Lunel 
Cary,  Sir  (Arthur  Lucius) 

Michael 
Case,  Thomas 
Casement,  Roger  David 
Casey,  Richard  Gardiner, 

Baron 
Casey,  William  Francis 
Cash,  John  Theodore 
Cassel,  Sir  Ernest  Joseph 
Cassels,  Sir  Robert  Archibald 
Cassels,  Walter  Richard 
Catchpool,  (Egerton)  St  John 

(Pettifor) 
Cates,  Arthur 
Cathcart,  Edward  Provan 
Caton-Thompson,  Gertrude 


1849-1928 

1892-1981 
1857-1938 

1881-1955 
1844-1929 
1859-1910 

1875-1940 
1844-1927 
1830-1901 
1841-1918 
1878-1966 
1892-1982 
1909-1990 

#1893-1932 
1844-1913 

1927-1982 

1886-1966 

1882-1962 
1854-1935 

1908-1985 
1844-1901 

1870-1956 


1887-1969 
1874-1939 
1837-1903 
1905-1975 
1808-1901 
1856-1928 
1880-1963 
1897-1977 
1826-1909 
1888-1957 

1917-1976 
1844-1925 
1864-1916 

1890-1976 
1884-1957 
1854-1936 
1852-1921 
1876-1959 
1826-1907 

#1890-1971 
1829-1901 
1877-1954 
1888-1985 


522 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Catto,  Thomas  Sivewright, 

Baron  1879-1959 

Cavan,  Earl  of.  See  Lambart, 

Frederick  Rudolph  1865-1946 

Cave,  George,  Viscount  1856-1928 

Cave,  Sir  Richard  Guy  1920-1986 

Cavell,  Edith  1865-1915 

Cavendish,  Spencer  Compton, 

Marquess  of  Harrington, 

afterwards  Duke  of 

Devonshire  1833-1908 

Cavendish,  Victor  Christian 

William,  Duke  of 

Devonshire  1868-1938 

Cavendish-Bentinck,  Victor 

Frederick  William.  See 

Bentinck  1897-1990 

Cawdor,  Earl.  See  Campbell, 

Frederick  Archibald 

Vaughan  1847-1911 

Cawood,  Sir  Walter  1907  -1967 

Cawston,  (Edwin)  Richard  1923-1986 

Cawthorne,  Sir  Terence 

Edward  1902-1970 

Cavzer,  (Michael)  Anthony 

(Rathborne)  1920-1990 

Cazalet,  Peter  Victor 

Ferdinand  1907-1973 

Cazalet-Keir,  Thelma  1899-1989 

Cecil,  David  George 

Brownlow,  Marquess  of 

Exeter  and  Baron 

Burghley  1905-1981 

Cecil,  Edgar  Algernon  Robert 

Gascoyne-,  Viscount  Cecil 

of  Chelwood  1864-1958 

Cecil,  Lord  (Edward 

Christian)  David  Gascoyne-  1902-1986 
Cecil,  Lord  Edward  Herbert 

Gascoyne-  1867-1918 

Cecil,  Henry,  pseudonym.  See 

Leon,  Henry  Cecil  1902-1976 

Cecil,  Hugh  Richard 

Heathcote  Gascoyne-, 

Baron  Quickswood  1869-1956 

Cecil,  James  Edward  Hubert 

Gascovne-,  Marquess  of 

Salisbury  1861-1947 

Cecil,  Robert  Arthur  James 

Gascovne-,  Marquess  of 

Salisbury  1893-1972 

Cecil,  Robert  Arthur  Talbot 

Gascovne-,  Marquess  of 

Salisbury  1830-1903 

Centlivres,  Albert  van  de 

Sandt  1887-1966 

Chads,  Sir  Henry  1819-1906 

Chadwick,  Hector  Munro  1870-1947 

Chadwick,  Sir  James  1891  -1974 

Chadwick,  Rov  1893-1947 

Chain,  Sir  Ernst  Boris  1906-1979 


Challans,  (Eileen)  Mary, 

'Mary  Renault'  1905-1983 

Chalmers,  James  1 84 1  -1901 
Chalmers,  Sir  Mackenzie 

Dalzell  1847-1927 

Chalmers,  Robert,  Baron  1858-1938 
Chamberlain,  (Arthur) 

Neville  1869-1940 
Chamberlain,  Sir  Crawford 

Trotter  1821-1902 
Chamberlain,  Houston 

Stewart  1855-1927 

Chamberlain,  Joseph  1836-1914 
Chamberlain,  Sir  (Joseph) 

Austen  1863-1937 
Chamberlain,  Sir  Neville 

Bowles  1820-1902 
Chamberlin,  Peter  Hugh 

Girard  1919-1978 
Chambers,  Dorothea 

Katharine  1878-1960 
Chambers,  Sir  Edmund 

Kerchever  1866-1954 

Chambers,  Raymond  Wilson  1874-1942 

Chambers,  Sir  (Stanley)  Paul  1904-1981 
Chamier,  Stephen  Henry 

Edward  1834-1910 

Champneys,  Basil  1842-1935 
Champneys,  Sir  Francis 

Henry  1848-1930 

Chance,  Alexander  Macomb  #1844-1917 

Chance,  Sir  James  Timmins  1814-1902 
Chancellor,  Sir  Christopher 

John  Howard  1904-1989 

Chancellor,  Sir  John  Robert  1870-1952 
Chandos,  Viscount.  See 

Lvttelton,  Oliver  1893-1972 

Channell,  Sir  Arthur  Moseley  1838-1928 

Charmer,  George  Nicholas  1842-1905 

Chaplin,  Sir  Charles  Spencer  1889-1977 

Chaplin,  Henry,  Viscount  1840-1923 
Chapman,  (Anthonv)  Colin 

(Bruce)  1928-1982 

Chapman,  David  Leonard  1869-1958 

Chapman,  Edward  John  1 82 1  -1 904 

Chapman,  Frederick  Spencer  1907-1971 

Chapman,  Robert  William  1881-1960 
Chapman,  Sir  Ronald  Ivelaw-. 

See  Ivelaw-Chapman  1899-1978 

Chapman,  Sydney  1888-1970 

Chapman,  Sir  Sydney  John  1871-1951 

Charles,  James  1 85 1  -1906 

Charles,  Robert  Henry  1955-1931 

Charlesworth,  Martin  Percival  1895-1950 

Charley,  Sir  William  Thomas  1933-1904 
Chariot,  Andre  Eugene 

Maurice  1892-1956 

Charnley,  Sir  John  1911  -1982 
Charnwood,  Baron.  See 

Benson,  Godfrey  Rathbone  1864-1945 

Charoux,  Siegfried  Joseph  1896—1967 


523 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Charrington,  Frederick 

Nicholas  1850-1936 
Charteris,  Archibald  Hamilton         1835-1908 

Chase,  Drummond  Percy  1820-1902 

Chase,  Frederic  Henry  1853-1925 

Chase,  Marian  Emma  1844-1905 

Chase,  William  St  Lucian  1856-1908 
Chatfield,  Alfred  Ernie 

Montacute,  Baron  1873-1967 

Chatterjee,  Sir  Atul  Chandra  1874-1955 

Chatwin,  (Charles)  Bruce  1940-1989 

Chauvel,  Sir  Henry  George  1865-1945 
Chavasse,  Christopher 

Maude  1884-1962 

Chavasse,  Francis  James  1846-1928 

Cheadle,  Walter  Butler  1835-1910 

Cheade,  Arthur  Henry  1866-1929 

Cheesman,  Robert  Ernest  1878-1962 

Cheetham,  Samuel  1827-1908 
Chelmsford,  Baron.  See 

Thesiger,  Frederic 

Augustus  1827-1905 
Chelmsford,  Viscount.  See 

Thesiger,  Frederic  John 

Napier  1868-1933 

Chenevix-Trench,  Anthony  1919-1979 

Cheney,  Christopher  Robert  1906-1987 
Chermside,  Sir  Herbert 

Charles  1850-1929 
Cherry-Garrard,  Apsley 

George  Benet  1886-1959 
Cherwell,  Viscount.  See 

Lindemann,  Frederick 

Alexander  1886-1957 

Cheshire,  Geoffrey  Chevalier  1886-1978 

Chester,  Sir  (Daniel)  Norman  1907-1986 

Chesterton,  Cecil  Edward  #1879-1918 

Chesterton,  Gilbert  Keith  1874-1936 
Chetwode,  Sir  Philip 

Walhouse,  Baron  1869-1950 

Chevalier,  Albert  1861-1923 
Cheylesmore,  Baron.  See 

Eaton,  Herbert  Francis  1848-1925 
Cheylesmore,  Baron.  See 

Eaton,  William  Meriton  1843-1902 

Cheyne,  Thomas  Kelly  1841-1915 
Cheyne,  Sir  (William) 

Watson  1852-1932 

Chibnall,  Albert  Charles  1894-1988 
Chichester,  Sir  Francis 

Charles  1901-1972 

Chick,  Dame  Harriette  1875-1977 

Chifley,  Joseph  Benedict  1885-1951 

Child,  Harold  Hannyngton  1869-1945 

Child,  Thomas  1839-1906 
Child- Villiers,  Margaret 

Elizabeth,  Countess  of 

Jersey.  See  Villiers  1849-1945 
Child- Villiers,  Victor  Albert 

George,  Earl  of  Jersey.  See 

Villiers  1845-1915 


Childe,  Vere  Gordon  1892-1957 

Childers,  Robert  Erskine  1870-1922 

Childs,  William  Macbride  1869-1939 

Chilston,  Viscount.  See 

Akers-Douglas,  Aretas  1 85 1  -1 926 

Chilston,  Viscount.  See 

Akers-Douglas,  Aretas  1876-1947 

Chipperfield,  James  Seaton 

Methuen    "  1912-1990 

Chirol,  Sir  (Ignatius) 

Valentine  1852-1929 

Chisholm,  Hugh  1866-1924 

Cholmondeley,  Hugh,  Baron 

Delamere  1870-1931 

Chorley,  Robert  Samuel 

Theodore,  Baron  1895-1978 

Christiansen,  Arthur  1904-1963 

Christie,  Dame  Agatha  Mary 

Clarissa  1890-1976 

Christie,  John  1882-1962 

Christie,  John  Reginald 

Halliday  #1899-1953 

Christie,  John  Traill  1899-1980 

Christie,  Sir  William  Henry 

Mahoney  1845-1922 

Christophers,  Sir  (Samuel) 

Rickard  1873-1978 

Chrystal,  George  1851-1911 

Chubb,  Sir  Lawrence 

Wensley  1873-1948 

Church,  Charles  James 

Gregory  1942-1989 

Church,  Sir  William  Selby  1837-1928 

Churchill,  Clementine  Ogilvy 

Spencer-,  Baroness 

Spencer-Churchill  1885-1977 

Churchill,  Jeanette 

('Jennie'),  Lady  Randolph 

Churchill  #1854-1921 

Churchill,  Peter  Morland  1909-1972 

Churchill,  Randolph 

Frederick  Edward 

Spencer-  #1911-1968 

Churchill,  Sir  Winston 

Leonard  Spencer-  1874—1965 

Churchward,  George  Jackson  #1857-1933 
Chuter-Ede,  James  Chuter, 

Baron  Chuter-Ede  1882-1965 

Cilcennin,  Viscount.  See 

Thomas,  James  Purdon 

Lewes  1903-1960 

Citrine,  Walter  McLennan, 

Baron  1887-1983 

Clanricarde,  Marquess  of.  See 

Burgh  Canning,  Hubert 

George  De  1832-1916 

Clanwilliam,  Earl  of.  See 

Meade,  Richard  James  1832-1907 

Clapham,  Sir  Alfred  William  1883-1950 

Clapham,  (Arthur)  Roy  1904-1990 

Clapham,  Sir  John  Harold  1873-1946 


524 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Clarendon,  Earl  of.  See 

Villiers,  George  Herbert 

Hyde  1877-1955 

Clark,  Albert  Curtis  1859-1937 

Clark,  Alfred  Joseph  #1885-1941 

Clark,  Sir  Allen  George  1898-1962 

Clark,  Colin  Grant  1905-1989 

dark,  Frederick  Le  Gros  1892-1977 

Clark,  Sir  George  Norman  1890-1979 
Clark,  George  Sidney  Roberts 

Kitson.  See  Kitson  Clark  1900-1975 

Clark,  James  ('Jim')  1936-1968 

Clark,  John  Willis  1833-1910 
Clark,  Kenneth  Mackenzie, 

Baron  1903-1983 
Clark,  Thomas  Archibald 

Bennet-.  See  Bennet-Clark  1903-1975 
Clark,  Sir  Wilfrid  Edward  Le 

Gros  1895-1971 

Clark,  William  Donaldson  1916-1985 

Clark,  Sir  William  Henry  1876-1952 
Clark  Kerr,  Archibald  John 

Kerr,  Baron  Inverchapel  1882-1951 

Clarke,  Alexander  Ross  #1828-1914 

Clarke,  Sir  Andrew  1824-1902 

Clarke,  Sir  Caspar  Purdon  1846-1911 

Clarke,  Charles  Baron  1832-1906 
Clarke,  Sir  Charles  Noble 

Arden-.  See  Arden-Oarke  1898-1962 

Clarke,  Dudley  Wrangel  1899-1974 

Clarke,  Sir  Edward  George  1841  -1931 

Clarke,  Sir  Fred  1880-1952 
Clarke,  George  Sydenham, 

Baron  Sydenham  of  Combe  1848-1933 

Clarke,  Henry  Buder  1863-1904 

Clarke,  Louis  Colville  Gray  1881  -1960 

Clarke,  Sir  Marshal  James  1841  -1909 

Clarke,  Maude  Violet  1892-1935 
Clarke,  Sir  Richard  William 

Barnes  1910-1975 

Clarke,  Thomas  1884-1957 
Clarke,  Thomas  Ernest 

Bennett  1907-1989 

Clasper,  John  Hawks  1836-1908 

Clausen,  Sir  George  1852-1944 
Clauson,  Albert  Charles, 

Baron  1870-1946 

Claxton,  Brooke  1898-1960 

Clay,  Sir  Charles  Travis  1885-1978 

Clay,  Sir  Henry  1883-1954 

Clayden,  Peter  William  1827-1902 
Clayton,  Sir  Gilbert 

Falkingham  1875-1929 
Clayton,  Philip  Thomas 

Byard  1885-1972 

Clayton,  Sir  Stanley  George  191 1  -1986 
Clegg,  Sir  Alexander 

Bradshaw  1909-1986 

Clegg,  Hugh  Anthony  1900-1983 

Clementi,  Sir  Cecil  1875-1947 

Clements,  Sir  John  Selby  1910-1988 


Clerk,  Sir  Dugald  1854-1932 

Clerk,  Sir  George  Russell  1874-1951 

Clerke,  Agnes  Mary  1842-1907 
Clerke,  Ellen  Mary  (1840- 

1906).  See  under  Clerke, 

Agnes  Mary 

Clery,  Sir  Cornelius  Francis  1838-1926 
Cleverdon,  (Thomas)  Douglas 

Qames)  1903-1987 

Cleworth,  Thomas  Ebenezer  1854-1909 
Clifford,  Sir  Bede  Edmund 

Hugh  1890-1969 

Clifford,  Frederick  1828-1904 

Clifford,  Sir  Hugh  Charles  1866-1941 

Clifford,  John  1836-1923 

Clifton-Taylor,  Alec  1907-1985 
Clitheroe,  Baron.  See 

Assheton,  Ralph  1901-1984 

Clive,  Sir  Robert  Henry  1877-1948 

Clodd,  Edward  1840-1930 

Clore,  Sir  Charles  1904-1979 
Close,  Sir  Charles  Frederick 

Arden-.  See  Arden-Close  1865-1952 

Close,  Maxwell  Henry  1822-1903 

Clough,  Charles  Thomas  #1852-1916 

Clowes,  Sir  William  Laird  1856-1905 
Clunes,  Alexander  de  Moro 

Sherriff  ('Alec')  1912-1970 
Clunies  Ross,  Sir  Ian.  See 

Ross  1899-1959 

Clunies-Ross,  George  1842-1910 

Qutton,  Henry  Hugh  1850-1909 

Clutton-Brock,  Arthur  1868-1924 

Clyde,  James  Avon,  Lord  1863-1944 
Clyde,  James  Latham 

McDiarmid,  Lord  #1898-1975 
Clydesmuir,  Baron.  See 

Colville,  David  John  1894-1954 

Qynes,  John  Robert  1869-1949 

Coade,  Thorold  Francis  1896-1963 

Coatalen,  Louis  Herve  1879-1962 

Coates,  Eric  1886-1957 

Coates,  Joseph  Gordon  1878-1943 

Cobb,  Gerard  Francis  1838-1904 

Cobb,  John  Rhodes  1899-1952 
Cobbe,  Sir  Alexander 

Stanhope  1870-1931 

Cobbe,  Frances  Power  1822-1904 
Cobbold,  Cameron 

Fromanteel,  Baron  Cobbold  1904-1987 
Cobden-Sanderson,  Thomas 

James  1840-1922 

Cobham,  Sir  Alan  John  1894-1973 

Cochran,  Sir  Charles  Blake  1872-1951 

Cochrane,  Archibald  Leman  1909-1988 
Cochrane,  Douglas 

Mackinnon  Baillie 

Hamilton,  Earl  of 

Dundonald  1852-1935 
Cochrane,  Sir  Ralph 

Alexander  1895-1977 


525 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Cochrane-Baillie,  Charles 

Wallace  Alexander  Napier 

Ross,  Baron  Lamington. 

See  Baillie  1860-1940 

Cockayne,  Dame  Elizabeth  1894-1988 

Cockburn,  (Francis)  Claud  1904-1981 

Cockcroft,  Sir  John  Douglas  1897-1967 

Cockerell,  Douglas  Bennett  1870-1945 

Cockerell,  Sir  Sydney  Carlyle  1867-1962 

Cockerell,  Sydney  Morris  1906-1987 
Cocks,  Arthur  Herbert 

Tennyson  Somers-, 

Baron  Somers.  See 

Somers-Cocks  1887-1944 

Codner,  Maurice  Frederick  1888-1958 

Cody,  Samuel  Franklin  #1861-1913 
Coghill,  Nevill  Henry  Kendal 

Aylmer  1899-1980 
Coghlan,  Sir  Charles  Patrick 

John  1863-1927 

Cohen,  Sir  Andrew  Benjamin  1909-1968 

Cohen,  Arthur  1829-1914 

Cohen,  Harriet  1896-1967 
Cohen,  Henry,  Baron  Cohen 

of  Birkenhead  1900-1977 
Cohen,  Sir  John  Edward 

('Jack')  "  1898-1979 
Cohen,  Lionel  Leonard, 

Baron  1888-1973 

Cohen,  Sir  Robert  Waley  1877-1952 

Coia,  Jack  Antonio  1898-1981 

Coillard,  Francois  1834-1904 

Cokayne,  George  Edward  1825-1911 

Coke,  Gerald  Edward  1907-1990 
Coke,  Thomas  William,  Earl 

of  Leicester  1822-1909 

Coker,  Ernest  George  1869-1946 

Colbeck,  William  #1871-1930 
Coldstream,  Sir  William 

Menzies  1908-1987 
Cole,  Cecil  Jackson-.  See 

Jackson-Cole  1901-1979 
Cole,  George  Douglas 

Howard  1889-1959 

Cole,  George  James,  Baron  1906-1979 

Cole,  Dame  Margaret  Isabel  1893-1980 

Colebrook,  Leonard  1883-1967 

Coleman,  William  Stephen  1829-1904 
Coleraine,  Baron.  See  Law, 

Richard  Kidston  1901-1980 
Coleridge,  Bernard  John 

Seymour,  Baron  1851-1927 

Coleridge,  Mary  Elizabeth  1861-1907 
Coleridge,  Stephen  William 

Buchanan  1854-1936 

Coleridge-Taylor,  Samuel  1875-1912 
Coles,  Charles  Edward,  Coles 

Pasha  1853-1926 
Coles,  Vincent  Stuckey 

Stratum  1845-1929 

Collar,  (Arthur)  Roderick  1908-1986 


Collen,  Sir  Edwin  Henry 

Hayter 
Colles,  Henry  Cope 
Collett,  Sir  Henry 
Collie,  John  Norman 
Collier,  John 
Collings,  Jesse 
Collingwood,  Cuthbert 
Collingwood,  Sir  Edward 

Foyle 
Collingwood,  Robin  George 
Collins,  Cecil  James  Henry 
Collins,  John  Churton 
Collins,  Josephine  ('Jose') 
Collins,  (Lewis)  John 
Collins,  Michael 
Collins,  Norman  Richard 
Collins,  Richard  Henn,  Baron 
Collins,  Sir  William 

Alexander  Roy 
Collins,  William  Edward 
Colman,  Ronald  Charles 
Colnaghi,  Martin  Henry 
Colomb,  Sir  John  Charles 

Ready 
Colquhoun,  Robert 
Colton,  Sir  John 
Colvile,  Sir  Henry  Edward 
Colville,  David  John,  Baron 

Clydesmuir 
Colville,  Sir  John  Rupert 
Colville,  Sir  Stanley  Cecil 

James 
Colvin,  Sir  Auckland 
Colvin,  Ian  Duncan 
Colvin,  Sir  Sidney 
Colvin,  Sir  Walter  Mytton. 

See  under  Colvin,  Sir 

Auckland 
Commerell,  Sir  John  Edmund 
Common,  Andrew  Ainslie 
Comper,  Sir  (John)  Ninian 
Compton,  Lord  Alwyne 

Frederick 
Compton,  Fay 

Compton-Burnett,  Dame  Ivy 
Comrie,  Leslie  John 
Conder,  Charles 
Conder,  Claude  Reignier 
Condy,  Henry  Bollmann 
Conesford,  Baron.  See 

Strauss,  Henry  George 
Congreve,  Sir  Walter  Norris 
Coningham,  Sir  Arthur 
Connard,  Philip 
Connaught  and  Strathearn, 

Duke  of.  See  Arthur 

William  Patrick  Albert 
Connell,  Amyas  Douglas 
Connemara,  Baron.  See 

Bourke,  Robert 


1843-1911 
1879-1943 
1836-1901 
1859-1942 
1850-1934 
1831-1920 
1826-1908 

1900-1970 
1889-1943 
1908-1989 
1848-1908 
1887-1958 
1905-1982 
1890-1922 
1907-1982 
1842-1911 

1900-1976 

1867-1911 

#1891-1958 

1821-1908 

1838-1909 
1914-1962 
1823-1902 
1852-1907 

1894-1954 
1915-1987 

1861-1939 
1838-1908 
1877-1938 
1845-1927 


1829-1901 
1841-1903 
1864-1960 

1825-1906 
1894-1978 
1884-1969 
1893-1950 
1868-1909 
1848-1910 
#1826-1907 

1892-1974 
1862-1927 
1895-1948 
1875-1958 


1850-1942 
1901-1980 

1827-1902 


526 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Connolly,  Cyril  Vernon 

1903- 

-1974 

Connolly,  James 

#1868- 

-1916 

Connor,  Ralph,  pseudonym. 

See  Gordon,  Charles 

William 

1860- 

-1937 

Connor,  Sir  William  Neil 

1909- 

-1967 

Conquest,  George  Augustus 

1837- 

-1901 

Conrad,  Joseph 

1857- 

-1924 

Cons,  Emma 

#1838- 

-1912 

Constable,  William  George 

1887- 

-1976 

Constant,  Hayne 

1904- 

-1968 

Constantine,  Learie  Nicholas, 

Baron  Constantine 

1901- 

-1971 

Conway,  Robert  Seymour 

1864- 

-1933 

Conway,  William  Martin, 

Baron  Conway  of  Allington 

1856- 

-1937 

Conybeare,  Frederick 

Cornwallis 

1856- 

-1924 

Conyngham,  Sir  Gerald 

Ponsonby  Lenox-.  See 

Lenox-Conyngham 

1866- 

-1956 

Cook,  Arthur  Bernard 

1868- 

-1952 

Cook,  Arthur  James 

1883- 

-1931 

Cook,  Sir  Basil  Alfred 

Kemball-.  See 

Kemball-Cook 

1876- 

-1949 

Cook,  Sir  Edward  Tyas 

1857- 

-1919 

Cook,  Sir  Francis 

1817- 

-1901 

Cook,  Sir  James  Wilfred 

1900- 

-1975 

Cook,  Sir  Joseph 

1860- 

-1947 

Cook,  Stanley  Arthur 

1873- 

-1949 

Cook,  Sir  William  Richard 

Joseph 

1905- 

-1987 

Cooke,  George  Albert 

1865- 

-1939 

Cooke,  Mordecai  Cubitt 

#1825- 

-1914 

Coolidge,  William  Augustus 

Brevoort 

1850- 

-1926 

Cooper,  Sir  Alfred 

1838- 

-1908 

Cooper,  Alfred  Duff, 

Viscount  Norwich 

1890- 

-1954 

Cooper,  (Arthur  William) 

Douglas 

1911- 

-1984 

Cooper,  Charlotte.  See  Sterry 

1870- 

-1966 

Cooper,  Sir  Daniel 

1821- 

-1902 

Cooper,  Lady  Diana  Olivia 

Winifred  Maud, 

Viscountess  Norwich 

1892- 

-1986 

Cooper,  Edward  Herbert 

1867- 

-1910 

Cooper,  Sir  (Francis)  D'Arcy 

1882- 

-1941 

Cooper,  Dame  Gladys 

Constance 

1888- 

-1971 

Cooper,  James 

1846- 

-1922 

Cooper,  James  Davis 

1823- 

-1904 

Cooper,  Joshua  Edward 

Synge 

1901- 

-1981 

Cooper,  Sir  (Thomas)  Edwin 

1874- 

-1942 

Cooper,  Thomas  Frederick 

1921 

-1984 

Cooper,  Thomas  Mackay, 

Baron  Cooper  of  Culross 

1892- 

-1955 

Cooper,  Thomas  Sidney 

1803- 

-1902 

Cooper,  Thompson 

1837 

-1904 

Coote,  Sir  Colin  Reith 
Cope,  Sir  Alfred  William 
Cope,  Sir  (Vincent)  Zachary 
Copeland,  Ralph 
Copinger,  Walter  Arthur 
Copisarow,  Maurice 
Coppard,  Alfred  Edgar 
Coppin,  George  Selth 
Coppinger,  Richard  William 
Corbet,  Matthew  Ridley 
Corbett,  Edward  James  OJini') 
Corbett,  John 

Corbett,  Sir  Julian  Stafford 
Corbett,  Thomas  Godfrey 

Poison,  Baron  Rowallan 
Corbett  Ashby,  Dame 

Margery  Irene 
Corbishley,  Thomas 
Corbould,  Edward  Henry 
Corelli,  Marie,  pseudonym.  See 

Mackay,  Mary 
Corfield,  William  Henry 
Cork  and  Orrery,  Earl  of.  See 

Bovle,  William  Henry 

Dudley 
Cornford,  Frances  Crofts 
Cornford,  Francis  Macdonald 
Cornford,  (Rupert)  John 
Cornish,  Charles  John 
Cornish,  Francis  Wane 

Warre-.  See  Warre-Cornish 
Cornish,  Vaughan 
Cornwall,  Sir  James 

Handyside  Marshall-.  See 

Marshall-Cornwall 
Cornwallis,  Sir  Kinahan 
Cornwell,  James 
Corry,  Montagu  William 

Lowry,  Baron  Rowton 
Corvo,  Baron.  See  Rolfe, 

Frederick  William 
Cory,  John 

Coryndon,  Sir  Robert  Thome 
Cosgrave,  William  Thomas 
Cosslett,  (Vernon)  Ellis 
Costain,  Sir  Richard  Rylandes 
Costello,  John  Aloysius 
Cotton,  Jack 

Cotton,  (Thomas)  Henry 
Couch,  Sir  Arthur  Thomas 

Quiller-  ('OJ).  See 

Quiller-Couch 
Couch,  Sir  Richard 
Couchman,  Sir  Harold  John 
Coulson,  Charles  Alfred 
Coulton,  George  Gordon 
Couper,  Sir  George  Ebenezer 

Wilson 
Coup  land,  Sir  Reginald 
Court  Brown,  William 

Michael.  See  Brown 


1893-1979 
1877-1954 
1881-1974 
1837-1905 
1847-1910 
1889-1959 
1878-1957 
1819-1906 
1847-1910 
1850-1902 
1875-1955 
1817-1901 
1854-1922 

1895-1977 

1882-1981 
1903-1976 
1815-1905 

1855-1924 
1843-1903 


1873-1967 
1886-1960 
1874-1943 
#1915-1936 
1858-1906 

1839-1916 

1862-1948 


1887-1985 
1883-1959 
1812-1902 

1838-1903 

#1860-1913 
1828-1910 
1870-1925 
1880-1965 
1908-1990 
1902-1966 
1891-1976 
1903-1964 
1907-1987 


1863-1944 
1817-1905 
#1882-1956 
1910-1974 
1858-1947 

1824-1908 
1884-1952 

1918-1968 


527 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Courtauld,  Augustine  1904-1959 

Courtauld,  Samuel  1876-1947 

Courthope,  William  John  1842-1917 
Courtneidge,  Dame 

(Esmeralda)  Cicely  1893-1980 
Courtney,  Sir  Christopher 

Lloyd  1890-1976 
Courtney,  Dame  Kathleen 

D'Olier  #1878-1974 
Courtney,  Leonard  Henry, 

Baron  Courtney  of  Penwith  1832-1918 

Courtney,  William  Leonard  1850-1928 

Cousin,  Anne  Ross  1824-1906 

Cousins,  Frank  1904-1986 

Cowan,  Sir  Walter  Henry  1871-1956 

Cowans,  Sir  John  Steven  1862-1921 

Coward,  Sir  Henry  1849-1944 

Coward,  Sir  Noel  Peirce  1899-1973 
Cowdray,  Viscount.  See 

Pearson,  Weetman 

Dickinson  1856-1927 

Cowell,  Edward  Byles  1826-1903 

Cowen,  Sir  Frederic  Hymen  1852-1935 

Cowie,  William  Garden  1 83 1  -1902 

Cowley,  Sir  Arthur  Ernest  1861-1931 
Cowper,  Francis  Thomas  de 

Grey,  Earl  1834-1905 

Cox,  Alfred  1866-1954 
Cox,  Sir  Christopher  William 

Machell  1899-1982 
Cox,  George  (called  Sir 

George)  William  1827-1902 

Cox,  Harold  1859-1936 

Cox,  Leslie  Reginald  1897-1965 

Cox,  Sir  Percy  Zachariah  1864-1937 
Cozens-Hardy,  Herbert 

Hardy,  Baron  1838-1920 
Craddock,  Sir  Reginald  Henry  1864-1937 
Cradock,  Sir  Christopher 

George  Francis  Maurice  1862-1914 
Craig,  (Edward  Henry) 

Gordon  1872-1966 

Craig,  Isa.  See  Knox  1831-1903 
Craig,  James,  Viscount 

Craigavon  1871-1940 

Craig,  Sir  John  1874-1957 

Craig,  William  James  1 843  -1906 
Craigavon,  Viscount.  See 

Craig,  James  1871-1940 
Craigie,  Pearl  Mary  Teresa, 

'John  Oliver  Hobbes'  1867-1906 

Craigie,  Sir  Robert  Leslie  1883-1959 
Craigie,  Sir  William 

Alexander  1867-1957 
Craigmyle,  Baron.  See  Shaw, 

Thomas  1850-1937 

Craik,  Sir  Henry  1846-1927 
Cranbrook,  Earl  of.  See 

Gathorne-Hardy,  Gathorne  1814-1906 

Crane,  Walter  1845-1915 

Cranko,  John  Cyril  1927-1973 


Crankshaw,  Edward  1909-1984 

Crathorne,  Baron.  See 

Dugdale,  Thomas  Lionel  1897-1977 

Craven,  Hawes  1837-1910 

Craven,  Henry  Thornton  1818-1905 

Crawford,  Earl  of.  See 

Lindsay,  David  Alexander 

Edward  1871-1940 

Crawford,  Earl  of.  See 

Lindsay,  David  Alexander 

Robert  1900-1975 

Crawford,  Earl  of.  See 

Lindsay,  James  Ludovic  1847-1913 

Crawford,  Osbert  Guy 

Stanhope  1886-1957 

Crawfurd,  Oswald  John 

Frederick  1834-1909 

Crawfurd,  Sir  Raymond 

Henry  Payne  1865-1938 

Crawley,  Leonard  George  1903-1981 

Creagh,  Sir  Garrett 

O'Moore  1848-1923 

Creagh,  William  1828-1901 

Creasy,  Sir  George  Elvey  1895-1972 

Creditor,  Dora.  See  Gaitskell, 

Anna  Deborah  1901-1989 

Creech  Jones,  Arthur.  See 

Jones  1891-1964 

Creed,  John  Martin  1889-1940 

Creed,  Sir  Thomas  Percival  1897-1969 

Creedy,  Sir  Herbert  James  1 878  -1 973 

Cremer,  Robert  Wyndham 

Ketton-.  See 

Ketton-Cremer  1906-1969 

Cremer,  Sir  William  Randal  1838-1908 

Crewe-Milnes,  Robert  Offley 

Ashburton,  Marquess  of 

Crewe  1858-1945 

Crichton-Browne,  Sir  James. 

See  Browne  1840-1938 

Cripps,  Charles  Alfred,  Baron 

Parmoor  1852-1941 

Cripps,  Dame  Isobel  189 1  -1979 

Cripps,  Sir  (Richard)  Stafford  1889-1952 
Cripps,  Wilfred  Joseph  1841-1903 

Crispin,  Edmund,  pseudonym. 

See  Montgomery,  Robert 

Bruce  1921-1978 

Crocker,  Henry  Radcliffe-. 

See  Radcliffe-Crocker  1845-1909 

Crockett,  Samuel  Rutherford  1860-1914 

Croft,  Henry  Page,  Baron  1881-1947 

Croft,  John  1833-1905 

Croft,  (John)  Michael  1922-1986 

Crofts,  Ernest  1847-1911 

Croke,  Thomas  William  1824-1902 

Cromer,  Earl  of.  See  Baring, 

Evelyn  1841-1917 

Cromer,  Earl  of.  See  Baring, 

Rowland  Thomas  1877-1953 

Crompton,  Henry  1836-1904 


528 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Crompton,  Richmal.  See 

Lamburn,  Richmal 

Crompton  1890-1%9 

Crompton,  Rookes  Evelyn 

Bell  1845-1940 

Cronin,  Archibald  Joseph  1896-1981 

Crookes,  Sir  William  1832-1919 

Crooks,  William  1852-1921 

Crookshank,  Harry  Frederick 

Comfort,  Viscount 

Crookshank  1893-1961 

Crosfield,  John  #1832-1901 

Crosland,  (Charles)  Anthony 

(Raven)  1918-1977 

Cross,  Sir  (Alfred)  Rupert 

(Neale)  1912-1980 

Cross,  (Arthur)  Geoffrey 

(Neale),  Baron  Cross  of 

Chelsea  1904-1989 

Cross,  Charles  Frederick  1855-1935 

Cross,  Kenneth  Mervyn 

Baskerville  1890-1968 

Cross,  Richard  Assheton, 

Viscount  1823-1914 

Crossman,  Richard  Howard 

Stafford  1907-1974 

Crossman,  Sir  William  1830-1901 

Crosthwaite,  Sir  Charles 

Haukes  Todd  1835-1915 

Crowdv,  Dame  Rachel 

Eleanor  1884-1964 

Crowe,  Sir  Edward  Thomas 

Frederick  1877-1960 

Crowe,  Eyre  1824-1910 

Crowe,  Sir  Eyre  Alexander 

Barby  Wichart  1864-1925 

Crowley,  Aleister.  See 

Crowley,  Edward 

Alexander  #1875-1947 

Crowlev,  Edward  Alexander  #1875-1947 

Crowther,  Geoffrey,  Baron  1907-1972 

Crowther-Hunt,  Baron.  See 

Hunt,  Norman  Crowther  1920-1987 

Crozier,  William  Percival  1879-1944 

Cruikshank,  Robert  James  1898-1956 

Crum,  Walter  Ewing  1865-1944 

Crump,  Charles  George  1862-1935 

Cruttwell,  Charles  Robert 

Mowbray  Fraser  1887-1941 

Cruttwell,  Charles  Thomas  1847-1911 

Cubitt,  William  George  1835-1903 

Cudlipp,  Percival  Thomas 

James  1905-1962 

Cullen,  William  1867-1948 

Cullingworth,  Charles  James  1 84 1  -1 908 

Cullis,  Winifred  Clara  1875-1956 

Cumberlege,  Geoffrey 

Fenwick  Jocelyn    "  1891-1979 

Cumming,  Sir  Mansfield 

George  Smith  #1859-1923 

Cummings,  Arthur  John  1882-1957 


Cummings,  Bruce  Frederick, 

4W.  N.  P.  Barbelhon' 
Cuningham,  James  McNabb 
Cunliffe,  Walter,  Baron 
Cunliffe-Lister,  Philip,  Earl 

of  Swinton 
Cunningham,  Sir  Alan 

Gordon 
Cunningham,  Andrew 

Browne,  Viscount 

Cunningham  of  Hyndhope 
Cunningham,  Darnel  John 
Cunningham,  Sir  George 
Cunningham,  Sir  John  Henry 

Dacres 
Cunningham,  William 
Cunninghame  Graham, 

Robert  Bontine.  See 

Graham 
Curran,  Sir  Charles  John 
Currie,  Sir  Arthur  William 
Currie,  Sir  Donald 
Currie,  Sir  James 
Currie  (formerly  Singleton), 

Mary  Montgomerie,  Lady, 

'Violet  Fane' 
Currie,  Philip  Henry 

Wodehouse,  Baron 
Currie,  Sir  William  Crawford 
Curtin,  John 

Curtis,  Dunstan  Michael  Carr 
Curtis,  Edmund 
Curtis,  Lionel  George 
Curtis,  William  Edward 
Curtis  Brown,  Spencer 
Curzon,  Sir  Clifford  Michael 
Curzon,  George  Nathaniel, 

Marquess  Curzon  of 

Kedleston 
Curzon-Howe,  Sir  Assheton 

Gore 
Cushendun,  Baron.  See 

McNeill,  Ronald  John 
Cushny,  Arthur  Robertson 
Cust,  Henry  John  Cockayne 
Cust,  Sir  Lionel  Henry 
Cust,  Robert  Needham 
Custance,  Henry 
Custance,  Sir  Reginald 

Neville 
Cuthbertson,  Sir  David  Paton 
Cutner,  Solomon.  See 

Solomon 
Cutts,  Edward  Lewes 


D'Abernon,  Viscount.  See 
Vincent,  Sir  Edgar 

Dadabhai,  Naoroji.  See 
Naoroji 


1889-1919 

1829-1905 
#1855-1920 

1884-1972 

1887-1983 


1883-1963 
1850-1909 
1888-1963 

1885-1962 

1849-1919 


1852-1936 
#1921-1980 
1875-1933 
1825-1909 
1868-1937 


1843-1905 

1834-1906 
1884-1961 

1885-1945 
1910-1983 
1881-1943 
1872-1955 
1889-1969 
1906-1980 
1907-1982 


1859-1925 

1850-1911 

1861-1934 
1866-1926 
1861-1917 
1859-1929 
1821-1909 
1842-1908 

1847-1935 
1900-1989 

1902-1988 
1824-1901 


1857-1941 

#1825-1917 


529 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Dadabhoy,  Sir  Maneckji 

Byramji  1865-1953 

Dafoe,  John  Wesley  1866-1944 

Dahl,  Roald  1916-1990 

Dain,  Sir  (Harry)  Guy  1870-1966 

Dakin,  Henry  Drysdale  1880-1952 

Dale,  Sir  David  1829-1906 

Dale,  Sir  Henry  Hallett  1875-1968 

Daley,  Sir  (William)  Allen  1887-1969 

Dallinger,  William  Henry  1842-1909 
Dalrymple-Hamilton,  Sir 

Frederick  Hew  George  1890-1974 
Dalrymple-Hay,  Sir  Harley 

Hugh.  See  Hay  1861-1940 
Dalton,  (Edward)  Hugh  (John 

Neale),  Baron  1887-1962 

Dalton,  Ormonde  Maddock  1866-1945 
Dalziel,  Davison  Alexander, 

Baron  1854-1928 

Dalziel,  Edward  1817-1905 

Dalziel,  George  1815-1902 
Dalziel,  James  Henry,  Baron 

Dalziel  of  Kirkcaldy  1868-1935 
Dalziel,  Thomas  Bolton 

Gilchrist  Septimus  1823-1906 
Damm,  Sheila  Van.  See  Van 

Damm  1922-1987 
Dampier,  Sir  William  Cecil 

Dampier  (formerly 

Whetham)  1867-1952 

Danckwerts,  Peter  Victor  1916-1984 
Dane,  Clemence,  pseudonym. 

See  Ashton,  Winifred  1888-1965 

Dane,  Sir  Louis  William  1856-1946 

Daniel,  Charles  Henry  Olive  1836-1919 

Daniel,  Evan  1837-1904 

Daniel,  Glyn  Edmund  1914-1986 

Danielli,  James  Frederic  1911  -1984 

Danquah,  Joseph  Boakye  1895-1965 
Dansey,  Sir  Claude  Edward 

Marjoribanks  #1876-1947 

Danvers,  Frederic  Charles  1833-1906 
D'Aranyi,  Jelly  (1893-1966). 

See  under  Fachiri,  Adila  1886-1962 

Darbishire,  Helen  1881-1961 

Darbyshire,  Alfred  1839-1908 

D'Arcy,  Charles  Frederick  1859-1938 

D'Arcy,  Martin  Cyril  1888-1976 

D'Arcy,  William  Knox  #1849-1917 

Darling,  Charles  John,  Baron  1849-1936 

Darling,  Sir  Frank  Fraser  1903-1979 

Darlington,  Cyril  Dean  1903-1981 
Darlington,  William  Aubrey 

Cecil  1890-1979 

Dart,  (Robert)  Thurston  1921-1971 
Darwin,  Bernard  Richard 

Meirion  1876-1961 

Darwin,  Sir  Charles  Gallon  1887-1962 

Darwin,  Sir  Francis  1848-1925 

Darwin,  Sir  George  Howard  1845-1912 

Darwin,  Sir  Horace  1 85 1  -1928 


Darwin,  Sir  Robert  Vere 

('Robin')  1910-1974 

Dashwood,  Edmee  Elizabeth 

Monica,  'E.  M.  Delafield'  1890-1943 

Daubeney,  Sir  Henry  Charles 

Barnston  1810-1903 

Daubeny,  Sir  Peter 

Lauderdale  1921-1975 

Davenport,  Ernest  Harold 

('Nicholas')  1893-1979 

Davenport,  Harold  1907-1969 

Davenport-Hill,  Rosamond. 

See  Hill  1825-1902 

Davey,  Horace,  Baron  1833-1907 

David,  Albert  Augustus  1867-1950 

David,  Sir  Percival  Victor 

David  Ezekiel  #1892-1964 

David,  Sir  (Tannatt  William) 

Edgeworth  1858-1934 

Davids,  Thomas  William 

Rhys  1843-1922 

Davidson,  Andrew  Bruce  1831-1902 

Davidson,  Charles  1824-1902 

Davidson,  (Frances)  Joan, 

Baroness  Northchurch  and 

Viscountess  1894-1985 

Davidson,  James  Leigh 

Strachan-  See 

Strachan-Davidson  1843-1916 

Davidson,  (James)  Norman  1911-1972 

Davidson,  John  1857-1909 

Davidson,  John  Colin 

Campbell,  Viscount  1889-1970 

Davidson,  Sir  John 

Humphrey  1876-1954 

Davidson,  John  Thain  1833-1904 

Davidson,  Sir  (Leybourne) 

Stanley  (Patrick)  1894-1981 

Davidson,  Randall  Thomas, 

Baron  Davidson  of 

Lambeth  1848-1930 

Davie,  Thomas  Benjamin  1895-1955 

Davies,  Charles  Maurice  1828-1910 

Davies,  Clement  Edward  1884-1962 

Davies,  David,  Baron  1880-1944 

Davies,  Duncan  Sheppey  1921-1987 

Davies,  Sir  (Henry)  Walford  1869-1941 

Davies,  John  Emerson 

Harding  1916-1979 

Davies,  John  Llewelyn  1826-1916 

Davies,  Margaret  Caroline 

Llewelyn.  See  Llewelyn 

Davies  #1861-1944 

Davies,  Sir  Martin  1908-1975 

Davies,  Rhys  1901-1978 

Davies,  Richard  Llewelyn, 

Baron  Llewelyn-Davies. 

See  Llewelyn  Davies  1912-1981 

Davies,  Robert  1816-1905 

Davies,  (Sarah)  Emily  1830-1921 

Davies,  William  Henry  1871-1940 


530 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Davies,  William  John  Abbott 

1890- 

-1967 

Davies,  Sir  William 

(Llewelyn) 

1887- 

-1952 

D'Avigdor-Goldsmid,  Sir 

Henry  Joseph 

1909- 

-1976 

Daviot,  Gordon.  See 

Mackintosh,  Elizabeth 

#1896- 

-1952 

Davis,  Charles  Edward 

1827- 

-1902 

Davis,  George  Edward 

#1850- 

-1907 

Davis,  Henry  William 

Carless 

1874- 

-1928 

Davis,  Joseph 

1901- 

-1978 

Davis,  Sir  William  Wellclose 

1901- 

-1987 

Davison,  Charles 

#1858- 

-1940 

Davison,  Emily  Wilding 

#1872- 

-1913 

Davitt,  Michael 

1846- 

-1906 

Dawber,  Sir  (Edward)  Guy 

1861- 

-1938 

Dawkins,  Richard 

McGiUivray 

1871- 

-1955 

Dawkins,  Sir  William  Boyd 

1837- 

-1929 

Dawson,  Bertrand  Edward, 

Viscount  Dawson  of  Penn 

1864- 

-1945 

Dawson,  Charles 

#1864- 

-1916 

Dawson,  (George)  Geoffrey 

1874- 

-1944 

Dawson,  George  Mercer 

1849- 

-1901 

Dawson,  (Henry)  Christopher 

#1889- 

-1970 

Dawson,  John 

1827- 

-1903 

Dawtry,  Frank  Dalmeny 

1902- 

-1968 

Day,  Sir  John  Charles 

Frederic  Sigismund 

1826- 

-1908 

Day,  Lewis  Foreman 

1845- 

-1910 

Day,  William  Henry 

1823- 

-1908 

Day-Lewis,  Cecil 

1904- 

-1972 

Deacon,  Sir  George  Edward 

Raven 

1906- 

-1984 

Deacon,  George  Frederick 

1843- 

-1909 

Deakin,  Alfred 

1856- 

-1919 

Deakin,  Arthur 

1890- 

-1955 

Dean,  Basil  Herbert 

1888- 

-1978 

Dean,  Sir  Maurice  Joseph 

1906- 

-1978 

Dean,  William  Ralph  ('Dixie') 

1907- 

-1980 

Deane,  Sir  James  Parker 

1812- 

-1902 

Dearmer,  Percy 

1867- 

-1936 

De  Baissac,  (Marc)  Claude 

(de  Boucherville) 

1907- 

-1974 

De  Beer,  Esmond  Samuel 

1895- 

-1990 

De  Beer,  Sir  Gavin  Rylands 

1899- 

-1972 

Debenham,  Frank 

1883- 

-1965 

De  Bunsen,  Sir  Maurice 

William  Ernest 

1852- 

-1932 

De  Burgh,  William  George 

1866- 

-1943 

De  Burgh  Canning,  Hubert 

George,  Marquess  of 

Clanricarde.  See  Burgh 

Canning 

1832 

-1916 

De  Chair,  Sir  Dudley  Rawson 

Stratford 

1864- 

-1958 

Dee,  Philip  Ivor 

1904- 

-1983 

Deedes,  Sir  Wyndham  Henry 

1883- 

-1956 

De  Ferranti,  Basil  Reginald 

Vincent  Ziani.  See  Ferranti 

1930 

-1988 

De  Ferranti,  Sebastian  Ziani. 

See  Ferranti  1864-1930 

De  Guingand,  Sir  Francis 

Wilfred  1900-1979 

De  Havilland,  Sir  Geoffrey  1882-1965 

De  Havilland,  Geoffrey  Raoul  1910-1946 
De  la  Bedoyere,  Count 

Michael  Anthony  Maurice 

Huchet  1900-1973 

Delafield,  E.  M.,  pseudonym. 

See  Dashwood,  Edmee 

Elizabeth  Monica  1890-1943 

De  la  Mare,  Walter  John  1873-1956 

Delamere,  Baron.  See 

Cholmondeley,  Hugh  1870-1931 

De  la  Ramee,  Marie  Louise, 

'Ouida'  1839-1908 

De  la  Rue,  Sir  Thomas 

Andros  1849-1911 

De  Laszlo,  Philip  Alexius. 

See  Laszlo  de  Lombos  1869-1937 

De  La  Warr,  Earl.  See 

Sackville,  Herbrand 

Edward  Dundonald  Brassev  1900-1976 
Delevingne,  Sir  Malcolm  1868-1950 

Delius,  Frederick  1862-1934 

Dell,  Ethel  Marv.  See  Savage  1881-1939 

Deller,  Sir  Edwin  1883-1936 

Delmer,  (Denis)  Sefton  1904-1979 

De  Madariaga,  Salvador.  See 

Madariaga  1886-1978 

De  Manio,  Jack  1914-1988 

Demant,  Vigo  Auguste  1893-1983 

De  Montmorency,  James 

Edward  Geoffrey  1866-1934 

De  Montmorency,  Raymond 

Harvey,  Viscount  Frankfort 

de  Montmorency  1835-1902 

De  Morgan,  William  Frend  1839-1917 

Dempsev,  Sir  Miles 

Christopher  1896-1969 

Denman,  Gertrude  Mary, 

Lady  1884-1954 

Dennev,  James  1856-1917 

Denning,  Sir  Norman  Egbert  1904-1979 

Dennis,  Nigel  Forbes  1912-1989 

Denniston,  Alexander  Guthrie 

(Alastair)  1881-1961 

Denniston,  John  Dewar  1887-1949 

Denny,  Sir  Archibald  1860-1936 

Denny,  Sir  Maurice  Edward  1886-1955 

Dennv,  Sir  Michael  Mavnard  1896-1972 

Dent,  Charles  Enrique  '  1911-1976 

Dent,  Edward  Joseph  1876-1957 

Dent,  Joseph  Malaby  1849-1926 

Derby,  Earl  of.  See  Stanley, 

Edward  George  Villiers'  1865-1948 

Derbv,  Earl  of.  See  Stanley, 

Frederick  Arthur  1841-1908 

D'Erlanger,  Sir  Gerard  John 

Regis  Leo  1906-1962 


53i 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


De  Robeck,  Sir  John  Michael 
De  Saulles,  George  William 
Desborough,  Baron.  See 

Grenfell,  William  Henry 
Desch,  Cecil  Henry 
De  Selincourt,  Ernest.  See 

Selincourt 
De  Soissons,  Louis 

Emmanuel  Jean  Guy  de 

Savoie-Carignan 
Despard,  Charlotte 
De  Stein,  Sir  Edward  Sinauer 
De  Syllas,  Stelios  Messinesos 

(Leo) 
Des  Voeux,  Sir  (George) 

William 
Dermoid,  Charles  Maurice 
De  Valera,  Eamon 
De  Vere,  Aubrey  Thomas 
De  Vere,  Sir  Stephen  Edward 
Deverell,  Sir  Cyril  John 
De  Villiers,  John  Henry, 

Baron 
Devine,  George  Alexander 

Cassady 
Devlin,  Joseph 
Devonport,  Viscount.  See 

Kearley,  Hudson  Ewbanke 
Devons,  Ely 
Devonshire,  Duke  of.  See 

Cavendish,  Spencer 

Compton 
Devonshire,  Duke  of.  See 

Cavendish,  Victor  Christian 

William 
Dewar,  Sir  James 
De  Wet,  Christiaan  Rudolph 
De  Wiart,  Sir  Adrian  Carton. 

See  Carton  de  Wiart 
De  Winton,  Sir  Francis 

Walter 
De  Worms,  Henry,  Baron 

Pirbright 
Dewrance,  Sir  John 
Dexter,  John 
D'Eyncourt,  Sir  Eustace 

Henry  William  Tennyson-. 

See  Tennyson-d'Eyncourt 
De  Zulueta,  Sir  Philip 

Francis.  See  Zulueta 
Dibbs,  Sir  George  Richard 
Dibdin,  Sir  Lewis  Tonna 
Dicey,  Albert  Venn 
Dicey,  Edward  James  Stephen 
Dick,  Sir  William  Reid 
Dick-Read,  Grantly 
Dickens,  Frank 
Dickinson,  Goldsworthy 

Lowes 
Dickinson,  Henry  Winram 
Dickinson,  Hercules  Henry 


1862- 

1928 

Dickinson,  Lowes  (Cato) 

1819-1908 

1862- 

1903 

Dicksee,  Sir  Francis  Bernard 

('Frank') 

1853-1928 

1855- 

1945 

Dickson,  Sir  Collingwood 

1817-1904 

#1874- 

1958 

Dickson,  Sir  William 

Forster 

1898-1987 

1870- 

1943 

Dickson,  William  Purdie 
Dickson-Poynder,  Sir  John 
Poynder,  Baron  Islington. 

1823-1901 

1890- 

1962 

See  Poynder 

1866-1936 

#1844- 

-1939 

Diefenbaker,  John  George 

1895-1979 

1887- 

1965 

Digby,  William 
Dilhorne,  Viscount.  See 

1849-1904 

1917- 

1964 

Manningham-Buller, 

Reginald  Edward 

1905-1980 

1834- 

-1909 

Dilke,  Sir  Charles  Wentworth 

1843-1911 

1883- 

-1908 

Dilke,  Emilia  Frances,  Lady 

1840-1904 

1882- 

-1975 

Dill,  Sir  John  Greer 

1881-1944 

1814- 

-1902 

Dill,  Sir  Samuel 

1844-1924 

1812- 

-1904 

Dillon,  Emile  Joseph 

1854-1933 

1874- 

-1947 

Dillon,  Frank 

Dillon,  Harold  Arthur  Lee-, 

1823-1909 

1842- 

-1914 

Viscount  Dillon 

1844-1932 

Dillon,  John 

1851-1927 

1910- 

-1966 

Dillwyn,  (Elizabeth)  Amy 

#1845-1935 

1871- 

-1934 

Dimbleby,  Richard  Frederick 

1913-1965 

Dimock,  Nathaniel 

1825-1909 

1856- 

-1934 

Dines,  William  Henry 

1855-1927 

1913- 

-1967 

Diplock,  (William  John) 

Kenneth,  Baron 

1907-1985 

Dirac,  Paul  Adrien  Maurice 

1902-1984 

1833- 

-1908 

Dix,  George  Eglington  Alston 

(Dom  Gregory) 

1901-1952 

Dixey,  Sir  Frank 

1892-1982 

1868- 

-1938 

Dixie,  Lady  Florence 

1842- 

-1923 

Caroline 

1857-1905 

1854- 

-1922 

Dixon,  Sir  Arthur  Lewis 

1881-1969 

Dixon,  Henry  Horatio 

1869-1953 

1880- 

-1963 

Dixon,  Sir  Pierson  John 

1904-1965 

Dixon,  Sir  Robert  Bland 

1867-1939 

1835- 

-1901 

Dixon,  Walter  Ernest 

1870-1931 

Dobb,  Maurice  Herbert 

1900-1976 

1840- 

-1903 

Dobbie,  Sir  William  George 

1858- 

-1937 

Shedden 

#1879-1964 

1925- 

-1990 

Dobbs,  Sir  Henry  Robert 

Conway 

1871-1934 

Dobell,  Bertram 

1842-1914 

1868- 

-1951 

Dobree,  Bonamy 

1891-1974 

Dobson,  Frank  Owen 

1886-1963 

1929 

-1989 

Dobson,  Gordon  Miller 

1834- 

-1904 

Bourne 

1889-1976 

1852- 

-1938 

Dobson,  (Henry)  Austin 

1840-1921 

1835 

-1922 

Dobson,  Sir  Roy  Hardy 

1891-1968 

1832 

-1911 

Dod,  Charlotte  ('Lottie') 

#1871-1960 

1878 

-1961 

Dodd,  Charles  Harold 

1884-1973 

1890 

-1959 

Dodd,  Francis 

1874-1949 

1899 

-1986 

Dodds,  Sir  (Edward)  Charles 

1899-1973 

Dodds,  Eric  Robertson 

1893-1979 

1862 

-1932 

Dodgson,  Campbell 

1867-1948 

1870 

-1952 

Dodgson,  Frances  Catharine 

1883-1954 

1827 

-1905 

Dods,  Marcus 

1834-1909 

532 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Dohcrty,  Hugh  Lawrence  1875-1919 

Dolin,  Sir  Anton  1904-1983 
Dolling,  Robert  William 

Radclyffe  1851-1902 

Dolmetsch,  (Eugene)  Arnold  1858-1940 

Donald,  Ian  1910-1987 

Donald,  Sir  John  Stewart  1861-1948 

Donald,  Sir  Robert  1860-1933 

Donaldson,  Sir  James  1831-1915 
Donaldson,  St  Clair  George 

Alfred  1863-1935 

Donat,  (Friederich)  Robert  1905-1958 

Donkin,  Bryan  1835-1902 

Donnan,  Frederick  George  1870-1956 

Donnelly,  Desmond  Louis  1920-1974 
Donnellv,  Sir  John 

Fretcheville  Dykes  1834-1902 

Donnet,  Sir  James  John  Louis  1816-1905 

Donoghue,  Stephen  1884-1945 
Donoughmore,  Earl  of.  See 

Helv-Hutchinson,  Richard 

Walter  John  1875-1948 
Donovan,  Terence  Norbert, 

Baron  Donovan  1898-1971 

Doodson,  Arthur  Thomas  1890-1968 
Dorrien,  Sir  Horace 

Lockwood  Smith-.  See 

Smith-Dorrien  1858-1930 

Dors,  Diana  1931-1984 

Doubleday,  Herbert  Arthur  1867-1941 

Doughty,  Charles  Montagu  1843-1926 
Doughty- Wvlie,  Charles 

Hotham  Montagu  1868-1915 

Douglas,  Sir  Adve  1815-1906 

Douglas,  Lord  Alfred  Bruce  1870-1945 
Douglas,  Sir  Charles 

Whittingham  Horsley  1850-1914 

Douglas,  Claude  Gordon  1882-1963 

Douglas,  Clifford  ('Hugh')  1879-1952 
Douglas,  George,  pseudonym. 

See  Brown,  George 

Douglas  1869-1902 
Douglas,  George 

Cunninghame  Monteath  1826-1904 

Douglas,  (George)  Norman  1868-1952 

Douglas,  Sir  (Henrv)  Percv  1876-1939 

Douglas,  Keith  Castellain  #1920-1944 

Douglas,  Sir  William  Scott  1890-1953 
Douglas,  William  Sholto, 

Baron  Douglas  of 

Kirtleside  1893-1969 
Douglas-Home,  Charles 

Cospatrick  1937-1985 
Douglas-Pennant,  George 

Sholto  Gordon,  Baron 

Penrhyn  1836-1907 
Douglas-Scott-Montagu,  John 

Walter  Edward,  Baron 

Montagu  of  Beaulieu  1866-1929 

Dove,  Dame  (Jane)  Frances  1847-1942 

Dove,  John  1872-1934 


Dover  Wilson,  John.  See 

Wilson 
Dowden,  Edward 
Dowden,  John 
Dowding,  Hugh  Caswall 

Tremenheere,  Baron 
Dowie,  John  Alexander 
Downey,  Richard  Joseph 
Downie,  Allan  Watt 
Dowty,  Sir  George  Herbert 
Doyle,  Sir  Arthur  Conan 
Doyle,  John  Andrew 
D'Oyly  Carte,  Dame 

Bridget 
D'Oyly  Carte,  Richard 
Drax,  Sir  Reginald 

Aylmer  Ranfurly 

Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-.  See 

Plunkett 
Drayton,  Harold  Charles 

Gilbert  ('Harky*) 
Dredge,  James 
Dreschfeld,  Julius 
Dresser,  Christopher 
Drew,  Sir  Thomas 
Dreyer,  Sir  Frederic  Charles 
Dreyer,  Georges 
Dreyer,  John  Louis  Emil 
Dreyer,  Rosalie 
Driberg,  Thomas  Edward 

Neil,  Baron  Bradwell 
Drinkwater,  John 
Driver,  Sir  Godfrey  Rolles 
Driver,  Samuel  Rolles 
Drogheda,  Earl  of.  See 

Moore,  (Charles)  Garrett 

(Ponsonby) 
Druce,  George  Claridge 
Drummond,  Dugald 
Drummond,  Sir  George 

Alexander 
Drummond,  Sir  Jack  Cecil 
Drummond,  James 
Drummond,  James  Eric,  Earl 

of  Perth 
Drummond,  Peter 
Drummond,  Sir  Peter  Roy 

Maxwell 
Drummond,  William  Henry 
Drurv,  Sir  Alan  Nigel 
Drury,  (Edward)  Alfred 

(Briscoe) 
Drury-Lowe,  Sir  Drury 

Curzon 
Dryland,  Alfred 
Drysdale,  Charles  Vickery 
Drysdale,  Learmont 
Du  Cane,  Sir  Edmund 

Frederick 
Duckett,  Sir  George  Floyd 
Duckworth,  Sir  Dyce 


1881-1969 

1843-1913 
1840-1910 

1882-1970 
1847-1907 
1881-1953 
1901-1988 
1901-1975 
1859-1930 
1844-1907 

1908-1985 
1844-1901 


1880-1967 

1901-1966 
1840-1906 
1846-1907 
#1834-1904 
1838-1910 
1878-1956 
1873-1934 
1852-1926 
1895-1987 

1905-1976 
1882-1937 
1892-1975 
1846-1914 


1910-1989 

1850-1932 

#1840-1912 

1829-1910 

1891-1952 
1835-1918 

1876-1951 
#1850-1918 

1894-1945 
1854-1907 
1889-1980 

1856-1944 

1830-1908 
1865-1946 
1874-1961 

1866-1909 

1830-1903 
1811-1902 
1840-1928 


533 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Duckworth,  Wynfrid 

Laurence  Henry 
Du  Cros,  Sir  Arthur  Philip 
Dudgeon,  (John)  Alastair 
Dudgeon,  Leonard  Stanley 
Dudgeon,  Robert  Ellis 
Dudley,  Earl  of.  See  Ward, 

William  Humble 
Duff,  Sir  Alexander  Ludovic 
Duff,  Sir  Beauchamp 
Duff,  Edward  Gordon 
Duff,  Sir  James  Fitzjames 
Duff,  Sir  Lyman  Poore 
Duff,  Sir  Mountstuart 

Elphinstone  Grant.  See 

Grant  Duff 
Dufferin  and  Ava,  Marquess 

of.  See  Blackwood, 

Frederick  Temple 

Hamilton-Temple 
Duffy,  Sir  Charles  Gavan 
Duffy,  Sir  Frank  Gavan 
Duffy,  Patrick  Vincent 
Duffy,  Terence 
Dugdale,  Thomas  Lionel, 

Baron  Crathorne 
Duke,  Sir  Frederick  William 
Duke,  Henry  Edward,  Baron 

Merrivale 
Duke-Elder,  Sir  (William) 

Stewart 
Dukes,  Ashley 
Dulac,  Edmund 
Du  Maurier,  Dame  Daphne 
Du  Maurier,  Sir  Gerald 

Hubert  Edward  Busson 
Duncan,  Sir  Andrew  Rae 
Duncan,  George  Simpson 
Duncan,  Sir  John  Norman 

Valette  ('Val') 
Duncan,  Sir  Patrick 
Duncan-Sandys,  Baron.  See 

Sandys,  (Edwin)  Duncan 
Dundas,  Lawrence  John 

Lumley,  Marquess  of 

Zetland 
Dunderdale,  Wilfred  Albert 
Dundonald,  Earl  of.  See 

Cochrane,  Douglas 

Mackinnon  Baillie 

Hamilton 
Dunedin,  Viscount.  See 

Murray,  Andrew  Graham 
Dunhill,  Thomas  Frederick 
Dunhill,  Sir  Thomas  Peel 
Dunlop,  Sir  Derrick  Melville 
Dunlop,  John  Boyd 
Dunmore,  Earl  of.  See 

Murray,  Charles  Adolphus 
Dunne,  John  William 
Dunne,  Sir  Laurence  Rivers 


Dunphie,  Charles  James  1820-1908 
1870-1956      Dunraven  and  Mount-Earl, 
1 87 1  -1955          Earl  of.  See  Quin, 
1916-1989          Windham  Thomas 

1876-1938          Wyndham-  1841-1926 
1820-1904      Dunrossil,  Viscount.  See 

Morrison,  William 

1867-1932         Shepherd  1893-1961 
1862-1933      Dunsany,  Baron  of.  See 
1855-1918          Plunkett,  Edward  John 

#1863-1924          Moreton  Drax  1878-1957 
1898-1970      Dunstan,  Sir  Wyndham 

1865-1955         Rowland  1861-1949 

Du  Parcq,  Herbert,  Baron  1880-1949 

Dupre,  August  1835-1907 

1829-1906      Du  Pre,  Jacqueline  Mary  1945-1987 

Durand,  Sir  Henry  Mortimer  1850-1924 

Durham,  (Mary)  Edith  #1863-1944 

Durnford,  Sir  Walter  1847-1926 

1826-1902      Durrell,  Lawrence  George  1912-1990 

1816-1903      Dutt,  (Rajani)  Palme  1896-1974 

1852-1936      Dutt,  Romesh  Chunder  1848-1909 

1836-1909      Dutton,  Joseph  Everett  1874-1905 

1922-1985      Duveen,  Joseph,  Baron  1869-1939 

Duveen,  Sir  Joseph  Joel  1843-1908 

1897-1977      Dwyer,  George  Patrick  1908-1987 

1863-1924      Dyer,  Reginald  Edward  Harry  1864-1927 

Dyer,  Sir  William  Turner 
1855-1939  Thiselton-.  See 

Thiselton-Dyer  1843-1928 

1898-1978      Dyke,  Sir  William  Hart  1837-1931 

1885-1959      Dykes  Bower,  Sir  John  1905-1981 

1882-1953      Dyson,  Sir  Frank  Watson  1868-1939 

1907-1989      Dyson,  Sir  George  1883-1964 

Dyson,  William  Henry  ('Will')  1 880-1938 
1873-1934 
1884-1952 
1884-1965      Eady,  Charles  Swinfen,  Baron 

Swinfen  1851-1919 
19 1 3  -1975      Eady,  Sir  (Crawfurd)  Wilfrid 

1870-1943         (Griffin)  1890-1962 

Eady,  Eric  Thomas  #1915-1966 
1908-1987      Eardley-Wilmot,  Sir  Sainthill. 

See  Wilmot  1852-1929 

Earle,  John  1824-1903 

1876-1961      Earle,  Sir  Lionel  1866-1948 

1899-1990      East,  Sir  Alfred  1849-1913 

East,  Sir  Cecil  James  1837-1908 

East,  Sir  (William)  Norwood  1872-1953 

Eastlake,  Charles  Locke  1836-1906 

1852-1935      Easton,  Hugh  Ray  1906-1965 

Easton,  Sir  James  Alfred  1908-1990 

1849-1942      Eastwood,  Sir  Eric  1910-1981 
1877-1946      Eaton,  Herbert  Francis,  Baron 

1876-1957          Cheylesmore  1848-1925 
1902-1980      Eaton,  William  Meriton, 

1840-1921          Baron  Cheylesmore  1843-1902 

Ebbutt,  Norman  1894-1968 

1841-1907      Ebert,  (Anton)  Charles  1887-1980 

#1875-1949      Ebsworth,  Joseph  Woodfall  1824-1908 

1893-1970      Eccles,  William  Henry  1875-1966 


534 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Eckersley,  Peter  Pendleton 
Eckersley,  Thomas  Lydwell 
Eddington,  Sir  Arthur 

Stanley 
Eddis,  Eden  Upton 
Ede,  Harold  Stanley  ('Jim') 
Ede,  James  Chuter  Chuter-, 

Baron  Chuter-Ede.  See 

Chuter-Ede 
Edelman,  (Israel)  Maurice 
Eden,  (Robert)  Anthony,  Earl 

of  Avon 
Edge,  Sir  John 
Edge,  Selwyn  Francis 
Edgeworth,  Francis  Ysidro 
Edmonds,  Sir  James  Edward 
Edouin,  Willie 
Edrich,  WiUiam  John  ('Bill') 
Edridge-Green,  Frederick 

William 
Edward  VII,  King 
Edward  VIII,  King  (later 

Duke  of  Windsor) 
Edward  of  Saxe- Weimar, 

Prince 
Edwards,  Alfred  George 
Edwards,  (Arthur)  Trystan 
Edwards,  Ebenezer 
Edwards,  Sir  Fleetwood 

Isham 
Edwards,  Henry  Sutherland 
Edwards,  Hugh  Robert 

Arthur 
Edwards,  James  Keith  O'Neill 

('Jimmy') 
Edwards,  Sir  (John)  Goronwy 
Edwards,  John  Passmore 
Edwards,  Lionel  Dalhousie 

Robertson 
Edwards,  Matilda  Barbara 

Betham- 
Edwards,  Sir  Owen  Morgan 
Edwards,  Sir  Robert 

Meredydd  Wynne-.  See 

Wynne-Edwards 
Edwards,  Sir  Ronald 

Stanley 
Egerton,  Sir  Alfred  Charles 

Glyn 
Egerton,  Sir  Charles  Comyn 
Egerton,  Hugh  Edward 
Egremont,  Baron.  See 

Wyndham,  John  Edward 

Reginald 
Einzig,  Paul 
Elder,  Sir  (WiUiam)  Stewart 

Duke-.  See  Duke-Elder 
Elgar,  Sir  Edward  WiUiam 
Elgar,  Francis 
Elgin,  Earl  of.  See  Bruce, 

Victor  Alexander 


1892 

-1963 

Elias,  Julius  Salter,  Viscount 

1886- 

-1959 

Southwood 

1873-1946 

Elias,  Norbert 

1897-1990 

1882- 

-1944 

Eliot,  Sir  Charles  Norton 

1812- 

-1901 

Edgecumbe 

1862-1931 

1895- 

-1990 

Eliot,  Sir  John 

1839-1908 

Eliot,  Thomas  Stearns 

1888-1965 

Elkan,  Benno 

1877-1960 

1882- 

-1965 

Ellerman,  (Annie)  Winifred, 

1911- 

-1975 

'Bryher' 

1894-1983 

Ellerman,  Sir  John  Reeves 

1862-1933 

1897- 

-1977 

Ellery,  Robert  Lewis  John 

1827-1908 

1841- 

-1926 

Elles,  Sir  Hugh  Jamieson 

1880-1945 

1868- 

-1940 

Ellicott,  Charles  John 

1819-1905 

1845- 

-1926 

Elliot,  Arthur  Ralph  Douglas 

1846-1923 

1861- 

-1956 

Elliot,  Sir  George  Augustus 

1813-1901 

1846- 

-1908 

Elliot,  Gilbert  John  Murray 

1916- 

-1986 

Kynynmond,  Earl  of  Minto 

1845-1914 

Elliot,  Sir  Henry  George 

1817-1907 

1863- 

-1953 

Elliot,  Sir  John 

1898-1988 

1841- 

-1910 

Elliot,  Walter  Elliot 

1888-1958 

Elliot,  Sir  WiUiam 

1896-1971 

1894- 

-1972 

EUiott,  Sir  Charles  Alfred 

1835-1911 

Elliott,  Sir  Claude  Aurelius 

1888-1973 

1823- 

-1902 

EUiott,  Edwin  BaUey 

1851-1937 

1848- 

-1937 

EUiott,  Thomas  Renton 

1877-1961 

1884- 

-1973 

EUis,  Sir  Arthur  William 

1884- 

-1961 

Mickle 
EUis,  Sir  (Bertram)  Qough 

1883-1966 

1842- 

-1910 

Williams-.  See 

1828- 

-1906 

Williams-Ellis 

1883-1978 

EUis,  Sir  Charles  Drummond 

1895-1980 

1906- 

-1972 

Ellis,  Clifford  WUson 

1907-1985 

EUis,  Frederick  Startridge 

1830-1901 

1920- 

-1988 

EUis,  Henry  Havelock 

1859-1939 

1891 

-1976 

EUis,  John  Devonshire 

1824-1906 

1823- 

-1911 

Ellis,  Robinson 

EUis,  Thomas  Evelyn  Scott-, 

1834-1913 

1878- 

-1966 

Baron  Howard  de  Walden. 

See  Scott-Ellis 

1880-1946 

1836- 

-1919 

EUis,  Sir  WiUiam  Henry 

1860-1945 

1858- 

-1920 

Ellmann.  Richard  David 

1918-1987 

Elmhirst,  Leonard  Knight 

1893-1974 

Elmhirst,  Sir  Thomas  Walker 

1895-1982 

1897- 

-1974 

Elphinstone,  Sir  (George) 

Keith  (Buller) 

1865-1941 

1910- 

-1976 

Elsie,  LUy 

1886-1962 

Elsmie,  George  Robert 

1838-1909 

1886- 

-1959 

Elton,  Sir  Arthur  Hallam  Rice 

1906-1973 

1848- 

-1921 

Elton,  Godfrey,  Baron 

1892-1973 

1855- 

-1927 

Elton,  Oliver 

1861-1945 

Elvin,  Sir  (James)  Arthur 

1899-1957 

Elwes,  Gervase  Henry  Cary- 

1866-1921 

1920 

-1972 

Elwes,  Henry  John 

1846-1922 

1897- 

-1973 

Elwes,  Simon  Edmund 

Vincent  Paul 

1902-1975 

1898- 

-1978 

Elworthy,  Frederick  Thomas 

1830-1907 

1857- 

-1934 

Elwyn-Jones,  Baron.  See 

1845- 

-1909 

Jones,  (Frederick)  Elwyn 

1909-1989 

Emberton,  Joseph 

#1889-1956 

1849 

-1917 

Embry,  Sir  BasU  Edward 

1902-1977 

535 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Emden,  Alfred  Brotherston  #1888-1979 
Emery,  Richard  Gilbert 

('Dick')  1915-1983 

Emery,  (Walter)  Bryan  1903-1971 

Emery,  William  1825-1910 

Emett,  (Frederick)  Rowland  1906-1990 

Emmott,  Alfred,  Baron  1858-1926 

Empson,  Sir  William  1906-1984 

Engledow,  Sir  Frank  Leonard  1890-1985 
Ensor,  Sir  Robert  Charles 

Kirkwood  1877-1958 

Entwistle,  William  James  1895-1952 

Epstein,  Sir  Jacob  1880-1959 

Erdelyi,  Arthur  1908-1977 

Erith,  Raymond  Charles  1904-1973 
Ernie,  Baron.  See  Prothero, 

Rowland  Edmund  1851-1937 
Ervine,  (John)  St  John 

(Greer)  1883-1971 
Escort,  Bickham  Aldred 

Cowan  Sweet-.  See 

Sweet-Escort  1907-1981 

Esdaile,  Katharine  Ada  1 88 1  -1950 
Esher,  Viscount.  See  Brett, 

Reginald  Baliol  1852-1930 

Esmond,  Henry  Vernon  1869-1922 

Etheridge,  Robert  1819-1903 

Euan-Smith,  Sir  Charles  Bean  1842-1910 

Eumorfopoulos,  George  1863-1939 
Eva,  pseudonym.  See  under 

O'Doherty,  Kevin  Izod  1823-1905 

Evan-Thomas,  Sir  Hugh  1862-1928 

Evans,  Sir  Arthur  John  185 1  -1941 
Evans,  (Benjamin)  Ifor,  Baron 

Evans  of  Hungershall  1899-1982 
Evans,  Sir  Charles  Arthur 

Lovatt  1884-1968 

Evans,  Daniel  Silvan  1818-1903 

Evans,  Sir  David  Gwynne  1909-1984 

Evans,  Dame  Edith  Mary  1888-1976 

Evans,  Edmund  1826-1905 
Evans,  Edward  Ratcliffe 

Garth  Russell,  Baron 

Mountevans  1880-1957 

Evans,  Sir  (Evan)  Vincent  185 1  -1934 

Evans,  George  Essex  1863-1909 

Evans,  George  Ewart  1909-1988 
Evans,  Sir  Guildhaume 

Myrddin-.  See 

Myrddin-Evans  1894-1964 

Evans,  Horace,  Baron  1903-1963 

Evans,  Sir  John  1823-1908 

Evans,  John  Gwenogvryn  1852-1930 

Evans,  Meredith  Gwynne  1904-1952 

Evans,  Sir  Samuel  Thomas  1859-1918 

Evans,  Sebastian  1830-1909 

Evans,  Sir  Trevor  Maldwyn  1902-1981 
Evans,  Sir  (Worthington) 

Laming  Worthington-  1868-1931 
Evans-Pritchard,  Sir  Edward 

Evan  1902-1973 


Evatt,  Herbert  Vere  1894-1965 

Eve,  Sir  Harry  Trelawney  1856-1940 
Everard,  Harry  Stirling 

Crawfurd    "  1848-1909 

Everett,  Joseph  David  1 83 1  -1 904 

Everett,  Sir  William  1844-1908 
Evershed,  (Francis)  Raymond, 

Baron  1899-1966 

Evershed,  John  1864-1956 
Eversley,  Baron.  See 

Shaw-Lefevre,  George 

John  1831-1928 

Eves,  Reginald  Grenville  1876-1941 
Evill,  Sir  Douglas  Claude 

Strathern  1892-1971 

Ewart,  Alfred  James  1872-1937 

Ewart,  Charles  Brisbane  1827-1903 

Ewart,  Sir  John  Alexander  1 82 1  -1904 

Ewart,  Sir  John  Spencer  1861-1930 

Ewer,  William  Norman  1885-1977 

Ewing,  Sir  (James)  Alfred  1855-1935 

Ewins,  Arthur  James  1882-1957 
Exeter,  Marquess  of.  See 

Cecil,  David  George 

Brownlow  1905-1981 

Eyre,  Charles  Petrie  #1817-1902 

Eyre,  Edward  John  1815-1901 
Eyston,  George  Edward 

Thomas  1897-1979 


Faber,  Sir  Geoffrey  Cust  1889-1961 

Faber,  Oscar  1886-1956 
Fachiri,  Adila  Adrienne 

Adalbertina  Maria  1886-1962 

Faed,  John  1819-1902 

Fagan,  James  Bernard  1873-1933 

Fagan,  Louis  Alexander  1845-1903 

Fairbairn,  Andrew  Martin  1838-1912 

Fairbairn,  Sir  Robert  Duncan  1910-1988 

Fairbairn,  Stephen  1862-1938 

Fairbank,  Alfred  John  #1895-1982 

Fairbridge,  Kingsley  Ogilvie  1885-1924 

Fairburn,  Charles  Edward  #1887-1945 

Fairey,  Sir  (Charles)  Richard  1887-1956 
Fairfield,  Baron.  See  Greer, 

(Frederick)  Arthur  1863-1945 
Fairfield,  Cicily  Isabel.  See 

West,  Dame  Rebecca  1892-1983 

Fairley,  Sir  Neil  Hamilton  1891-1966 

Fairlie,  Henry  Jones  1924-1990 

Falcke,  Isaac  1819-1909 
Falconer,  Lanoe,  pseudonym. 

See  Hawker,  Mary 

Elizabeth  1848-1908 
Falconer,  Sir  Robert 

Alexander  1867-1943 

Falkiner,  Caesar  Litton  1863-1908 
Falkiner,  Sir  Frederick 

Richard  1831-1908 

Falkner,  John  Meade  1858-1932 


536 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Falls,  Cyril  Bentham  1888-1971 
Fane,  Violet,  pseudonym.  See 

Currie,  Mary 

Montgomerie,  Lady  1843-1905 
Fanshawe,  Sir  Edward 

Gennys  1814-1906 
Faringdon,  Baron.  See 

Henderson,  (Alexander) 

Gavin  1902-1977 

Farieon,  Benjamin  Leopold  1838-1903 

Farjeon,  Eleanor  1881-1965 

Farmer,  Emily  1826-1905 

Farmer,  Herbert  Henry  1892-1981 

Farmer,  John  1835-1901 

Farmer,  Sir  John  Bretland  1865-1944 

FarneU,  Lewis  Richard  1856-1934 

Fames,  Kenneth  #1911-1941 
Farningham,  Marianne, 

pseudonym.  See  Hearn. 

Mary  Anne  1834-1909 

Farnol,'  (John)  Jeffery  1878-1952 

Farquhar,  John  Nicol  1861  -1929 

Farquharson,  David  1840-1907 
Farr,  Thomas  George 

('Tommy')  1913-1986 

Farrar,  Adam  Storey  1826-1905 

Farrar,  Frederic  William  183 1  -1903 

Farrell,  James  Gordon  1935-1979 
Farren  (afterwards  Soutar), 

Ellen  ('Nellie')  1848-1904 

Farren,  William  1825-1908 

Farren,  Sir  William  Scott  1892-1970 

Farrer,  Austin  Marsden  1904-1968 

Farrer,  WiUiam  1861-1924 

Farwell,  Sir  George  1845-1915 
Faulkner,  (Arthur)  Brian 

(Deane),  Baron  Faulkner  of 

Downpatrick  1921-1977 

Fausset,  Andrew  Robert  1821-1910 

Fawcett,  Dame  Millicent  1847-1929 

Fay,  Sir  Sam  1856-1953 

Fay,  William  George  1872-1947 

Fayrer,  Sir  Joseph  1824-1907 

Fearnsides,  William  George  1879-1968 

Feather,  Norman  1904-1978 
Feather,  Victor  Grayson 

Hardie,  Baron  Feather  1908-1976 
Fedden,  Sir  (Alfred  Hubert) 

Rov  1885-1973 

Feetham,  Richard  1874-1965 

Feiling,  Sir  Keith  Grahame  1884-1977 

Felkin,  Ellen  Thorneycroft  1860-1929 

Fell,  Dame  Honor  Bridget  1900-1986 

Fellowes,  Edmund  Horace  1870-1951 

FeUowes,  Sir  Edward  Abdy  1895-1970 
Fender,  Percv  George 

Herbert  1892-1985 

Fenn,  George  Manville  1831-1909 
Fenton,  Henrv  John 

Horstman  '  #1854-1929 

Fenwick,  Ethel  Gordon  1857-1947 


Ferguson,  Frederic 

Sutherland  1878-1967 

Ferguson,  Harry  George  1884-1960 
Ferguson,  Mary  Catherine, 

Lady  1823-1905 
Ferguson,  Ronald  Crauford 

Munro-,  Viscount  Novar  1860-1934 
Fergusson,  Bernard  Edward, 

Baron  Ballantrae  1911-1980 

Fergusson,  Sir  Charles  1865-1951 

Fergusson,  Sir  James  1832-1907 
Fergusson,  Sir  (John)  Donald 

(Balfour)  1891-1963 

Fermor,  Sir  Lewis  Leigh  1880-1954 
Ferranti,  Basil  Reginald 

Vincent  Ziani  de  1930-1988 

Ferranti,  Sebastian  Ziani  de  1864-1930 

Ferrers,  Norman  Macleod  1829-1903 

Ferrier,  Sir  David  1843-1928 

Ferrier,  Kathleen  Mary  1912-1953 
Ferryman,  Eric  Edward 

\lockler-  See 

Mockler-Ferryman  1896-1978 

Festing,  Sir  Francis  Wogan  1902-1976 

Festing,  John  Wogan  1 837  -1902 
Fetherstonhaugh,  Sir  Herbert 

Meade-.  See 

Meade-Fetherstonhaugh  1875-1964 
fforde,  Sir  Arthur  Frederic 

Browrdow  1900-1985 

ffoulkes,  Charles  John  1868-1947 

Field,  (Agnes)  Mary  1896-1968 

Field,  Sir  (Arthur)  Mostyn  1855-1950 

Field,  Sir  Frederick  Laurence  1871-1945 

Field,  Walter  1837-1901 

Field,  William  Ventris,  Baron  1813-1907 

Fielden,  Sir  Edward  Hedley  1903-1976 

Fields,  Dame  Grade  1898-1979 
Fife,  Duchess  of.  See 

Alexandra  Victoria  Alberta 

Edwina  Louise  Duff, 

Princess  Arthur  of 

Connaught  1891-1959 
Fife,  Duchess  of.  See  Louise 

Victoria  Alexandra  Dagmar  1867-1931 

Figgis,  John  Neville  1866-1919 

Figgures,  Sir  Frank  Edward  1910-1990 

Fildes,  Sir  Paul  Gordon  1882-1971 

Fildes,  Sir  (Samuel)  Luke  1844-1927 
Filon,  Louis  Napoleon 

George  1875-1937 

Finberg,  Alexander  Joseph  1866-1939 

Finch,  George  Ingle  1888-1970 
Finch-Hatton,  Harold 

Heneage  1856-1904 
Finkelstein,  Moses.  See 

Finley,  Sir  Moses  I.  1912-1986 
Finlav,  Robert  Bannatvne, 

Viscount  1842-1929 

Finlay,  William,  Viscount  1875-1945 

Finlayson,  James  1840-1906 


537 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Finley,  Sir  Moses  I.  1912-1986 

Finnie,  John  1829-1907 

Finzi,  Gerald  Raphael  1901-1956 
Firbank,  (Arthur  Annesley) 

Ronald  #1886-1926 

Firth,  Sir  Charles  Harding  1857-1936 

Firth,  John  Rupert  1890-1960 

Firth,  Sir  William  John  1 88 1  -1957 
Fischer  Williams,  Sir  John. 

See  Williams  1870-1947 

Fisher,  Alan  Wainwright  1922-1988 

Fisher,  Andrew  1862-1928 
Fisher,  Geoffrey  Francis, 

Baron  Fisher  of  Lambeth  1887-1972 
Fisher,  Herbert  Albert 

Laurens  1865-1940 
Fisher,  James  Maxwell 

McConnell  1912-1970 
Fisher,  John  Arbuthnot, 

Baron  1841-1920 
Fisher,  Sir  (Norman  Fenwick) 

Warren  1879-1948 

Fisher,  Robert  Howie  1861-1934 

Fisher,  Sir  Ronald  Aylmer  1890-1962 
Fisher,  Sir  William 

Wordsworth  1875-1937 

Fison,  Lorimer  1832-1907 

Fitch,  Sir  Joshua  Girling  1824-1903 

Fitton,  James  1899-1982 
FitzAlan  of  Derwent, 

Viscount.  See  Howard, 

Edmund  Bernard  FitzAlan-  1855-1947 
FitzAlan-Howard,  Bernard 

Marmaduke,  Duke  of 

Norfolk.  See  Howard  1908-1975 
FitzAlan-Howard,  Henry, 

Duke  of  Norfolk.  See 

Howard  1847-1917 

Fitzclarence,  Charles  1865-1914 

FitzGerald,  George  Francis  185 1  -1901 
FitzGerald,  Sir  Thomas 

Naghten  1838-1908 

FitzGibbon,  Gerald  1837-1909 
FitzGibbon,  (Robert  Louis) 

Constantine  (Lee-Dillon)  1919-1983 
Fitzmaurice,  Baron.  See 

Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Edmond 

George  1846-1935 
Fitzmaurice,  Sir  Gerald 

Gray  1901-1982 

Fitzmaurice,  Sir  Maurice  1861-1924 

Fitzmaurice-Kelly,  James  1857-1923 

Fitzpatrick,  Sir  Dennis  1837-1920 

FitzPatrick,  Sir  (James)  Percy  1862-1931 

FitzRoy,  Edward  Algernon  1869-1943 

Fitzsimmons,  Robert  #1863-1917 

Flanagan,  Bud  1896-1968 

Flanders,  Allan  David  1910-1973 

Flanders,  Michael  Henry  1922-1975 

Fleay,  Frederick  Gard  1831-1909 

Fleck,  Alexander,  Baron  1889-1968 


Flecker,  Herman  Elroy 

('James  Elroy')  1884-1915 

Fleming,  Sir  Alexander  1881-1955 
Fleming,  Sir  Arthur  Percy 

Morris  1881-1960 

Fleming,  David  Hay  1849-1931 
Fleming,  David  Pinkerton, 

Lord  1877-1944 

Fleming,  George  1833-1901 

Fleming,  Ian  Lancaster  1908-1964 

Fleming,  James  1830-1908 

Fleming,  Sir  (John)  Ambrose  1849-1945 

Fleming,  (Robert)  Peter  1907-1971 

Fleming,  Sir  Sandford  1827-1915 
Fleming,  (William)  Launcelot 

(Scott)  1906-1990 

Fletcher,  Sir  Banister  Flight  1866-1953 
Fletcher,  Charles  Robert 

Leslie  1857-1934 

Fletcher,  Sir  Frank  1870-1954 

Fletcher,  James  1852-1908 
Fletcher,  Reginald  Thomas 

Herbert,  Baron  Winster  1885-1961 

Fletcher,  Sir  Walter  Morley  1873-1933 

Flett,  Sir  John  Smith  1869-1947 

Fleure,  Herbert  John  1877-1969 

Flint,  Robert  1838-1910 

Flint,  Sir  William  Russell  1880-1969 
Florey,  Howard  Walter, 

Baron  1898-1968 

Flower,  Sir  Cyril  Thomas  1879-1961 

Flower,  Robin  Ernest  William  1881-1946 

Floyer,  Ernest  Ayscoghe  1852-1903 
Fluck,  Diana  Mary.  See  Dors, 

Diana  1931-1984 

Flux,  Sir  Alfred  William  1867-1942 
Foakes  Jackson,  Frederick 

John.  See  Jackson  1855-1941 

Fogerty,  Elsie  1865-1945 

Folley,  (Sydney)  John  1906-1970 

Foot,  Sir  Dingle  Mackintosh  1905-1978 
Foot,  Hugh  Mackintosh, 

Baron  Caradon  1907-1990 

Foot,  Isaac  1880-1960 
Forbes,  Sir  Archibald 

Finlayson  1903-1989 

Forbes,  Sir  Charles  Morton  1880-1960 

Forbes,  George  #1849-1936 

Forbes,  George  William  1869-1947 

Forbes,  James  Staats  1823-1904 

Forbes,  Qoan)  Rosita  1890-1967 

Forbes,  Stanhope  Alexander  1857-1947 
Forbes-Robertson,  Sir 

Johnston.  See  Robertson  1853-1937 
Forbes-Sempill,  William 

Francis,  Baron  Sempill  1893-1965 

Ford,  Edmund  Brisco  1901-1988 

Ford,  Edward  Onslow  1852-1901 
Ford,  Ford  Madox  (formerly 

Ford  Hermann  Hueffer)  1873-1939 

Ford,  Patrick  1837-1913 


538 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Ford,  William  Justice  1853-1904 

Fordham,  Sir  Herbert  George  1854-1929 

Forester,  Cecil  Scott  1899-1966 
Forestier- Walker,  Sir 

Frederick  William  Edward 

Forestier  1844-1910 
Forman,  Alfred  William.  See 

Forman,  Henrv  Buxton 

Forman,  Henry  Buxton  1842-1917 

Formby,  George  1904-1961 
Forrest,  Sir  George  William 

David  Starck  1845-1926 

Forrest,  John,  Baron  1847-1918 

Forster,  Edward  Morgan  1879-1970 
Forster,  Hugh  Oakeley 

Arnold-.  See 

Arnold-Forster  1855-1909 

Forster,  Sir  Martin  Onslow  1 872  -1 945 

Forsyth,  Andrew  Russell  1858-1942 

Forsyth,  Peter  Taylor  #1848-1921 

Fortes,  Meyer  1906-1983 
Fortescue,  George 

Knottesford  1847-1912 

Fortescue,  Hugh,  Earl  1818-1905 

Fortescue,  Sir  John  William  1859-1933 

Foss,  Hubert  James  1899-1953 

Foster,  Sir  Clement  Le  Neve  1941-1904 

Foster,  Sir  George  Eulas  1847-1931 
Foster,  Sir  Harry  Braustyn 

Hylton  Hylton-.  See 

Hvlton-Foster  1905-1965 

Foster,  Sir  Idris  Llewelyn  1911-1984 

Foster,  Sir  John  Galway  1903/4-1982 

Foster,  Joseph  1844-1905 

Foster,  Sir  Michael  1836-1907 

Foster,  Sir  (Thomas)  Gregory  1866-1931 

Fotheringham,  John  Knight  '  1874-1936 
Fougasse,  pseudonym.  See 

Bird,  (Cyril)  Kenneth  1887-1965 

Foulkes,  Isaac  1836-1904 

Fowle,  Thomas  Welbank  1835-1903 

Fowler,  Alfred  1868-1940 
Fowler,  Ellen  Thorneycroft. 

See  Felkin  1860-1929 

Fowler,  Sir  Henry  #1870-1938 
Fowler,  Henry  Hartley, 

Viscount  Wolverhampton  1830-1911 

Fowler,  Henry  Watson  1858-1933 

Fowler,  Sir  James  Kingston  1852-1934 

Fowler,  Sir  Ralph  Howard  1889-1944 

Fowler,  Thomas  1832-1904 

Fowler,  William  Warde  1847-1921 

Fox,  Sir  (Charles)  Douglas  #1840-1921 

Fox,  Sir  Cyril  Fred  1882-1967 

Fox,  Douglas  Gerard  Arthur  1893-1978 
Fox,  Dame  Evelyn  Emily 

Marian  1874-1955 
Fox,  Felicity  Lane-,  Baroness. 

See  Lane-Fox  1918-1988 

Fox,  Sir  Francis  1844-1927 

Fox,  Harold  Munro  1889-1967 


Fox,  Sir  John  Jacob  #1874-1944 

Fox,  Sir  Lionel  Wray  1895-1961 

Fox,  Samson  1838-1903 

Fox,  Terence  Robert  Corelli  1912-1962 

Fox,  Sir  Theodore  Fortescue  1899-1989 

Fox,  Uffa  1898-1972 
Fox  Bourne,  Henry  Richard. 

See  Bourne  1837-1909 
Fox  Strangways,  Arthur 

Henry.  See  Strangways  1859-1948 
Fox-Strangways,  Giles 

Stephen  Holland,  Earl  of 

Ilchester  1874-1959 

Foxwell,  Arthur  1853-1909 

Foxwell,  Herbert  Somerton  1849-1936 

Foyle,  William  Alfred  1885-1963 
Fraenkel,  Eduard  David 

Mortier  1888-1970 

Frampton,  Sir  George  James  1860-1928 
Frampton,  (George  Vernon) 

Meredith  #1894-1984 

Francis,  Sir  Frank  Chalton  1901-1988 
Francis-Williams,  Baron.  See 

Williams,  Edward  Francis  1903-1970 

Frankau,  Gilbert  1884-1952 
Frankfort  de  Montmorency, 

Viscount.  See  de 

Montmorency,  Raymond 

Harvey  1835-1902 

Frankland,  Percy  Faraday  1858-1946 

Franklin,  Charles  Samuel  1879-1964 

Franklin,  Rosalind  Elsie  #1920-1958 

Franks,  Robert  Sleightholme  1871-1964 

Fraser,  Alexander  Campbell  1819-1914 
Fraser,  Sir  Andrew 

Henderson  Leith  1848-1919 
Fraser,  Bruce  Austin,  Baron 

Fraser  of  North  Cape  1888-1981 

Fraser,  Claud  Lovat  1890-1921 

Fraser,  Donald  1870-1933 

Fraser,  Sir  Francis  Richard  1885-1964 

Fraser,  Sir  Hugh  1936-1987 
Fraser,  Hugh,  Baron  Fraser 

ofAllander  1903-1966 
Fraser,  Sir  Hugh  Charles 

Patrick  Joseph  1918-1984 

Fraser,  Peter  1884-1950 

Fraser,  Sir  Robert  Brown  1904-1985 
Fraser,  Simon  Joseph,  Baron 

Lovat  1871-1933 

Fraser,  Sir  Thomas  Richard  1 84 1  -1 920 
Fraser,  (Walter)  Ian  (Reid), 

Baron  Fraser  of 

Tullybelton  1911-1989 
Fraser,  William,  Baron 

Strathalmond  1888-1970 
Fraser,  (William  Jocelyn)  Ian, 

Baron  Fraser  of  Lonsdale  1897-1974 
Fraser  Darling,  Sir  Frank. 

See  Darling  1903-1979 

Frazer,  Alastair  Campbell  1909-1969 


539 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Frazer,  Sir  James  George 
Fream,  William 
Frechette,  Louis  Honore 
Freedman,  Barnett 
Freeman,  Gage  Earle 
Freeman,  John 
Freeman,  John  Peere 

Williams-.  See 

Williams-Freeman 
Freeman,  Sir  Ralph 
Freeman,  Richard  Austin 
Freeman,  Sir  Wilfrid 

Rhodes 
Freeman-Mitford,  Algernon 

Bertram,  Baron  Redesdale. 

See  Mitford 
Freeman-Thomas,  Freeman, 

Marquess  of  Willingdon 
Freeth,  Francis  Arthur 
Fremantle,  Sir  Edmund 

Robert 
French,  Evangeline  Francis 
French,  Francesca  Law 
French,  Sir  Henry  Leon 
French,  John  Denton 

Pinkstone,  Earl  of  Ypres 
Frere,  Alexander  Stuart 
Frere,  Mary  Eliza  Isabella 
Frere,  Walter  Howard 
Freshfield,  Douglas  William 
Freud,  Anna 
Freund,  Sir  Otto  Kahn-.  See 

Kahn-Freund 
Freyberg,  Bernard  Cyril, 

Baron 
Freyer,  Sir  Peter  Johnston 
Flicker,  Peter  Racine 
Friese-Greene,  William.  See 

Greene 
Frisch,  Otto  Robert 
Frith,  William  Powell 
Fritsch,  Felix  Eugen 
Frost,  Dora.  See  Gaitskell, 

Anna  Deborah 
Frowde,  Henry 
Fry,  Charles  Burgess 
Fry,  Danby  Palmer 
Fry,  Sir  Edward 
Fry,  (Edwin)  Maxwell 
Fry,  Joseph  Storrs 
Fry,  Roger  Eliot 
Fry,  Sara  Margery 
Fry,  Thomas  Charles 
Fryatt,  Charles  Algernon 
Frye,  Leslie  Legge  Sarony. 

See  Sarony,  Leslie 
Fuchs,  (Emil  Julius)  Klaus 
Fulford,  Sir  Roger  Thomas 

Baldwin 
Fuller,  Sir  Cyril  Thomas 

Moulden 


1854-1941      Fuller,  John  Frederick 

1854-1906         Charles  1878-1966 

1839-1908      Fuller,  Sir  Ooseph) 

1901-1958         Bampfylde  1854-1935 

1820-1903      Fuller,  Peter  Michael  1947-1990 

1880-1929      Fuller,  Sir  Thomas  Ekins  1831-1910 

Fuller-Maitland,  John 

Alexander.  See  Maitland  1856-1936 

1858-1943      Fulleylove,  John  1845-1908 

1880-1950      Fulton,  John  Scott,  Baron  1902-1986 

#1862-1943      Furneaux,  William  Mordaunt  1848-1928 

Furness,  Christopher,  Baron  1852-1912 

1888-1953      Furniss,  Harry  1854-1925 

Furniss,  Henry  Sanderson, 

Baron  Sanderson  1868-1939 

1837-1916      Furnivall,  Frederick  James  1825-1910 

Furse,  Charles  Wellington  1868-1904 

1866-1941      Furse,  Dame  Katharine  1875-1952 

1884-1970      Furse,  Sir  Ralph  Dolignon  1887-1973 

Fury,  Billy  1941-1983 
1836-1929      Fust,  Herbert  Jenner-.  See 

1869-1960         Jenner-Fust  1806-1904 
187 1  -1960      Fyfe,  David  Patrick  Maxwell, 

1883-1966         EarlofKilmuir  1900-1967 

Fyfe,  Henry  Hamilton  1869-1951 

1852-1925      Fyfe,  Sir  William  Hamilton  1878-1965 

1892-1984      Fyleman,  Rose  Amy  1877-1957 
1845-1911 
1863-1938 

1845-1934      Gabor,  Dennis  1900-1979 

1895-1982      Gaddum,  Sir  John  Henry  1900-1965 

Gadsby,  Henry  Robert  1842-1907 
1900-1979      Gainford,  Baron.  See  Pease, 

Joseph  Albert  1860-1943 

1889-1963      Gairdner,  James  1828-1912 
1851-1921      Gairdner,  Sir  William 

1920-1990  Tennant  1824-1907 

Gaitskell,  Anna  Deborah 

1855-1921  ('Dora'),  Baroness  1901-1989 

1904-1979      Gaitskell,  Hugh  Todd  Naylor  1906-1963 

1819-1909      Galbraith,  Vivian  Hunter  1889-1976 

1879-1954      Gale,  Frederick  1823-1904 

Gale,  Sir  Humfrey 

1901-1989         Myddelton  1890-1971 

1841-1927      Gale,  Sir  Richard  Nelson  1896-1982 

1872-1956      Gallacher,  William  1881-1965 

1818-1903      Galloway,  Sir  Alexander  1895-1977 

1827-1918      Galloway,  Sir  William  1840-1927 

1899-1987      Gallwey,  Peter  1820-1906 

1826-1913      Galsworthy,  John  1867-1933 

1866-1934      Gallon,  Sir  Francis  1822-1911 

1874-1958      Game,  Sir  Philip  Woolcott  1876-1961 

1846-1930      Gamgee,  Arthur  1841-1909 

1872-1916      Gandhi,  Indira  Priyadarshani  1917-1984 

Gandhi,  Mohandas 

1897-1985  Karamchand  1869-1948 

1911  -1988      Gann,  Thomas  William 

Francis  1867-1938 

1902-1983      Garbett,  Cyril  Forster  1875-1955 

Garcia,  Manuel  Patricio 

1874-1942         Rodriguez  1805-1906 


540 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Gardiner,  Sir  Alan  Henderson 

1879- 

-1963 

Gardiner,  Alfred  George 

1865- 

-1946 

Gardiner,  Gerald  Austin, 

Baron 

1900- 

-1990 

Gardiner,  Henry  Balfour 

1877- 

-1950 

Gardiner,  Samuel  Rawson 

1829- 

-1902 

Gardiner,  Sir  Thomas  Robert 

1883- 

-1964 

Gardner,  Ernest  Arthur 

(1862-1939).  See  under 

Gardner,  Percy 

Gardner,  Dame  Helen  Louise 

1908- 

-1986 

Gardner,  Percy 

1846- 

-1937 

Gargan,  Denis 

1819- 

-1903 

Garner,  (Joseph  John)  Saville, 

Baron 

1908- 

-1983 

Garner,  Thomas 

1839- 

-1906 

Garner,  William  Edward 

1889- 

-1960 

Garnett,  Constance  Clara 

1861- 

-1946 

Garnett,  David 

1892- 

-1981 

Garnett,  James  Clerk  Maxwell 

1880- 

-1958 

Garnett,  Richard 

1835- 

-1906 

Garran  (formerly  Gamman), 

Andrew 

1825- 

-1901 

Garrard,  Apsley  George 

Benet  Cherry-.  See 

Cherry-Garrard 

1886- 

-1959 

Garratt,  Herbert  William 

#1864- 

-1913 

Garrett,  Fydell  Edmund 

1865- 

-1907 

Garrett  Anderson,  Elizabeth. 

See  Anderson 

1836- 

-1917 

Garrod,  Sir  Alfred  Baring 

1819- 

-1907 

Garrod,  Sir  (Alfred)  Guv 

(Roland) 

1891- 

-1965 

Garrod,  Sir  Archibald 

Edward 

1857- 

-1936 

Garrod,  Dorothy  Anne 

Elizabeth 

#1892- 

-1968 

Garrod,  Heathcote  William 

1878- 

-1960 

Garrod,  Lawrence  Paul 

1895- 

-1979 

Garstang,  John 

1876- 

-1956 

Garstin,  Sir  William  Edmund 

1849- 

-1925 

Garth,  Sir  Richard 

1820- 

-1903 

Garvie,  Alfred  Ernest 

1861- 

-1945 

Garvin,  James  Louis 

1868- 

-1947 

Gaselee,  Sir  Alfred 

1844- 

-1918 

Gaselee,  Sir  Stephen 

1882- 

-1943 

Gask,  George  Ernest 

1875 

-1951 

Gaskell,  Holbrook 

#1813- 

-1909 

Gaskell,  Walter  Holbrook 

1847- 

-1914 

Gasquet,  Francis  Neil 

1846- 

-1929 

Gaster,  Moses 

1856- 

-1939 

Gatacre,  Sir  William  Forbes 

1843- 

-1906 

Gatenby,  James  Bronte 

1892- 

-1960 

Gater,  Sir  George  Henry 

1886- 

-1963 

Gates,  Reginald  Ruggles 

1882- 

-1962 

Gathorne-Hardy,  Gathorne, 

Earl  of  Cranbrook 

1814- 

-1906 

Gam,  Alfred 

1813 

-1903 

Gauvain,  Sir  Henry  John 

1878 

-1945 

Geddes,  Auckland  Campbell, 

Baron 

1879 

-1954 

Geddes,  Sir  Eric  Campbell 
Geddes,  Sir  Patrick 
Gedye,  (George)  Eric  (Rowe) 
Gee,  Samuel  Jones 
Geikie,  Sir  Archibald 
Geikie,  James  Murdoch 
Geikie,  John  Cunningham 
Gell,  Sir  James 
Gellibrand,  Sir  John 
Genee,  Dame  Adeline 
George  V,  King 
George  VI,  King 
George  Edward  Alexander 

Edmund,  Duke  of  Kent 
George  William  Frederick 

Charles,  Duke  of 

Cambridge 
George,  David  Lloyd,  Earl 

Lloyd-George  of  Dwyfor. 

See  Lloyd  George 
George,  Sir  Ernest 
George,  Frances  Louise 

Lloyd,  Countess 

Lloyd-George  of  Dwyfor. 

See  Lloyd  George 
George,  Gwilym  Lloyd-, 

Viscount  Tenby.  See 

Lloyd-George 
George,  Hereford  Brooke 
George,  Lady  Megan  Lloyd. 

See  Lloyd  George 
George,  Thomas  Neville 
George,  Walter  Goodall 
George-Brown,  Baron.  See 

Brown,  George  Alfred 
Geraldo,  pseudonym.  See 

Walcan-Bright,  Gerald 
Gerard  (afterwards  de 

Laszowska),  (Jane)  Emily 
Gerard,  Sir  Montagu  Gilbert 
Gere,  Charles  March 
Gerhardie,  William  Alexander 
Gerin,  Winifred  Eveleen 
German,  Sir  Edward 
Gertler,  Mark 
Gibb,  Sir  Alexander 
Gibb,  Sir  Claude  Dixon 
Gibb,  Elias  John  Wilkinson 
Gibb,  Sir  Hamilton  Alexander 

Rosskeen 
Gibberd,  Sir  Frederick  Ernest 
Gibbings,  Robert  John 
Gibbins,  Henry  de  Beltgens 
Gibbon,  Sir  (loan)  Gwilym 
Gibbons,  (Edward)  Stanley 
Gibbons,  Stella  Dorothea 
Gibbs,  Henry  Hucks,  Baron 

Aldenham 
Gibbs,  Sir  Humphrey  Vicary 
Gibbs,  Sir  Philip  Armand 

Hamilton 


1875-1937 
1854-1932 
1890-1970 
1839-1911 
1835-1924 
#1839-1915 
1824-1906 
1823-1905 
1872-1945 
1878-1970 
1865-1936 
1895-1952 

1902-1942 


1819-1904 


1863-1945 
1839-1922 


1888-1972 


1894-1967 
1838-1910 

1902-1966 

1904-1980 

#1858-1943 

1914-1985 

1904-1974 

1849-1905 
1842-1905 
1869-1957 
1895-1977 
1901-1981 
1862-1936 
1891-1939 
1872-1958 
1898-1959 
1857-1901 

1895-1971 
1908-1984 
1889-1958 
1865-1907 
1874-1948 
#1840-1913 
1902-1989 

1819-1907 
1902-1990 

1877-1962 


54i 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Gibbs,  Vicary  1853-1932 
Gibson,  Edward,  Baron 

Ashbourne  1837-1913 

Gibson,  Guy  Penrose  1918-1944 

Gibson,  Sir  John  Watson  1885-1947 

Gibson,  Reginald  Oswald  #1902-1983 

Gibson,  Wilfrid  Wilson  1878-1962 

Gibson,  William  Pettigrew  1902-1960 

Gielgud,  Val  Henry  1900-1981 

Giffard,  Sir  George  James  1886-1964 
Giffard,  Hardinge  Stanley, 

EarlofHalsbury  1823-1921 

Giffen,  Sir  Robert  1837-1910 

Gifford,  Edwin  Hamilton  1820-1905 
Gigliucci,  Countess.  See 

Novello,  Clara  Anastasia  1818-1908 

Gilbert,  Sir  Alfred  1854-1934 

Gilbert,  Sir  Joseph  Henry  1817-1901 
Gilbert,  Sir  William 

Schwenck  1836-1911 

Gilchrist,  Percy  Carlyle  #1851-1935 

Giles,  Herbert  Allen  1845-1935 

Giles,  Peter  1860-1935 

Gill,  (Arthur)  Eric  (Rowton)  1882-1940 

Gill,  Sir  David  1843-1914 

Gilliatt,  Sir  William  1884-1956 

Gillie,  Dame  Annis  Calder  1900-1985 

Gillies,  Duncan  1834-1903 

Gillies,  Sir  Harold  Delf  1882-1960 

Gillies,  Sir  William  George  1898-1973 

Gilman,  Harold  John  Wilde  #1876-1919 

Gilmour,  Sir  John  1 876-1940 

Gilmour,  John  Scott  Lennox  1906-1986 

Gilson,  Julius  Parnell  1868-1929 

Gimson,  Ernest  William  #1864-1919 
Gingold,  Hermione 

Ferdinanda  1897-1987 

Ginner,  Isaac  Charles  1878-1952 

Ginsberg,  Morris  1889-1970 

Ginsburg,  Christian  David  1831-1914 
Girdlestone,  Gathorne 

Robert  1881-1950 

Girouard,  Desire  1836-1911 
Girouard,  Sir  (Edouard) 

Percy  (Cranwill)  1867-1932 

Gissing,  George  Robert  1857-1903 
Gladstone,  Herbert  John, 

Viscount  1854-1930 

Gladstone,  John  Hall  1827-1902 

Glaisher,  James  1809-1903 
Glaisher,  James  Whitbread 

Lee  1848—1928 

Glanville,  Sir  William  Henry  1900-1976 

Glass,  David  Victor  191 1  -1978 

Glass,  Ruth  Adele  1912-1990 

Glazebrook,  Michael  George  1853-1926 
Glazebrook,  Sir  Richard 

Tetley  1854-1935 
Gleichen,  Lady  Feodora 

GeorginaMaud  1861-1922 

Gleitze,  Mercedes  #1900-1979 


Glenavy,  Baron.  See 

Campbell,  James  Henry 

Mussen  1851-1931 
Glenavy,  Baron.  See 

Campbell,  Patrick  Gordon  1913-1980 
Glenesk,  Baron.  See 

Borthwick,  Algernon  1830-1908 

Glenny,  Alexander  Thomas  1882—1965 
Glenvil  Hall,  William  George. 

See  Hall  1887-1962 

Gloag,  Paton  James  1 823  -1 906 
Gloag,  William  Ellis,  Lord 

Kincairney  1828-1909 

Gloag,  William  Murray  #1865-1934 
Gloucester,  Duke  of.  See 

Henry  William  Frederick 

Albert  1900-1974 

Glover,  John  #1817-1902 

Glover,  Terrot  Reaveley  1869-1943 

Glubb,  Sir  John  Bagot  1897-1986 

Gluckman,  (Herman)  Max  191 1  -1975 

Glyn,  Elinor  1864-1943 

Godber,  Frederick,  Baron  1888-1976 

Goddard,  Rayner,  Baron  1877-1971 

Godfrey,  Daniel  1 83 1  -1903 

Godfrey,  John  Henry  1888-1971 

Godfrey,  Walter  Hindes  1881-1961 

Godfrey,  William  1889-1963 

Godkin,  Edwin  Lawrence  1831-1902 

Godlee,  Sir  Rickman  John  1849-1925 

Godley,  Sir  Alexander  John  1867-1957 

Godley,  Alfred  Denis  1856-1925 
Godley,  (John)  Arthur,  Baron 

Kilbracken  1847-1932 

Godwin,  George  Nelson  1846-1907 

Godwin,  Sir  Harry  1901-1985 
Godwin-Austen,  Henry 

Haversham  1834-1923 
Gogarty,  Oliver  Joseph  St 

John  1878-1957 

Gold,  Ernest  1881-1976 

Gold,  Sir  Harcourt  Gilbey  1876-1952 

Goldfinger,  Erno  1902-1987 
Goldie,  Sir  George  Dashwood 

Taubman  1846-1925 
Goldie,  Grace  Murrell 

Wyndham  1900-1986 

Goldschmidt,  Otto  1829-1907 

Goldsmid,  Sir  Frederic  John  1818-1908 
Goldsmid,  Sir  Henry  Joseph 

D'Avigdor-.  See 

D'Avigdor-Goldsmid  1909-1976 
Goldsmid-Montefiore,  Claude 

Joseph.  See  Montefiore  1858-1938 

Gollan,John  1911-1977 

Gollancz,  Sir  Hermann  1852-1930 

Gollancz,  Sir  Israel  1863-1930 

Gollancz,  Sir  Victor  1893-1967 

Gonne,  Maud  Edith  #1866-1953 

Gooch,  George  Peabody  1873-1968 

Goodall,  Frederick  1822-1904 


54* 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Goodall.  Norman 
Goodall,  Sir  Reginald 
Goode,  Sir  William 

Athelstane  Meredith 
Gooden,  Stephen  Frederick 
Goodenough,  Frederick 

Craufurd 
Goodenough,  Sir  William 

Edmund 
Goodenough,  Sir  William 

Macnamara 
Goodeve,  Sir  Charles 

Frederick 
Goodey,  Tom 
Goodhart,  Arthur  Lehman 
Goodhart-Rendel,  Harry 

Stuart 
Goodman  (formerly  Salaman), 

Juha 
Goodrich,  Edwin  Stephen 
Goossens,  Sir  Eugene 
Goossens,  Leon  Jean 
Gordon,  Alexander 
Gordon,  Arthur  Charles 

Hamilton-,  Baron 

Stanmore 
Gordon,  Charles  William, 

'Ralph  Connor' 
Gordon,  George  Stuart 
Gordon  (formerly 

Marjoribanks),  Ishbel 

Maria,  Marchioness  of 

Aberdeen  and  Temair 

(1857-1939).  See  under 

Gordon,  John  Campbell 
Gordon,  James  Frederick 

Skinner 
Gordon,  John  Campbell, 

Marquess  of  Aberdeen  and 

Temair 
Gordon,  Sir  John  James  Hood 
Gordon,  John  Rutherford 
Gordon,  Mervyn  Henry 
Gordon,  Sir  Thomas  Edward 
Gordon-Lennox,  Charles 

Henry,  Duke  of  Richmond 

and  Gordon 
Gordon-Taylor,  Sir  Gordon 
Gordon  Walker,  Patrick 

Chrestien,  Baron 

Gordon-Walker 
Gore,  Albert  Augustus 
Gore,  Charles 
Gore,  George 
Gore,  John  Ellard 
Gore,  (William)  David 

Ormsby,  Baron  Harlech. 

See  Ormsby  Gore 
Gore,  William  George  Arthur 

Ormsby-,  Baron  Harlech. 

See  Ormsby-Gore 


1896-1985 
1901-1990 

1875-1944 
1892-1955 

1866-1934 

1867-1945 

1899-1951 

1904-1980 
1885-1953 
1891-1978 

1887-1959 

1812-1906 
1868-1946 
1893-1962 
1897-1988 
#1841-1931 

1829-1912 

1860-1937 
1881-1942 


1821-1904 


1847-1934 
1832-1908 
1890-1974 
1872-1953 
1832-1914 


1818-1903 
1878-1960 


1907-1980 
1840-1901 
1853-1932 
1826-1908 
1845-1910 


1918-1985 


1885-1964 


Gore-Booth,  Constance, 

Countess  Markievicz 
Gore-Booth,  Eva  Selina 
Gore-Booth,  Paul  Henry, 

Baron 
Gore-Browne,  Sir  Stewart 
Gorell,  Baron.  See  Barnes, 

John  Gorell 
Gorer,  Peter  Alfred  Isaac 
Gorst,  Sir  John  Eldon 
Gorst,  Sir  (John)  Eldon 
Gort,  Viscount.  See  Vereker, 

John  Standish  Surtees 

Prendergast 
Goschen,  George  Joachim, 

Viscount 
Gosling,  Harry 
Gossage,  Sir  (Ernest)  Leslie 
Gosse,  Sir  Edmund  William 
Gosse,  Philip  Henry  George 
Gosselin,  Sir  Martin  le 

Marchant  Hadsley 
Gosset,  William  Sealy, 

'Student' 
Gotch,  John  Alfred 
Gott,  John 

Gott,  William  Henry  Ewart 
Goudge,  Elizabeth  de 

Beauchamp 
Gough,  Sir  Charles  John 

Stanley 
Gough,  Herbert  John 
Gough,  Sir  Hubert  de  la  Poer 
Gough,  Sir  Hugh  Henry 
Gough,  John  Edmond 
Gough-Calthorpe,  Augustus 

Cholmondeley,  Baron 

Calthorpe 
Gough-Calthorpe,  Sir 

Somerset  Arthur.  See 

Calthorpe 
Gould,  Sir  Francis  Carruthers 
Gould,  Nathaniel 
Gould,  Sir  Ronald 
Goulding,  Frederick 
Gouzenko,  Igor  Sergeievich 
Gow,  Andrew  Sydenham 

Farrar 
Gower,  (Edward)  Frederick 

Leveson-.  See 

Leveson-Gower 
Gower,  Sir  Henry  Dudley 

Gresham  Leveson 
Gowers,  Sir  Ernest  Arthur 
Gowers,  Sir  William  Richard 
Gowrie,  Earl  of.  See 

Hore-Ruthven,  Alexander 

Gore  Arkwright 
Grace,  Edward  Mills 
Grace,  William  Gilbert 
Graham,  Henry  Grey 


#1868-1927 
#1870-1926 

1909-1984 
1883-1967 

1848-1913 
1907-1961 
1835-1916 
1861-1911 


1886-1946 

1831-1907 
1861-1930 
1891-1949 
1849-1928 
#1879-1959 

1847-1905 

1876-1937 
1852-1942 
1830-1906 
1897-1942 

1900-1984 

1832-1912 
1890-1965 

1870-1963 
1833-1909 
1871-1915 


1829-1910 


1864-1937 
1844-1925 
1857-1919 
1904-1986 
1842-1909 
1919-1982 

#1886-1978 


1819-1907 

1873-1954 
1880-1966 
1845-1915 


1872-1955 
1841-1911 

1848-1915 
1842-1906 


543 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Graham,  Hugh,  Baron 

Atholstan  1848-1938 

Graham,  John  Anderson  1861-1942 
Graham,  Robert  Bontine 

Cunninghame  1852-1936 

Graham,  Sir  Ronald  William  1870-1949 
Graham,  Thomas  Alexander 

Ferguson  1840-1906 

Graham,  William  1839-1911 

Graham,  William  1887-1932 

Graham,  (William)  Sydney  1918-1986 
Graham  Brown,  Thomas.  See 

Brown  1882-1965 
Graham-Harrison,  Sir 

William  Montagu  1871-1949 
Graham-Little,  Sir  Ernest 

Gordon  Graham  1867-1950 

Grahame,  Kenneth  1859-1932 

Grahame-White,  Claude  1879-1959 

Granet,  Sir  (William)  Guy  1867-1943 

Grant,  Sir  (Alfred)  Hamilton  1872-1937 

Grant,  Cary  1904-1986 
Grant,  Sir  Charles  (1836— 

1903).  See  under  Grant,  Sir 

Robert 
Grant,  Duncan  James 

Corrowr  1885-1978 

Grant,  George  Monro  1835-1902 

Grant,  Sir  Robert  1837-1904 
Grant  Duff,  Sir  Mountstuart 

Elphinstone  1829-1906 

Grantham,  Sir  William  1835-1911 

Granville,  Sir  Keith  1910-1990 
Granville-Barker,  Harley 

Granville  1877-1946 

Graves,  Alfred  Perceval  1846-1931 

Graves,  George  Windsor  1873?— 1949 

Graves,  Robert  Ranke  1895-1985 

Gray,  Sir  Alexander  1882-1968 
Gray,  Sir  Archibald 

Montague  Henry  1880-1967 

Gray,  Basil  1904-1989 

Gray,  Benjamin  Kirkman  1862-1907 

Gray,  George  Buchanan  1865-1922 

Gray,  George  Edward  Kruger  1880-1943 

Gray,  Herbert  Branston  1851-1929 

Gray,  Sir  James  1891-1975 
Gray,  (Kathleen)  Eileen 

(Moray)  1879-1976 

Gray,  Louis  Harold  1905-1965 
Greame,  Philip  Lloyd-,  Earl 

of  Swinton.  See 

Cunliffe-Lister  1884-1972 

Greaves,  Walter  1846-1930 
Green,  Alice  Sophia  Amelia 

(Mrs  Stopford  Green)  1847-1929 

Green,  Charles  Alfred  Howell  1864-1944 
Green,  Frederick  William 

Edridge-.  See 

Edridge-Green  1863-1953 

Green,  Gustavus  1865-1964 


Green,  Henry,  pseudonym.  See 

Yorke,  Henry  Vincent 
Green,  Samuel  Gosnell 
Green,  William  Curtis 
Greenaway,  Catherine  ('Kate') 
Greene,  Harry  Plunket 
Greene,  Sir  Hugh  Carleton 
Greene,  Wilfrid  Arthur, 

Baron 
Greene,  William  Friese- 
Greene,  Sir  (William) 

Graham 
Greenidge,  Abel  Hendy  Jones 
Greenly,  Edward 
Greenly,  Henry 
Greenwell,  William 
Greenwood,  Arthur 
Greenwood,  Arthur  William 

James  ('Anthony'), 

Baron  Greenwood  of 

Rossendale 
Greenwood,  Frederick 
Greenwood,  Hamar,  Viscount 
Greenwood,  Joan  Mary 

Waller 
Greenwood,  Thomas 
Greenwood,  Walter 
Greer,  (Frederick)  Arthur, 

Baron  Fairfield 
Greer,  William  Derrick 

Lindsay 
Greet,  Sir  Philip  Barling  Ben 
Greg,  Sir  Walter  Wilson 
Grego,  Joseph 
Gregory,  Sir  Augustus 

Charles 
Gregory,  Edward  John 
Gregory,  Frederick 

Gugenheim 
Gregory,  Isabella  Augusta, 

Lady 
Gregory,  John  Walter 
Gregory,  Sir  Richard  Arman 
Gregory,  Robert 
Greiffenhagen,  Maurice 

William 
Grenfell,  Bernard  Pyne 
Grenfell,  Edward  Charles, 

Baron  St  Just 
Grenfell,  Francis  Wallace, 

Baron 
Grenfell,  George 
Grenfell,  Hubert  Henry 
Grenfell,  Joyce  Irene 
Grenfell,  Julian  Henry 

Francis 
Grenfell,  Sir  Wilfred 

Thomason 
Grenfell,  William  Henry, 

Baron  Desborough 
Gresley,  Sir  (Herbert)  Nigel 


1905-1973 
1822-1905 
1875-1960 
1846-1901 
1865-1936 
1910-1987 

1883-1952 
1855-1921 

1857-1950 
1865-1906 
#1861-1951 
#1876-1947 
1820-1918 
1880-1954 


1911-1982 
1830-1909 
1870-1948 

1921-1987 
1851-1908 
1903-1974 

1863-1945 

1902-1972 
1857-1936 
1875-1959 
1843-1908 

1819-1905 
1850-1909 

1893-1961 

1852-1932 
1864-1932 
1864-1952 
1819-1911 

1862-1931 
1869-1926 

1870-1941 

1841-1925 
1849-1906 
1845-1906 
1910-1979 

1888-1915 

1865-1940 

1855-1945 
#1876-1941 


544 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Greville,  Frances  Evelyn, 

Countess  of  Warwick 
Grey,  Albert  Henry  George, 

Earl 
Grey,  Charles  Grey 
Grey,  Sir  Edward,  Viscount 

Grey  of  Fallodon 
Grey  (formerly  Shirreff), 

Maria  Georgina 
Grice,  (Herbert)  Paul 
Grierson,  Sir  George 

Abraham 
Grierson,  Sir  Herbert  John 

Clifford 
Grierson,  Sir  James  Moncrieff 
Grierson,  John 
Grieve,  Christopher  Murray, 

'Hugh  MacDiarmid' 
Griffin,  Bernard  William 
Griffin,  Sir  Lepel  Henry 
Griffith,  Alan  Arnold 
Griffith,  Arthur 
Griffith,  Francis  Llewellyn 
Griffith,  Ralph  Thomas 

Hotchkin 
Griffiths,  Arthur  George 

Frederick 
Griffiths,  Ernest  Howard 
Griffiths,  Ezer 
Griffiths,  Hugh 
Griffiths,  James 
Griffiths,  Sir  John  Norton-. 

See  Norton-Griffiths 
Grigg,  Edward  William 

Macleay,  Baron  Altrincham 
Grigg,  Sir  (Percy)  James 
Griggs,  William 
Grigson,  Geoffrey  Edward 

Harvey 
Grigson,  (Heather  Mabel) 

Jane 
Grimble,  Sir  Arthur  Francis 
Grimthorpe,  Baron.  See 

Beckett,  Sir  Edmund 
Grisewood,  Frederick  Henry 
Groome,  Francis  Hindes 
Grose,  Thomas  Hodge 
Gross,  (Imre)  Anthony 

(Sandor) 
Grossmith,  George 
Grossmith,  George,  the 

younger 
Grossmith,  Walter  Weedon 

(1854-1919).  See  under 

Grossmith,  George 
Grosvenor,  Richard  De 

Aquila,  Baron  Stalbridge 
Grubb,  Sir  Kenneth  George 
Gruffyd,  William  John 
Gubbins,  Sir  Colin  McVean 
Gubbins,  John 


Gubbins,  Norman  Hector 

1861- 

-1938 

Leifchild  ('Nathaniel') 

#1893- 

1976 

Guedalla,  Philip 

1889- 

-1944 

1851- 

-1917 

Guest,  Frederick  Edward 

1875- 

-1937 

1875- 

1953 

Guest,  Ivor  Churchill, 

Viscount  Wimborne 

1873- 

1939 

1862- 

-1933 

Guggenheim,  Edward 

Armand 

1901- 

1970 

1816- 

-1906 

Guggisberg,  Sir  Frederick 

1913- 

-1988 

Gordon 
Guillum  Scott,  Sir  John 

1869- 

1930 

1851- 

-1941 

Arthur.  See  Scott 
Guinness,  Sir  Arthur  Edward, 

1910- 

-1983 

1866- 

-1960 

Baron  Ardilaun 

1840- 

-1915 

1859- 

-1914 

Guinness,  Edward  Cecil,  Earl 

1898- 

-1972 

of Iveagh 
Guinness,  Gwendolen 

1847- 

-1927 

1892- 

-1978 

Florence  Mary,  Countess  of 

1899- 

-1956 

Iveagh  (1881-1966).  See 

1838- 

-1908 

under  Guinness,  Rupert 

1893- 

-1963 

Edward  Cecil  Lee 

1872- 

-1922 

Guinness,  Henry  Grattan 

1835- 

-1910 

1862- 

-1934 

Guinness,  Rupert  Edward 

Cecil  Lee,  Earl  of  Iveagh 

1874- 

-1967 

1826- 

-1906 

Guinness,  Walter  Edward, 

Baron  Moyne 

1880- 

-1944 

1838- 

-1908 

Gully,  William  Court, 

1851- 

-1932 

Viscount  Selby 

1835- 

-1909 

1888- 

-1962 

Gunn,  Battiscombe  George 

1883- 

-1950 

#1891- 

-1954 

Gunn,  Sir  James 

1893- 

-1964 

1890- 

-1975 

Giinther,  Albert  Charles 

Lewis  Gotthilf 

1830- 

-1914 

1871- 

-1930 

Gunther,  Robert  William 

Theodore 

1869- 

-1940 

1879- 

-1955 

Gurney,  Sir  Henry  Lovell 

1890- 

-1964 

Goldsworthy 

1898- 

-1951 

1832- 

-1911 

Gurney,  Henry  Palin 

1847- 

-1904 

Gurney,  Ivor  Bertie 

#1890- 

-1937 

1905- 

-1985 

Guthrie,  Sir  James 
Guthrie,  Thomas  Anstey,  'F. 

1859- 

-1930 

1928- 

-1990 

Anstey' 

1856- 

-1934 

1888- 

-1956 

Guthrie,  William 
Guthrie,  (William)  Keith 

1835- 

-1908 

1816 

-1905 

(Chambers) 

1906- 

-1981 

1888- 

-1972 

Guthrie,  Sir  (William) 

1851 

-1902 

Tyrone 

1900- 

-1971 

1845- 

-1906 

Gutteridge,  Harold  Cooke 

1876 

-1953 

Guttmann,  Sir  Ludwig 

1899- 

-1980 

1905- 

-1984 

Guy,  Sir  Henry  Lewis 

1887- 

-1956 

1847- 

-1912 

Gwatkin,  Henry  Melvill 

1844- 

-1916 

Gwyer,  Sir  Maurice  Linford 

1878 

-1952 

1874- 

-1935 

Gwynn,  John 

1827 

-1917 

Gwynn,  Stephen  Lucius 

1864- 

-1950 

Gwynne,  Howell  Arthur 

1865- 

-1950 

1847 

-1912 

Gwynne-Jones,  Allan 
Gwynne- Vaughan,  Dame 

1892- 

-1982 

1837 

-1912 

Helen  Charlotte  Isabella 

1879 

-1967 

1900 

-1980 

#1881 

-1954 

1896 

-1976 

Hacker,  Arthur 

1858 

-1919 

1838 

-1906 

Hacking,  Sir  John 

1888- 

-1969 

545 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Haddon,  Alfred  Cort  1855-1940 

Haddow,  Sir  Alexander  1907-1976 

Haden,  Sir  Francis  Seymour  1818-1910 

Hadfield,  Sir  Robert  Abbott  1858-1940 
Hadley,  Patrick  Arthur 

Sheldon  1899-1973 

Hadley,  William  Waite  1866-1960 

Hadow,  Grace  Eleanor  1875-1940 

Hadow,  Sir  (William)  Henry  1859-1937 
Hadrill,  (John)  Michael 

Wallace-.  See 

Wallace-Hadrill  1916-1985 

Haggard,  Sir  Henry  Rider  1856-1925 
Hahn,  Kurt  Matthias  Robert 

Martin  1886-1974 

Haig,  Douglas,  Earl  1861-1928 

Haig  Brown,  William  1823-1907 

Haigh,  Arthur  Elam  1855-1905 
Hailes,  Baron.  See 

Buchan-Hepburn,  Patrick 

George  Thomas  1 90 1  -1 974 
Hailey,  (William)  Malcolm, 

Baron  1872-1969 
Hailsham,  Viscount.  See 

Hogg,  Douglas  McGarel  1872-1950 
Hailwood,  (Stanley)  Michael 

(Bailey)  1940-1981 

Haines,  Sir  Frederick  Paul  1819-1909 
Haking,  Sir  Richard  Cyril 

Byrne  1862-1945 
Halcrow,  Sir  William 

Thomson  1883-1958 

Haldane,  Elizabeth  Sanderson  1862-1937 
Haldane,  John  Burdon 

Sanderson  1892-1964 

Haldane,  John  Scott  1860-1936 
Haldane,  Richard  Burdon, 

Viscount  1856-1928 

Hale-White,  Sir  William  1857-1949 

Haley,  Sir  William  John  1901-1987 

Halford,  Frank  Bernard  1894-1955 
Haliburton,  Arthur  Lawrence, 

Baron  1832-1907 
Halifax,  Viscount.  See  Wood, 

Charles  Lindley  1839-1934 
Halifax,  Earl  of.  See  Wood, 

Edward  Frederick  Lindley  1881-1959 

Hall,  Sir  (Alfred)  Daniel  1864-1942 

Hall,  Arthur  Henry  1876-1949 

Hall,  Sir  Arthur  John  1866-1951 

Hall,  Christopher  Newman  1816-1902 

Hall,  Sir  Edward  Marshall  1858-1927 

Hall,  FitzEdward  1825-1901 

Hall,  Harry  Reginald  Holland  1873-1930 

Hall,  Henry  Robert  1898-1989 

Hall,  Hubert  1857-1944 

Hall,  Sir  John  1824-1907 

Hall,  Philip  1904-1982 
Hall,  Radclyffe.  See 

Radclyffe-Hall,  Marguerite 

Antonia  #1880-1943 


Hall,  Robert  Lowe,  Baron 

Roberthall  1901-1988 

Hall,  William  George  Glenvil  1887-1962 

Hall,  Sir  (William)  Reginald  1870-1943 

Hall,  (William)  Stephen 

(Richard)  King-,  Baron 

King-Hall.  See  King-Hall  1893-1966 

Hall-Patch,  Sir  Edmund  Leo  1896-1975 

Halle  (formerly 

Norman-Neruda),  Wilma 

Maria  Francisca,  Lady  1839-1911 

Hallett,  John  Hughes-.  See 

Hughes-Hallett  1901-1972 

Halliburton,  William 

Dobinson  1860-1931 

Halliday,  Edward  Irvine  1902-1984 

Halliday,  Sir  Frederick  James  1806-1901 

Halliley,  John  Elton.  See  Le 

Mesurier,  John  1912-1983 

Halliwell,  (Robert  James) 

Leslie  1929-1989 

Halsbury,  Earl  of.  See 

Giffard,  Hardinge  Stanley  1823-1921 

Halsey,  Sir  Lionel  1872-1949 

Hambleden,  Viscount.  See 

Smith,  William  Frederick 

Danvers  1868-1928 

Hamblin  Smith,  James.  See 

Smith  1829-1901 

Hambourg,  Mark  1879-1960 

Hambro,  Sir  Charles  Jocelyn  1897-1963 

Hamidullah,  Nawab  of 

Bhopal.  See  Bhopal  1894-1960 

Hamilton,  Sir  (Charles) 

Denis  1918-1988 

Hamilton,  Charles  Harold  St 

John,  'Frank  Richards'  1876-1961 

Hamilton,  David  James  1 849  -1 909 

Hamilton,  Sir  Edward  Walter  1847-1908 

Hamilton,  Eugene  Jacob  Lee-. 

See  Lee-Hamilton  1845-1907 

Hamilton,  Sir  Frederick  Hew 

George  Dalrymple-.  See 

Dalrymple-Hamilton  1890-1974 

Hamilton,  Lord  George 

Francis  1845-1927 

Hamilton,  Hamish  1900-1988 

Hamilton,  Sir  Ian  Standish 

Monteith  1853-1947 

Hamilton,  James,  Duke  of 

Abercorn  1838-1913 

Hamilton,  James.  See 

Hamilton,  Hamish  1900-1988 

Hamilton,  John  Andrew, 

Viscount  Sumner  1859-1934 

Hamilton,  Sir  Richard  Vesey  1829-1912 

Hamilton,  Walter  1908-1988 

Hamilton  Fairley,  Sir  Neil. 

SeeFairley  1891-1966 

Hamilton  Fyfe,  Sir  William. 

See  Fyfe  1878-1965 


546 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Hammerton,  Sir  John 

Alexander  #1871-1949 

Hammond,  Sir  John  1 889-1964 

Hammond,  John  Lawrence 

Le  Breton  1872-1949 

Hammond,  Walter  Reginald  1903-1965 

Hampden,  Viscount.  See 

Brand,  Henrv  Robert  1841-1906 

Hampson,  Frank  1918-1985 

Hamshaw  Thomas,  Hugh. 

See  Thomas  1885-1962 

Hamson,  Charles  John  Joseph 

('Jack')  1905-1987 

Hanburv,  Charlotte  (1830- 

1900)'.  See  under  Hanbury, 

Elizabeth 
Hanbury,  Elizabeth  1793-1901 

Hanbury,  Sir  James  Arthur  1832-1908 

Hanbury,  Robert  William  1845-1903 

Hanbury-Williams,  Sir  John 

Coldbrook  1892-1965 

Hancock,  Anthony  John 

('Tony')  1924-1968 

Hancock,  Dame  Florence 

May  1893-1974 

Hancock,  Sir  Henry 

Drummond  1895-1965 

Hancock,  Sir  (William)  Keith  1898-1988 

Handlev,  Thomas  Reginald 

('Tommy')  1892-1949 

Handlev  Page,  Sir  Frederick. 

See  Page  1885-1962 

Hankey,  Maurice  Pascal 

Alers,  Baron  1877-1963 

Hankin,  St  John  Emile 

Clavering  1869-1909 

Hanlan  (properly  Hanlon), 

Edward  1855-1908 

Hannay,  James  Owen, 

'George  A.  Birmingham'  1865-1950 

Hannay,  Robert  Kerr  1867-1940 

Hannington,  Walter  #1896-1966 

Hansford  Johnson,  Pamela, 

Lady  Snow.  See  Johnson  1912-1981 

Hanson,  (Emmeline)  Jean  1919-1973 

Hanworth,  Viscount.  See 

Pollock,  Ernest  Murrav  1861-1936 

Harari,  Manya  1905-1969 

Harari,  Ralph  Andrew  1892-1969 

Harben,  Sir  Henry  1823-1911 

Harcourt,  Augustus  George 

Vernon  1834-1919 

Harcourt,  Leveson  Francis 

Vernon-.  See 

Vernon-Harcourt  1839-1907 

Harcourt,  Lewis,  Viscount  1863-1922 

Harcourt,  William  Edward, 

Viscount  1908-1979 

Harcourt,  Sir  William  George 

Granville  Venables  Vernon  1827-1904 

Harcourt-Smith,  Sir  Cecil  1859-1944 


Harden,  Sir  Arthur  1865-1940 

Hardie,  James  Keir  1856-1915 

Hardie,  Martin  1875-1952 

Hardie,  William  Ross  1862-1916 

Hardiman,  Alfred  Frank  1891-1949 
Harding,  Allan  Francis 

('John'),  Baron  Harding  of 

Petherton  18% -1989 

Harding,  Sir  Edward  John  1880-1954 

Harding,  Gilbert  Charles  1907-1960 
Harding,  Sir  Harold  John 

Boyer  1900-1986 
Hardinge,  Alexander  Henry 

Louis,  Baron  Hardinge  of 

Penshurst  1894-1960 
Hardinge,  Charles,  Baron 

Hardinge  of  Penshurst  1858-1944 
Hardwicke,  Sir  Cedric 

Webster  1893-1964 
Hardwicke,  Earl  of.  See 

Yorke,  Albert  Edward 

Philip  Henry  1867-1904 

Hardy,  Sir  Alister  Clavering  18% -1985 

Hardy,  Frederic  Daniel  1827-1911 
Hardy,  Gathorne  Gathorne-, 

Earl  of  Cranbrook.  See 

Gathorne-Hardy  1814-1906 

Hardy,  Godfrey  Harold  1877-1947 
Hardy,  Herbert  Hardy 

Cozens-,  Baron 

Cozens-Hardy.  See 

Cozens-Hardy  1838-1920 

Hardy,  Sam  1882-1966 

Hardy,  Thomas  1840-1928 

Hardy,  Sir  William  Bate  1864-1934 
Hare,  Augustus  John 

Cuthbert  1834-1903 

Hare,  Sir  John  1844-1921 
Hare,  John  Hugh,  Viscount 

Blakenham  1911-1982 

Hare,  John  Robertson  1 89 1  -1979 
Harewood,  Earl  of.  See 

Lascelles,  Henry  George 

Charles  1882-1947 

Hargrave,  John  Gordon  1894-1982 

Hargreaves,  James  #1834 -1915 
Harington,  Sir  Charles 

('Tim')  1872-1940 

Harington,  Sir  Charles  Robert  1897-1972 

Harker,  Alfred  1859-1939 

Harland,  Henry  1861-1905 

Harland,  Sydney  Cross  1891-1982 
Harlech,  Baron.  See  Ormsbv 

Gore,  (William)  David  1918-1985 
Harlech,  Baron.  See 

Ormsby-Gore,  William 

George  Arthur  1885-1964 

Harley,  John  Laker  ('Jack')  191 1  -1990 

Harley,  Robert  1828-1910 

Harman,  Sir  Charles  Eustace  1894-1970 

Harmer,  Sir  Sidney  Frederic  #1862-1950 


547 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Harmsworth,  Alfred  Charles 

William,  Viscount 

Northcliffe 
Harmsworth,  Esmond  Cecil, 

Viscount  Rothermere 
Harmsworth,  Harold  Sidney, 

Viscount  Rothermere 
Harper,  Sir  George  Montague 
Harraden,  Beatrice 
Harrel,  Sir  David 
Harrington,  Timothy  Charles 
Harris,  Sir  Arthur  Travers 
Harris,  Frederick  Leverton 
Harris,  Geoffrey  Wingfield 
Harris,  George  Robert 

Canning,  Baron 
Harris,  (Henry)  Wilson 
Harris,  James  Rendel 
Harris,  James  Thomas 

('Frank') 
Harris,  John  Wyndham 

Parkes  Lucas  Beynon, 

'John  Wyndham' 
Harris,  Sir  Percy  Alfred 
Harris,  Sir  Percy  Wyn-.  See 

Wyn-Harris 
Harris,  Thomas  Lake 
Harris,  Tomas 
Harris,  Sir  William  Henry 
Harrison,  Francis  Llewelyn 

('Frank') 
Harrison,  Frederic 
Harrison,  Henry 
Harrison,  Jane  Ellen 
Harrison,  Mary  St  Leger, 

'Lucas  Malet' 
Harrison,  Reginald 
Harrison,  Sir  Reginald  Carey 

('Rex') 
Harrison,  Sir  William 

Montagu  Graham-.  See 

Graham-Harrison 
Harrisson,  Thomas  Harnett 

('Tom') 
Harrod,  Sir  (Henry)  Roy 

(Forbes) 
Hart,  Sir  Basil  Henry  Liddell 
Hart,  Horace  Henry 
Hart,  Sir  Raymund  George 
Hart,  Sir  Robert 
Harrington,  Marquess  of.  See 

Cavendish,  Spencer 

Compton 
Hartley,  Arthur  Clifford 
Hartley,  Sir  Charles  Augustus 
Hartley,  Sir  Harold  Brewer 
Hartley,  Leslie  Poles 
Hartnell,  Sir  Norman  Bishop 
Hartog,  Sir  Philip(pe)  Joseph 
Hartree,  Douglas  Rayner 
Hartshorn,  Vernon 


1865-1922 

1898-1978 

1868-1940 
1865-1922 
1864-1936 
1841-1939 
1851-1910 
1892-1984 
1864-1926 
#1913-1971 

1851-1932 
1883-1955 
1852-1941 

1856-1931 


1903-1969 
1876-1952 

1903-1979 
1823-1906 
1908-1964 
1883-1973 

1905-1987 
1831-1923 
1867-1954 
1850-1928 

1852-1931 
1837-1908 

1908-1990 


1871-1949 

1911-1976 

1900-1978 
1895-1970 
#1840-1916 
1899-1960 
1835-1911 


1833-1908 
1889-1960 
1825-1915 
1878-1972 
1895-1972 
1901-1979 
1864-1947 
1897-1958 
1872-1931 


Hartshorne,  Albert  1839-1910 

Harty,  (Fredric)  Russell  1934-1988 

Harty,  Sir  (Herbert)  Hamilton  1879-1941 

Harvey,  Hildebrand  Wolfe  1887-1970 
Harvey,  Sir  John  Martin 

Martin-.  See 

Martin-Harvey  1863-1944 
Harvey,  Sir  Oliver  Charles, 

Baron  Harvey  of  Tasburgh  1893-1968 

Harwood,  Basil  1859-1949 
Harwood,  Sir  Henry 

Harwood  1888-1950 

Haskell,  Arnold  Lionel  David  1903-1980 

Haslam,  Sir  Alfred  Seale  #1844-1927 
Hasler,  Herbert  George 

('Blondie')  1914-1987 
Haslett,  Dame  Caroline 

Harriet  1895-1957 

Hassall,  Christopher  Vernon  1912-1963 

Hassall,  Joan  1906-1988 

Hassall,  John  1868-1948 

Hastie,  William  1842-1903 

Hastings,  Anthea  Esther  1924-1981 
Hastings,  Francis  John 

Clarence  Westenra 

Plantagenet,  Earl  of 

Huntingdon  1901-1990 

Hastings,  James  1852-1922 
Hastings,  Sir  Patrick 

Gardiner  1880-1952 

Hatch,  Frederick  Henry  #1864-1932 

Hathaway,  Dame  Sibyl  Mary  #1884-1974 

Hatry,  Clarence  Charles  1888-1965 
Hatton,  Harold  Heneage 

Finch-.  See  Finch-Hatton  1856-1904 

Hatton,  Joseph  1841-1907 

Hatton,  Sir  Ronald  George  1886-1965 

Havell,  Ernest  Binfield  #  1 86 1  -1934 

Havelock,  Sir  Arthur  Elibank  1844-1908 

Havelock,  Sir  Thomas  Henry  1877-1968 

Haverfield,  Francis  John  1860-1919 
Havilland,  Sir  Geoffrey  de. 

See  de  Havilland  1882-1965 

Haweis,  Hugh  Reginald  1838-1901 
Haweis,  Mary  (d.  1898).  See 

under  Haweis,  Hugh 

Reginald 
Hawke,  Sir  (Edward) 

Anthony  1895-1964 

Hawke,  Sir  (John)  Anthony  1869-1941 
Hawke,  Martin  Bladen,  Baron 

Hawke  of  Towton  1860-1938 
Hawker,  Mary  Elizabeth, 

'Lanoe  Falcner'  1848-1908 
Hawkins,  Sir  Anthony  Hope, 

'Anthony  Hope'  1863-1933 
Hawkins,  Henry,  Baron 

Brampton  1817-1907 

Hawkins,  Herbert  Leader  1887-1968 
Haworth,  Sir  (Walter) 

Norman  1883-1950 


548 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Hawthorn,  John  Michael 
Hawtrey,  Sir  Charles  Henry 
Hawtrey,  Sir  Ralph  George 
Hay,  Sir  Harley  Hugh 

Dalrymple- 
Hay,  Ian,  pseudonym.  See 

Beith,  John  Hay 
Hay,  William  Thomson 

('Will') 
Hayes,  Edwin 
Hayman,  Henry 
Hayne,  Charles  Hayne  Seale-. 

See  Seale-Hayne 
Hayter,  Stanley  William 
Hayward,  Sir  Isaac  James 
Hayward,  John  Davy 
Hayward,  Robert  Baldwin 
Hazlitt,  Wilham  Carew 
Head,  Antony  Henry, 

Viscount 
Head,  Barclay  Vincent 
Head,  Sir  Henry 
Headlam,  Arthur  Cayley 
Headlam,  Stewart  Duckworth 
Headlam,  Walter  George 
Headlam-Morley,  Sir  James 

Wycliffe 
Heal,  Sir  Ambrose 
Healy,  John  Edward 
Healy,  Timothy  Michael 
Hearn,  Mary  Anne, 

'Marianne  Farningham' 
Heath,  Christopher 
Heath,  Sir  (Henry)  Frank 
Heath,  Sir  Leopold  George 
Heath,  Sir  Thomas  Little 
Heath  Robinson,  Wilham.  See 

Robinson 
Heathcoat  Amory,  Derick, 

Viscount  Amory.  See 

Amory 
Heathcote,  John  Moyer 
Heaton,  Sir  John  Henniker 
Heaviside,  Oliver 
Hector,  Annie  French,  'Mrs 

Alexander' 
Hector,  Sir  James 
Heenan,  John  Carmel 
Heffer,  Reuben  George 
Heilbron,  Sir  Ian  Morris 
Heinemann,  William 
Heitler,  Walter  Heinrich 
Hele-Shaw,  Henry  Selby 
Helena  Victoria,  Princess 
Hellmuth,  Isaac 
Helpmann,  Sir  Robert 

Murray 
Hely-Hutchinson,  Richard 

Walter  John,  Earl  of 

Donoughmore 
Hemming,  George  Wirgman 


1929-1959 

Hemphill,  Charles  Hare, 

1858-1923 

Baron 

1822- 

-1908 

1879-1975 

Henderson,  (Alexander) 

Gavin,  Baron  Faringdon 

1902- 

-1977 

1861-1940 

Henderson,  Arthur 

1863- 

-1935 

Henderson,  Sir  David 

1862- 

-1921 

1876-1952 

Henderson,  David  Willis 

Wilson 

1903- 

-1968 

#1888-1949 

Henderson,  George  Francis 

1819-1904 

Robert 

1854- 

-1903 

1823-1904 

Henderson,  George  Gerald 
Henderson,  Sir  Hubert 

1862- 

-1942 

1833-1903 

Douglas 

1890- 

-1952 

1901-1988 

Henderson,  Joseph 

1832- 

-1908 

1884-1976 

Henderson,  Sir  Nevile 

1905-1965 

Meyrick 

1882- 

-1942 

1829-1903 

Henderson,  Sir  Reginald  Guy 

1834-1913 

Hannam 

1881- 

-1939 

Henderson,  William  George 

1819- 

-1905 

1906-1983 

Hendy,  Sir  Philip  Anstiss 

1900- 

-1980 

1844-1914 

Henley,  Wilham  Ernest 

1849- 

-1903 

1861-1940 

Hennell,  Sara  (1812-1899). 

1862-1947 

See  under  Bray, 

#1847-1924 

Caroline 

1814- 

-1905 

1866-1908 

Hennessey,  John  Bobanau 

Nickerheu 

1829- 

-1910 

1863-1929 

Hennessy,  Henry 

1826- 

-1901 

1872-1959 

Hennessy,  (Richard)  James 

1872-1934 

(Arthur)  Pope-.  See 

1855-1931 

Pope-Hennessy 
Henriques,  Sir  Basil  Lucas 

1916- 

-1974 

1834-1909 

Quixano 

1890- 

-1961 

1835-1905 

Henry  Wilham  Frederick 

1863-1946 

Albert,  Prince  of  York  and 

1817-1907 

later  Duke  of  Gloucester 

1900- 

-1974 

1861-1940 

Henry,  Sir  Edward  Richard 

1850- 

-1931 

Henry,  Mitchell 

1826- 

-1910 

1872-1944 

Henschel,  Sir  George 

1850- 

-1934 

Henson,  Herbert  Hensley 

1863- 

-1947 

Henson,  Leslie  Lincoln 

1891- 

-1957 

1899-1981 

Henty,  George  Alfred 

1832- 

-1902 

1834-1912 

Hepburn,  Patrick  George 

1848-1914 

Thomas  Buchan-,  Baron 

1850-1925 

Hailes.  See 

Buchan-Hepburn 

1901- 

-1974 

1825-1902 

Hepworth,  Dame  (Jocelyn) 

1834-1907 

Barbara 

1903- 

-1975 

1905-1975 

Herbert,  Sir  Alan  Patrick 

1890- 

-1971 

1908-1985 

Herbert,  Auberon  Edward 

1886-1959 

William  Molyneux 

1838- 

-1906 

1863-1920 

Herbert,  Auberon  Mark  Yvo 

1904-1981 

Henry  Molyneux 

1922- 

-1974 

1854-1941 

Herbert,  Auberon  Thomas, 

1870-1948 

Baron  Lucas 

1876- 

-1916 

1817-1901 

Herbert,  Aubrey  Nigel  Henry 

Molyneux 

#1880- 

-1923 

1909-1986 

Herbert,  Edwin  Savory, 

Baron  Tangley 

1899- 

-1973 

Herbert,  George  Edward 

1875-1948 

Stanhope  Molyneux,  Earl 

1821-1905 

of  Carnarvon 

1866- 

-1923 

549 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Herbert,  Sir  Robert  George 

Wyndham 
Herdman,  Sir  William  Abbott 
Herford,  Brooke 
Herford,  Charles  Harold 
Herford,  William  Henry 
Herkomer,  Sir  Hubert  von 
Hermes,  Gertrude  Anna 

Bertha 
Herring,  George 
Herringham,  Sir  Wilmot 

Parker 
Herschel,  Alexander  Stewart 
Herschel,  Sir  William  James 
Hertslet,  Sir  Edward 
Hertz,  Joseph  Herman 
Hertzog,  James  Barry  Munnik 
Heseltine,  Philip  Arnold, 

'Peter  Warlock' 
Heslop,  Richard  Henry 
Hess,  Dame  (Julia)  Myra 
Hetherington,  Sir  Hector 

James  Wright 
Hewart,  Gordon,  Viscount 
Hewett,  Sir  John  Prescott 
Hewins,  William  Albert 

Samuel 
Hewitt,  Sir  Edgar  Rainey 

Ludlow-.  See 

Ludlow-Hewitt 
Hewitt,  John  Harold 
Hewlett,  Maurice  Henry 
Hey,  Donald  Holroyde 
Heyer,  Georgette 
Heyworth,  Geoffrey,  Baron 
Hibberd,  (Andrew)  Stuart 
Hibbert,  Sir  John  Tomlinson 
Hichens,  Robert  Smythe 
Hichens,  (William)  Lionel 
Hicks,  Edward  Lee 
Hicks,  Sir  (Edward)  Seymour 

(George) 
Hicks,  George  Dawes 
Hicks,  George  Ernest 
Hicks,  Sir  John  Richard 
Hicks,  Robert  Drew 
Hicks,  William  Joynson-, 

Viscount  Brentford 
Hicks  Beach,  Sir  Michael 

Edward,  Earl  St  Aldwyn 
Higgins,  Edward  John 
Higgins,  Sir  John  Frederick 

Andrews 
Hilbery,  Sir  (George) 

Malcolm 
Hilditch,  Thomas  Percy 
Hiles,  Henry 
Hill,  Alexander  Staveley 
Hill,  Alsager  Hay 
Hill,  Archibald  Vivian 
Hill,  Sir  Arthur  William 


1831-1905 
1858-1924 
1830-1903 
1853-1931 
1820-1908 
1849-1914 

1901-1983 
1832-1906 

1855-1936 
1836-1907 
#1833-1917 
1824-1902 
1872-1946 
1866-1942 

1894-1930 
1907-1973 
1890-1965 

1888-1965 
1870-1943 
1854-1941 

1865-1931 


1886-1973 
1907-1987 
1861-1923 
1904-1987 
1902-1974 
1894-1974 
1893-1983 
1824-1908 
1864-1950 
1874-1940 
1843-1919 

1871-1949 
1862-1941 
1879-1954 
1904-1989 
1850-1929 

1865-1932 

1837-1916 
1864-1947 

1875-1948 

1883-1965 
1886-1965 
1828-1904 
1825-1905 
1839-1906 
1886-1977 
1875-1941 


Hill,  Charles,  Baron  Hill  of 

Luton  1904-1989 

Hill,  Sir  (Edward)  Maurice  1862-1934 

Hill,  Frank  Harrison  1830-1910 
Hill,  George  Birkbeck 

Norman  1835-1903 

Hill,  Sir  George  Francis  1867-1948 
Hill,  Sir  (John)  Denis 

(Nelson)  1913-1982 

Hill,  Sir  Leonard  Erskine  1866-1952 
Hill,  Leonard  Raven-.  See 

Raven-Hill  1867-1942 

Hill,  (Norman)  Graham  1929-1975 

Hill,  Octavia  1838-1912 

Hill,  Oliver  Falvey  #1887-1968 

Hill,  Philip  Ernest  #1873-1944 

Hill,  Sir  Roderic  Maxwell  1894-1954 

Hill,  Rosamund  Davenport-  1825-1902 

Hill,  William  #1903-1971 

Hillary,  Richard  Hope  #1919-1943 

Hillgarth,  Alan  Hugh  1899-1978 
Hillier,  Sir  Harold  George 

Knight  1905-1985 

Hillier,  Tristram  Paul  1905-1983 

Hills,  Arnold  Frank  1857-1927 

Hills,  Sir  John  1834-1902 

Hilton,  James  1900-1954 

Hilton,  Roger  1911-1975 
Himmelweit,  Hildegard 

Therese  1918-1989 

Hinchley,  John  William  #1871-1931 

Hind,  Arthur  Mayger  1880-1957 

Hind,  Henry  Youle  1823-1908 
Hind,  Richard  Dacre  Archer-. 

See  Archer-Hind  1849-1910 
Hindley,  Sir  Clement  Daniel 

Maggs  1874-1944 
Hindley,  John  Scott,  Viscount 

Hyndley  1883-1963 
Hingeston-Randolph 

(formerly  Hingston), 

Francis  Charles  1833-1910 

Hingley,  Sir  Benjamin  1830-1905 

Hingston,  Sir  William  Hales  1829-1907 

Hinks,  Arthur  Robert  1873-1945 
Hinkson  (formerly  Tynan), 

Katharine  1861-1931 
Hinshelwood,  Sir  Cyril 

Norman  1897-1967 

Hinsley,  Arthur  1865-1943 
Hinton,  Christopher,  Baron 

Hinton  of  Bankside  1901-1983 

Hipkins,  Alfred  James  1826-1903 

Hirst,  Sir  Edmund  Langley  1898-1975 

Hirst,  Francis  Wrigley  1873-1953 

Hirst,  George  Herbert  1 87 1  -1954 

Hirst,  Hugo,  Baron  1863-1943 

Hislop,  Joseph  Dewar  #1884-1977 

Hitchcock,  Sir  Alfred  Joseph  1899-1980 
Hitchcock,  Sir  Eldred 

Frederick  1887-1959 


550 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Hitchens,  (Sydney)  Ivon 
Hives,  Ernest  Walter,  Baron 
Hoare,  Joseph  Charles 
Hoare,  Sir  Reginald  Hervey 
Hoare,  Sir  Samuel  John 

Gurney,  Viscount 

Templewood 
Hobart,  Sir  Percy  Cleghorn 

Stanley 
Hobbes,  John  Oliver, 

pseudonym.  See  Craigie, 

Pearl  Marv  Teresa 
Hobbs,  Sir  John  Berry  ('Jack') 
Hobday,  Sir  Frederick 

Thomas  George 
Hobhouse,  Arthur,  Baron 
Hobhouse,  Sir  Charles 

Edward  Henry 
Hobhouse,  Edmund 
Hobhouse,  Henry 
Hobhouse,  Sir  John  Richard 
Hobhouse,  Leonard  Trelawny 
Hobson,  Ernest  William 
Hobson,  Geoffrey  Dudley 
Hobson,  John  Atkinson 
Hobson,  Sir  John  Gardiner 

Sumner 
Hocking,  Joseph  (1860-1937). 

See  under  Hocking,  Silas 

Kitto 
Hocking,  Silas  Kitto 
Hodge,  John 
Hodge,  Sir  William  Vallance 

Douglas 
Hodgetts,  James  Frederick 
Hodgkin,  Thomas 
Hodgkins,  Frances  Mary 
Hodgson,  Ralph  Edwin 
Hodgson,  Richard  Dacre.  See 

Archer-Hind 
Hodgson,  Sir  Robert 

MacLeod 
Hodgson,  Shadworth  Hollway 
Hodsoll,  Sir  (Eric)  John 
Hodson,  (Francis  Lord) 

Charlton,  Baron 
Hodson  (afterward 

Labouchere),  Henrietta 
Hoey,  Frances  Sarah  (Mrs 

Cashel  Hoey) 
Hoffnung,  Gerard 
Hofrneyr,  Jan  Hendrik 
Hofmeyr,  Jan  Hendrik 
Hogarth,  David  George 
Hogben,  Lancelot  Thomas 
Hogg,  Douglas  McGarel, 

Viscount  Hailsham 
Hogg,  Quintin 
Holden,  Charles  Henry 
Holden,  Henry  Smith 
Holden,  Luther 


1893- 

1979 

Holder,  Sir  Frederick  William 

1850-1909 

1886- 

-1965 

Holderness,  Sir  Thomas 

1851- 

1906 

William 

1849-1924 

1882- 

-1954 

Holdich,  Sir  Thomas 

Hungerford 

1843-1929 

Holdsworth,  Sir  William 

1880- 

-1959 

Searle 

1871-1944 

Hole,  Samuel  Reynolds 

1819-1904 

1885- 

-1957 

Holford,  William  Graham, 

Baron 

1907-1975 

Holiday,  Henry 

1839-1927 

1867- 

-1906 

Hollams,  Sir  John 

1820-1910 

1882- 

-1963 

Holland,  Sir  Eardley  Lancelot 

1879-1967 

Holland,  Sir  (Edward)  Milner 

1902-1969 

1869- 

-1939 

Holland,  Henry  Scott 

1847-1918 

1819- 

-1904 

Holland,  Sir  Henry  Thurstan, 

Viscount  Knutsford 

1825-1914 

#1862- 

-1941 

Holland,  Sir  Henry  Tristram 

1875-1965 

1817- 

-1904 

Holland,  John  Charles  Francis 

#1897-1956 

1854- 

-1937 

Holland,  Sir  Sidney  George 

1893-1961 

1893- 

-1961 

Holland,  Sydney  George, 

1864- 

-1929 

Viscount  Knutsford 

1855-1931 

1856- 

-1933 

Holland,  Sir  Thomas  Erskine 

1835-1926 

1882- 

-1949 

Holland,  Sir  Thomas  Henry 

1868-1947 

1858- 

-1940 

Holland-Martin,  Sir  Douglas 

Eric  ('Deric') 

1906-1977 

1912- 

-1967 

Hollinghurst,  Sir  Leslie 

Norman 

1895-1971 

Hollingshead,  John 

1827-1904 

Hollingworth,  Sydney  Ewart 

1899-1966 

1850- 

-1935 

Hollis,  Sir  Leslie  Chasemore 

1897-1963 

1855- 

-1937 

Hollis,  (Maurice)  Christopher 

1902-1977 

Hollis,  Sir  Roger  Henry 

1905-1973 

1903- 

-1975 

Holloway,  Stanley  Augustus 

1890-1982 

1828- 

-1906 

Hollowell,  James  Hirst 

1851-1909 

1831- 

-1913 

Holman  Hunt,  William.  See 

1869- 

-1947 

Hunt 

1827-1910 

1871- 

-1962 

Holme,  Charles 

1848-1923 

Holmes,  Arthur 

1890-1965 

1849- 

-1910 

Holmes,  Augusta  Mary  Anne 

1847-1903 

Holmes,  Sir  Charles  John 

1868-1936 

1874- 

-1956 

Holmes,  Sir  Gordon  Morgan 

1876-1965 

1832- 

-1912 

Holmes,  Sir  Richard 

1894- 

-1971 

Rivington 

1835-1911 

Holmes,  Thomas 

1846-1918 

1895- 

-1984 

Holmes,  Thomas  Rice 

Edward 

1855-1933 

1841- 

-1910 

Holmes,  Timothy 

1825-1907 

Holmes,  Sir  Valentine 

1888-1956 

1830- 

-1908 

Holmyard,  Eric  John 

1891-1959 

#1925- 

-1959 

Holroyd,  Sir  Charles 

1861-1917 

1845 

-1909 

Holrovd,  Henrv  North,  Earl 

1894- 

-1948 

of  Sheffield 

1832-1909 

1862- 

-1927 

Hoist,  Gustav  Theodore 

1874-1934 

1895 

-1975 

Hoist,  Imogen  Clare 

1907-1984 

Holtby,  Winifred 

#1898-1935 

1872 

-1950 

Holttum,  (Richard)  Eric 

1895-1990 

1845 

-1903 

Holyoake,  George  Jacob 

1817-1906 

1875 

-1960 

Home,  Charles  Cospatrick 

1887 

-1963 

Douglas-.  See 

1815 

-1905 

Douglas-Home 

1937-1985 

55* 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Hone,  Evie  1894-1955 

Hood,  Arthur  William 

Acland,  Baron  1824-1901 

Hood,  Sir  Horace  Lambert 

Alexander  1870-1916 

Hook,  James  Clarke  1819-1907 

Hooke,  Samuel  Henry  1874-1968 

Hooker,  Sir  Joseph  Dalton  1817-191 1 

Hooker,  Sir  Stanley  George  1907-1984 

Hooley,  Ernest  Terah  #1859-1947 

Hooper,  Sir  Frederic  Collins  1892-1963 

Hope,  Anthony,  pseudonym. 

See  Hawkins,  Sir  Anthony 

Hope  1863-1933 

Hope,  James  Fitzalan,  Baron 

Rankeillour  1870-1949 

Hope,  John  Adrian  Louis, 

Earl  of  Hopetoun  and 

Marquess  of  Linlithgow  1860-1908 

Hope,  Laurence,  pseudonym. 

See  Nicolson,  Adela 

Florence  1865-1904 

Hope,  Victor  Alexander  John, 

Marquess  of  Linlithgow  1887-1952 

Hope,  Sir  William  Henry  St 

John  1854-1919 

Hope-Wallace,  Philip  Adrian  191 1  -1979 

Hopetoun,  Earl  of.  See  Hope, 

John  Adrian  Louis  1860-1908 

Hopkins,  Edward  John  1818-1901 

Hopkins,  Sir  Frank  Henry 

Edward  1910-1990 

Hopkins,  Sir  Frederick 

Gowland  1861-1947 

Hopkins,  Jane  Ellice  1836-1904 

Hopkins,  Sir  Richard 

Valentine  Nind  1880-1955 

Hopkinson,  Sir  Alfred  1851-1939 

Hopkinson,  Bertram  1874-1918 

Hopkinson,  Sir  (Henry) 

Thomas  1905-1990 

Hoppe,  Emil  Otto  #1878-1972 

Hopwood,  Charles  Henry  1829-1904 

Hopwood,  Francis  John 

Stephens,  Baron 

Southborough  1860-1947 

Horder,  Percy  (Richard) 

Morley  1870-1944 

Horder,  Thomas  Jeeves, 

Baron  1871-1955 

Hore-Belisha,  (Isaac)  Leslie, 

Baron  1893-1957 

Hore-Ruthven,  Alexander 

Gore  Arkwright,  Earl  of 

Gowrie  1872-1955 

Hornby,  Charles  Harry  St 

John  1867-1946 

Hornby,  Frank  #1863-1936 

Hornby,  James  John  1826-1909 

Home,  (Charles)  Kenneth  #1907-1969 

Home,  (Charles)  Silvester  #1865-1914 


Home,  Henry  Sinclair,  Baron  1861-1929 

Home,  Herbert  Percy  #1864-1916 

Home,  John  #1848-1928 
Home,  Robert  Stevenson, 

Viscount  Home  of 

Slamannan  1871-1940 

Homer,  Arthur  Lewis  1894-1968 
Homiman,  Annie  Elizabeth 

Fredericka  1860-1937 

Homiman,  Frederick  John  1835-1906 

Hornung,  Ernest  William  #1866-1921 

Horrabin,  James  Francis  1884—1962 
Horridge,  Sir  Thomas 

Gardner  1857-1938 

Horrocks,  Sir  Brian  Gwynne  1895-1985 
Horsbrugh,  Florence 

Gertrude,  Baroness  1889-1969 

Horsley,  John  Callcott  1817-1903 

Horsley,  John  William  1845-1921 
Horsley,  Sir  Victor  Alexander 

Haden  1857-1916 

Horton,  Sir  Max  Kennedy  1883-1951 

Horton,  Percy  Frederick  1897-1970 

Horton,  Robert  Forman  1855-1934 

Hose,  Charles  1863-1929 

Hosie,  Sir  Alexander  1853-1925 

Hosier,  Arthur  Julius  1877-1963 

Hoskins,  Sir  Anthony  Hiley  1828-1901 

Hoskyns,  Sir  Edwyn  Clement  1884-1937 

Hotine,  Martin  1898-1968 

Houghton,  William  Stanley  1 88 1  -1913 
Houldsworth,  Sir  Hubert 

Stanley  1889-1956 

House,  (Arthur)  Humphry  1908-1955 

Housman,  Alfred  Edward  1859-1936 

Housman,  Laurence  1865-1959 
Houston,  Dame  Fanny 

Lucy  1857-1936 
Howard,  Bernard  Marmaduke 

FitzAlan-,  sixteenth  Duke 

of  Norfolk  1908-1975 

Howard,  David  #1839-1916 

Howard,  Sir  Ebenezer  1850-1928 
Howard,  Edmund  Bernard 

FitzAlan-,  Viscount 

FitzAlan  of  Derwent  1855-1947 
Howard,  Esme  William, 

Baron  Howard  of  Penrith  1 863  -1939 
Howard,  George  James,  Earl 

of  Carlisle  1843-1911 
Howard,  Henry  FitzAlan-, 

Duke  of  Norfolk  1847-1917 

Howard,  Leslie  1893-1943 
Howard,  Louise  Ernestine, 

Lady  #1880-1969 
Howard,  Rosalind  Frances, 

Countess  of  Carlisle  1845-1921 

Howard,  Trevor  Wallace  1913-1988 
Howard  de  Walden,  Baron. 

See  Scott-Ellis,  Thomas 

Evelyn  1880-1946 


552 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Howard-Smith,  Trevor 

Wallace.  See  Howard 
Howarth,  Thomas  Edward 

Brodie 
Howe,  Clarence  Decatur 
Howell,  David 
Howell,  George 
Howell,  William  Gough 
Howells,  Herbert  Norman 
Howes,  Frank  Stewart 
Howes,  Thomas  George  Bond 
Howick  of  Glendale,  Baron. 

See  Baring,  (Charles) 

Evelyn 
Howitt,  Alfred  William 
Howitt,  Sir  Harold  Gibson 
Howland,  Sir  William  Pearce 
Howson,  George 
Hubback,  Eva  Marian 
Hubbard,  Louisa  Maria 
Huddart,  James 
Huddleston,  Sir  Hubert 

Jervoise 
Hudleston  (formerly 

Simpson),  Wilfred 

Hudleston 
Hudson,  Charles  Thomas 
Hudson,  Sir  Robert  Arundell 
Hudson,  Robert  George 

Spencer 
Hudson,  Robert  Spear, 

Viscount 
Hudson,  William  Henry 
Hueffer,  Ford  Hermann.  See 

Ford,  Ford  Madox 
Hugel,  Friedrich  von,  Baron 

of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire. 

See  Von  Hugel 
Hugessen,  Sir  Hughe 

Montgomery  Knatchbull-. 

See  Knatchbull-Hugessen 
Huggins,  Godfrey  Martin, 

Viscount  Malvem 
Huggins,  Sir  William 
Hughes,  Arthur 
Hughes,  Edward 
Hughes,  Edward  David 
Hughes,  Elizabeth  Phillipps 
Hughes,  Hugh  Price 
Hughes,  John 
Hughes,  Richard  Arthur 

Warren 
Hughes,  Sir  Sam 
Hughes,  Thomas  McKenny 
Hughes,  William  Morris 
Hughes-Hallett,  John 
Hulbert,  John  Norman 

('Jack') 
Hull,  Sir  Richard  Amyatt 
Hulme,  Frederick  Edward 
Hulton,  Sir  Edward 


1913-1988 

1914-1988 
1886-1960 
1831-1903 
1833-1910 
1922-1974 
1892-1983 
1891-1974 
1853-1905 


1903-1973 
1830-1908 
1886-1969 
1811-1907 
#1886-1936 
#1886-1949 
1836-1906 
1847-1901 

1880-1950 


1828-1909 
1828-1903 
1864-1927 

1895-1965 

1886-1957 
1841-1922 

1873-1939 


1852-1925 


1886-1971 

1883-1971 
1824-1910 
1832-1915 
1832-1908 
1906-1963 
#1851-1925 
1847-1902 
1842-1902 

1900-1976 
1853-1921 
#1832-1917 
1862-1952 
1901-1972 

1892-1978 
1907-1989 
1841-1909 
1869-1925 


Hulton,  Sir  Edward  George 

Warris 
Hume,  Allan  Octavian 
Hume,  Martin  Andrew  Sharp 
Hume-Rothery,  William 
Humphrey,  Sir  Andrew 

Henry 
Humphrey,  Herbert  Alfred 
Humphrey,  John  Herbert 
Humphreys,  Leslie  Alexander 

Francis  Longmore 
Humphreys,  Sir  (Richard 

Somers)  Travers 

(Christmas) 
Humphreys,  (Travers) 

Christmas 
Humphrys,  Sir  Francis  Henry 
Hunt,  Dame  Agnes 

Gwendoline 
Hunt,  Arthur  Surridge 
Hunt,  George  William 

(1829P-1904).  See  under 

Macdermott,  Gilbert 

Hastings 
Hunt,  Henry  George 

Bonavia- 
Hunt,  John  Henderson,  Baron 

Hunt  of  Fawley 
Hunt,  Norman  Crowther, 

Baron  Crowther-Hunt 
Hunt,  William 
Hunt,  William  Holman 
Hunter,  Sir  Archibald 
Hunter,  Colin 
Hunter,  Donald 
Hunter,  Sir  Ellis 
Hunter,  Sir  George  Burton 
Hunter,  Leslie  Stannard 
Hunter,  Philip  Vassar 
Hunter,  Sir  Robert 
Hunter,  Sir  William  Guyer 
Hunter- Weston,  Sir  Aylmer 

Gould.  See  Weston 
Huntingdon,  Earl  of.  See 

Hastings,  Francis  John 

Clarence  Westenra 

Plantagenet 
Huntington,  George 
Hurcomb,  Cyril  William, 

Baron 
Hurlstone,  William  Yeates 
Hurst,  Sir  Arthur  Frederick 
Hurst,  Sir  Cecil  James 

Barrington 
Hurst,  Margery 
Husband,  Sir  (Henry) 

Charles 
Hussev,  Christopher  Edward 

dive 
Hutchinson,  Arthur 
Hutchinson,  Francis  Ernest 


1906-1988 
1829-1912 
1843-1910 
1899-1968 

1921-1977 
1868-1951 
1915-1987 

1904-1976 


1867-1956 

1901-1983 
#1879-1971 

1866-1948 
1871-1934 


1845-1901 

#1847-1917 

1905-1987 


1920-1987 
1842-1931 
1827-1910 
1856-1936 
1841-1904 
1898-1978 
1892-1961 
1845-1937 
1890-1983 
1883-1956 
1844-1913 
1827-1902 

1864-1940 


1901-1990 
1825-1905 

1883-1975 
1876-1906 
1879-1944 

1870-1963 
1913-1989 

1908-1983 

1899-1970 
1866-1937 
1871-1947 


553 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Hutchinson,  Horatio  Gordon 

('Horace')  1859-1932 

Hutchinson,  John  1884-1972 

Hutchinson,  Sir  Jonathan  1828-1913 

Hutchinson,  Sir  Joseph  Bum  1902-1988 
Hutchinson,  Richard  Walter 

John  Hely-,  Earl  of 

Donoughmore.  See 

Hely-Hutchinson  1875-1948 

Hutchison,  Sir  Robert  1 87 1  -1960 
Hutchison,  Sir  William 

Oliphant  1889-1970 

Huth,  Alfred  Henry  1850-1910 

Hutton,  Alfred  1839-1910 

Hutton,  Frederick  Wollaston  1836-1905 

Hutton,  George  Clark  1825-1908 

Hutton,  Sir  Leonard  1916-1990 

Hutton,  William  Holden  1860-1930 

Huxley,  Aldous  Leonard  1894-1963 

Huxley,  Sir  Julian  Sorell  1887-1975 

Huxley,  Leonard  1860-1933 
Hwfa  Mon.  See  Williams, 

Rowland  1823-1905 

Hyde,  Douglas  1860-1949 

Hyde,  Sir  Robert  Robertson  1878-1967 

Hylton,  Jack  1892-1965 
Hylton-Foster,  Sir  Harry 

Braustyn  Hylton  1905-1965 
Hyndley,  Viscount.  See 

Hindley,  John  Scott  1 883  -1963 

Hyndman,  Henry  Mayers  1842-1921 


Ibbetson,  Sir  Denzil  Charles 

Jelf  1847-1908 
Ibbetson,  Henry  John 

Selwin-,  Baron  Rookwood. 

See  Selwin-Ibbetson  1826-1902 
Ignatius,  Father.  See  Lyne, 

Joseph  Leycester  1837-1908 
Ilbert,  Sir  Courtenay 

Peregrine  1841-1924 
Ilchester,  Earl  of.  See 

Fox-Strangways,  Giles 

Stephen  Holland  1874-1959 

Iliffe,  Edward  Mauger,  Baron  1877-1960 

Illing,  Vincent  Charles  1890-1969 

Illingworth,  Ronald  Stanley  1909-1990 

Image,  Selwyn  1849-1930 

Imms,  Augustus  Daniel  1880-1949 

Ince,  Sir  Godfrey  Herbert  1 89 1  -1960 

Ince,  William  1825-1910 
Inchcape,  Earl  of.  See 

Mackay,  James  Lyle  1852-1932 
Inchyra,  Baron.  See  Millar, 

Frederick  Robert  Hoyer  1900-1989 

Inderwick,  Frederick  Andrew  1836-1904 

Ing,  (Harry)  Raymond  1899-1974 

Inge,  William  Ralph  1860-1954 

Ingham,  Albert  Edward  1900-1967 

Inglis,  Sir  Charles  Edward  1875-1952 


Inglis,  Sir  Claude  Cavendish  1883-1974 

Inglis,  Elsie  Maud  1864-1917 

Ingold,  Sir  Christopher  Kelk  1893-1970 

Ingram,  Arthur  Foley 

Winnington-.  See 

Winnington-Ingram  1858-1946 

Ingram,  Sir  Bruce  Stirling  1877-1963 

Ingram,  John  Kells  1 823  -1907 

Ingram,  Thomas  Dunbar  1826-1901 

Innes,  James  John  McLeod  1830-1907 

Innes,  Sir  James  Rose-.  See 

Rose-Innes  1855-1942 

Innes  of  Learney,  Sir  Thomas         1893-1971 
Inskip,  Thomas  Walker 

Hobart,  Viscount  Caldecote         1876-1947 
Inverchapel,  Baron.  See  Clark 

Kerr,  Archibald  John  Kerr  1882-1951 

Inverforth,  Baron.  See  Weir, 

Andrew  1865-1955 

Invernairn,  Baron.  See 

Beardmore,  William  1856-1936 

Iqbal,  Sir  Muhammad  1876-1938 

Irby,  Leonard  Howard  Loyd  1836-1905 

Ireland,  John  Nicholson  1879-1962 

Ireland,  William  Wotherspoon         1832-1909 
Ironside,  Robin  Cunliffe  1912-1965 

Ironside,  William  Edmund, 

Baron  1880-1959 

Irvine,  Sir  James  Colquhoun  1877-1952 

Irvine,  William  1840-1911 

Irving,  Sir  Edmund  George  1910-1990 

Irving,  Sir  Henry  1838-1905 

Isaacs,  Alick  1921-1967 

Isaacs,  George  Alfred  1883-1979 

Isaacs,  Sir  Isaac  Alfred  1855-1948 

Isaacs,  Rufus  Daniel, 

Marquess  of  Reading  1860-1935 

Isaacs,  Stella,  Marchioness  of 

Reading  and  Baroness 

Swanborough  1894-1971 

Isherwood,  Christopher 

William  Bradshaw  1904-1986 

Isherwood,  Sir  Joseph 

William  1870-1937 

Isitt,  Dame  Adeline  Genee- 

See  Genee  1878-1970 

Islington,  Baron.  See 

Poynder,  Sir  John  Poynder 

Dickson-  1866-1936 

Ismail,  Sir  Mirza  Mohammad  1883-1959 

Ismay,  Hastings  Lionel,  Baron         1887-1965 
Ismay,  Joseph  Bruce  1862-1937 

Issigonis,  Sir  Alexander 

Arnold  Constantine  1906-1988 

Iveagh,  Countess  of  (1881 - 

1966).  See  under  Guinness, 

Rupert  Edward  Cecil  Lee 
Iveagh,  Earl  of.  See  Guinness, 

Edward  Cecil  1847-1927 

Iveagh,  Earl  of.  See  Guinness, 

Rupert  Edward  Cecil  Lee  1874-1967 


554 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Ivelaw-Chapman,  Sir  Ronald 
Iwan-Mtiller,  Ernest  Bruce 


Jacks,  Lawrence  Pearsall 
Jacks,  William 
Jackson  of  Lodsworth, 

Baroness.  See  Ward, 

Barbara  Mary 
Jackson,  Sir  Barry  Vincent 
Jackson,  Brian  Anthony 
Jackson,  Sir  Cyril 
Jackson,  Derek  Ainslie 
Jackson,  Sir  (Francis)  Stanley 
Jackson,  Frederick  George 
Jackson,  Sir  Frederick  John 
Jackson,  Frederick  John 

Foakes 
Jackson,  Henry 
Jackson,  Sir  Henry 

Bradwardine 
Jackson,  Sir  Herbert 
Jackson,  John 
Jackson,  John  Hughlings 
Jackson,  Mason 
Jackson,  Samuel  Phillips 
Jackson,  Sir  Thomas  Graham 
Jackson,  William  Lawies, 

Baron  Allerton 
Jackson,  Willis,  Baron  Jackson 

of  Burnley 
Jackson-Cole,  Cecil 
Jacob,  Sir  Claud  William 
Jacob,  Edgar 
Jacob,  Gordon  Percival 

Septimus 
Jacobs,  William  Wymark 
Jacobson,  Sydney,  Baron 
Jagger,  Charles  Sargeant 
James,  Alexander  Wilson 
James,  Arthur  Lloyd 
James,  Henry 
James,  Henry,  Baron  James  of 

Hereford 
James,  James 
James,  (John)  Morrice 

(Cairns),  Baron  Saint 

Brides 
James,  Montague  Rhodes 
James,  Reginald  William 
James,  Rolfe  Arnold  Scott-. 

See  Scott-James 
James,  Sidney 

James,  Sir  William  Milbourne 
James,  William  Owen 
Jameson,  Andrew,  Lord 

Ardwall 
Jameson,  Sir  Leander  Starr 
Jameson,  Margaret  Ethel 

('Storm') 


1899- 

-1978 

Jameson,  Sir  (William) 

1853- 

-1910 

Wilson 
Jane,  (John)  Frederick 

1885- 

-1962 

(Thomas) 

#1865- 

-1916 

Janner,  Barnett,  Baron 

1892- 

-1982 

1860- 

-1955 

Japp,  Alexander  Hay,  4H.  A. 

1841- 

-1907 

Page' 

1837- 

-1905 

Jardine,  Douglas  Robert 

1900- 

-1958 

Jardine,  Sir  Robert 

1825- 

-1905 

1914- 

-1981 

Jarvis,  Claude  Scudamore 

1879- 

-1953 

1879- 

-1961 

Jarvis,  Sir  John  Layton  ('Jack') 

1887- 

-1968 

1932- 

-1983 

Jasper,  Ronald  Qaud  Dudley 

1917- 

-1990 

1863- 

-1924 

Jayne,  Francis  John 

1845- 

-1921 

1906- 

-1982 

Jeaffreson,  John  Cordy 

1831- 

-1901 

1870- 

-1947 

Jeans,  Sir  James  Hopwood 

1877- 

-1946 

1860- 

-1938 

Jebb,  Eglantyne 

1876- 

-1928 

1860- 

-1929 

Jebb,  Richard 

#1874- 

-1953 

Jebb,  Sir  Richard  Claverhouse 

1841- 

-1905 

1855- 

-1941 

Jefferson,  Arthur  Stanley.  See 

1839- 

-1921 

Laurel,  Stan 

#1890- 

-1965 

Jefferson,  Sir  Geoffrey 

1886- 

-1961 

1855- 

-1929 

Jeffery,  George  Barker 

1891- 

-1957 

1863- 

-1936 

Jeffreys,  Sir  Harold 

1891- 

-1989 

1833- 

-1901 

Jekyll,  Gertrude 

#1843- 

-1932 

1835- 

-1911 

Jelf,  George  Edward 

1834- 

-1908 

1819- 

-1903 

Jellicoe,  (John)  Basil  (Lee) 

1899- 

-1935 

1830- 

-1904 

Jellicoe,  John  Rushworth,  Earl 

1859- 

-1935 

1835- 

-1924 

Jenkin,  Charles  Frewen 

1865- 

-1940 

Jenkins,  Qaude 

#1877- 

-1959 

1840- 

-1917 

Jenkins,  David  Llewelyn, 

Baron 

1899- 

-1969 

1904- 

-1970 

Jenkins,  Ebenezer  Evans 

1820- 

-1905 

1901- 

-1979 

Jenkins,  John  Edward 

1838- 

-1910 

1863- 

-1948 

Jenkins,  Sir  Lawrence  Hugh 

1857- 

-1928 

1844- 

-1920 

Jenkins,  Richard  Walter.  See 

Burton,  Richard 

1925- 

-1984 

1895- 

-1984 

Jenkinson,  Sir  (Charles) 

1863- 

-1943 

Hilary 

1882- 

-1961 

1908- 

-1988 

Jenkinson,  Francis  John 

1885- 

-1934 

Henry 

1853- 

-1923 

1901- 

-1953 

Jenks,  (Clarence)  Wilfred 

#1909- 

-1973 

1884- 

-1943 

Jenks,  Edward 

1861- 

-1939 

1843- 

-1916 

Jenner-Fust,  Herbert 
Jennings,  (Frank)  Humphrey 

1806- 

-1904 

1828- 

-1911 

(Sinkler) 

#1907- 

-1950 

1832- 

-1902 

Jennings,  Paul  Francis 

1918- 

-1989 

Jennings,  Sir  (William)  Ivor 

1903- 

-1965 

Jephcott,  Sir  Harry 

1891 

-1978 

1916- 

-1989 

Jephson,  Arthur  Jermy 

1862- 

-1936 

Mounteney 

1858- 

-1908 

1891 

-1964 

Jerome,  Jerome  Klapka 
Jerram,  Sir  (Thomas  Henry) 

1859- 

-1927 

1878- 

-1959 

Martyn 

1858- 

-1933 

d. 

1976 

Jerrold,  Douglas  Francis 

1893- 

-1964 

1881- 

-1973 

Jersey,  Countess  of.  See 

1900- 

-1978 

Villiers,  Margaret  Elizabeth 

Child- 

1849- 

-1945 

1845- 

-1911 

Jersey,  Earl  of.  See  Villiers, 

1853- 

-1917 

Victor  Albert  George 

Child- 

1845- 

-1915 

1891 

-1986 

Jervis-Smith,  Frederick  John 

#1848- 

-1911 

555 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Jessop,  Gilbert  Laird 

Jessopp,  Augustus 

Jeune,  Francis  Henry,  Baron 

St  Helier 
Jewkes,  John 
Jex-Blake,  Sophia  Louisa 
Jex-Blake,  Thomas  William 
Jinnah,  Mahomed  Ali 
Joachim,  Harold  Henry 
Joad,  Cyril  Edwin  Mitchinson 
Joel,  Jack  Barnato  (1862- 

1940).  See  under  Joel, 

Solomon  Barnato 
Joel,  Solomon  Barnato 
John,  Augustus  Edwin 
John,  Sir  Caspar 
John,  Gwendolen  Mary 
John,  Sir  William  Goscombe 
Johns,  Claude  Hermann 

Walter 
Johns,  William  Earl 
Johnson,  Alan  Woodworth 
Johnson,  Alfred  Edward 

Webb-,  Baron 

Webb-Johnson.  See 

Webb-Johnson 
Johnson,  Amy 
Johnson,  Bertha  Jane 
Johnson,  Dame  Celia 
Johnson,  Charles 
Johnson,  Harry  Gordon 
Johnson,  Sir  Henry  Cecil 
Johnson,  Hewlett 
Johnson,  John  de  Monins 
Johnson,  Lionel  Pigot 
Johnson,  Sir  Nelson  King 
Johnson,  Pamela  Hansford, 

Lady  Snow 
Johnson,  William  Ernest 
Johnson,  William  Percival 
Johnson-Marshall,  Sir  Stirrat 

Andrew  William 
Johnston,  Sir  Charles 

Hepburn 
Johnston,  Christopher 

Nicholson,  Lord  Sands 
Johnston,  Edward 
Johnston,  George  Lawson, 

Baron  Luke 
Johnston,  Sir  Harry 

Hamilton 
Johnston,  Sir  Reginald 

Fleming 
Johnston,  Thomas 
Johnston,  William 
Joicey,  James,  Baron 
Jolowicz,  Herbert  Felix 
Joly,  Charles  Jasper 
Joly,  John 
Joly  de  Lotbiniere,  Sir  Henry 

Gustave 


1874-1955 

Jones,  Lady.  See  Bagnold, 

1823-1914 

Enid  Algerine 

1889-1981 

Jones,  Adrian 

1845-1938 

1843-1905 

Jones,  (Alfred)  Ernest 

1879-1958 

1902-1988 

Jones,  Sir  Alfred  Lewis 

1845-1909 

1840-1912 

Jones,  Allan  Gwynne-.  See 

1832-1915 

Gwynne-Jones 

1892-1982 

1876-1948 

Jones,  Arnold  Hugh 

1868-1938 

Martin 

1904-1970 

1891-1953 

Jones,  Arthur  Creech 

1891-1964 

Jones,  Sir  (Bennett)  Melvill 

1887-1975 

Jones,  Bernard  Mouat 

1882-1953 

Jones,  David 

1895-1974 

1865-1931 

Jones,  Sir  Eric  Malcolm 

1907-1986 

1878-1961 

Jones,  (Frederic)  Wood 

1879-1954 

1903-1984 

Jones,  (Frederick)  Elwyn, 

#1876-1939 

Baron  Elwyn-Jones 

1909-1989 

1860-1952 

Jones,  Sir  (George)  Roderick 

1877-1962 

Jones,  Sir  Harold  Spencer 

1890-1960 

1857-1920 

Jones,  Sir  Henry 

1852-1922 

1893-1968 

Jones,  Henry  Arthur 

1851-1929 

1917-1982 

Jones,  Henry  Cadman 
Jones,  Sir  Henry  Frank 

1818-1902 

Harding 

1906-1987 

Jones,  Sir  Henry  Stuart- 

1867-1939 

1880-1958 

Jones,  (James)  Sidney 

1861-1946 

1903-1941 

Jones,  John  Daniel 

1865-1942 

#1846-1927 

Jones,  Sir  John  Edward 

1908-1982 

Lennard-  See 

1870-1961 

Lennard-Jones 

1894-1954 

1923-1977 

Jones,  Sir  John  Morris-.  See 

1906-1988 

Morris-Jones 

1864-1929 

1874-1966 

Jones,  John  Viriamu 

1856-1901 

1882-1956 

Jones,  Owen  Thomas 

1878-1967 

1867-1902 

Jones,  Reginald  Teague-.  See 

1892-1954 

Teague-Jones 

1889-1988 

Jones,  Sir  Robert 

1857-1933 

1912-1981 

Jones,  Sir  Robert  Armstrong-. 

1858-1931 

See  Armstrong-Jones 

1857-1943 

1854-1928 

Jones,  Thomas 

1870-1955 

Jones,  Thomas  Gwynn 

#1871-1949 

1912-1981 

Jones,  Thomas  Rupert 

1819-1911 

Jones,  (William)  Clifford 

1914-1990 

1912-1986 

Jones,  William  West 

1838-1908 

Jordan,  (Heinrich  Ernst)  Karl 

1861-1959 

1857-1934 

Jordan,  Sir  John  Newell 

1852-1925 

1872-1944 

Jordan  Lloyd,  Dorothy.  See 

Lloyd 

1889-1946 

1873-1943 

Joseph,  Horace  William 

Brindley 

1867-1943 

1858-1927 

Joseph,  Sir  Maxwell 
Joubert  de  la  Ferte,  Sir  Philip 

1910-1982 

1874-1938 

Bennet 

1887-1965 

1881-1965 

Jourdain,  (Emily)  Margaret 

#1876-1951 

1829-1902 

Jourdain,  Francis  Charles 

1846-1954 

Robert 

1865-1940 

1890-1954 

Jowitt,  William  Allen,  Earl 

1885-1957 

1864-1906 

Joy,  David 

#1825-1903 

1857-1933 

Joyce,  James  Augustine 

1882-1941 

Joyce,  Sir  Matthew  Ingle 

1839-1930 

1829-1908 

Joyce,  William  Brooke 

#1906-1946 

556 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Joynson-Hicks,  William, 

Viscount  Brentford.  See 

Hicks  1865-1932 

Julius,  Sir  George  Alfred  1873-1946 


Kahn,  Richard  Ferdinand, 

Baron  1905-1989 

Kahn-Freund,  Sir  Otto  1900-1979 

Kaldor,  Nicholas,  Baron  1908-1986 

Kane,  Robert  Romney  1842-1902 

Kapitza,  Piotr  Leonidovich  1894-1984 

Karloff,  Boris  1887-1969 

Karno,  Fred  #1866-1941 
Kay,  (Sydney  Francis)  Patrick 

(Chippindall  Healey).  See 

Dolin,  Sir  Anton  1904-1983 
Kearley,  Hudson  Ewbanke, 

Viscount  Devonport  1856-1934 

Keating,  Thomas  Patrick  1917-1984 

Keay,  John  Seymour  1839-1909 
Keble  Martin,  William.  See 

Martin  1877-1969 

Keeble,  Sir  Frederick  William  1870-1952 
Keeble,  Lillah,  Lady.  See 

McCarthy,  Lillah  1875-1960 

Keedey,  Charles  Robert  Bell  1848-1909 
Keightlev,  Sir  Charles 

Frederic  1901-1974 

Keilin,  David  1887-1963 

Keir,  Sir  David  Lindsay  1895-1973 
Keir,  Thelma  Cazalet-.  See 

Cazalet-Keir  1899-1989 

Keith,  Sir  Arthur  1866-1955 

Keith,  Arthur  Berriedale  1879-1944 
Keith,  James,  Baron  Keith  of 

Avonholm  1886-1964 

Keith,  Sir  William  John  1873-1937 

Kekewich,  Sir  Arthur  1832-1907 

Kekewich,  Robert  George  1854-1914 
Kell,  Sir  Vernon  George 

Waldegrave  #1873-1942 

Kellaway,  Charles  Hallilev  1889-1952 

Kellv,  Sir  David  Victor  1 89 1  -1959 

Kelly,  Frederick  Septimus  1881-1916 

Kelly,  Sir  Gerald  Festus  1879-1972 
Kelly,  James  Fitzmaurice-. 

See  Fitzmaurice-Kelly  1857-1923 

Kelly,  Sir  John  Donald  1871-1936 
Kellv,  Mary  Anne,  'Eva' 

(1826-1910).  See  under 

O'Doherty,  Kevin  Izod  1823-1905 

Kelly,  William  1821-1906 

Kellv-Kenny,  Sir  Thomas  1840-1914 

Keltie,  Sir  John  Scott  1840-1927 
Kelvin,  Baron.  See  Thomson, 

William  1824-1907 
Kemball,  Sir  Arnold 

Burrowes  1820-1908 
Kemball-Cook,  Sir  Basil 

Alfred  1876-1949 


Kemble,  Henry 
Kemp,  Stanley  Wells 
Kempe,  Sir  Alfred  Bray 
Kempe,  Charles  Earner 
Kempe,  Harry  Robert 
Kemsley,  Viscount.  See 

Berry,  (James)  Gomer 
Kendal,  Dame  Margaret 

Shafto  (Madge) 
Kendal,  William  Hunter 
Kendall,  Sir  Maurice  George 
Kendrick,  Sir  Thomas 

Downing 
Kennard,  Sir  Howard  William 
Kennaway,  Sir  Ernest 

Laurence 
Kennedy,  Sir  Alexander 

Blackie  William 
Kennedy,  (Aubrey)  Leo 
Kennedy,  Geoffrey  Anketell 

Studdert.  See  Studdert 

Kennedy 
Kennedy,  Harry  Angus 

Alexander 
Kennedy,  James  ('Jimmy') 
Kennedy,  Margaret  Moore 
Kennedy,  Sir  William  Rann 
Kennet,  Baron.  See  Young, 

Edward  Hilton 
Kennet,  (Edith  Agnes) 

Kathleen,  Lady 
Kennett,  Robert  Hatch 
Kenney,  Annie 
Kennington,  Eric  Henri 
Kenny,  Courtney  Stanhope 
Kenny,  Elizabeth 
Kensit,  John 
Kens  wood,  Baron.  See 

Whitfield,  Ernest  Albert 
Kent,  Duchess  of.  See  Marina 
Kent,  Duke  of.  See  George 

Edward  Alexander  Edmund 
Kent,  Albert  Frank  Stanley 
Kent,  Sir  Percy-  Edward 

('Peter') 
Kent,  (William)  Charles 

(Mark) 
Kentner,  Louis  Philip 
Kenyatta,  Jomo 
Kenyon,  Sir  Frederic  George 
Kenyon,  George  Thomas 
Kenyon,  Joseph 
Kenyon,  Dame  Kathleen 

Mary 
Kenyon-Slaney,  William 

Slaney 
Keogh,  Sir  Alfred 
Keppel,  Alice  Frederica 
Keppel,  Sir  George  Olof 

Roos-.  See  Roos-Keppel 
Keppel,  Sir  Henry 


1848-1907 

1882-1945 

#1849-1922 

#1837-1907 

#1852-1935 

1883-1968 

1848-1935 
1843-1917 
1907-1983 

1895-1979 
1878-1955 

1881-1958 

1847-1928 
1885-1965 


#1883-1929 

1866-1934 
1902-1984 
1896-1967 
1846-1915 

1879-1960 

1878-1947 
1864-1932 
1879-1953 
1888-1960 
1847-1930 
1880-1952 
1853-1902 

1887-1963 

1906-1968 

1902-1942 
1863-1958 

1913-1986 

1823-1902 
1905-1987 
1890s-1978 
1863-1952 
1840-1908 
1885-1961 

1906-1978 

1847-1908 
1857-1936 

#1868-1947 

1866-1921 
1809-1904 


557 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Ker,  Neil  Ripley  1908-1982 

Ker,  William  Paton  1855-1923 

Kerensky,  Oleg  Alexander  1905-1984 

Kermack,  William  Ogilvy  1898-1970 

Kerr,  Archibald  John  Kerr 

Clark,  Baron  Inverchapel. 

See  Clark  Kerr  1882-1951 

Kerr,  John  1824-1907 

Kerr,  Sir  John  Graham  1869-1957 

Kerr,  (John  Martin)  Munro  1868-1960 

Kerr,  Philip  Henry,  Marquess 

of  Lothian  1882-1940 

Kerr,  Robert  1823-1904 

Kerr,  Lord  Walter  Talbot  1839-1927 

Keswick,  Sir  John  Henry  1906-1982 

Keswick,  Sir  William 

Johnston  1903-1990 

Ketelbey,  Albert  William  1875-1959 

Kettle,  Edgar  Hartley  1882-1936 

Ketton-Cremer,  Robert 

Wyndham  1906-1969 

Keyes,  Roger  John  Brownlow, 

Baron  1872-1945 

Keyes,  Sidney  Arthur 

Kilworth  #1922-1943 

Keynes,  Lady.  See  Lopokova, 

Lydia  Vasilievna  1892-1981 

Keynes,  Sir  Geoffrey 

Langdon  1887-1982 

Keynes,  John  Maynard,  Baron         1883-1946 
Keys,  William  Herbert  1923-1990 

Khama,  Sir  Seretse  1921-1980 

Khan  Sahib  1883-1958 

Kidd,  Benjamin  1858-1916 

Kiggell,  Sir  Launcelot 

Edward  1862-1954 

Kilbracken,  Baron.  See 

Godley,  (John)  Arthur  1847-1932 

Kilbrandon,  Baron.  See  Shaw, 

Charles  James  Dahymple  1906-1989 

Killearn,  Baron.  See 

Lampson,  Miles 

Wedderburn  1880-1964 

Killen,  William  Dool  1806-1902 

Kilmaine,  Baron.  See  Browne, 

John  Francis  Archibald  1902-1978 

Kilmuir,  Earl  of.  See  Fyfe, 

David  Patrick  Maxwell  1900-1967 

Kimber,  William  #1872-1961 

Kimberley,  Earl  of.  See 

Wodehouse,  John  1826-1902 

Kimmins,  Dame  Grace 

Thyrza  1870-1954 

Kinahan,  George  Henry  1829-1908 

Kincairney,  Lord.  See  Gloag, 

William  Ellis  1828-1909 

Kindersley,  Hugh  Kenyon 

Molesworth,  Baron  1899-1976 

Kindersley,  Robert 

Molesworth,  Baron  1871-1954 

King,  Cecil  Harmsworth  1901-1987 


King,  Earl  Judson  1901  -1962 

King,  Edward  1829-1910 

King,  Sir  (Frederic)  Truby  1858-1938 

King,  Sir  George  1840-1909 

King,  Harold  1887-1956 

King,  Haynes  1831-1904 
King,  Horace  Maybray,  Baron 

Maybray-King  1 90 1  -1 986 
King,  William  Bernard 

Robinson  1889-1963 
King,  William  Lyon 

Mackenzie  1874-1950 
King-Hall,  (William)  Stephen 

(Richard),  Baron  1893-1966 
Kingdon-Ward,  Francis 

('Frank')  1885-1958 
Kingsburgh,  Lord.  See 

Macdonald,  John  Hay 

Athole  1836-1919 
Kingscote,  Sir  Robert  Nigel 

Fitzhardinge  1830-1908 
Kingsford,  Charles 

Lethbridge  1862-1926 
Kingsmill,  Hugh.  See  Lunn, 

Hugh  Kingsmill  #1889-1949 

Kingston,  Charles  Cameron  1850-1908 
Kinnear,  Alexander  Smith, 

Baron  1833-1917 

Kinnear,  Sir  Norman  Boyd  1882-1957 

Kinns,  Samuel  1826-1903 
Kinross,  Baron.  See  Balfour, 

John  Blair  1837-1905 

Kipling,  (Joseph)  Rudyard  1865-1936 

Kipping,  Frederic  Stanley  1863-1949 

Kipping,  Sir  Norman  Victor  1901-1979 

Kirk,  Sir  John  1832-1922 

Kirk,  Sir  John  1847-1922 

Kirk,  Kenneth  Escott  1886-1954 

Kirk,  Norman  Eric  1923-1974 

Kirkbride,  Sir  Alec  Seath  1897-1978 

Kirkley,  Sir  (Howard)  Leslie  19 1 1  -1989 
Kirkman,  Sir  Sidney 

Chevalier  1895-1982 
Kirkpatrick,  Sir  Ivone 

Augustine  1897-1964 

Kirkwood,  David,  Baron  1872-1955 
Kitchener,  Horatio  Herbert, 

Earl  1850-1916 

Kitchin,  George  William  1827-1912 

Kitson,  James,  Baron  Airedale  1835-1911 
Kitson  Clark,  George  Sidney 

Roberts  1900-1975 

Kitton,  Frederick  George  1856-1904 

Klein,  Melanie  1882-1960 
Klugmann,  Norman  John 

('James')  1912-1977 
Knatchbull-Hugessen,  Sir 

Hughe  Montgomery  1886-1971 

Knight,  (George)  Wilson  1897-1985 

Knight,  Harold  1874-1961 

Knight,  Joseph  1829-1907 


558 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Knight,  Joseph 

Knight,  Dame  Laura  (1877— 

1970).  See  under  Knight, 

Harold 
Knollys,  Edward  George 

William  Tyrwhitt,  Viscount 
Knollys,  Francis,  Viscount 
Knott,  Cargill  Gilston 
Knott,  Ralph 
Knowles,  Dom  David.  See 

Knowles,  Michael  Clive 
Knowles,  Sir  Francis  Gerald 

William 
Knowles,  Sir  James  Thomas 
Knowles,  Michael  Clive 

(Dom  David) 
Knox,  (Alfred)  Dillwyn 
Knox,  Edmund  Arbuthnott 
Knox,  Edmund  George  Valpy 
Knox,  Sir  Geoffrey  George 
Knox,  Sir  George  Edward 
Knox  (formerly  Craig),  Isa 
Knox,  Ronald  Arbuthnott 
Knox,  Wilfred  Lawrence 
Knox-Little,  William  John 
Knutsford,  Viscount.  See 

Holland,  Sir  Henry 

Thurstan 
Knutsford,  Viscount.  See 

Holland,  Sydney  George 
Koestler,  Arthur 
Kokoschka,  Oskar 
Komisarjevsky,  Theodore 
Kompfher,  Rudolf 
Konig,  Karl 
Korda,  Sir  Alexander 
Kotze,  Sir  John  Gilbert 
Krebs,  Sir  Hans  Adolf 
Kronberger,  Hans 
Kruger  Gray,  George 

Edward.  See  Gray 
Kiichemann,  Dietrich 
Kuczynski,  Robert  Rene 
Kylsant,  Baron.  See  Phihpps, 

Owen  Cosby 
Kynaston  (formerly  Snow), 

Herbert 


Labouchere,  Henrietta.  See 

Hodson 
Labouchere,  Henry  Du  Pre 
Lacey,  Janet 

Lacey,  Thomas  Alexander 
Lachmann,  Gustav  Victor 
Lack,  David  Lambert 
Lafont,  Eugene 
Laidlaw,  Anna  Robena 
Laidlaw,  John 
Laidlaw,  Sir  Patrick  Playfair 


1837-1909      Laidler,  (Gavin)  Graham 
('Pont') 

Laing,  Ronald  David 

Laird,  John 

Laithwaite,  Sir  (John)  Gilbert 
1895-1966      Lake,  Kirsopp 
1837-1924      Lake,  Sir  Percv  Henry  Noel 
#1856-1922      Lamb,  Henry  Taylor 
1878-1929      Lamb,  Sir  Horace 

Lamb,  Lynton  Harold 
1896-1974      Lambart,  Frederick  Rudolph, 

Earl  of  Cavan 
1915-1974      Lambe,  Sir  Charles  Edward 
1 83 1  -1908      Lambert,  Brooke 

Lambert,  Constant 
1896-1974      Lambert,  George 
#1884-1943      Lambert,  George,  Viscount 
1847-1937      Lambert,  Maurice 
1881-1971      Lambourne,  Baron.  See 
1884-1958  Lockwood,  Amelius  Mark 

1845-1922  Richard 

1831-1903      Lamburn,  Richmal 
1888-1957  Crompton- 

1886-1950      Lamington,  Baron.  See 
1839-1918  Baillie,  Charles  Wallace 

Alexander  Napier  Ross 
Cochrane- 
1825-1914      Lampe,  Geoffrey  William 

Hugo 
1855-1931      Lampson,  Miles  Wedderburn, 
1905-1983  Baron  Killearn 

1886-1980      Lancaster,  Sir  Osbert 
1882-1954      Lanchester,  Frederick  William 
1909-1977      Lanchester,  George  Herbert 
#1902-1966      Landor,  (Arnold)  Henry 
1893-1956         (Savage) 
1849-1940      Lane,  Sir  Allen 
1900-1981      Lane,  Dame  Elizabeth 
1920-1970  Kathleen 

Lane,  Sir  Hugh  Percy 
1880-1943      Lane,  John 
1911-1976      Lane,  Lupino 
1876-1947      Lane,  Sir  (William) 

Arbuthnot 
1863-1937      Lane-Fox,  Felicity,  Baroness 

Lane  Poole,  Reginald.  See 
1835-1910         Poole 

Lane-Poole,  Stanley  Edward. 
See  Poole 

Lang,  (Alexander)  Matheson 

Lang,  Andrew 
1841-1910      Lang,  Sir  John  Gerald 
1831-1912      Lang,  John  Marshall 
1903-1988      Lang,  (William)  Cosmo 
1853-1931  Gordon,  Baron  Lang  of 

1896-1966  Lambeth 

1910-1973      Lang,  William  Henry 
1837-1908      Langdon,  Stephen  Herbert 
1819-1901      Langdon-Brown,  Sir  Walter 
1832-1906  Langdon 

1881-1940      Langevin,  Sir  Hector  Louis 


#1908-1940 
1927-1989 
1887-1946 
1894-1986 
1872-1946 
1855-1940 
1883-1960 
1849-1934 
1907-1977 

1865-1946 
1900-1960 
1834-1901 
1905-1951 
1842-1915 
1866-1958 
1901-1964 


1847-1928 
1890-1969 

1860-1940 

1912-1980 

1880-1964 
1908-1986 
1868-1946 
1874-1970 

#1867-1924 
1902-1970 

1905-1988 
1875-1915 
1854-1925 
1892-1959 

1856-1943 
1918-1988 

1857-1939 

1854-1931 
1877-1948 
1844-1912 

1896-1984 
1834-1909 


1864-1945 
1874-1960 
1876-1937 

1870-1946 
1826-1906 


559 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Langford,  John  Alfred  1 823  -1903 

Langley,  John  Newport  1852-1925 
Langley  Moore,  Doris 

Elizabeth.  See  Moore  1902-1989 

Langton,  Sir  George  Philip  1 88 1  -1942 
Langtry,  Emilie  Charlotte 

('Lillie')  #1853-1929 

Lankester,  Sir  Edwin  Ray  1847-1929 

Lansbury,  George  1859-1940 
Lansdowne,  Marquess  of.  See 

Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Henry 

Charles  Keith  1845-1927 

Lapworth,  Arthur  #1872-1941 

Lapworth,  Charles  #1842-1920 

Larke,  Sir  William  James  1875-1959 

Larkin,  James  #1876-1947 

Larkin,  Philip  Arthur  1922-1985 

Larmor,  Sir  Joseph  1857-1942 

Lascelles,  Sir  Alan  Frederick  1887-1981 
Lascelles,  Sir  Frank 

Cavendish  1841-1920 
Lascelles,  Henry  George 

Charles,  Earl  of  Harewood  1882-1947 
Laski,  Esther  Pearl 

('Marghanita')  1915-1988 

Laski,  Harold  Joseph  1893-1950 

Last,  Hugo  Macilwain  1894-1957 
Laszlo  de  Lombos,  Philip 

Alexius  1869-1937 
Laszowska,  (Jane)  Emily  de. 

See  Gerard  1849-1905 

Latey,  John  1842-1902 

Latham,  Charles,  Baron  1888-1970 

Latham,  Henry  1 82 1  -1 902 

Latham,  Peter  Walter  1865-1953 

Lathbury,  Sir  Gerald  William  1906-1978 

Lauder,  Sir  Harry  1870-1950 

Laughton,  Charles  #1899-1962 

Laughton,  Sir  John  Knox  1830-1915 

Laurel,  Stan  #1890-1965 

Laurie,  James  Stuart  1832-1904 

Laurie,  Simon  Somerville  1829-1909 

Laurier,  Sir  Wilfrid  1841-1919 

Lauterpacht,  Sir  Hersch  1897-1960 

Lauwerys,  Joseph  Albert  1902-1981 

Laver,  James  1899-1975 

Lavery,  Sir  John  1856-1941 

Law,  Andrew  Bonar  1858-1923 

Law,  David  1831-1901 

Law,  Sir  Edward  FitzGerald  1846-1908 
Law,  Richard  Kidston,  Baron 

Coleraine  1901-1980 

Law,  Thomas  Graves  1836-1904 
Lawes  (afterwards 

Lawes-Wittewronge),  Sir 

Charles  Bennet  1843-1911 

Lawes,  William  George  1839-1907 

Lawley,  Francis  Charles  1825-1901 

Lawrence,  Alfred  Kingsley  1893-1975 
Lawrence,  Alfred  Tristram, 

Baron  Trevethin  1843-1936 


Lawrence,  (Arabella)  Susan  1871-1947 

Lawrence,  David  Herbert  1885-1930 
Lawrence,  Sir  (Frederick) 

Geoffrey  1902-1967 
Lawrence,  Frederick  William 

Pethick-,  Baron.  See 

Pethick-Lawrence  1 87 1  -1 961 
Lawrence,  Geoffrey,  Baron 

Trevethin  and  Baron 

Oaksey  #1880-1971 

Lawrence,  Gertrude  1898-1952 
Lawrence,  Sir  Herbert 

Alexander  1861-1943 

Lawrence,  Sir  Paul  Ogden  1861-1952 
Lawrence,  Thomas  Edward 

(Lawrence  of  Arabia)  1888-1935 

Lawrence,  Sir  Walter  Roper  1857-1940 

Laws,  Robert  1851-1934 
Lawson,  Edward  Frederick, 

Baron  Burnham  1890-1963 
Lawson,  Edward  Levy-, 

Baron  Burnham.  See 

Levy-Lawson  1833-1916 

Lawson,  Frederick  Henry  1897-1983 

Lawson,  George  183 1  -1903 

Lawson,  George  Anderson  1832-1904 
Lawson,  Harry  Lawson 

Webster  Levy-,  Viscount 

Burnham  1862-1933 

Lawson,  Sir  Wilfrid  1829-1906 

Lawther,  Sir  William  1889-1976 

Laycock,  Sir  Robert  Edward  1907-1968 
Layton,  Walter  Thomas, 

Baron  1884-1966 
Lazarus,  Ruth  Adele.  See 

Glass  1912-1990 

Lea,  Sir  George  Harris  1912-1990 
Leach,  Archibald  Alec.  See 

Grant,  Cary  1904-1986 

Leach,  Arthur  Francis  1851-1915 

Leach,  Bernard  Howell  1887-1979 

Leach,  Sir  Edmund  Ronald  1910-1989 

Leacock,  Stephen  Butler  1869-1944 

Leader,  Benjamin  Williams  1831-1923 

Leader,  John  Temple  1810-1903 

Leaf,  Walter  1852-1927 

Leake,  George  1856-1902 
Leakey,  Louis  Seymour 

Bazett  1903-1972 
Learmonth,  Sir  James 

Rognvald  1895-1967 
Leathers,  Frederick  James, 

Viscount  1883-1965 
Leathes,  Sir  Stanley 

Mordaunt  1861-1938 

Leavis,  Frank  Raymond  1895-1978 

Le  Bas,  Edward  1904-1966 
Lecky,  Squire  Thornton 

Stratford  1838-1902 
Lecky,  William  Edward 

Hartpole  1838-1903 


560 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Leconfield,  Baron.  See 

Wyndham,  John  Edward 

Reginald 
Ledingham,  Sir  John  Charles 

Grant 
Ledward,  Gilbert 
Ledwidge,  Francis 
Lee,  Sir  (Albert)  George 
Lee,  Arthur  Hamilton, 

Viscount  Lee  of  Fareham 
Lee,  Sir  Frank  Godbould 
Lee,  Frederick  George 
Lee,  Janet  ('Jennie'),  Baroness 

Lee  of  Asheridge 
Lee,  Rawdon  Briggs 
Lee,  Robert  Warden 
Lee,  Sir  Sidney 
Lee,  Vernon,  pseudonym.  See 

Paget,  Violet 
Lee-Hamilton,  Eugene  Jacob 
Lee- Warner,  Sir  William 
Lees,  Florence  Sarah 
Lees,  George  Martin 
Leese,  Sir  Oliver  William 

Hargreaves 
Leeson,  Spencer  Stottesbery 

Gwatkin 
Le  Fanu,  Sir  Michael 
Le  Gallienne,  Richard 

Thomas 
Lefroy,  William 
Legg,  John  Wickham 
Legh,  Thomas  Wodehouse, 

Baron  Newton 
Legros,  Alphonse 
Le  Gros  Clark,  Frederick.  See 

Clark 
Le  Gros  Clark,  Sir  Wilfrid 

Edward.  See  Clark 
Lehmann,  Rosamond  Nina 
Lehmann,  Rudolf 
Lehmann,  Rudolph  Chambers 
Lehmann,  (Rudolph)  John 

(Frederick) 
Leicester,  Earl  of.  See  Coke, 

Thomas  William 
Leigh,  Vivien 
Leigh-Mallory,  Sir  Trafford 

Leigh 
Leighton,  Stanley 
Leiningen,  Prince  Ernest 

Leopold  Victor  Charles 

Auguste  Joseph  Emich 
Leiper,  Robert  Thomson 
Leishman,  Thomas 
Leishman,  Sir  William  Boog 
Leitch,  Charlotte  Cecilia 

Pitcairn  ('Cecil') 
Leith-Ross,  Sir  Frederick 

William 
Lejeune,  Caroline  Alice 


1920-1972 

1875-1944 
1888-1960 
1891-1917 
1879-1967 

1868-1947 
1903-1971 
1832-1902 

1904-1988 
1845-1908 
1868-1958 
1859-1926 

1856-1935 
1845-1907 
1846-1914 

#1840-1922 
1898-1955 

1894-1978 

1892-1956 
1913-1970 

1866-1947 
1836-1909 
1843-1921 

1857-1942 
1837-1911 

1892-1977 

1895-1971 

1901-1990 

1819-1905 

#1856-1929 

1907-1987 

1822-1909 
1913-1967 

1892-1944 
1837-1901 


1830-1904 
1881-1969 
1825-1904 
1865-1926 

1891-1977 

1887-1968 
1897-1973 


Le  Jeune,  Henry 
Lemass,  Sean  Francis 
Le  Mesurier,  John 
Lemmens-Sherrington, 

Helen 
Lemon,  Sir  Ernest  John 

Hutchings 
Lempriere,  Charles 
Leng,  Sir  John 
Leng,  Sir  W'illiam 

Christopher 
Lennard-Jones,  Sir  John 

Edward 
Lennon,  John  Winston 
Lennox,  Charles  Henry 

Gordon-,  Duke  of 

Richmond  and  Gordon. 

See  Gordon-Lennox 
Lennox-Boyd,  Alan  Tindal, 

Viscount  Boyd  of  Merton 
Leno,  Dan 
Lenox-Conyngham,  Sir 

Gerald  Ponsonby 
Leon,  Henry  Cecil,  'Henrv 

Cecil' 
Le  Queux,  William  Tufnell 
Le  Sage,  Sir  John  Merry 
Leslie,  Sir  Bradford 
Leslie,  Sir  John  Randolph 

('Shane') 
Lester,  Sean  (John  Ernest) 
Le  Strange,  Guy 
Lethaby,  William  Richard 
Lett,  Sir  Hugh 
Lever,  Sir  (Samuel)  Hardman 
Lever,  William  Hesketh, 

Viscount  Leverhulme 
Leverhulme,  Viscount.  See 

Lever,  William  Hesketh 
Leverson,  Ada  Esther 
Leveson-Gower,  (Edward) 

Frederick 
Leveson  Gower,  Sir  Henry 

Dudley  Gresham.  See 

power 
Levick,  George  Murray 
Levy,  Benn  Wolfe 
Levy,  Doris  Elizabeth 

Langley.  See  Moore 
Levy,  Hyman 
Levy-Lawson,  Edward,  Baron 

Bumham 
Levy-Lawson,  Harry  Lawson 

Webster,  Viscount 

Bumham.  See  Lawson 
Lewin,  (George)  Ronald 
Lewis,  Agnes 
Lewis,  Alun 

Lewis,  Sir  Anthony  Carey 
Lewis,  Sir  Aubrey  Julian 
Lewis,  Bunnell 


1819-1904 
1899-1971 
1912-1983 

1834-1906 

1884-1954 
1818-1901 
1828-1906 

1825-1902 

1894-1954 

1940-1980 


1818-1903 

1904-1983 
1860-1904 

1866-1956 

1902-1976 

#1864-1927 

1837-1926 

1831-1926 

1885-1971 
1888-1959 
1854-1933 
1857-1931 
1876-1964 
1869-1947 

1851-1925 

1851-1925 
#1862-1933 

1819-1907 


1873-1954 
1876-1956 
1900-1973 

1902-1989 
1889-1975 

1833-1916 


1862-1933 
1914-1984 
1843-1926 

#1915-1944 
1915-1983 

1900-1975 
1824-1908 


56i 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Lewis,  Cecil  Day-.  See 

Day-Lewis  1904-1972 

Lewis,  Clive  Staples  1898-1963 
Lewis,  David  (1814-1895). 

See  under  Lewis,  Evan 
Lewis,  (Dominic)  Bevan 

(Wyndham)  #1891-1969 

Lewis,  Evan  1818-1901 

Lewis,  Sir  George  Henry  1833-1911 

Lewis,  John  Spedan  1885-1963 

Lewis,  John  Travers  1825-1901 

Lewis,  Percy  Wyndham  1882-1957 

Lewis,  Richard  1821-1905 

Lewis,  Rosa  1867-1952 

Lewis,  Ted,  'Kid'  #1894-1970 

Lewis,  Sir  Thomas  1881-1945 
Lewis,  Sir  Wilfrid  Hubert 

Poyer  1881-1950 
Lewis,  William  Cudmore 

McCullagh  1885-1956 
Lewis,  William  Thomas, 

Baron  Merthyr  1837-1914 

Lewis,  Sir  Willmott  Harsant  1877-1950 

Ley,  Henry  George  1887-1962 
Leyel,  Hilda  Winifred  Ivy 

(Mrs  C.  F.  Leyel)  1880-1957 

Liaqat  Ah  Khan  1895-1951 

Liberty,  Sir  Arthur  Lasenby  1843-1917 
Liddell,  Edward  George 

Tandy  1895-1981 

Liddell,  Eric  Henry  #1902-1945 
Liddell  Hart,  Sir  Basil  Henry. 

See  Hart  1895-1970 

Lidderdale,  William  1832-1902 

Lidell,  (Tord)  Alvar  (Quan)  1908-1981 

Lidgett,  John  Scott  1854-1953 

Lightwood,  John  Mason  1852-1947 

Lillicrap,  Sir  Charles  Swift  1887-1966 
Lillie,  Beatrice  Gladys,  Lady 

Peel  1894-1989 
Limerick,  Countess  of.  See 

Pery,  Angela  Olivia  1897-1981 
Lincolnshire,  Marquess  of. 

See  Wynn-Carrington, 

Charles  Robert  1843-1928 
Lindemann,  Frederick 

Alexander,  Viscount 

Cherwell  1886-1957 

Lindley,  Sir  Francis  Oswald  1872-1950 

Lindley,  Nathaniel,  Baron  1828-1921 

Lindrum,  Walter  Albert  1898-1960 
Lindsay,  Alexander  Dunlop, 

Baron  Lindsay  of  Birker  1879-1952 

Lindsay,  David  1856-1922 
Lindsay,  David  Alexander 

Edward,  Earl  of  Crawford  1 87 1  -1940 
Lindsay,  David  Alexander 

Robert,  Lord  Balniel, 

Baron  Wigan,  Earl  of 

Crawford,  Earl  of  Balcarres  1 900  -1 975 

Lindsay,  George  Mackintosh  1880-1956 


Lindsay,  James  Gavin  1835-1903 

Lindsay,  James  Ludovic,  Earl 

of  Crawford  1847-1913 

Lindsay,  John  Seymour  1882-1966 

Lindsay,  Sir  Martin 

Alexander  1905-1981 

Lindsay  (afterwards 

Loyd-Lindsay),  Robert 

James,  Baron  Wantage  1832-1901 

Lindsay,  Sir  Ronald  Charles  1877-1945 

Lindsay,  Thomas  Martin  1843-1914 

Lindsay,  Wallace  Martin  1858-1937 

Lindsell,  Sir  Wilfrid  Gordon  1884-1973 

Lingen,  Ralph  Robert 

Wheeler,  Baron  1819-1905 

Linklater,  Eric  Robert  Russell  1899-1974 

Linlithgow,  Marquess  of. 

See  Hope,  John  Adrian 

Louis  1860-1908 

Linlithgow,  Marquess  of.  See 

Hope,  Victor  Alexander 

John  1887-1952 

Linnett,  John  Wilfrid  1913-1975 

Linstead,  Sir  (Reginald) 

Patrick  1902-1966 

Lipson,  Ephraim  1888-1960 

Lipton,  Sir  Thomas 

Johnstone  1850-1931 

Lister,  Arthur  1830-1908 

Lister,  Joseph,  Baron  1827-1912 

Lister,  Philip  Cunliffe-,  Earl 

of  Swinton.  See 

Cunliffe-Lister  1884-1972 

Lister,  Sir  (Robert)  Ashton  #1845-1929 

Lister,  Samuel  Cunliffe, 

Baron  Masham  1815-1906 

Lithgow,  Sir  James  1 883  -1952 

Litthauer,  Hildegard  Therese. 

See  Himmelweit  1918-1989 

Little,  Andrew  George  1863-1945 

Little,  Sir  Charles  James 

Colebrooke  1882-1973 

Little,  Sir  Ernest  Gordon 

Graham  Graham-.  See 

Graham-Little  1867-1950 

Little,  William  John  Knox-. 

See  Knox-Little  1839-1918 

Littler,  Sir  Ralph  Daniel 

Makinson  1835-1908 

Littlewood,  John  Edensor  1885-1977 

Littlewood,  Sir  Sydney 

Charles  Thomas  1895-1967 

Liveing,  George  Downing  1827-1924 

Livens,  William  Howard  1889-1964 

Livesey,  Sir  George  Thomas  1834-1908 

Livingstone,  Sir  Richard 

Winn  1880-1960 

Llandaff,  Viscount.  See 

Matthews,  Henry  1826-1913 

Llewellin,  John  Jestyn, 

Baron    '  1893-1957 


562 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Llewellyn,  Richard, 

pseudonym.  See  Lloyd, 

Richard  Dafydd  Vivian 

Llewellyn 
Llewellyn,  Sir  (Samuel 

Henry)  William 
Llewelyn  Davies,  Margaret 

Caroline 
Llewelyn  Davies,  Richard, 

Baron  Llewelyn-Davies 
Lloyd,  Dorothy  Jordan 
Lloyd,  Edward  Mayow 

Hastings 
Lloyd,  George  Ambrose, 

Baron 
Lloyd,  Sir  Hugh  Pughe 
Lloyd,  Sir  John  Edward 
Lloyd,  John  Selwyn  Brooke, 

Baron  Selwyn-Lloyd 
Lloyd,  Marie,  pseudonym.  See 

Wood,  Matilda  Alice 

Victoria 
Lloyd,  Richard  Dafydd 

Vivian  Llewellyn,  'Richard 

Llewellyn' 
Lloyd,  Sir  Thomas  Ingram 

Kynaston 
Lloyd  George,  David,  Earl 

Lloyd-George  of  Dwyfor 
Lloyd  George,  Frances 

Louise,  Countess 

Lloyd-George  of  Dwyfor 
Lloyd-George,  Gwilym, 

Viscount  Tenby 
Lloyd  George,  Lady  Megan 
Lloyd-Greame,  Philip,  Earl  of 

S  win  ton.  See 

Cunliffe-Lister 
Lloyd  James,  Arthur.  See 

James 
Loates,  Thomas 
Lobel,  Edgar 

Loch,  Sir  Charles  Stewart 
Lock,  Walter 
Locke,  William  John 
Lockey,  Charles 
Lockhart,  Sir  Robert 

Hamilton  Bruce 
Lockspeiser,  Sir  Ben 
Lockwood,  Amelius  Mark 

Richard,  Baron  Lambourne 
Lockwood,  Sir  John  Francis 
Lockwood,  Margaret  Mary 
Lockyer,  Sir  (Joseph)  Norman 
Lodge,  Eleanor  Constance 
Lodge,  Sir  Oliver  Joseph 
Lodge,  Sir  Richard 
Loftie,  William  John 
Lofting,  Hugh  John 
Loftus,  Lord  Augustus 

William  Frederick  Spencer 


Logan,  Sir  Douglas  William 

1910- 

-1987 

Logue,  Michael 

1840- 

-1924 

Lohmann,  George  Alfred 

1865- 

-1901 

1906- 

-1983 

Lombard,  Adrian  Albert 

1915- 

-1967 

London,  Heinz 

1907- 

-1970 

1858- 

-1941 

Londonderry,  Marquess  of. 
See  Vane-Tempest- 

#1861- 

-1944 

Stewart,  Charles 

Stewart 

1852- 

-1915 

1912- 

-1981 

Londonderry,  Marquess  of. 

1889- 

-1946 

See  Vane-Tempest- 
Stewart,  Charles  Stewart 

1889- 

-1968 

Henry 
Long,  Walter  Hume, 

1878- 

-1949 

1879- 

-1941 

Viscount  Long  of  Wraxall 

1854- 

-1924 

1894- 

-1981 

Longhurst,  Henry  Carpenter 

1909- 

-1979 

1861- 

-1947 

Longhurst,  William  Henry 
Longmore,  Sir  Arthur 

1819- 

-1904 

1907- 

-1978 

Murray 

1885- 

-1970 

Longstaff,  Tom  George 

1875- 

-1964 

Lonsdale,  Earl  of.  See 

1870- 

-1922 

Lowther,  Hugh  Cecil 

1857- 

-1944 

Lonsdale,  Frederick 

1881- 

-1954 

Lonsdale,  Dame  Kathleen 

1903- 

-1971 

1906- 

-1983 

Lopes,  Sir  Lopes  Massey 
Lopokova,  Lydia  Vasilievna, 

1818- 

-1908 

1896- 

-1968 

Lady  Keynes 

1892- 

-1981 

Loraine,  Sir  Percy  Lyham 

1880- 

-1961 

1863- 

-1945 

Loraine,  Violet  Mary 

1886- 

-1956 

Lord,  Thomas 

1808- 

-1908 

Loreburn,  Earl.  See  Reid, 

1888- 

-1972 

Robert  Threshie 
Lorimer,  Maxwell  George. 

1846- 

-1923 

1894- 

-1967 

See  Wall,  Max 

1908- 

-1990 

1902- 

-1966 

Lorimer,  Sir  Robert  Stodart 

1864- 

-1929 

Loss,  Joshua  Alexander  ('Joe') 

1909- 

-1990 

Lotbiniere,  Sir  Henry 

1884- 

-1972 

Gustave  Joly  de.  See  Joly 

de  Lotbiniere 

1829- 

-1908 

1884- 

-1943 

Lothian,  Marquess  of.  See 

1867- 

-1910 

Kerr,  Philip  Henry 

1882- 

-1940 

1888- 

-1982 

Louise  Caroline  Alberta, 

1849- 

-1923 

princess  of  Great  Britain 

1848- 

-1939 

1846- 

-1933 

Louise  Victoria  Alexandra 

1863- 

-1930 

Dagmar,  Princess  Royal  of 

1820- 

-1901 

Great  Britain 
Lovat,  Baron.  See  Fraser, 

1867- 

-1931 

1887- 

-1970 

Simon  Joseph 

1871- 

-1933 

1891- 

-1990 

Lovatt  Evans,  Sir  Charles 

Arthur.  See  Evans 

1884- 

-1968 

1847- 

-1928 

Love,  Augustus  Edward 

1903- 

-1965 

Hough 

1863- 

-1940 

1916- 

-1990 

Lovelace,  Earl  of.  See 

1836 

-1920 

Milbanke,  Ralph  Gordon 

1869- 

-1936 

Noel  King 

1839- 

-1906 

1851- 

-1940 

Lovett,  Richard 

1851- 

-1904 

1855- 

-1936 

Low,  Alexander,  Lord 

1845- 

-1910 

1839 

-1911 

Low,  Sir  David  Alexander 

#1886- 

-1947 

Cecil 

1891- 

-1963 

Low,  Sir  Robert  Cunliffe 

1838- 

-1911 

1817- 

-1904 

Low,  Sir  Sidney  James  Mark 

1857- 

-1932 

563 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Lowe,  Sir  Drury  Curzon 

Drury-.  See  Drury-Lowe  1830-1908 

Lowe,  Eveline  Mary  1869-1956 
Lowke,  Wenman  Joseph 

Bassett-.  See 

Bassett-Lowke  1877-1953 

Lowry,  Clarence  Malcolm  1909-1957 

Lowry,  Henry  Dawson  1869-1906 

Lowry,  Laurence  Stephen  1887-1976 

Lowry,  Thomas  Martin  1874-1936 
Lowson,  Sir  Denys 

Colquhoun  Flowerdew  1906-1975 
Lowther,  Hugh  Cecil,  Earl  of 

Lonsdale  1857-1944 

Lowther,  James  1840-1904 
Lowther,  James  William, 

Viscount  Ullswater  1855-1949 

Lowy,  Albert  or  Abraham  1816-1908 
Loyd-Lindsay,  Robert  James, 

Baron  Wantage.  See 

Lindsay  1832-1901 

Luard,  Sir  William  Garnham  1820-1910 
Lubbock,  Sir  John,  Baron 

Avebury  1834-1913 

Lubbock,  Percy  1879-1965 
Lubetkin,  Berthold 

Romanovitch  1901-1990 

Luby,  Thomas  Clarke  1821-1901 
Lucas,  Baron.  See  Herbert, 

Auberon  Thomas  1876-1916 

Lucas,  Sir  Charles  Prestwood  1853-1931 

Lucas,  Edward  Verrall  1868-1938 

Lucas,  Frank  Laurence  1894-1967 

Lucas,  Keith  1879-1916 

Luckock,  Herbert  Mortimer  1833-1909 

Lucy,  Sir  Henry  William  1 843  -1924 
Ludlow,  John  Malcolm 

Forbes  1821-1911 
Ludlow-Hewitt,  Sir  Edgar 

Rainey  1886-1973 
Lugard,  Frederick  John 

Dealtry,  Baron  1858-1945 
Luke,  Baron.  See  Johnston, 

George  Lawson  1873-1943 

Luke,  Sir  Harry  Charles  1884-1969 

Luke,  Jemima  1813-1906 

Lukin,  Sir  Henry  Timson  1860-1925 
Lumley,  Lawrence  Roger, 

Earl  of  Scarbrough  1896-1969 
Lunn,  Sir  Arnold  Henry 

Moore  1888-1974 

Lunn,  Sir  Henry  Simpson  1859-1939 
Lunn,  Hugh  Kingsmill, 

'Hugh  KingsmuT  #1889-1949 

Lupton,  Joseph  Hirst  1836-1905 

Lush,  Sir  Charles  Montague  1853-1930 

Lusk,  Sir  Andrew  1810-1909 

Luthuli,  Albert  John  1898P-1967 

Lutyens,  (Agnes)  Elisabeth  1906-1983 

Lutyens,  Sir  Edwin  Landseer  1869-1944 

Lutz,  (Wilhelm)  Meyer  1829-1903 


Luxmoore,  Sir  (Arthur) 

Fairfax  (Charles  Coryndon)  1876-1944 

Lyall,  Sir  Alfred  Comyn  1835-1911 

Lyall,  Sir  Charles  James  1845-1920 

Lyall,  Edna,  pseudonym.  See 

Bayly,  Ada  Ellen  1857-1903 

Lygon,  William,  Earl 

Beauchamp  1872-1938 

Lyle,  Charles  Ernest 

Leonard,  Baron  Lyle  of 

Westbourne  1882-1954 

Lynam,  Charles  Cotterill  #1858-1938 

Lynch,  Arthur  Alfred  1861-1934 

Lynch,  Benjamin  #1913-1946 

Lynd,  Robert  Wilson  1879-1949 

Lyne,  Joseph  Leycester 

(Father  Ignatius)  1837-1908 

Lyne,  Sir  William  John  1844-1913 

Lynn,  Ralph  Clifford  #1882-1962 

Lynskey,  Sir  George  Justin  1888-1957 

Lyon,  Claude  George  Bowes-, 

Earl  of  Strathmore  and 

Kinghorne.  See 

Bowes-Lyon  1855-1944 

Lyons,  Sir  Algernon 

McLennan  1833-1908 

Lyons,  (Francis  Stewart) 

Leland  1923-1983 

Lyons,  Sir  Henry  George  1864-1944 

Lyons,  Joseph  Aloysius  1879-1939 

Lyons,  Sir  Joseph  Nathaniel  #1847-1917 
Lyons,  Sir  William  1901-1985 

Lyte,  Sir  Henry  Churchill 

Maxwell  1848-1940 

Lyttelton,  Alfred  1857-1913 

Lyttelton,  Arthur  Temple  1852-1903 

Lyttelton,  Edward  1855-1942 

Lyttelton,  Sir  Neville  Gerald  1845-1931 

Lyttelton,  Oliver,  Viscount 

Chandos  1893-1972 

Lytton,  Earl  of.  See 

Bulwer-Lytton,  Victor 

Alexander  George  Robert  1876-1947 

Lytton,  Lady  Constance 

Georgina  #1869-1923 

Lytton,  Sir  Henry  Alfred  1865-1936 


MacAlister,  Sir  Donald  1854-1934 

MacAlister,  Sir  (George)  Ian  1878-1957 
McAlpine,  (Archibald) 

Douglas  1890-1981 

Macan,  Sir  Arthur  Vernon  1843-1908 

Macara,  Sir  Charles  Wright  1845-1929 

McArthur,  Charles  1844-1910 

MacArthur,  John  Stewart  #1856-1920 
Macarthur,  Mary  Reid.  See 

Anderson  1880-1921 
MacArthur,  Sir  William 

Porter  1884-1964 

Macartney,  Sir  George  1867-1945 


564 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Macartney,  Sir  Samuel 

Halliday  1833-1906 
Macassey,  Sir  Lynden 

Livingston  1876-1963 
Macaulay,  Dame  (Emilie ) 

Rose  1881-1958 

Macaulav,  James  1817-1902 

Macbain,  Alexander  1855-1907 

McBean,  Angus  Rowland  1904-1990 

Macbeth,  Robert  Walker  1848-1910 

McBev,  James  1883-1959 

MacBride,  John  #1868-1916 
MacBryde,  Robert  (1913- 

1966).  See  under 

Colquhoun,  Robert 

McCabe,  Joseph  Martin  1867-1955 

MacCallum,  Andrew  1821-1902 

McCallum,  Ronald  Buchanan  1898-1973 
McCalmont,  Harry  Leslie 

Blundell  1861-1902 

McCance,  Sir  Andrew  1889-1983 

McCardie,  Sir  Henry  Alfred  1869-1933 

McCarrison,  Sir  Robert  1878-1960 
MacCarthy,  Sir  (Charles 

Otto)  Desmond  1877-1952 
McCarthy,  Dame  (Emma) 

Maud '  1858-1949 

M'Carthy,  Justin  1830-1912 
McCarthy,  Lillah,  Lady 

Keeble  1875-1960 

McClean,  Frank  1837-1904 
McClintock,  Sir  Francis 

Leopold  1819-1907 

McClure,  Sir  John  David  1860-1922 

McCoan,  James  Carlile  1 829  -1904 

MacColl,  Dugald  Sutherland  1859-1948 

MacColl,  Ewan  1915-1989 

MacColl,  Malcolm  1831-1907 

MacColl,  Norman  1843-1904 

MacCormac,  Sir  William  1836-1901 
McCormick,  William  Patrick 

Glyn  1877-1940 
McCormick,  Sir  William 

Symington  1859-1930 
McCreerv,  Sir  Richard 

Loudon  1898-1967 
McCudden,  James  Thomas 

Byford  1895-1918 

MacCunn,  Hamish  ('James')  1868-1916 
MacDermot,  Hugh  Hyacinth 

O'Rorke,  The  MacDermot  1834-1904 
Macdermott,  Gilbert  Hastings  1845-1901 
MacDermott,  John  Clarke, 

Baron  1896-1979 

MacDermott,  Martin  1823-1905 
MacDiarmid,  Hugh, 

pseudonym.  See  Grieve, 

Christopher  Murray  1892-1978 
Macdonald,  Sir  Claude 

Maxwell  1852-1915 

MacDonald,  George  1824-1905 


Macdonald,  Sir  George  1862-1940 
Macdonald,  Sir  Hector 

Archibald  1853-1903 

Macdonald,  Hector  Munro  1865-1935 

MacDonald,  James  Ramsay  1866-1937 
Macdonald,  Sir  James  Ronald 

Leslie  1862-1927 

McDonald,  John  Blake  1829-1901 

Macdonald,  Sir  John  Denis  1826-1908 
Macdonald,  John  Hay  Athole, 

Lord  Kingsburgh  '  1836-1919 

MacDonald,  Malcolm  John  1901  -1981 

MacDonald,  Sir  Murdoch  1866-1957 

Macdonell,  Arthur  Anthony  1854-1930 

MacDonell,  Sir  Hugh  Guion  1832-1904 

Macdonell,  Sir  John  1845-1921 

Macdonell,  Sir  Philip  James  1 873  -1940 
MacDonnell,  Antony  Patrick, 

Baron  1844-1925 
Macdonnell,  Archibald 

Gordon  #1895-1941 
McDonnell,  Randal  John 

Somerled,  Earl  of  Antrim  1911-1977 
McDonnell,  Sir  Schomberg 

Kerr  1861-1915 

McDougall,  William  1871-1938 

Mace,  James  ('Jem')  1831-1910 

McElwain,  Timothv  John  1937-1990 

McEvoy,  Arthur  Ambrose  1878-1927 

McEvoy,  Harry  1902-1984 
McEwen,  Sir  John 

Blackwood  1868-1948 

Macewen,  Sir  William  1848-1924 

McFadvean,  Sir  Andrew  1887-1974 

McFadvean,  Sir  John  #1853-1941 

Macfadven,  Allan  1860-1907 

Macfadven,  Sir  Eric  1879-1966 

M'Fadyen,  John  Edgar  1870-1933 
MacFarlane,  Sir  (Frank)  Noel 

Mason-.  See 

Mason-MacFarlane  1889-1953 

Macfarlane,  (Robert)  Gwyn  1907-1987 

Macfarren,  Walter  Cecil  1826-1905 
MacGillivray,  Sir  Donald 

Charles  1906-1966 
McGowan,  Harrv  Duncan, 

Baron  1874-1961 

McGrath,  Sir  Patrick  Thomas  1868-1929 

MacGregor,  Sir  Evan  1842-1926 

MacGregor,  James  1832-1910 

MacGregor,  Sir  William  1846-1919 
McGrigor,  Sir  Rhoderick 

Robert  1893-1959 

MacheU,  James  Octavius  1 837  -1 902 
Machen,  Arthur  Llewelvn 

Jones-  #1863-1947 

Machray,  Robert  183 1  -1904 
Mclndoe,  Sir  Archibald 

Hector  1900-1960 
Mclntire,  (Heather  Mabel) 

Jane.  See  Grigson  1928-1990 


565 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Macintosh,  Sir  Robert 

Reynolds  1897-1989 

M'Intosh,  William  Carmichael  1838-1931 

Macintyre,  Donald  1 83 1  -1903 
Macintyre,  Donald  George 

Frederick  Wyville  1904-1981 
Maclver,  David  Randall-.  See 

Randall-Maclver  1873-1945 

Mackail,  John  William  1859-1945 
Mackay,  /Eneas  James 

George  1839-1911 

Mackay,  Alexander  1833-1902 
Mackay,  Donald  James,  Baron 

Reay  1839-1921 
Mackay,  James  Lyle,  Earl  of 

Inchcape  1852-1932 
Mackay,  Mary,  'Marie 

Corelli'  1855-1924 

McKechnie,  William  Sharp  1863-1930 

McKenna,  Reginald  1863-1943 

Mackennal,  Alexander  1835-1904 
Mackennal,  Sir  (Edgar) 

Bertram  1863-1931 

Mackenzie,  Sir  Alexander  1842-1902 

McKenzie,  Alexander  1869-1951 
Mackenzie,  Sir  Alexander 

Campbell  1847-1935 
Mackenzie,  Sir  (Edward 

Montague)  Compton  1883-1972 
Mackenzie,  Sir  George 

Sutherland  1844-1910 

Mackenzie,  Sir  James  1853-1925 

M'Kenzie,  Sir  John  1836-1901 

MacKenzie,  John  Stuart  1860-1935 

McKenzie,  (Robert)  Tait  1867-1938 

McKenzie,  Robert  Trelford  1917-1981 

Mackenzie,  Sir  Stephen  1844-1909 

Mackenzie,  Sir  William  1849-1923 
Mackenzie,  William 

Warrender,  Baron  Amulree  1860-1942 
Mackenzie  King,  William 

Lyon.  See  King  1874-1950 

McKeown,  Thomas  1912-1988 

McKerrow,  Ronald  Brunlees  1872-1940 

McKie,  Douglas  1896-1967 

McKie,  Sir  William  Neil  1901-1984 

Mackinder,  Sir  Halford  John  1 86 1  -1947 
MacKinlay,  Antoinette.  See 

Sterling  1843-1904 
Mackinnon,  Sir  Frank 

Douglas  1871-1946 
Mackinnon,  Sir  William 

Henry  1852-1929 

Mackintosh,  Sir  Alexander  1858-1948 

Mackintosh,  Charles  Rennie  1868-1928 
Mackintosh,  Elizabeth, 

'Josephine  Tey'  and 

'Gordon  Daviot'  #1896-1952 
Mackintosh,  Harold  Vincent, 

Viscount  Mackintosh  of 

Halifax  1891-1964 


Mackintosh,  Hugh  Ross  1870-1936 

Mackintosh,  James  Macalister  1891-1966 

Mackintosh,  John  1833-1907 

Mackintosh,  John  Pitcairn  1929-1978 

Mackmurdo,  Arthur  Heygate  #1851-1942 

Mackworth- Young,  Gerard  1884-1965 

McLachlan,  Robert  1837-1904 

Maclagan,  Christian  1811-1901 
Maclagan,  Sir  Eric  Robert 

Dalrymple  1879-1951 

Maclagan,  William  Dalrymple  1826-1910 

Maclaren,  Alexander  1826-1910 
MacLaren,  Archibald 

Campbell  1871-1944 
McLaren,  Charles 

Benjamin  Bright,  Baron 

Aberconway  1850-1934 
McLaren,  Henry  Duncan, 

Baron  Aberconway  1879-1953 
Maclaren,  Ian,  pseudonym.  See 

Watson,  John  1850-1907 

McLaren,  John,  Lord  1 83 1  -1910 
Maclaren-Ross,  James 

('Julian')  #1912-1964 

Maclay,  Joseph  Paton,  Baron  1857-1951 

Maclean,  Alistair  Stuart  1922-1987 

Maclean,  Sir  Donald  1864-1932 

Maclean,  Donald  Duart  1913-1983 
Maclean,  Sir  Harry  Aubrey 

de  Vere  1848-1920 

Maclean,  Ida  Smedley  #1877-1944 

Maclean,  James  Mackenzie  1835-1906 

Maclean,  John  #1879-1923 

McLean,  Norman  1865-1947 

Maclear,  George  Frederick  1833-1902 
Maclear,  John  Fiot  Lee 

Pearse  1838-1907 
McLennan,  Sir  John 

Cunningham  1867-1935 
Macleod,  Fiona,  pseudonym. 

See  Sharp,  William    "  1855-1905 

Macleod,  Henry  Dunning  1821-1902 

Macleod,  Iain  Norman  1913-1970 

McLeod,  Games)  Walter  1887-1978 

Macleod,  John  James  Rickard  1876-1935 

McLintock,  Sir  William  1873-1947 
McLintock,  William  Francis 

Porter  1887-1960 

Maclure,  Edward  Craig  1833-1906 
Maclure,  Sir  John  William 

(1835-1901).  See  under 

Maclure,  Edward  Craig 
McMahon,  Sir  (Arthur) 

Henry  1862-1949 

McMahon,  Charles  Alexander  1830-1904 

MacMahon,  Percy  Alexander  1854-1929 
MacMichael,  Sir  Harold 

Alfred  1882-1969 
Macmillan,  Sir  Frederick 

Orridge  1851-1936 

Macmillan,  Hugh  1833-1903 


566 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Macmillan,  Hugh  Pattison, 

Magrath,  John  Richard 

1839- 

-1930 

Baron 

1873- 

-1952 

Maguire,  James  Rochfort 

1855- 

-1925 

McMillan,  Margaret 

1860- 

-1931 

Mahaffy,  Sir  John  Pentland 

1839- 

-1919 

Macmillan,  (Maurice)  Harold, 

Mahon,  Sir  Bryan  Thomas 

1862- 

-1930 

Earl  of  Stockton 

1894- 

-1986 

Mair,  William 

1830- 

-1920 

McMillan,  William 

1887- 

-1977 

Maitland,  Agnes  Catherine 

1850- 

-1906 

Macmillan,  William  Miller 

#1885- 

-1974 

Maitland,  Sir  Arthur  Herbert 

McMurrich,  James  Playfair 

1859- 

-1939 

Drummond  Ramsay-Steel-. 

Macnaghten,  Sir  Edward, 

See  Steel-Maitland 

1876- 

-1935 

Baron 

1830- 

-1913 

Maitland,  Edward  Maitland 

#1880- 

-1921 

McNair,  Arnold  Duncan, 

Maitland,  Frederic  William 

1850- 

-1906 

Baron 

1885- 

-1975 

Maitland,  John  Alexander 

McNair,  John  Frederick 

Fuller- 

1856- 

-1936 

Adolphus 

1828- 

-1910 

Major,  Henry  Dewsbury  Alves 

1871- 

-1961 

MacNalty,  Sir  Arthur 

Makarios  HI  i  Mouskos, 

Salusbury 

1880- 

-1969 

Michael) 

1913- 

-1977 

Macnamara,  Thomas  James 

1861- 

-1931 

Malan,  Daniel  Francois 

1874- 

-1959 

McNaughton,  Andrew 

Malan,  Francois  Stephanus 

1871- 

-1941 

George  Latta 

1887- 

-1966 

Malcolm,  Sir  Dougal  Orme 

1877- 

-1955 

McNee,  Sir  John  William 

1887- 

-1984 

Malcolm,  Sir  Neill 

#1869- 

-1953 

MacNeice,  (Frederick)  Louis 

1907- 

-1963 

Malet,  Sir  Edward  Baldwin 

1837- 

-1908 

McNeil,  Hector 

1907- 

-1955 

Malet,  Lucas,  pseudonym.  See 

McNeile,  (Herman)  Cyril, 

Harrison,  Mary  St  Leger 

1852- 

-1931 

'Sapper' 

1888- 

-1937 

Malinowski,  Bronislaw  Kasper 

#1884- 

-1942 

McNeill,  James 

1869- 

-1938 

Malins,  Joseph 

#1844- 

-1926 

McNeill,  Sir  James 

Mallaby,  Sir  (Howard) 

McFadyen 

1892- 

-1964 

George  (Charles) 

1902- 

-1978 

MacNeill,  John  (otherwise 

Malleson,  Elizabeth 

#1828- 

-1916 

Eoin) 

1867- 

-1945 

Malleson,  (William)  Miles 

1888- 

-1969 

McNeill,  Sir  John  Carstairs 

1831- 

-1904 

Mallock,  William  Hurrell 

1849- 

-1923 

MacNeill,  John  Gordon  Swift 

1849- 

-1926 

Mallon,  James  Joseph 

1875- 

-1961 

McNeill,  Ronald  John,  Baron 

Mallory,  George  Leigh 

1886- 

-1924 

Cushendun 

1861- 

-1934 

Mallory,  Sir  Trafford  Leigh 

Macphail,  Sir  (John)  Andrew 

1864- 

-1938 

Leigh-.  See  Leigh-Mallory 

1892- 

-1944 

Macpherson,  (James)  Ian, 

Mallowan,  Sir  Max  Edgar 

Baron  Stratncarron 

1880- 

-1937 

Lucien 

1904- 

-1978 

Macpherson,  Sir  John 

Malone,  Sylvester 

1822- 

-1906 

Molesworth 

1853- 

-1914 

Maltby,  Sir  Paul  Copeland 

1892- 

-1971 

Macpherson,  Sir  John  Stuart 

#1898- 

-1971 

Malvern,  Viscount.  See 

McQueen,  Sir  John  Withers 

1836- 

-1909 

Huggins,  Godfrey  Martin 

1883- 

-1971 

Macqueen-Pope,  Walter 

Maneckji  Byramji  Dadabhoy, 

James 

1888- 

-1960 

Sir.  See  Dadabhoy 

1865- 

-1953 

Macready,  Sir  (Cecil 

Manio,  Jack  de.  See  De 

Frederick)  Nevil 

1862 

-1946 

Manio 

1914- 

-1988 

Macrorie,  William  Kenneth 

1831- 

-1905 

Manley,  Norman  Washington 

1893 

-1969 

M'Taggart,  John  M'Taggart 

Manley,  WiUiam  George 

Ellis 

1866- 

-1925 

Nicholas 

1831- 

-1901 

McTaggart,  William 

1835- 

-1910 

Mann,  Arthur  Henry 

1850- 

-1929 

MacTaggart.  Sir  William 

1903- 

-1981 

Mann,  Arthur  Henry 

1876- 

-1972 

McWlurter,  (Alan)  Ross 

1925 

-1975 

Mann,  Cathleen  Sabine 

1896- 

-1959 

MacWhirter,  John 

1839 

-1911 

Mann,  Sir  James  Gow 

1897 

-1962 

Madariaga,  Salvador  de 

1886 

-1978 

Mann,  Thomas  ('Tom') 

1856- 

-1941 

Madden,  Cecil  Charles 

1902 

-1987 

Manners,  (Lord)  John  James 

Madden,  Sir  Charles  Edward 

1862- 

-1935 

Robert,  Duke  of  Rutland 

1818- 

-1906 

Madden,  Frederic  William 

1839 

-1904 

Mannheim,  Hermann 

1889- 

-1974 

Madden,  Katherine  Cecil.  See 

Mannin,  Ethel  Edith 

1900- 

-1984 

Thurston 

1875- 

-1911 

Manning,  Bernard  Lord 

1892- 

-1941 

Madden,  Thomas  More 

1844- 

-1902 

Manning,  John  Edmondson 

1848- 

-1910 

Maegraith,  Brian  Gilmore 

1907- 

-1989 

Manning,  Olivia  Mary 

1908- 

-1980 

Maffey,  John  Loader,  Baron 

Manningham-Buller,  Reginald 

Rugby 

1877 

-1969 

Edward,  Viscount  Dilhorne 

1905 

-1980 

567 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Manns,  Sir  August 
Mansbridge,  Albert 
Mansel-Pleydell,  John  Clavell 
Mansergh,  James 
Mansfield,  Sir  John  Maurice 
Mansfield,  Katherine, 

pseudonym.  See  Murry, 

Kathleen 
Mansfield,  Robert  Blachford 
Manson,  James  Bolivar 
Manson,  Sir  Patrick 
Manson,  Thomas  Walter 
Manton,  Irene 
Manton,  Sidnie  Milana 
Manvell,  (Arnold)  Roger 
Maple,  Sir  John  Blundell 
Mapleson,  James  Henry 
Mapother,  Edward  Dillon 
Mappin,  Sir  Frederick 

Thorpe 
Mapson,  Leslie  William 
Marc,  pseudonym.  See  Boxer, 

(Charles)  Mark  (Edward) 
Marconi,  Guglielmo 
Marett,  Robert  Ranulph 
Margesson,  (Henry)  David 

(Reginald),  Viscount 
Margoliouth,  David  Samuel 
Marie  Louise,  Princess 
Marillier,  Henry  Currie 
Marina,  Duchess  of  Kent 
Marjoribanks,  Edward,  Baron 

Tweedmouth 
Markham,  Sir  Albert  Hastings 
Markham,  Beryl 
Markham,  Sir  Clements 

Robert 
Markham,  Violet  Rosa 
Markievicz,  Countess.  See 

Gore-Booth,  Constance 
Marks,  David  Woolf 
Marks,  George  Croydon, 

Baron 
Marks,  Simon,  Baron  Marks 

of  Broughton 
Marples,  Alfred  Ernest,  Baron 

Marples 
Marquand,  Hilary  Adair 
Marquis,  Frederick  James, 

Earl  of  Woolton 
Marr,  John  Edward 
Marre,  Sir  Alan  Samuel 
Marrian,  Guy  Frederic 
Marriott,  Sir  John  Arthur 

Ransome 
Marriott,  Sir  William 

Thackeray 
Marris,  Sir  William  Sinclair 
Marsden,  Alexander  Edwin 
Marsden,  Sir  Ernest 
Marsh,  Dame  (Edith)  Ngaio 


1825-1907 

Marsh,  Sir  Edward  Howard 

1872- 

-1953 

1876-1952 

Marshall,  Alfred 

1842- 

-1924 

1817-1902 

Marshall,  (Charles)  Arthur 

1834-1905 

(Bertram) 

1910- 

-1989 

1893-1949 

Marshall,  George  William 
Marshall,  Sir  Guy  Anstruther 

1839- 

-1905 

Knox 

1871- 

-1959 

1888-1923 

Marshall,  Sir  John  Hubert 

1876- 

-1958 

1824-1908 

Marshall,  Julian 

1836- 

-1903 

1879-1945 

Marshall,  Sir  Stirrat  Andrew 

1844-1922 

William  Johnson-.  See 

1893-1958 

Johnson-Marshall 

1912- 

-1981 

1904-1988 

Marshall,  Thomas  Humphrey 

1893- 

-1981 

1902-1979 

Marshall,  Sir  William  Raine 

1865- 

-1939 

1909-1987 

Marshall-Cornwall,  Sir  James 

1845-1903 

Handyside 

1887- 

-1985 

1830-1901 

Marshall  Hall,  Sir  Edward. 

1835-1908 

See  Hall 
Martel,  Sir  Giffard  Le 

1858- 

-1929 

1821-1910 

Quesne 

1889- 

-1958 

1907-1970 

Marten,  Sir  (Clarence)  Henry 

(Kennett) 

1872- 

-1948 

1931-1988 

Martin,  Alexander 

1857- 

-1946 

#1874-1937 

Martin,  (Basil)  Kingsley 

1897- 

-1969 

1866-1943 

Martin,  Sir  Charles  James 

1866- 

-1955 

Martin,  Sir  David  Christie 

1914- 

-1976 

1890-1965 

Martin,  Sir  Douglas  Eric 

1858-1940 

('Deric')  Holland-.  See 

1872-1956 

Holland-Martin 

1906- 

-1977 

1865-1951 

Martin,  Sir  Harold  Brownlow 

1906-1968 

Morgan 

1918- 

-1988 

Martin,  Herbert  Henry 

1881- 

-1954 

1849-1909 

Martin,  Hugh 

1890 

-1964 

1841-1918 

Martin,  Sir  Theodore 

1816- 

-1909 

1902-1986 

Martin,  Sir  Thomas  Acquin 
Martin,  Violet  Florence, 

1850- 

-1906 

1830-1916 

'Martin  Ross' 

1862- 

-1915 

1872-1959 

Martin,  William  Keble 
Martin-Harvey,  Sir  John 

1877- 

-1969 

#1868-1927 

Martin 

1863- 

-1944 

1811-1909 

Martindale,  Cyril  Charlie 

1879- 

-1963 

Martindale,  Hilda 

1875- 

-1952 

#1858-1938 

Marwick,  Sir  James  David 

1826- 

-1908 

Mary,  Queen 

1867- 

-1953 

1888-1964 

Masefield,  John  Edward 
Masham,  Baron.  See  Lister, 

1878- 

-1967 

1907-1978 

Samuel  Cunliffe 

1815- 

-1906 

1901-1972 

Maskelyne,  John  Nevil 
Maskelyne,  Mervyn  Herbert 

#1839- 

-1917 

1883-1964 

Nevil  Story-.  See 

1857-1933 

Story-Maskelyne 

1823- 

-1911 

1914-1990 

Mason,  Alfred  Edward 

1904-1981 

Woodley 

1865- 

-1948 

Mason,  Arthur  James 

1851- 

-1928 

1859-1945 

Mason,  Charlotte  Maria  Shaw 

#1842- 

-1923 

Mason,  Sir  Frank  Trowbridge 

1900- 

-1988 

1834-1903 

Mason,  James  Neville 

1909- 

-1984 

1873-1945 

Mason-MacFarlane,  Sir 

1832-1902 

(Frank)  Noel 

1889- 

-1953 

1889-1970 

Massey,  (Charles)  Vincent 

1887- 

-1967 

1899-1982 

Massey,  Gerald 

1828- 

-1907 

568 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Massev,  Sir  Harrie  Stewart 

Wilson 
Massev,  William  Ferguson 
Massingberd,  Sir  Archibald 

Armar  Montgomery-.  See 

Montgomery-Massingberd 
Massingham,  Harold  John 
Massingham,  Henry  William 
Masson,  David 
Masson,  Sir  David  Orme 
Massy,  William  Godfrey 

Dunham 
Masterman,  Charles  Frederick 

Gurney 
Masterman,  Sir  John  Cecil 
Masters,  John 
Masters,  Maxwell  Tylden 
Matcham,  Francis  ('Frank') 
Mather,  Sir  Kenneth 
Matheson,  George 
Mathew,  Anthony  (1905— 

1976).  See  under  Mathew, 

David  James 
Mathew,  David  James 
Mathew,  Gervase  (1905— 

1976).  See  under  Mathew, 

David  James 
Mathew,  Sir  James  Charles 
Mathew,  Theobald 
Mathew,  Sir  Theobald 
Mathews,  Basil  Joseph 
Mathews,  Charles  Edward 
Mathews,  Sir  Charles  Willie 
Mathews,  Sir  Lloyd  William 
Mathews,  Dame  Vera  (Elvira 

Sibyl  Maria)  Laughton 
Mathieson,  William  Law 
Matthew,  Sir  Robert  Hogg 
Matthews,  Alfred  Edward 
Matthews,  Sir  Bryan  Harold 

Cabot 
Matthews,  Denis  James 
Matthews,  Henry,  Viscount 

Llandaff 
Matthews,  Jessie  Margaret 
Matthews,  (Leonard) 

Harrison 
Matthews,  Walter  Robert 
Matthews,  Sir  William 
Maturin,  Basil  William 
Maud  Charlotte  Mary 

Victoria,  Queen  of  Norway 
Maud,  John  Primatt  Redcliffe, 

Baron  Redcliffe-Maud 
Maude,  Aylmer 
Maude,  Sir  (Frederick) 

Stanley 
Maudling,  Reginald 
Maudsley,  Henry 
Maufe,  Sir  Edward 

Brantwood 


Maugham,  Frederic  Herbert, 

1908- 

-1983 

Viscount 

1866- 

-1958 

1856- 

-1925 

Maugham,  William  Somerset 

1874- 

-1%5 

Maurice,  Sir  Frederick  Barton 

1871- 

-1951 

Maurice,  Sir  John  Frederick 

1841- 

-1912 

1871- 

-1947 

Maurier,  Dame  Daphne  du. 

1888- 

-1952 

See  Du  Maurier 

1907- 

-1989 

1860- 

-1924 

Mavor,  Osborne  Henry, 

1822- 

-1907 

'James  Bridie' 

1888- 

-1951 

1858- 

-1937 

Mawdsley,  James 

1848- 

-1902 

Mawer,  Sir  Allen 

1879- 

-1942 

1838- 

-1906 

Mawson,  Sir  Douglas 

1882- 

-1958 

Mawson,  Thomas  Hayton 

#1861- 

-1933 

1874- 

-1927 

Maxim,  Sir  Hiram  Stevens 

1840- 

-1916 

1891- 

-1977 

Maxse,  Sir  (Frederick)  Ivor 

1862- 

-1958 

1914- 

-1983 

Maxse,  Leopold  James 

1864- 

-1932 

1833- 

-1907 

Maxton,  James 

1885- 

-1946 

#1854- 

-1920 

Maxwell,  Sir  Alexander 

1880- 

-1963 

1911- 

-1990 

Maxwell,  Gavin 

1914- 

-1969 

1842- 

-1906 

Maxwell,  Sir  Herbert  Eustace 

1845- 

-1937 

Maxwell,  Sir  John  Grenfell 

1859- 

-1929 

Maxwell  (formerly  Braddon), 

Mary  Elizabeth 

1837- 

-1915 

1902- 

-1975 

Maxwell  Fyfe,  David  Patrick, 

Earl  of  Kilmuir.  See  Fyfe 

1900- 

-1967 

Maxwell  Lyte,  Sir  Henry 

Churchill.  See  Lyte 

1848- 

-1940 

1830- 

-1908 

May,  George  Ernest,  Baron 

1871- 

-1946 

1866- 

-1939 

May,  Philip  William  ('Phil') 

1864- 

-1903 

1898- 

-1964 

May,  Sir  William  Henry 

1849- 

-1930 

1879- 

-1951 

May  bray-King,  Baron.  See 

1834- 

-1905 

King,  Horace  Maybray 

1901- 

-1986 

1850- 

-1920 

Maybury,  Sir  Henry  Percy 

1864- 

-1943 

1850- 

-1901 

Mayer,  Sir  Robert 

1879- 

-1985 

Mayne,  Robert  Blair 

#1915- 

-1955 

1888- 

-1959 

Mayor,  John  Eyton 

1868- 

-1938 

Bickersteth 

1825- 

-1910 

1906- 

-1975 

Mead,  Charles  Philip 

#1887- 

-1958 

1869- 

-1960 

Meade,  Richard  James,  Earl 

of  Clan  william 

1832- 

-1907 

1906- 

-1986 

Meade-Fetherstonhaugh,  Sir 

1919- 

-1988 

Herbert 
Meakin,  James  Edward 

1875- 

-1964 

1826- 

-1913 

Budgett 

1866- 

-1906 

1907- 

-1981 

Meath,  Earl  of.  See  Brabazon, 

Reginald 

1841- 

-1929 

1901- 

-1986 

Medawar,  Sir  Peter  Brian 

1915- 

-1987 

1881- 

-1973 

Medd,  Peter  Goldsmith 

1829- 

-1908 

1844- 

-1922 

Medlicott,  Henry  Benedict 

1829- 

-1905 

1847- 

-1915 

Mee,  Arthur  Henry 

1875- 

-1943 

Meek,  Charles  Kingsley 

1885- 

-1965 

1869- 

-1938 

Meghnad  Saha 

1893- 

-1956 

Meiggs,  Russell 

1902- 

-1989 

1906- 

-1982 

Meighen,  Arthur 

1874- 

-1960 

1858- 

-1938 

Meiklejohn,  John  Miller  Dow 

1836- 

-1902 

Meinertzhagen,  Richard 

#1878- 

-1967 

1864- 

-1917 

Melba,  Dame  Nellie 

1861- 

-1931 

1917- 

-1979 

Melchett,  Baron.  See  Mond, 

#1835- 

-1918 

Alfred  Moritz 
Melchett,  Baron.  See  Mond, 

1868- 

-1930 

1883- 

-1974 

Julian  Edward  Alfred 

1925- 

-1973 

569 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Meldola,  Raphael  #1849-1915 

Meldrum,  Charles  1821-1901 

Mellanby,  Sir  Edward  1884-1955 

Mellanby,  John  1878-1939 
Mellon  (formerly  Woolgar), 

Sarah  Jane  1824-1909 

Melville,  Arthur  1855-1904 

Mendelsohn,  Eric  1887-1953 

Mendl,  Sir  Charles  Ferdinand  1 87 1  -1958 

Menon,  Vapal  Pangunni  1894-1966 
Menon,  Vengalil  Krishnan 

Kunji-Krishna  1896-1974 
Menzies,  Sir  Frederick 

Norton  Kay  1875-1949 

Menzies,  Sir  Robert  Gordon  1894-1978 

Menzies,  Sir  Stewart  Graham  1890-1968 
Mercer,  Cecil  William, 

'Dornford  Yates'  1885-1960 

Mercer,  James  1883-1932 

Mercer,  Joseph  1914-1990 

Meredith,  George  1828-1909 

Meredith,  Sir  William  Ralph  1840-1923 

Merivale,  Herman  Charles  1839-1906 
Merriman,  Frank  Boyd, 

Baron  1880-1962 
Merriman,  Henry  Seton, 

pseudonym.  See  Scott,  Hugh 

Stowell  1862-1903 

Merriman,  John  Xavier  1841-1926 
Merrison,  Sir  Alexander 

Walter  1924-1989 
Merrivale,  Baron.  See  Duke, 

Henry  Edward  1885-1939 

Merry,  William  Walter  1835-1918 

Merry  del  Val,  Rafael  1865-1930 
Mersey,  Viscount.  See 

Bigham,  John  Charles  1840-1929 
Merthyr,  Baron.  See  Lewis, 

William  Thomas  1837-1914 

Merton,  Sir  Thomas  Ralph  1888-1969 

Merz,  Charles  Hesterman  1874-1940 
Messel,  Oliver  Hilary 

Sambourne  1904-1978 

Messel,  Rudolph  #1848-1920 

Messervy,  Sir  Frank  Walter  1893-1973 
Meston,  James  Scorgie, 

Baron  1865-1943 
Metcalfe,  Sir  Charles  Herbert 

Theophilus  1853-1928 
Methuen,  Sir  Algernon 

Methuen  Marshall  1856-1924 
Methuen,  Paul  Ayshford, 

Baron  #1886-1974 
Methuen,  Paul  Sanford, 

Baron  1845-1932 

Methven,  Sir  (Malcolm)  John  1926-1980 
Meux  (formerly  Lambton), 

Sir  Hedworth  1856-1929 

Mew,  Charlotte  Mary  1869-1928 

Meyer,  Frederick  Brotherton  1847-1929 

Meyer,  Sir  William  Stevenson  1860-1922 


Meynell,  Alice  Christiana 

Gertrude 
Meynell,  Sir  Francis 

Meredith  Wilfrid 
Meyrick,  Edward 
Meyrick,  Frederick 
Michell,  Anthony  George 

Maldon 
Michell,  Sir  Lewis  Loyd 
Michie,  Alexander 
Micklem,  Nathaniel 
Micklethwaite,  John  Thomas 
Middleditch,  Edward  Charles 
Middleton,  James  Smith 
Midlane,  Albert 
Midleton,  Earl  of.  See 

Brodrick,  (William)  St  John 

(Fremantle) 
Miers,  Sir  Anthony  Cecil 

Capel 
Miers,  Sir  Henry  Alexander 
Milbanke,  Ralph  Gordon 

Noel  King,  Earl  of 

Lovelace 
Mildmay,  Anthony  Bingham, 

Baron  Mildmay  of  Flete 
Miles,  Sir  (Arnold)  Ashley 
Milford,  David  Sumner 
Milford,  Sir  Humphrey 

Sumner 
Milford,  (Theodore)  Richard 
Milford  Haven,  Marquess  of. 

See  Mountbatten,  Louis 

Alexander 
Mill,  Hugh  Robert 
Millar,  Frederick  Robert 

Hoyer,  Baron  Inchyra 
Millar,  Gertie 
Miller,  Florence  Fenwick 
Miller,  Henry  George 
Miller,  James.  See  MacColl, 

Ewan 
Miller,  Sir  James  Percy 
Miller,  William 
Milligan,  George 
Milligan,  Sir  William 
Mills,  Bertram  Wagstaff 
Mills,  Percy  Herbert, 

Viscount 
Mills,  Sir  William 
Mills,  William  Hobson 
Milne,  Alan  Alexander 
Milne,  Sir  (Archibald) 

Berkeley 
Milne,  Edward  Arthur 
Milne,  George  Francis,  Baron 
Milne,  John 
Milne- Watson,  Sir  David 

Milne 
Milner,  Alfred,  Viscount 
Milner,  Henry  Ernest 


1847-1922 

1891-1975 
1854-1938 
1827-1906 

1870-1959 
1842-1928 
1833-1902 
1888-1976 
1843-1906 
1923-1987 
1878-1962 
1825-1909 


1856-1942 

1906-1985 
1858-1942 


1839-1906 

1909-1950 
1904-1988 
1905-1984 

1877-1952 
1895-1987 


1854-1921 
1861-1950 

1900-1989 

1879-1952 

#1854-1935 

#1913-1976 

1915-1989 
1864-1906 
1864-1945 
1860-1934 
1864-1929 
1873-1938 

1890-1968 
1856-1932 
1873-1959 
1882-1956 

1855-1938 
1896-1950 
1866-1948 
1850-1913 

1869-1945 

1854-1925 

#1845-1906 


570 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Milner,  James,  Baron  Milner 

of  Leeds 

1889- 

1967 

Milner,  Violet  Georgina, 

Viscountess 

1872- 

1958 

Milner  Holland,  Sir  Edward. 

See  Holland 

1902- 

-1969 

Milnes,  Robert  Offley 

Ashburton  Crewe-, 

Marquess  of  Crewe.  See 

Crewe-Milnes 

1858- 

1945 

Milverton,  Baron.  See 

Richards,  Arthur  Frederick 

1885- 

-1978 

Minett,  Francis  Colin 

1890- 

-1953 

Minns,  Sir  Ellis  Hovell 

#1874- 

-1953 

Minto,  Earl  of.  See  Elliot, 

Gilbert  John  Murray 

Kynynmond 

1845- 

-1914 

Minton,  Francis  John 

1917- 

-1957 

Mirza  Mohammad  Ismail,  Sir. 

See  Ismail 

1883- 

-1959 

Mitchell,  Sir  Arthur 

1826- 

-1909 

Mitchell,  Denis  Holden 

1911- 

-1990 

Mitchell,  Sir  Godfrey  Way 

1891- 

-1982 

Mitchell,  Graham  Russell 

1905- 

-1984 

Mitchell,  James  Alexander 

Hugh 

1939- 

-1985 

Mitchell,  John  Murray 

1815- 

-1904 

Mitchell,  Joseph  Stanley 

1909- 

-1987 

Mitchell,  Leslie  Scott 

Falconer 

1905- 

-1985 

Mitchell,  Sir  Peter  Chalmers 

1864- 

-1945 

Mitchell,  Sir  Philip  Euen 

1890- 

-1964 

Mitchell,  Reginald  Joseph 

1895- 

-1937 

Mitchell,  Sir  William  Gore 

Sutherland 

1888- 

-1944 

Mitford,  Algernon  Bertram 

Freeman-,  Baron  Redesdale 

1837- 

-1916 

Mitford,  Nancy  Freeman- 

1904- 

-1973 

Moberly,  Robert  Campbell 

1845- 

-1903 

Moberly,  Sir  Walter  Hamilton 

1881- 

-1974 

Mocatta,  Frederic  David 

1828- 

-1905 

Mockler-Ferryman,  Eric 

Edward 

1896- 

-1978 

Moens,  William  John  Charles 

1833- 

-1904 

Moeran,  Ernest  John 

1894- 

-1950 

Moffatt,  James 

1870- 

-1944 

Moir,  Frank  Lewis 

1852- 

-1904 

Molesworth,  Mary  Louisa 

#1839- 

-1921 

Mollison,  Amy.  See  Johnson 

1903- 

-1941 

Mollison,  James  Allan 

1905 

-1959 

Molloy,  Gerald 

1834- 

-1906 

Molloy,  James  Lynam 

1837- 

-1909 

Molloy,  Joseph  FitzGerald 

1858- 

-1908 

Molony,  Sir  Thomas  Francis 

1865 

-1949 

Molyneux,  Sir  Robert  Henry 

More-.  See 

More-Molyneux 

1838- 

-1904 

Momigliano,  Arnaldo  Dante 

1908 

-1987 

'Mon,  Hwfa',  pseudonym.  See 

Williams,  Rowland 

1823 

-1905 

Monash,  Sir  John 

1865 

-1931 

Monckton,  Walter  Turner, 

Viscount  Monckton  of 

Brenchley  1891-1965 

Moncrieff,  Sir  Alan  Aird  #1901  -1971 

Moncrieff,  Sir  Alexander  1829-1906 

Moncreiff,  Henry  James, 

Baron  1840-1909 

Moncreiffe  of  that  Ilk,  Sir 

(Rupert)  Iain  (Kay),  1919-1985 

Mond,  Alfred  Moritz,  Baron 

Melchett  1868-1930 

Mond,  Julian  Edward  Alfred, 

Baron  Melchett  1925-1973 

Mond,  Ludwig  1839-1909 

Mond,  Sir  Robert  Ludwig  1867-1938 

Monkhouse,  William  Cosmo  1840-1901 

Monnington,  Sir  (Walter) 

Thomas  1902-1976 

Monro,  Sir  Charles 

Carmichael  1860-1929 

Monro,  Charles  Henry  1835-1908 

Monro,  David  Binning  1836-1905 

Monro,  Harold  Edward  1879-1932 

Monro,  Sir  Horace  Cecil  1 86 1  -1949 

Monro,  Matt  1930-1985 

Monsarrat,  Nicholas  John 

Turney  1910-1979 

Monson,  Sir  Edmund  John  1834-1909 

Montagu  of  Beaulieu.  Baron. 

See  Douglas-Scott- 
Montagu,  John  Walter 

Edward  1866-1929 

Montagu,  Edwin  Samuel  1879-1924 

Montagu,  Ewen  Edward 

Samuel  1901-1985 

Montagu,  Ivor  Goldsmid 

Samuel  1904-1984 

Montagu,  Lord  Robert  1825-1902 

Montagu,  Samuel,  Baron 

Swaythling  1832-1911 

Montagu-Douglas-Scott,  Lord 

Charles  Thomas.  See  Scott  1839-1911 

Montagu-Douglas-Scott,  Lord 

Francis  George.  See  Scott  1879-1952 

Montague,  Charles  Edward  1867-1928 

Montague,  Francis  Charles  1858-1935 

Monteath,  Sir  James  1847-1929 

Montefiore,  Claude  Joseph 

Goldsmid-  1858-1938 

Montgomerie,  Robert 

Archibald  James  1855-1908 

Montgomery,  Bernard  Law, 

Viscount  Montgomery  of 

Alamein  1887-1976 

Montgomery,  (Robert)  Bruce, 

'Edmund  Crispin'  1921-1978 

Montgomerv-Massingberd, 

Sir  Archibald  Armar  1871-1947 

Montmorency,  James  Edward 

Geoffrey  de.  See  de 

Montmorency  1866-1934 


57i 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Montmorency,  Raymond 

Harvey  de,  Viscount 

Frankfort  de 

Montmorency.  See  de 

Montmorency  1835-1902 

Monypenny,  William  Flavelle  1866-1912 

Moody,  Harold  Arundel  1882-1947 
Moon,  Sir  (Edward) 

Penderel  1905-1987 

Moor,  Sir  Frederick  Robert  1853-1927 
Moor,  Sir  Ralph  Denham 

Rayment  1860-1909 

Moore,  Arthur  William  1853-1909 
Moore,  (Charles)  Garrett 

(Ponsonby),  Earl  of 

Drogheda  1910-1989 
Moore,  Doris  Elizabeth 

Langley  1902-1989 

Moore,  Edward  1835-1916 

Moore,  George  Augustus  1852-1933 

Moore,  George  Edward  1873-1958 

Moore,  Gerald  1899-1987 

Moore,  Henry  Spencer  1898-1986 
Moore,  Mary.  See  Wyndham, 

Mary,  Lady  1861-1931 

Moore,  Stuart  Archibald  1842-1907 

Moore,  Temple  Lushington  1856-1920 
Moore-Brabazon,  John 

Theodore  Cuthbert,  Baron 

Brabazon  of  Tara.  See 

Brabazon  1884-1964 

Moorehead,  Alan  McCrae  1910-1983 

Moores,  Cecil  1902-1989 

Moorhouse,  James  1826 -1915 
Moorman,  John  Richard 

Humpidge  1905-1989 
Moran,  Baron.  See  Wilson, 

Charles  McMoran  1882-1977 

Moran,  Patrick  Francis  1830-1911 

Morant,  Geoffrey  Miles  1899-1964 

Morant,  Sir  Robert  Laurie  1863-1920 

Mordell,  Louis  Joel  1888-1972 
More-Molyneux,  Sir  Robert 

Henry  1838-1904 

Morecambe,  Eric  1926-1984 

Morel,  Edmund  Dene  #1873-1924 

Moresby,  John  1830-1922 

Morfill,  William  Richard  1834-1909 

Morgan,  Charles  Langbridge  1894-1958 

Morgan,  Conwy  Lloyd  1852-1936 

Morgan,  Edward  Delmar  1840-1909 
Morgan,  Sir  Frederick 

Edgworth  1894-1967 

Morgan,  Sir  Gilbert  Thomas  1872-1940 

Morgan,  John  Hartman  1876-1955 

Morgan,  Sir  Morien  Bedford  1912-1978 

Moriarty,  Henry  Augustus  1815-1906 

Morison,  Stanley  Arthur  1889-1967 

Morison,  Sir  Theodore  1863-1936 
Morland,  Sir  Thomas 

Lethbridge  Napier  1865-1925 


Morley,  Earl  of.  See  Parker, 

Albert  Edmund  1843-1905 

Morley,  Iris  #1910-1953 

Morley,  John,  Viscount 

Morley  of  Blackburn  1838-1923 

Morley  Horder,  Percy 

(Richard).  See  Horder  1870-1944 

Morrah,  Dermot  Michael 

Macgregor  1896-1974 

Morrell,  Lady  Ottoline  Violet 

Anne  1873-1938 

Morris,  (Alfred)  Edwin  1894-1971 

Morris,  Sir  Cedric  Lockwood  #1889-1982 
Morris,  Charles  Richard, 

Baron  Morris  of  Grasmere  1898-1990 

Morris,  Edward  Patrick, 

Baron  1859-1935 

Morris,  Sir  Harold  Spencer  1876-1967 

Morris,  John  Humphrey 

Carlile  1910-1984 

Morris,  (John)  Marcus 

(Harston)  1915-1989 

Morris,  John  William,  Baron 

Morris  of  Borth-y-Gest  1 896-1979 

Morris,  Sir  Lewis  1833-1907 

Morris,  Mary  ('May')  #1862-1938 

Morris,  Michael,  Baron 

Morris  and  Killanin  1826-1901 

Morris,  Philip  Richard  1836-1902 

Morris,  Sir  Philip  Robert  1901-1979 

Morris,  Tom  1821-1908 

Morris,  William  O'Connor  1824-1904 

Morris,  William  Richard, 

Viscount  Nuffield  1877-1963 

Morris-Jones,  Sir  John  1864-1929 

Morrison,  George  Ernest  #1862-1920 

Morrison,  Herbert  Stanley, 

Baron  Morrison  of 

Lambeth  1888-1965 

Morrison,  Walter  1836-1921 

Morrison,  William 

Shepherd,  Viscount 

Dunrossil  1893-1961 

Morshead,  Sir  Leslie  James  1 889  -1 959 

Mortimer,  (Charles)  Raymond 

(Bell)  1895-1980 

Mortimer,  John  Robert  #1825-1911 

Mortimer,  Robert  Cecil  1902-1976 

Morton,  Sir  Desmond  John 

Falkiner  1891-1971 

Morton,  Fergus  Dunlop, 

Baron  Morton  of  Henryton  1887-1973 

Morton,  John  Cameron 

Andrieu  Bingham  Michael, 

'Beachcomber'  1893-1979 

Morton,  Richard  Alan  1899-1977 

Moseley,  Henry  Gwyn 

Jeffreys  1887-1915 

Moshinsky,  Alan  Samuel.  See 

Marre  1914-1990 

Mosley,  Sir  Oswald  Ernald  1896-1980 


572 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Mott,  Sir  Basil 

Mott,  Sir  Frederick  Walker 

Mottistone,  Baron.  See  Seely, 

John  Edward  Bernard 
Mottram,  Ralph  Hale 
Mottram,  Vernon  Henry 
Moule,  George  Evans 
Moule,  Handley  Carr  Glyn 
Moullin,  Eric  Balliol 
Moulton,  James  Hope 
Moulton,  John  Fletcher, 

Baron 
Mount  Stephen,  Baron.  See 

Stephen,  George 
Mount  Temple,  Baron.  See 

Ashley,  Wilfrid  William 
Mountbatten,  Edwina  Cynthia 

Annette,  Countess 

Mountbatten  of  Burma 
Mountbatten,  Louis 

Alexander,  Marquess  of 

Milford  Haven  (formerly 

Prince  Louis  Alexander  of 

Battenberg) 
Mountbatten,  Louis 

Francis  Albert  Victor 

Nicholas,  Earl  Mountbatten 

of  Burma 
Mountevans,  Baron.  See 

Evans,  Edward  Ratcliffe 

Garth  Russell 
Mountford,  Edward  William 
Mouskos,  Michael.  See 

Makarios  III 
Mowat,  Sir  Oliver 
Mowatt,  Sir  Francis 
Moyne,  Baron.  See  Guinness, 

Walter  Edward 
Moynihan,  Berkeley  George 

Andrew,  Baron 
Moynihan,  (Herbert  George) 

Rodrigo 
Mozley,  John  Kenneth 
Muddiman,  Sir  Alexander 

Phillips 
Muggeridge,  (Thomas) 

Malcolm 
Muir,  Edwin 

Muir,  (John)  Ramsay  (Bryce) 
Muir,  Sir  Robert 
Muir,  Sir  William 
Muirhead,  Alexander 
Muirhead,  John  Henry 
Muller,  Ernest  Bruce  Iwan-. 

See  Iwan-Muller 
Mullins,  Edwin  Roscoe 
Munby,  Alan  Noel  Latimer 
Munby,  Arthur  Joseph 
Munnings,  Sir  Alfred  James 
Munro,  Hector  Hugh 
Munro,  James 


1859- 

-1938 

Munro-Ferguson,  Ronald 

1853- 

-1926 

Crauford,  Viscount  Novar. 

See  Ferguson 

1860- 

-1934 

1868- 

-1947 

Munrow,  David  John 

1942- 

-1976 

1883- 

-1971 

Murdoch,  Richard  Bernard 

1907- 

-1990 

1882- 

-1976 

Murdoch,  William  Lloyd 

1855- 

-1911 

1828- 

-1912 

Murison,  Alexander  Falconer 

1847- 

-1934 

1841- 

-1920 

Murless,  Sir  (Charles  Francis) 

1893- 

-1963 

Noel 

1910- 

-1987 

1863- 

-1917 

Murphy,  Alfred  John 

1901- 

-1980 

Murray,  Alexander  Stuart 

1841- 

-1904 

1844- 

-1921 

Murray,  Alexander  William 
Charles  Oliphant,  Baron 

1829- 

-1921 

Murray  of  Elibank 
Murray,  Andrew  Graham, 

#1870- 

-1920 

1867- 

-1938 

Viscount  Dunedin 

1849- 

-1942 

Murray,  Sir  Archibald  James 

1860- 

-1945 

Murray,  Charles  Adolphus, 

1901- 

-1960 

Earl  of  Dunmore 

1841- 

-1907 

Murray,  David  Christie 

1847- 

-1907 

Murray,  Sir  (George)  Evelyn 

(Pemberton) 

1880- 

-1947 

Murray,  George  Gilbert  Aime 

1866- 

-1957 

1854- 

-1921 

Murray,  Sir  George  Herbert 

1849- 

-1936 

Murray,  George  Redmayne 

1865- 

-1939 

Murray,  George  Robert  Milne 

1858- 

-1911 

Murray,  Sir  James  Augustus 

1900- 

-1979 

Henry 

1837- 

-1915 

Murray,  Sir  James  Wolfe 

1853- 

-1919 

Murray,  Sir  John 

1841- 

-1914 

1880- 

-1957 

Murray,  Sir  John 

1851- 

-1928 

1855- 

-1908 

Murray,  John 

Murray,  Sir  (John)  Hubert 

1879- 

-1964 

1913- 

-1977 

(Plunkett) 

1861- 

-1940 

1820- 

-1903 

Murray,  Margaret  Alice 

1863- 

-1963 

1837- 

-1919 

Murray,  Sir  Oswyn  Alexander 

Ruthven 

1873- 

-1936 

1880- 

-1944 

Murry,  John  Middleton 
Murry,  Kathleen,  'Katherine 

1889- 

-1957 

1865- 

-1936 

Mansfield' 

1888- 

-1923 

Musgrave,  Sir  James 

1826- 

-1904 

1910- 

-1990 

Muspratt,  Edmund  Knowles 

#1833- 

-1923 

1883- 

-1946 

Muspratt,  Sir  Max 

#1872- 

-1934 

Muybridge,  Eadweard 

1830- 

-1904 

1875- 

-1928 

Myers,  Charles  Samuel 

1873- 

-1946 

Myers,  Ernest  James 

1844- 

-1921 

1903- 

-1990 

Myers,  Leopold  Hamilton 

1881- 

-1944 

1887- 

-1959 

Mynors,  Sir  Roger  Aubrey 

1872- 

-1941 

Baskerville 

1903- 

-1989 

1864- 

-1959 

Myrddin-Evans,  Sir 

1819- 

-1905 

Guildhaume 

1894 

-1964 

#1848- 

-1920 

Myres,  Sir  John  Linton 

1869- 

-1954 

1855- 

-1940 

Myres,  (John)  Nowell 

(Linton) 

1902 

-1989 

1853- 

-1910 

Mysore,  Sir  Shri  Krishnaraja 

1848- 

-1907 

Wadiyar  Bahadur, 

1913 

-1974 

Maharaja  of 

1884- 

-1940 

1828- 

-1910 

1878- 

-1959 

1870- 

-1916 

Nabarro,  Sir  Gerald  David 

1832- 

-1908 

Nunes 

1913 

-1973 

573 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Naipaul,  Shivadhar  Srinivasa 

(Shiva) 
Nair,  Sir  Chettur  Sankaran. 

Sec  Sankaran  Nair 
Nairne,  Alexander 
Namier,  Sir  Lewis  Bernstein 
Naoroji,  Dadabhai 
Narbeth,  John  Harper 
Nares,  Sir  George  Strong 
Nash,  John  Northcote 
Nash,  Paul 
Nash,  Sir  Walter 
Nathan,  Harry  Louis,  Baron 
Nathan,  Sir  Matthew 
Nawanagar,  Maharaja  Shri 

Ranjitsinhji  Vibhaji, 

Maharaja  Jam  Saheb  of 
Neagle,  Dame  Anna 
Neale,  Sir  John  Ernest 
Neave,  Airey  Middleton 

Sheffield 
Neel,  (Louis)  Boyd 
Nehru,  Jawaharlal 
Nehru,  Pandit  Motilal 
Neil,  Robert  Alexander 
Neil,  Samuel 

Neill,  Alexander  Sutherland 
Neill,  Stephen  Charles 
Neilson,  George 
Neilson,  Julia  Emilie 
Nelson,  Eliza  (1827-1908). 

See  under  Craven,  Henry 

Thornton 
Nelson,  Sir  Frank 
Nelson,  George  Horatio, 

Baron  Nelson  of  Stafford 
Nelson,  Sir  Hugh  Muir 
Nemon,  Oscar 
Neruda,  Wilma  Maria 

Francisca.  See  Halle,  Lady 
Nesbit,  Edith.  See  Bland 
Nettleship,  Edward 
Nettleship,  John  Trivett 
Neubauer,  Adolf 
Nevill,  Lady  Dorothy  Fanny 
Neville,  Henry 
Nevinson,  Christopher 

Richard  Wynne 
Nevinson,  Henry  Woodd 
Newall  (formerly  Phillpotts), 

Dame  Bertha  Surtees 
Newall,  Cyril  Louis  Norton, 

Baron 
Newall,  Hugh  Frank 
Newberry,  Percy  Edward 
Newbigin,  Marion  Isabel 
Newbold,  Sir  Douglas 
Newbolt,  Sir  Henry  John 
Newbolt,  William  Charles 

Edmund 
Newitt,  Dudley  Maurice 


1945-1985 

1857-1934 
1863-1936 
1888-1960 
#1825-1917 
1863-1944 
1831-1915 
1893-1977 
1889-1946 
1882-1968 
1889-1963 
1862-1939 


1872-1933 
1904-1986 
1890-1975 

1916-1979 
1905-1981 
1889-1964 
1861-1931 
1852-1901 
1825-1901 
1883-1973 
1900-1984 
1858-1923 
1868-1957 


1818-1905 
1883-1966 

1887-1962 
1835-1906 
1906-1985 

1839-1911 
1858-1924 
1845-1913 
1841-1902 
1832-1907 
#1826-1913 
1837-1910 

1889-1946 
1856-1941 

1877-1932 

1886-1963 
1857-1944 
1869-1949 
#1869-1934 
1894-1945 
1862-1938 

1844-1930 
1894-1980 


Newman,  Ernest  1868-1959 

Newman,  Sir  George  1870-1948 
Newman,  Maxwell  Herman, 

Alexander  1897-1984 

Newman,  William  Lambert  1834-1923 

Newmarch,  Charles  Henry  1824-1903 

Newnes,  Sir  George  1851-1910 

Newsam,  Sir  Frank  Aubrey  1893-1964 

Newsholme,  Sir  Arthur  1857-1943 

Newsom,  Sir  John  Hubert  1910-1971 
Newton,  Baron.  See  Legh, 

Thomas  Wodehouse  1857-1942 

Newton,  Alfred  1829-1907 

Newton,  Ernest  1856-1922 
Nichol  Smith,  David.  See 

Smith  1875-1962 

Nicholls,  Frederick  William  1889-1974 

Nichols,  Qohn)  Beverley  1898-1983 
Nichols,  Robert  Malise 

Bowyer  1893-1944 
Nicholson,  Benjamin  Lauder 

('Ben')  1894-1982 

Nicholson,  Sir  Charles  1808-1903 
Nicholson,  Sir  Charles 

Archibald  1867-1949 

Nicholson,  Charles  Ernest  1868-1954 
Nicholson,  Edward  William 

Byron  1849-1912 

Nicholson,  George  1847-1908 

Nicholson,  Joseph  Shield  1850-1927 
Nicholson,  Norman 

Cornthwaite  1914-1987 

Nicholson,  Reynold  Alleyne  1868-1945 

Nicholson,  (Rosa)  Winifred  #1893-1981 
Nicholson,  Sir  Sydney 

Hugo  1875-1947 
Nicholson,  William  Gustavus, 

Baron  1845-1918 
Nicholson,  Sir  William 

Newzam  Prior  1872-1949 

Nickalls,  Guy  1866-1935 

Nicol,  Erskine  1825-1904 
Nicoll,  (John  Ramsay) 

Allardyce  1894-1976 

Nicoll,  Sir  William  Robertson  185 1  -1923 
Nicolson,  Adela  Florence, 

'Laurence  Hope'  1865-1904 
Nicolson,  Sir  Arthur,  Baron 

Carnock  1849-1928 

Nicolson,  Sir  Harold  George  1886-1968 

Nicolson,  (Lionel)  Benedict  1914-1978 
Nicolson,  Malcolm  Hassels 

(1843-1904).  See  under 

Nicolson,  Adela  Florence 
Nicolson,  Victoria  Mary, 

Lady.  See  Sackville-West  1892-1962 

Niemeyer,  Sir  Otto  Ernst  1883-1971 

Nightingale,  Florence  1820-1910 

Nimptsch,  Uli  1897-1977 
Niven,  (James)  David 

(Graham)  1910-1983 


574 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Nixon,  Sir  John  Eccles  1857-1921 

Nkrumah,  Kwame  1909-1972 

Noble,  Sir  Andrew  1831-1915 

Noble,  Montagu  Alfred  1873-1940 

Noble,  Sir  Percy  Lockhart 

Harnam  1880-1955 

Nodal,  John  Howard  1831-1909 

Noel,  Conrad  le  Despenser 

Roden  #1869-1942 

Noel-Baker,  Philip  John, 

Baron  1889-1982 

Noel-Buxton,  Noel  Edward, 

Baron  1869-1948 

Norfolk,  Duke  of.  See 

Howard,  Bernard 

Marmaduke  FitzAlan-  1908-1975 

Norfolk,  Duke  of.  See 

Howard,  Henrv  FitzAlan-  1847-1917 

Norgate,  Kate  1853-1935 

Norman,  Conollv  1853-1908 

Norman,  Sir  Francis  Booth  1830-1901 

Norman,  Sir  Henry  Wylie  1826-1904 

Norman,  Montagu  Collett, 

Baron  1871-1940 

Norman-Neruda,  Wilma 

Maria  Francisca.  See  Halle, 

Lady  1839-1911 

Normanbrook,  Baron.  See 

Brook,  Norman  Craven  1902  -1967 

Normand,  Sir  Charles 

William  Blyth  #1889-1982 

Normand,  Wilfrid  Guild, 

Baron  1884-1962 

Norrington,  Sir  Arthur  Lionel 

Pugh  1899-1982 

Norrish,  Ronald  George 

Wreyford  1897-1978 

North,  Sir  Dudley  Burton 

Napier  1881-1961 

North,  John  Dudley  1893-1968 

Northbrook,  Earl  of.  See 

Baring,  Thomas  George  1826-1904 

Northchurch,  Baroness.  See 

Davidson,  (Frances)  Joan  1894-1985 

Northcliffe,  Viscount.  See 

Harmsworth,  Alfred 

Charles  William  1865-1922 

Northcote,  Henry  Stafford, 

Baron  1846-1911 

Northcote,  James  Spencer  1821-1907 

Northumberland,  Duke  of. 

See  Percy,  Alan  Ian  1880-1930 

Norton,  Baron.  See  Adderlev, 

Charles  Bowyer  1814-1905 

Norton,  Edward  Felix  1884-1954 

Norton,  John  1823-1904 

Norton-Griffiths,  Sir  John  1871  -1930 

Norway,  Nevil  Shute,  'Nevil 

Shute'  1899-1960 

Norwich,  Viscount.  See 

Cooper,  Alfred  Duff  1890-1954 


Norwich,  Viscountess.  See 

Cooper,  Lady  Diana  Olivia 

Winifred  Maud  1892-1986 

Norwood,  Sir  Cyril  1875-1956 

Novar,  Viscount.  See 

Ferguson,  Ronald  Crauford 

Munro-  1860-1934 

Novello  (afterwards  Countess 

Gigliucci),  Clara  Anastasia  1818-1908 

Novello,  Ivor  1893-1951 

Noyce,  (Cuthbert)  Wilfrid 

(Francis)  1917-1962 

Noyes,  Alfred  1880-1958 

Nuffield,  Viscount.  See 

Morris,  William  Richard  1877-1963 

Nunburnholme,  Baron.  See 

Wilson,  Charles  Henry  1833-1907 

Nunn,  Joshua  Arthur  1853-1908 

Nunn,  Sir  (Thomas)  Percy  1870-1944 

Nutt,  Alfred  Triibner  1856-1910 

Nuttall,  Enos  1842-1916 

Nuttall,  George  Henry 

Falkiner  1862-1937 

Nve,  Sir  Archibald  Edward  1895-1967 

Nyholm,  Sir  Ronald  Sydney  1917-1971 


Oakeley,  Sir  Herbert  Stanley  1830-1903 

Oakesh'ott,  Michael  Joseph  1901  -1990 

Oakeshott,  Sir  Walter  Fraser  1903-1987 

Oakley,  Sir  John  Hubert  1867-1946 

Oakley,  Kenneth  Page  1911-1981 
Oaksev,  Baron.  See  Lawrence, 

Geoffrey  #1880-1971 
Oates,  Lawrence  Edward 

Grace  1880-1912 

O'Brien,  Charlotte  Grace  1845-1909 

O'Brien,  Cornelius  1843-1906 
O'Brien,  Ignatius  John,  Baron 

Shandon  1857-1930 
O'Brien,  James  Francis 

Xavier  1828-1905 

O'Brien,  Kate  1897-1974 

O'Brien,  Peter,  Baron  1842-1914 

O'Brien,  William  1852-1928 
O'Callaghan,  Sir  Francis 

Langford  1839-1909 

O'Casey,  Sean  1880-1964 
O'Connor,  Charles  Owen 

CO'Conor  Don')  1838-1906 

O'Connor,  Charles  Yelverton  1843-1902 

O'Connor,  James  1836-1910 
O'Connor,  Sir  Richard 

Nugent  1889-1981 

O'Connor,  Thomas  Power  1848—1929 
O'Conor,  Sir  Nicholas 

Roderick  1843-1908 

Odell,  Noel  Ewart  1890-1987 

Odling,  William  #1829-1921 

O'Doherty,  Kevin  Izod  1823-1905 


575 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


O'Doherty  (formerly  Kelly), 

Mary  Anne  (1826-1910). 

See  under  O'Doherty, 

Kevin  Izod 
O'Donnell,  Patrick 
O'Dwyer,  Sir  Michael  Francis 
Ogden,  Charles  Kay 
Ogdon,  John  Andrew  Howard 
Ogg,  Sir  William  Gammie 
Ogilvie,  Sir  Frederick  Wolff 
Ogle,  John  William 
O'Hanlon,  John 
O'Higgins,  Kevin  Christopher 
O'Kelly,  Sean  Thomas 
Old  Hold,  Sir  Maurice 
Oldham,  Charles  James 

(1843-1907).  See  under 

Oldham,  Henry 
Oldham,  Henry 
Oldham,  Joseph  Houldsworth 
Oldham,  Richard  Dixon 
Oldman,  Cecil  Bernard 
O'Leary,  John 
Oliver,  David  Thomas 
Oliver,  Francis  Wall 
Oliver,  Frederick  Scott 
Oliver,  Sir  Geoffrey  Nigel 
Oliver,  Sir  Henry  Francis 
Oliver,  Samuel  Pasfield 
Oliver,  Sir  Thomas 
Olivier,  Giorgio  Borg 

('George') 
Olivier,  Laurence  Kerr,  Baron 
Olivier,  Sydney  Haldane, 

Baron 
Olpherts,  Sir  William 
Olsson,  Julius 
Oman,  Sir  Charles  William 

Chadwick 
Oman,  John  Wood 
Ommanney,  Sir  Erasmus 
Ommanney,  George  Druce 

Wynne 
O'Neill,  Sir  Con  Douglas 

Walter 
O'Neill,  Terence  Marne, 

Baron  O'Neill  of  the  Maine 
Onions,  Charles  Talbut 
Onslow,  Sir  Richard  George 
Onslow,  William  Hillier,  Earl 

of  Onslow 
Opie,  Peter  Mason 
Oppe,  Adolph  Paul 
Oppenheim,  Edward  Phillips 
Oppenheim,  Lassa  Francis 

Lawrence 
Oppenheimer,  Sir  Ernest 
Orage,  Alfred  Richard 
Oram,  Sir  Henry  John 
Orchardson,  Sir  William 

Quiller 


1856-1927 
1864-1940 
1889-1957 
1937-1989 
1891-1979 
1893-1949 
1824-1905 
1821-1905 
1892-1927 
1882-1966 
1915-1981 


1815-1902 
1874-1969 

#1858-1936 
#1894-1969 
1830-1907 
1863-1947 
1864-1951 
1864-1934 
1898-1980 
1865-1965 
1838-1907 
1853-1942 

1911-1980 
1907-1989 

1859-1943 
1822-1902 
1864-1942 

1860-1946 
1860-1939 
1814-1904 

1819-1902 

1912-1988 

1914-1990 
1873-1965 
1904-1975 

1853-1911 
1918-1982 
1878-1957 
1866-1946 

1858-1919 
1880-1957 
1873-1934 
1858-1939 

1832-1910 


Orczy,  Emma  Magdalena 

Rosalia  Marie  Josepha 

Barbara,  Baroness 
Ord,  Bernhard  ('Boris') 
Ord,  William  Miller 
Orde,  Cuthbert  Julian 
O'Rell,  Max,  pseudonym.  See 

Blouet,  Leon  Paul 
Orme,  Eliza 

Ormerod,  Eleanor  Anne 
Ormsby  Gore,  (William) 

David,  Baron  Harlech 
Ormsby-Gore,  William 

George  Arthur,  Baron 

Harlech 
Orpen,  Sir  William 

Newenham  Montague 
Orr,  Alexandra  Sutherland 
Orr,  John  Boyd,  Baron  Boyd 

Orr 
Orr,  William  McFadden 
Orton,  Charles  William 

Previte-.  See  Previte-Orton 
Orton,  John  Kingsley  ('Joe') 
Orwell,  George,  pseudonym. 

See  Blair,  Eric  Arthur 
Orwin,  Charles  Stewart 
Osborn,  Sir  Frederic  James 
Osborne,  Walter  Frederick 
O'Shea,  John  Augustus 
O'Shea,  William  Henry 
Osier,  Abraham  Follett 
Osier,  Sir  William 
O'Sullivan,  Cornelius 
Otte,  Elise 

Ottley,  Sir  Charles  Langdale 
Ouida,  pseudonym.  See  De  la 

Ramee,  Marie  Louise 
Ouless,  Walter  William 
Overton,  John  Henry 
Overtoun,  Baron.  See  White, 

John  Campbell 
Owen,  Sir  (Arthur)  David 

(Kemp) 
Owen,  (Humphrey)  Frank 
Owen,  John 
Owen,  (Paul)  Robert 
Owen,  Robert 

Owen,  Wilfred  Edward  Salter 
Owen,  Sir  (William)  Leonard 
Oxford  and  Asquith, 

Countess  of.  See  Asquith, 

Emma  Alice  Margaret 

('Margot') 
Oxford  and  Asquith,  Earl  of. 

See  Asquith,  Herbert 

Henry 


Pacht,  Otto  Ernst 
Page,  Sir  Archibald 


1865-1947 
1897-1961 
1834-1902 
1888-1968 

1848-1903 

#1848-1937 

1828-1901 

1918-1985 


1885-1964 

1878-1931 
1828-1903 

1880-1971 
1866-1934 

1877-1947 
1933-1967 

1903-1950 
1876-1955 
1885-1978 
1859-1903 
1839-1905 
1840-1905 
1808-1903 
1849-1919 
1841-1907 
1818-1903 
1858-1932 

1839-1908 
1848-1933 
1835-1903 

1843-1908 

1904-1970 
1905-1979 
1854-1926 
1920-1990 
1820-1902 
#1893-1918 
1897-1971 


1864-1945 
1852-1928 


1902-1988 
1875-1949 


576 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Page,  Sir  Denys  Lionel 
Page,  Sir  Frederick  Handley 
Page,  H.  A.,  pseudonym.  See 

Japp,  Alexander  Hay 
Page,  Sir  Leo  Francis 
Page,  Thomas  Ethelbert 
Page,  William 
Paget,  Sir  Bernard  Charles 

Tolver 
Paget,  Edward  Francis 
Paget,  Francis 

Paget,  Dame  (Mary)  Rosalind 
Paget,  Lady  Muriel  Evelyn 

Vernon 
Paget,  Reginald  Thomas  Guy 

Des  Voeux,  Baron  Paget  of 

Northampton 
Paget,  Sir  Richard  Arthur 

Surtees 
Paget,  Sidney  Edward 
Paget,  Stephen 
Paget,  Violet,  'Vernon  Lee' 
Pain,  Barn  Eric  Odell 
Paine,  Charles  Hubert  Scott-. 

See  Scott-Paine 
Paish,  Frank  Walter 
Pakenham,  Sir  Francis  John 
Pakenham,  Sir  William 

Christopher 
Palairet,  Sir  (Charles) 

Michael 
Palgrave,  Sir  Reginald  Francis 

Douce 
Palles,  Christopher 
Palmer,  Sir  Arthur  Power 
Palmer,  Sir  Charles  Mark 
Palmer,  Sir  Elwin  Mitford 
Palmer,  George  Herbert 
Palmer,  George  William 
Palmer,  Roundell  Cecil,  Earl 

of  Selborne 
Palmer,  William  Waldegrave, 

Earl  of  Selborne 
Paneth,  Friedrich  Adolf 
Pankhurst,  Dame  Christabel 

Harriette 
Pankhurst,  Emmeline 
Pankhurst,  (Estelle)  Sylvia 
Pantin,  Carl  Frederick  Abel 
Pares,  Sir  Bernard 
Pares,  Richard 
Paris,  Sir  Archibald 
Parish,  William  Douglas 
Park,  Sir  Keith  Rodney 
Parker,  Albert  Edmund,  Earl 

of  Morley 
Parker,  Charles  Stuart 
Parker,  Eric  Frederick  Moore 

Searle 
Parker,  Sir  (Horatio)  Gilbert 

(George) 


1908-1978 

Parker,  Hubert  Lister,  Baron 

1885-1962 

Parker  of  Waddington 

1900-1972 

Parker,  John 

1875-1952 

1837-1905 

Parker,  Joseph 

1830-1902 

1890-1951 

Parker,  Louis  Napoleon 

1852-1944 

1850-1936 

Parker,  Robert  John,  Baron 

1857-1918 

1861-1934 

Parkes,  Sir  Alan  Sterling 

1900-1990 

Parkes,  James  William 

1896-1981 

1887-1961 

Parkin,  Sir  George  Robert 

1846-1922 

1886-1971 

Parkinson,  Sir  (Arthur 

1851-1911 

Charles)  Cosmo 

1884-1967 

1855-1948 

Parkinson,  Norman 
Parmoor,  Baron.  See  Cripps, 

1913-1990 

1876-1938 

Charles  Alfred 
Parr  (formerly  Taylor), 

1852-1941 

Louisa 

J.  1903 

1908-1990 

Parratt,  Sir  Walter 
Parry,  Sir  Charles  Hubert 

1841-1924 

1869-1955 

Hastings 

1848-1918 

1860-1908 

Parry,  Sir  David  Hughes 

1893-1973 

1855-1926 

Parry,  Joseph 

1841-1903 

1856-1935 

Parry,  Joseph  Haydn  (1864- 

1864-1928 

1894).  See  under  Parry, 
Joseph 

1891-1954 

Parry,  Sir  (William)  Edward 

1893-1972 

1898-1988 

Parry- Williams,  Sir  Thomas 

1832-1905 

Herbert 

#1887-1975 

Parsons,  Alfred  William 

1847-1920 

1861-1933 

Parsons,  Sir  Charles 

Algernon 

1854-1931 

1882-1956 

Parsons,  Sir  John  Herbert 
Parsons,  Laurence,  Earl  of 

1868-1957 

1829-1904 

Rosse 

1840-1908 

1831-1920 

Parsons,  Sir  Leonard 

1840-1904 

Gregory 

1879-1950 

1822-1907 

Parsons,  Richard  Godfrey 

1882-1948 

1852-1906 

Parsons,  Terence.  See  Monro, 

1846-1926 

Matt 

1930-1985 

1851-1913 

Part,  Sir  Antony  Alexander 

1916-1990 

Partington,  James  Riddick 

1886-1965 

1887-1971 

Partridge,  Sir  Bernard 

1861-1945 

Partridge,  Eric  Honeywood 

1894-1979 

1859-1942 

Passfield,  Baron.  See  Webb, 

1887-1958 

Sidney  James 
Patch,  Sir  Edmund  Leo  Hall-. 

1859-1947 

1880-1958 

See  Hall-Patch 

1896-1975 

1858-1928 

Patel,  Vallabhbhai  Javerabhai 

1875-1950 

#1882-1960 

Patel,  Vithalbai  Jhavabhai 

1870-1933 

1899-1967 

Paterson,  Sir  Alexander 

1867-1949 

Henry 

1884-1947 

#1902-1958 

Paterson,  Sir  William 

1874-1956 

1861-1937 

Paterson,  William  Paterson 

1860-1939 

1833-1904 

Patiala,  Sir  Bhupindra  Singh, 

1892-1975 

Maharaja  of 

1891-1938 

Paton,  Diarmid  Noel 

1859-1928 

1843-1905 

Paton,  John  Brown 

1830-1911 

1829-1910 

Paton,  John  Gibson 
Paton,  John  Lewis 

1824-1907 

1870-1955 

('Alexander') 

1863-1946 

Paton,  Sir  Joseph  Noel 

1821-1901 

1862-1932 

Paton,  William 

1886-1943 

577 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Pattison,  Andrew  Seth 

Pringle-  (formerly  Andrew 

Seth)  1856-1931 

Paul,  Charles  Kegan  1828-1902 

Paul,  Herbert  Woodfield  1853-1935 

Paul,  Leslie  Allen  1905-1985 

Paul,  William  1822-1905 

Pauncefote,  Julian,  Baron  1828-1902 

Pavlova,  Anna  #1881-1931 

Pavy,  Frederick  William  1829-1911 

Payne,  Ben  Iden  1881-1976 

Payne,  Edward  John  1844-1904 

Payne,  Humfry  Gilbert  Garth  1902-1936 
Payne,  John  Wesley  Vivian 

('Jack')  1899-1969 

Payne,  Joseph  Frank  1840-1910 

Peach,  Benjamin  Neeve  #1842-1926 

Peacock,  Sir  Edward  Robert  1871-1962 

Peacocke,  Joseph  Ferguson  1835-1916 

Peake,  Arthur  Samuel  1865-1929 
Peake,  Sir  Charles  Brinsley 

Pemberton  1897-1958 

Peake,  Frederick  Gerard  1886-1970 

Peake,  Harold  John  Edward  1867-1946 

Peake,  Mervyn  Laurence  1911-1968 
Pearce,  Edward  Holroyd, 

Baron  1901-1990 

Pearce,  Ernest  Harold  1865-1930 

Pearce,  Sir  George  Foster  1870-1952 

Pearce,  Sir  (Standen)  Leonard  1873-1947 

Pearce,  Stephen  1819-1904 

Pearce,  Sir  William  George  1861-1907 

Pears,  Sir  Edwin  1835-1919 
Pears,  Sir  Peter  Neville 

Luard  1910-1986 

Pearsall,  William  Harold  1891-1964 
Pearsall  Smith,  (Lloyd) 

Logan.  See  Smith  1865-1946 

Pearse,  Patrick  Henry  #1879-1916 

Pearson,  Alfred  Chilton  1861-1935 

Pearson,  Charles  John,  Lord  1843-1910 
Pearson,  Colin  Hargreaves, 

Baron  1899-1980 

Pearson,  Sir  Cyril  Arthur  1866-1921 
Pearson,  (Edward)  Hesketh 

(Gibbons)  #1887-1964 

Pearson,  Egon  Sharpe  1895-1980 

Pearson,  Karl  1857-1936 

Pearson,  Lester  Bowles  1897-1972 
Pearson,  Weetman  Dickinson, 

Viscount  Cowdray  1856-1927 
Peart,  (Thomas)  Frederick, 

Baron  1914-1988 

Pease,  Sir  Arthur  Francis  1866-1927 

Pease,  Edward  Reynolds  1857-1955 
Pease,  Joseph  Albert,  Baron 

Gainford  1860-1943 

Pease,  Sir  Joseph  Whitwell  1828-1903 

Peat,  Stanley  1902-1969 

Pedley,  Robin  1914-1988 

Peek,  Sir  Cuthbert  Edgar  1855-1901 


Peel,  Lady.  See  Lillie, 

Beatrice  Gladys  1894-1989 
Peel,  Arthur  Wellesley, 

Viscount  1829-1912 

Peel,  Sir  Frederick  1823-1906 

Peel,  James  1811-1906 
Peel,  William  Robert 

Wellesley,  Earl  1867-1937 

Peers,  Sir  Charles  Reed  1868-1952 

Peers,  Edgar  Allison  1891-1952 

Peet,  Thomas  Eric  1882-1934 

Peile,  Sir  James  Braithwaite  1833-1906 

Peile,John  1837-1910 

Pelham,  Henry  Francis  1846-1907 

Pelissier,  Harry  Gabriel  1874-1913 

Pell,  Albert  1820-1907 

Pember,  Edward  Henry  1833-1911 

Pemberton,  Thomas  Edgar  1 849  -1 905 
Pemberton  Billing,  Noel.  See 

Billing  #1881-1948 

Pembrey,  Marcus  Seymour  1868-1934 

Penley,  William  Sydney  1852-1912 
Pennant,  George  Sholto 

Gordon  Douglas-,  Baron 

Penrhyn.  See 

Douglas-Pennant  1836-1907 
Penrhyn,  Baron.  See 

Douglas-Pennant,  George 

Sholto  Gordon  1836-1907 

Penrose,  Dame  Emily  1858-1942 

Penrose,  Francis  Cranmer  1817-1903 

Penrose,  Lionel  Sharpies  1898-1972 
Penrose,  Sir  Roland 

Algernon  1900-1984 
Penson,  Dame  Lillian 

Margery  1896-1963 
Pentland,  Baron.  See  Sinclair, 

John  1860-1925 

Pepler,  Sir  George  Lionel  1882-1959 

Peppiatt,  Sir  Leslie  Ernest  1 89 1  -1 968 

Percival,  John  1834-1918 
Percy,  Alan  Ian,  Duke  of 

Northumberland  1880-1930 
Percy,  Eustace  Sutherland 

Campbell,  Baron  Percy  of 

Newcasde  1887-1958 
Percy,  Henry  Algernon 

George,  Earl  1871-1909 

Pereira,  George  Edward  1865-1923 
Perham,  Dame  Margery 

Freda  1895-1982 

Perkin,  Arthur  George  1 86 1  -1 937 

Perkin,  Sir  William  Henry  1838-1907 

Perkin,  William  Henry  1860-1929 

Perkins,  Sir  ^neas  1834-1901 
Perkins,  John  Bryan  Ward-. 

See  Ward-Perkins  1912-1981 

Perkins,  Robert  Cyril  Layton  1866-1955 

Perks,  Sir  Robert  William  1849-1934 

Perowne,  Edward  Henry  1826-1906 

Perowne,  John  James  Stewart  1823-1904 


578 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Perring,  William  George 

Arthur  1898-1951 

Perrins,  Charles  William 

Dyson  1864-1958 

Perry,  Sir  (Edwin)  Cooper  1856-1938 

Perry,  Walter  Copland  1814-1911 

Perth,  Earl  of.  See 

Drummond,  James  Eric  1876-1951 

Pery,  Angela  Olivia,  Countess 

of  Limerick  1897-1981 

Petavel,  Sir  Joseph  Ernest  1873-1936 

Peters,  August  Dedof, 

'Augustus  Dudley'  1892-1973 

Peters,  Sir  Rudolph  Albert  1889-1982 

Petersen,  John  Charles  ('Jack')  191 1  -1990 
Peterson,  Alexander  Duncan 

Campbell  1908-1988 

Peterson,  Sir  Maurice 

Drummond  1889-1952 

Peterson,  Sir  William  1856-1921 

Pethick-Lawrence,  Emmeline, 

Lady  #1867-1954 

Pethick-Lawrence,  Frederick 

William,  Baron  1871-1961 

Petit,  Sir  Dinshaw  Manockjee  1823-1901 
Petre,  Sir  George  Glynn  1822-1905 

Petrie,  Sir  David  1879-1961 

Petrie,  William  1821-1908 

Petrie,  Sir  (William  Matthew) 

Flinders  1853-1942 

Petter,  (William)  Edward 

(Willoughby)  1908-1968 

Pettigrew,  James  Bell  1834-1908 

Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Edmond 

George,  Baron  Fitzmaurice 

(formerly  Lord  Edmond 

Fitzmaurice)  1846-1935 

Petty-Fitzmaurice,  Henry 

Charles  Keith,  Marquess  of 

Lansdowne  1845-1927 

Peuleve,  Henri  Leonard 

Thomas  ('Harry')  1916-1963 

Pevsner,  Sir  Nikolaus 

Bernhard  Leon  1902-1983 

Phear,  Sir  John  Budd  1825-1905 

Phelps,  Lancelot  Ridley  1853-1936 

Philbv,  Harold  Adrian  Russell 

('Kim')  1912-1988 

Philby,  Harrv  St  John 

Bri'dger  1885-1960 

Philip,  Sir  Robert  William  1857-1939 

Philipps,  Sir  Ivor  1 86 1  -1940 

Philipps,  Sir  John  Wvnford, 

Viscount  St  Davids  1860-1938 

Philipps,  Owen  Cosby,  Baron 

Kylsant  1863-1937 

Philhmore,  John  Swinnerton  1873-1926 

Phillimore,  Sir  Richard 

Fortescue  1864-1940 

Phillimore,  Sir  Walter  George 

Frank,  Baron  1845-1929 


Phillips,  Sir  Claude  1846-1924 

Phillips,  John  Bertram  1906-1982 

Phillips,  Marion  #1881-1932 

Phillips,  Morgan  Walter  1902-1963 

Phillips,  Owen  Hood  1907-1986 

Phillips,  Stephen  1864-1915 
Phillips,  Sir  Tom  Spencer 

Vaughan  1888-1941 

Phillips,  Walter  Alison  1864-1950 

Phillips,  William  1822-1905 

Phillipson,  Andrew  Tindal  1910-1977 
Phillpotts,  Dame  Bertha 

Surtees.  See  Newall  1877-1932 

Phillpotts,  Eden  1862-1960 

Philpot,  Glyn  Warren  1884-1937 
Phipps,  Sir  Eric  Clare 

Edmund  1875-1945 

Piatti,  Alfredo  Carlo  1822-1901 

Pick,  Frank  1878-1941 

Pickard,  Benjamin  1842-1904 

Pickard,  Sir  Robert  Howson  1874-1949 

Pickering,  Sir  George  White  1904-1980 
Pickford,  William,  Baron 

Sterndale  1848-1923 

Pickles,  William  Norman  1885-1969 
Pickthorn,  Sir  Kenneth 

William  Murray  1892-1975 

Picton,  James  Allanson  1832-1910 

Piercv,  William,  Baron  1886-1966 

Pigou,  Arthur  Cecil  1877-1959 

Pike,  Sir  Thomas  Geoffrey  1906-1983 

Pilcher,  Sir  John  Arthur  1912-1990 

Pile,  Sir  Frederick  Alfred  1884-1976 
Pilkington,  (William)  Henry, 

Baron  1905-1983 

Pinero,  Sir  Arthur  Wing  1855-1934 

Pinsent,  Dame  Ellen  Frances  1866-1949 

Piper,  Sir  David  Towry  1918-1990 

Pippard,  (Alfred  John)  Sutton  1891-1969 
Pirbright,  Baron.  See  De 

Worms,  Henry  1840-1903 

Pirow,  Oswald  1890-1959 
Pirrie,  William  James, 

Viscount  1847-1924 

Pissarro,  Lucien  1863-1944 

Pitman,  Sir  Henry  Alfred  1808-1908 

Pitman,  Sir  (Isaac)  James  1901-1985 

Plamenatz,  John  Petrov  1912-1975 
Plant,  Cyril  Thomas  Howe, 

Baron  1910-1986 

Plaskett,  Harrv  Hemlev  1893-1980 

Plaskett,  John  Stanlev  1865-1941 

Plater,  Charles  Dominic  1875-1921 

Plath,  Sylvia  #1932-1963 

Piatt,  Sir  Harrv  1886-1986 

Piatt,  Robert,  Baron  1900-1978 

Piatt,  Sir  William  1885-1975 

Plans,  John  Thompson  1830-1904 

Playfair,  Sir  Nigel  Ross  1874-1934 

Plavfair,  William  Smoult  1835-1903 

Plender,  William,  Baron  1861-1946 


579 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Pleydell,  John  Clavell 

Mansel-.  See 

Mansel-PIeydell  1817-1902 
Plimmer,  Robert  Henry  Aders  1877-1955 
Plomer,  William  Charles 

Franklyn  1903-1973 

Plomley,  (Francis)  Roy  1914-1985 
Plucknett,  Theodore  Frank 

Thomas  1897-1965 
Plumer,  Herbert  Charles 

Onslow,  Viscount  1857-1932 
Plummer,  Henry  Crozier 

Keating  1875-1946 
Plunkett,  Edward  John 

Moreton  Drax,  Baron  of 

Dunsany  1878-1957 

Plunkett,  Sir  Francis  Richard  1835-1907 

Plunkett,  Sir  Horace  Curzon  1854-1932 
Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax,  Sir 

Reginald  Aylmer  Ranfurly  1880-1967 
Plurenden,  Baron.  See 

Sternberg,  Rudy  1917-1978 

Pochin,  Sir  Edward  Eric  1909-1990 

Pode,  Sir  (Edward)  Julian  1902-1968 

Podmore,  Frank  1855-1910 

Poel,  William  1852-1934 

Poland,  Sir  Harry  Bodkin  1829-1928 

Polanyi,  Michael  1 89 1  -1976 

Pole,  Sir  Felix  John  Clewett  1877-1956 

Pollard,  Albert  Frederick  1869-1948 

Pollard,  Alfred  William  1859-1944 
Pollen,  Arthur  Joseph 

Hungerford  #1866-1937 

Pollen,  John  Hungerford  1820-1902 

Pollitt,  George  Paton  1878-1964 

Pollitt,  Harry  1890-1960 

Pollock,  Bertram  1863-1943 
Pollock,  Ernest  Murray, 

Viscount  Hanworth  1861-1936 

Pollock,  Sir  Frederick  1845-1937 

Pollock,  Hugh  McDowell  1852-1937 

Pollock,  Sir  (John)  Donald  1868-1962 

Polunin,  Oleg  1914-1985 

Pond,  Sir  Desmond  Arthur  1919-1986 
Ponsonby,  Arthur  Augustus 

William  Harry,  Baron 

Ponsonby  of  Shulbrede  1871-1946 
Ponsonby,  Vere  Brabazon, 

Earl  of  Bessborough  1 880-1956 
Pont.  See  Laidler,  (Gavin) 

Graham  #1908-1940 

Poole,  Reginald  Lane  1857-1939 

Poole,  Stanley  Edward  Lane-  1854-1931 

Pooley,  Sir  Ernest  Henry  1876-1966 

Poore,  George  Vivian  1843-1904 

Pope,  George  Uglow  1820-1908 

Pope,  Samuel  1826-1901 
Pope,  Walter  James 

Macqueen-.  See 

Macqueen-Pope  1888-1960 

Pope,  William  Burt  1822-1903 


Pope,  Sir  William  Jackson  1870-1939 
Pope-Hennessy,  (Richard) 

James  (Arthur)  1916-1974 

Popham,  Arthur  Ewart  1889-1970 
Popham,  Sir  (Henry)  Robert 

(Moore)  Brooke-.  See 

Brooke-Popham  1878-1953 
Portal,  Charles  Frederick 

Algernon,  Viscount  Portal 

of  Hungerford  1893-1971 

Portal,  Melville  1 8 1 9  -1 904 
Portal,  Sir  Wyndham 

Raymond,  Viscount  1885-1949 

Porter,  Sir  Andrew  Marshall  1837-1919 

Porter,  Rodney  Robert  1 9 1 7  -1 985 

Porter,  Samuel  Lowry,  Baron  1877-1956 
Portland,  Duke  of.  See 

Bentinck,  Victor  Frederick 

William  Cavendish-  1897-1990 
Postan  (formerly  Power), 

Eileen  Edna  le  Poer  1889-1940 

Postan,  Sir  Michael  Moissey  1899-1981 

Postgate,  John  Percival  1853-1926 

Postgate,  Raymond  William  1896-1971 

Pott,  Alfred  1822-1908 
Potter,  (Helen),  Beatrix  (Mrs 

Heelis)  1866-1943 

Potter,  Stephen  Meredith  1900-1969 

Poulton,  Sir  Edward  Bagnall  1856-1943 
Pouncey,  Philip  Michael 

Rivers  1910-1990 
Pound,  Sir  (Alfred)  Dudley 

(Pickman  Rogers)  1877-1943 

Powell,  Cecil  Frank  1903-1969 

Powell,  Frederick  York  1850-1904 

Powell,  Sir  (George)  Allan  1876-1948 

Powell,  Lawrenceson  Fitzroy  #  1 88 1  -1975 

Powell,  Michael  Latham  1905-1990 
Powell,  Olave  St  Clair 

Baden-,  Lady 

Baden-Powell.  See 

Baden-Powell  1889-1977 

Powell,  Sir  Richard  Douglas  1842-1925 
Powell,  Robert  Stephenson 

Smyth  Baden-,  Baron 

Baden-Powell.  See 

Baden-Powell  1857-1941 

Power,  Sir  Arthur  John  1 889  -1 960 

Power,  Sir  D'Arcy  1855-1941 
Power,  Eileen  Edna  le  Poer. 

See  Postan  1889-1940 

Power,  Sir  John  Cecil  1870-1950 

Power,  Sir  William  Henry  1842-1916 
Powicke,  Sir  (Frederick) 

Maurice  1879-1963 

Pownall,  Sir  Henry  Royds  1887-1961 

Powys,  John  Cowper  1 872  -1 963 
Poynder,  Sir  John 

Poynder  Dickson-,  Baron 

Islington  1866-1936 

Poynter,  Sir  Edward  John  1836-1919 


580 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Poynting,  John  Henrv  1852-1914 

Prain,  Sir  David  1857-1944 

Pratt,  Hodgson  1824-1907 

Pratt,  Joseph  Bishop  1854-1910 
Pre,  Jacqueline  Marv  du.  See 

Du  Pre  1945-1987 

Preece,  Sir  William  Henry  1834-1913 
Prendergast,  Sir  Harrv  North 

Dalrvmple  1834-1913 

Pressburger,  Emeric  1902-1988 

Prestage,  Edgar  1869-1951 
Previte-Orton,  Charles 

William  1877-1947 

Price,  Dennis  #1915-1973 
Price,  Frederick  George 

Hilton  1842-1909 

Price,  Thomas  1852-1909 

Prichard,  Harold  Arthur  1871-1947 

Priestley,  John  Boynton  1 894  -1 984 
Priestlev,  Sir  Raymond 

Edward  1886-1974 
Primrose,  (Albert  Edward) 

Harry  (Mayer  Archibald), 

Earl  of  Rosebery  1882-1974 
Primrose,  Archibald  Philip, 

Earl  of  Rosebery  1847-1929 

Primrose,  Sir  Henrv  William  1846-1923 

Pringle,  John  William  Sutton  1 9 1 2  -1 982 

Pringle,  Mia  Lilly  Kellmer  1920-1983 
Pringle,  William  Mather 

Rutherford  1874-1928 
Pringle-Pattison,  Andrew 

Seth.  See  Patrison  1856-1931 
Prinsep,  Valentine  Cameron 

('Val')  1838-1904 

Prior,  Arthur  Norman  #1914-1969 

Prior,  Melton  1845-1910 

Pritchard,  Sir  Charles  Bradley  1837-1903 
Pritchard,  Sir  Edward  Evan 

Evans-.  See  Evans- 

Pritchard  1902-1973 

Pritchard,  Sir  John  Michael  192 1  -1989 

Pritchett,  Robert  Taylor  1828-1907 

Pritt,  Denis  Nowell  1887-1972 
Prittie,  Terence  Cornelius 

Farmer  1913-1985 

Probert,  Lewis  1841-1908 

Procter,  Francis  1812-1905 
Proctor,  Robert  George 

Collier  1868-1903 

Propert,  John  Lumsden  1834-1902 

Prothero,  Sir  George  Walter  1848-1922 
Prothero,  Rowland  Edmund, 

Baron  Ernie  1851-1937 

Proudman,  Joseph  1888-1975 

Prout,  Ebenezer  1835-1909 

Pryde,  James  Ferrier  1866-1941 

Prynne,  George  Rundle  1818-1903 
Puddicombe,  Anne  Adalisa, 

'Allen  Raine'  1836-1908 

Pudney,  John  Sleigh  1909-1977 


Pugh,  Sir  Arthur  1870-1955 

Pullen,  Henrv  William  1836-1903 

Pumphrey,  Richard  Julius  1906-1967 

Punnett,  Reginald  Crundall  #1875-1967 
Purcell,  Albert  Arthur 

William  1872-1935 

Purse,  Benjamin  Ormond  1874-1950 

Purser,  Louis  Claude  1854-1932 

Purvis,  Arthur  Blaikie  1890-1941 

Pye,  Sir  David  Randall  1886-1960 

Pye,  Edith  Mary  #1876-1965 
Pvm,  Barbara  Mary 

Crampton  1913-1980 
Pyne,  Louisa  Fannv  Bodda. 

See  Bodda  Pyne  1832-1904 


Quarrier,  William  1829-1903 

Qiiavle,  Sir  Qohn)  Anthony  1913-1989 

Queich,  Henrv  #1858-1913 

Quick,  Sir  John  1852-1932 

Quick,  Oliver  Chase  1885-1944 
Quickswood,  Baron.  See 

Cecil,  Hugh  Richard 

Heathcote  Gascoyne-  1869-1956 
Quiller-Couch,  Sir  Arthur 

Thomas,  'OJ  1863-1944 

Quilter,  Ham  1851-1907 

Quilter,  Roger  Cuthbert  1877-1953 

Quilter,  Sir  William  Cuthbert  1841  -191 1 
Quin,  Windham  Thomas 

Wyndham-,  Earl  of 

Dunraven  and  Mount-Earl  1841-1926 


Race,  Robert  Russell  1907-1984 

Rackham,  Arthur  1867-1939 

Rackham,  Bernard  1876-1964 
Radcliffe,  Cvril  John, 

Viscount '  1899-1977 
Radcliffe-Brown,  Alfred 

Reginald  #1881-1955 

Radcliffe-Crocker,  Henry  1845-1909 
Radclvffe-Hall,  Marguerite 

Antonia,  'Radclvffe  Hall'  #1880-1943 

Radhakrishnan,  Sir  Sarvepalli  1888-1975 

Rae,  William  Fraser  1835-1905 

Raggi,  Mario  1821-1907 

Raikes,  Humphrey  Rivaz  1891-1955 

Railton,  Herbert  '  1858-1910 
Raine,  Allen,  pseudonym.  See 

Puddicombe,  Anne  Adalisa  1836-1908 
Raines,  Sir  Julius  Augustus 

Robert  1827-1909 
Rainy,  Adam  RoUand  (1862- 

1911).  See  under  Rainy, 

Robert 

Rainv,  Robert  1826-1906 

Raisin,  Catherine  Alice  #1855-1945 

Raistrick,  Harold  1890-1971 

Rait,  Sir  Robert  Sangster  1874-1936 


58i 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Rajagopalachari,  Chakravarti  1878-1972 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter  Alexander  1861-1922 

Ralston,  James  Layton  1881  -1948 
Ram,  Sir  (Lucius  Abel  John) 

Granville  1885-1952 
Raman,  Sir  (Chandrasekhara) 

Venkata  1888-1970 
Ram  berg,  Cyvia  Myriam.  See 

Rambert,  Dame  Marie  1888-1982 

Rambert,  Dame  Mane  1888-1982 

Rambush,  Niels  Edvard  #1889-1957 
Rame,  Marie  Louise,  'Ouida'. 

See  De  la  Ramee  1839-1908 

Ramsay,  Alexander  1822-1909 

Ramsay,  Sir  Bertram  Home  1883-1945 

Ramsay,  Sir  James  Henry  1832-1925 
Ramsay,  Lady  (Victoria) 

Patricia  (Helena  Elizabeth)  1886-1974 

Ramsay,  Sir  William  1852-1916 

Ramsay,  Sir  William  Mitchell  185 1  -1939 
Ramsay-Steel-Maitland,  Sir 

Arthur  Herbert 

Drummond.  See 

Steel-Maitland  1876-1935 

Ramsbottom,  John  1 885-1974 

Ramsden,  Omar  1873-1939 
Ramsey,  (Arthur)  Michael, 

Baron  Ramsey  of 

Canterbury  1904-1988 

Ramsey,  Frank  Plumpton  #1903-1930 

Ramsey,  Ian  Thomas  1915-1972 
Ramsey,  (Mary)  Dorothea 

(Whiting)  1904-1989 

Randall,  Sir  John  Turton  1905-1984 

Randall,  Richard  William  1824-1906 

Randall-Maclver,  David  1873-1945 

Randegger,  Alberto  1832-1911 

Randies,  Marshall  1826-1904 
Randolph,  Francis  Charles 

Hingeston-.  See 

Hingeston-Randolph  1833-1910 
Randolph,  Sir  George 

Granville  1818-1907 
Ranjitsinhji,  Maharaja  Jam 

Saheb  of  Nawanagar.  See 

Nawanagar  1872-1933 

Rank,  (Joseph)  Arthur,  Baron  1888-1972 
Rankeillour,  Baron.  See  Hope, 

James  Fitzalan  1870-1949 

Rankin,  Sir  George  Claus  1877-1946 

Ransom,  William  Henry  1824-1907 

Ransome,  Arthur  Michell  1884-1967 

Raper,  Robert  William  1842-1915 

Rapson,  Edward  James  1861-1937 

Rashdall,  Hastings  1858-1924 

Rassam,  Hormuzd  1826-1910 

Ratcliffe,  John  Ashworth  1902-1987 

Rathbone,  Eleanor  Florence  1872-1946 

Rathbone,  William  1819-1902 

Rattigan,  Sir  Terence  Mervyn  1911-1977 

Rattigan,  Sir  William  Henry  1842-1904 


Rau,  Sir  Benegal  Narsing 
Raven,  Charles  Earle 
Raven,  John  James 
Raven-Hill,  Leonard 
Raverat,  Gwendolen  Mary 
Raverty,  Henry  George 
Ravilious,  Eric  William 
Rawcliffe,  Gordon  Hindle 
Rawling,  Cecil  Godfrey 
Rawlinson,  George 
Rawlinson,  Sir  Henry 

Seymour,  Baron 
Rawlinson,  William  George 
Rawnsley,  Hardwicke 

Drummond 
Rawson,  Sir  Harry 

Holdsworth 
Rawsthorne,  Alan 
Rayleigh,  Baron.  See  Strutt, 

John  William 
Rayleigh,  Baron.  See  Strutt, 

Robert  John 
Raynor,  Geoffrey  Vincent 
Read,  Sir  Charles  Hercules 
Read,  Clare  Sewell 
Read,  Grantly  Dick-.  See 

Dick-Read 
Read,  Sir  Herbert  Edward 
Read,  Herbert  Harold 
Read,  Sir  Herbert  James 
Read,  John 
Read,  Walter  William 
Reade,  Thomas  Mellard 
Reading,  Marchioness  of.  See 

Isaacs,  Stella 
Reading,  Marquess  of.  See 

Isaacs,  Rufus  Daniel 
Reay,  Baron.  See  Mackay, 

Donald  James 
Reckitt,  Maurice  Benington 
Redcliffe-Maud.  See  Maud, 

John  Primatt  Redcliffe 
Redesdale,  Baron.  See 

Mitford,  Algernon  Bertram 

Freeman- 
Redgrave,  Sir  Michael 

Scudamore 
Redmayne,  Martin,  Baron 
Redmayne,  Sir  Richard 

Augustine  Studdert 
Redmond,  John  Edward 
Redmond,  William  Hoey 

Kearney 
Redpath,  Anne 
Redpath,  Henry  Adeney 
Reed,  Sir  Andrew 
Reed,  Austin  Leonard 
Reed,  Sir  Carol 
Reed,  Sir  Edward  James 
Reed,  Edward  Tennyson 
Reed,  Henry 


1887-1953 
1885-1964 
1833-1906 
1867-1942 
1885-1957 
1825-1906 
1903-1942 
1910-1979 
1870-1917 
1812-1902 

1864-1925 
1840-1928 

#1851-1920 

1843-1910 
1905-1971 

1842-1919 

1875-1947 
1913-1983 
1857-1929 
1826-1905 

1890-1959 
1893-1968 
1889-1970 
1863-1949 
1884-1963 
1855-1907 
1832-1909 

1894-1971 

1860-1935 

1839-1921 
1888-1980 

1906-1982 


1837-1916 

1908-1985 
1910-1983 

1865-1955 
1856-1918 

1861-1917 
1895-1965 

1848-1908 
#1837-1914 
1873-1954 
1906-1976 
1830-1906 
1860-1933 
1914-1986 


582 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Reed,  Sir  (Herbert)  Stanley 

Rees,  (Morgan)  Goronwy 

Reeves,  Sir  William  Conrad 

Reeves-Smith,  Sir  George 

Regan,  Charles  Tate 

Reich,  Emil 

Reid,  Archibald  David 

Reid,  Forrest 

Reid,  Sir  George  Houstoun 

Reid,  James  Scott 

Cumberland,  Baron 
Reid,  James  Smith 
Reid,  Sir  John  Watt 
Reid,  Sir  Robert  Gillespie 
Reid,  Robert  Threshie,  Earl 

Loreburn 
Reid,  Sir  Thomas  Wemyss 
Reid  Dick,  Sir  William.  See 

Dick 
Reillv,  Sir  Charles  Herbert 
Reilly,  Paul,  Baron 
Reith,  John  Charles  Walsham, 

Baron 
Reitz,  Deneys 
Relf,  Ernest  Frederick 
Renault,  Mary,  pseudonym. 

See  Challans,  (Eileen) 

Mary 
Rendall,  Montague  John 
Rendel,  Sir  Alexander 

Meadows 
Rendel,  George  Wightwick 
Rendel,  Harry  Stuart 

Goodhart-.  See 

Goodhart-Rendel 
Rendel,  Stuart,  Baron 
Rendle,  Alfred  Barton 
Rennell  of  Rodd,  Baron.  See 

Rodd,  Francis  James 

Rennell 
Rennell,  Baron.  See  Rodd, 

James  Rennell 
Rennie,  Sir  John  Ogilvy 
Repington,  Charles  a  Court 
Revelstoke,  Baron.  See 

Baring,  John 
Revie,  Donald 
Reynolds,  James  Emerson 
Reynolds,  Osborne 
Rhodes,  Cecil  John 
Rhodes,  Francis  William 
Rhodes,  Wilfred 
Rhondda,  Viscount.  See 

Thomas,  David  Alfred 
Rhondda,  Viscountess.  See 

Thomas,  Margaret  Haig 
Rhyl,  Baron.  See  Birch, 

(Evelyn)  Nigel  (Chetwode) 
Rhys,  Ernest  Percival 
Rhys,  Jean.  See  Williams,  Ella 

Gwendolen  Rees 


1872-1969 

1909-1979 
1821-1902 
Uc.  1858-1941 
1878-1943 
1854-1910 
1844-1908 
1875-1947 
1845-1918 

1890-1975 
1846-1926 
1823-1909 
1842-1908 

1846-1923 
1842-1905 

1878-1961 

1874-1948 
1912-1990 

1889-1971 
1882-1944 
1888-1970 


1905-1983 
1862-1950 

1829-1918 
1833-1902 


1887-1959 

#1834-1913 

1865-1938 


1895-1978 

1858-1941 
1914-1981 
1858-1925 

#1863-1929 
1927-1989 
1844-1920 
1842-1912 
1853-1902 
1851-1905 
1877-1973 

1856-1918 

1883-1958 

1906-1981 
1859-1946 

1890P-1979 


Rhys,  Sir  John  1840-1915 

Ricardo,  Sir  Harry  Ralph  1885-1974 
Richards,  Arthur  Frederick, 

Baron  Milverton  1885-1978 

Richards,  Audrey  Isabel  1899-1984 

Richards,  Ceri  Giraldus  1903-1971 

Richards,  Francis  John  1901  -1965 
Richards,  Frank,  pseudonym. 

See  Hamilton,  Charles 

Harold  St  John  1876-1961 
Richards,  Sir  Frederick 

William  1833-1912 

Richards,  Sir  Gordon  1904-1986 

Richards,  Ivor  Armstrong  1893-1979 

Richards,  Owain  Westmacott  1901-1984 

Richardson,  Alan  1905-1975 
Richardson,  Sir  Albert 

Edward  1880-1964 

Richardson,  Dorothy  Miller  #1873-1957 
Richardson,  Ethel  Florence 

Lindesav,  'Henry  Handel 

Richardson'  1870-1946 
Richardson,  (Frederick) 

Denys  1913-1983 
Richardson,  Henry  Handel. 

See  Richardson,  Ethel 

Florence  Lindesay  1870-1946 

Richardson,  Lewis  Fry  1881-1953 

Richardson,  Sir  Owen  Willans  1879-1959 

Richardson,  Sir  Ralph  David  1902-1983 

Riches,  Sir  Eric  William  1897-1987 

Richey,  James  Ernest  1886-1968 
Richmond,  Sir  Bruce 

Lyttelton  1871-1964 
Richmond,  Sir  Herbert 

William  1871-1946 

Richmond,  Sir  Ian  Archibald  1902-1965 

Richmond,  Sir  William  Blake  1842-1921 
Richmond  and  Gordon,  Duke 

of.  See  Gordon-Lennox, 

Charles  Henry  1818-1903 

Ricketts,  Charles  de  Sousy  1866-1931 
Riddell,  Charles  James 

Buchanan  1817-1903 
Riddell,  Charlotte  Eliza 

Lawson  (Mrs  J.  H. 

Riddell),  'F.  G.  Trafford'  1832-1906 
Riddell,  George  Allardice, 

Baron  1865-1934 

Ridding,  George  1828-1904 

Rideal,  Sir  Eric  Keighdey  1890-1974 

Ridgeway,  Sir  Joseph  West  1844-1930 

Ridgeway,  Sir  William  1853-1926 

Ridley,  Henry  Nicholas  1855-1956 
Ridley,  Sir  Matthew  White, 

Viscount  1842-1904 

Rieu,  Charles  Pierre  Henri  1820-1902 

Rieu,  Emile  Victor  1887-1972 

Rigby,  Sir  John  1834-1903 

Rigg,  James  Harrison  1821-1909 

Rigg,  James  McMullen  1855-1926 


583 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Ringer,  Sydney  1835-1910 

Ripon,  Marquess  of.  See 

Robinson,  George 

Frederick  Samuel  1827-1909 

Risley,  Sir  Herbert  Hope  1851-1911 

Ritchie,  Anne  Isabella,  Lady 

(1837-1919).  See  under 

Ritchie,  Sir  Richmond 

Thackeray  Willoughby 
Ritchie,  Charles  Thomson, 

Baron  Ritchie  of  Dundee  1838-1906 

Ritchie,  David  George  1853-1903 

Ritchie,  Sir  John  Neish  1904-1977 

Ritchie,  Sir  Neil  Methuen  1897-1983 

Ritchie,  Sir  Richmond 

Thackeray  Willoughby  1854-1912 

Ritchie-Calder,  Baron.  See 

Calder  1906-1982 

Rivaz,  Sir  Charles 

Montgomery  1845-1926 

Riverdale,  Baron.  See  Balfour, 

Arthur  1873-1957 

Rivers,  William  Halse  Rivers        #1864-1922 
Riviere,  Briton  1840-1920 

Robbins,  Lionel  Charles, 

Baron  1898-1984 

Robeck,  Sir  John  Michael  De. 

See  De  Robeck  1862-1928 

Roberthall,  Baron.  See  Hall, 

Robert  Lowe  1901-1988 

Roberton,  Sir  Hugh 

Stevenson  #1874-1952 

Roberts,  Alexander  1826-1901 

Roberts,  Colin  Henderson  1909-1990 

Roberts,  Frederick  Sleigh, 

Earl  1832-1914 

Roberts,  George  Henry  1869-1928 

Roberts,  Sir  Gilbert  #1899-1978 

Roberts,  Isaac  1829-1904 

Roberts,  Robert  Davies  1 85 1  -191 1 

Roberts,  Thomas  d'Esterre  1893-1976 

Roberts,  William  Patrick  1895-1980 

Roberts-Austen,  Sir  William 

Chandler  1843-1902 

Robertson,  Alan  1920-1989 

Robertson,  Alexander  1896-1970 

Robertson,  Sir  Alexander  1908-1990 

Robertson,  Andrew  1883-1977 

Robertson,  Archibald  1853-1931 

Robertson,  Brian  Hubert, 

Baron  Robertson  of 

Oakbridge  1896-1974 

Robertson,  Sir  Charles  Grant  1869-1948 

Robertson,  Sir  Dennis  Holme  1890-1963 

Robertson,  Donald  Struan  1885-1961 

Robertson,  Douglas  Moray 

Cooper  Lamb  Argyll  1837-1909 

Robertson,  (Florence) 

Marjorie.  See  Neagle, 

Dame  Anna  1904-1986 

Robertson,  George  Matthew  1864-1932 


Robertson,  Sir  George  Scott  1852-1916 
Robertson,  Sir  Howard 

Morley  1888-1963 
Robertson,  James  Patrick 

Bannerman,  Baron  1845-1909 

Robertson,  Sir  James  Wilson  1899-1983 

Robertson,  John  Mackinnon  1856-1933 

Robertson,  John  Monteath  1900-1989 
Robertson,  Sir  Johnston 

Forbes-  1853-1937 

Robertson,  Sir  Robert  1869-1949 
Robertson,  Sir  William 

Robert  1860-1933 
Robertson,  (William)  Strowan 

(Amherst)  ('Father  Algy')  #1894-1955 
Robertson  Scott,  John 

William  1866-1962 

Robey,  Sir  George  Edward  1869-1954 

Robins,  Elizabeth  #1862-1952 

Robins,  Thomas  Ellis,  Baron  1884-1962 

Robinson,  Sir  David  1904-1987 
Robinson,  (Esme  Stuart) 

Lennox  1886-1958 

Robinson,  Frederick  William  1830-1901 
Robinson,  George  Frederick 

Samuel,  Marquess  of  Ripon  1827-1909 
Robinson,  (George)  Geoffrey. 

See  Dawson  1874-1944 

Robinson,  Henry  Wheeler  1872-1945 

Robinson,  Joan  Violet  1 903  -1 983 

Robinson,  Sir  John  1839-1903 
Robinson,  John  Arthur 

Thomas  1919-1983 

Robinson,  Sir  John  Charles  1824-1913 

Robinson,  John  George  #1856-1943 

Robinson,  Sir  John  Richard  1 828  -1 903 

Robinson,  Joseph  Armitage  1858-1933 
Robinson,  Sir  Joseph 

Benjamin  1840-1929 
Robinson,  Philip  Stewart 

('Phil')  1847-1902 

Robinson,  Sir  Robert  1886-1975 

Robinson,  Roy  Lister,  Baron  1883-1952 

Robinson,  Vincent  Joseph  1829-1910 

Robinson,  William  #1838-1935 
Robinson,  Sir  (William) 

Arthur  1874-1950 

Robinson,  William  Heath  1872-1944 

Robinson,  William  Leefe  1895-1918 

Robison,  Robert  1883-1941 

Robson,  Dame  Flora  1902-1984 

Robson,  William  Alexander  1895-1980 
Robson,  William  Snowdon, 

Baron  1852-1918 

Roby,  Henry  John  1830-1915 
Roche,  Alexander  Adair, 

Baron  1871-1956 
Rochfort,  Sir  Cecil  Charles 

Boyd-.  See  Boyd-Rochfort  1887-1983 
Rodd,  Francis  James  Rennell, 

Baron  Rennell  of  Rodd  1895-1978 


584 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Rodd,  James  Rennell,  Baron 

Rennell 
Roe,  Sir  (Edwin)  Alliott 

Verdon  Verdon-  See 

Verdon-Roe 
Rogers,  Annie  Mary  Anne 

Henley 
Rogers,  Benjamin  Bickley 
Rogers,  Claude  Maurice 
Rogers,  Edmund  Dawson 
Rogers,  Frederick 
Rogers,  James  Guinness 
Rogers,  Sir  Leonard 
Rogers,  Leonard  James 
Rolfe,  Frederick  William 
Rolleston,  Sir  Humphrey 

Davy 
Rolls,  Charles  Stewart 
Rolt,  Lionel  Thomas  Caswall 
Romer,  Mark  Lemon,  Baron 
Romer,  Sir  Robert 
Ronald,  Sir  Landon 
Ronan,  Stephen 
Rookwood,  Baron.  See 

Selwin-Ibbetson,  Henry 

John 
Rooper,  Thomas  Godolphin 
Roos-Keppel,  Sir  George  Olof 
Roose,  Edward  Charles 

Robson 
Rootes,  William  Edward, 

Baron 
Ropes,  Arthur  Reed,  'Adrian 

Ross' 
Roscoe,  Sir  Henry  Enfield 
Roscoe,  Kenneth  Harry 
Rose,  Francis  Leslie 
Rose,  John  Donald 
Rose,  John  Holland 
Rose,  Reginald  Leslie  Smith-. 

See  Smith-Rose 
Rose-Innes,  Sir  James 
Rosebery,  Earl  of.  See 

Primrose,  (Albert  Edward) 

Harry  (Mayer  Archibald) 
Rosebery,  Earl  of.  See 

Primrose,  Archibald  Philip 
Rosenberg,  Isaac 
Rosenhain,  Walter 
Rosenheim,  Max  Leonard, 

Baron 
Rosenheim,  (Sigmund)  Otto 
Roseveare,  Sir  Martin  Pearson 
Roskill,  Stephen  Wentworth 
Ross,  Adrian,  pseudonym.  See 

Ropes,  Arthur  Reed 
Ross,  Sir  Alexander  George 
Ross,  Sir  (Edward)  Denison 
Ross,  Sir  Frederick  William 

Leith-.  See  Leith-Ross 
Ross,  Sir  Ian  Clunies 


1858-1941 


1877-1958 

1856-1937 
1828-1919 
1907-1979 
1823-1910 

#1846-1915 
1822-1911 
1868-1962 
1862-1933 

#1860-1913 

1862-1944 
1877-1910 
#1910-1974 
1866-1944 
1840-1918 
1873-1938 
1848-1925 


1826-1902 
1847-1903 
1866-1921 

1848-1905 

1894-1964 

1859-1933 
1833-1915 
1914-1970 
1909-1988 
1911-1976 
1855-1942 

1894-1980 
1855-1942 

1882-1974 

1847-1929 

#1890-1918 

1875-1934 

1908-1972 
1871-1955 
1898-1985 
1903-1982 

1859-1933 
1840-1910 
1871-1940 

1887-1968 
1899-1959 


Ross,  Sir  John  1829-1905 

Ross,  Sir  John  1853-1935 

Ross,  (John)  Carl  1901-1986 

Ross,  Joseph  Thorburn  1849-1903 
Ross,  Martin,  pseudonym.  See 

Martin,  Violet  Florence  1862-1915 

Ross,  Robert  Baldwin  #1869-1918 

Ross,  Sir  Ronald  1857-1932 
Ross,  William,  Baron  Ross  of 

Marnock  1911-1988 

Ross,  Sir  (William)  David  1877-1971 

Ross,  William  Henry  #1862-1944 
Ross,  William  Stewart, 

'Saladin'  1844-1906 
Rosse,  Earl  of.  See  Parsons, 

Laurence  1840-1908 

Rossetti,  William  Michael  1829-1919 

Roth,  Cecil  #1899-1970 

Rotha,  Paul  1907-1984 

Rothenstein,  Sir  William  1872-1945 
Rothermere,  Viscount.  See 

Harmsworth,  Esmond  Cecil  1898-1978 
Rothermere,  Viscount.  See 

Harmsworth,  Harold 

Sidney  1868-1940 
Rothery,  William  Hume-.  See 

Hume-Rothery  1899-1968 
Rothschild,  Lionel  Walter, 

Baron  1868-1937 
Rothschild,  Sir  Nathan 

Meyer,  Baron  1840-1915 
Rothschild,  Sir  (Nathaniel 

Mayer)  Victor,  Baron  1910-1990 

Rotter,  Godfrey  1879-1969 
Roughton,  Francis  John 

Worsley  1899-1972 

Round,  Henry  Joseph  1881-1966 

Round,  John  Horace  1854-1928 

Rous,  Sir  Stanley  Ford  1895-1986 

Rousby,  William  Wybert  1835-1907 
Rouse,  William  Henry 

Denham  1863-1950 

Routh,  Edward  John  183 1  -1907 
Rowallan,  Baron.  See  Corbett, 

Thomas  Godfrey  Poison  1895-1977 

Rowan,  Sir  (Thomas)  Leslie  1908-1972 

Rowe,  Joshua  Brooking  1837-1908 

Rowlands,  Sir  Archibald  1892-1953 
Rowlands,  David,  'Dewi 

Mon'  1836-1907 
Rowlatt,  Sir  Sidney  Arthur 

Taylor  1862-1945 

Rowley,  Harold  Henry  1890-1969 

Rowntree,  Benjamin  Seebohm  1871-1954 

Rowntree,  Joseph  1836-1925 
Rowton,  Baron.  See  Corry, 

Montagu  William  Lowry  1838-1903 

Roxburgh,  John  Fergusson  1888-1954 

Roy,  Camille  Joseph  1870-1943 

Royce,  Sir  (Frederick)  Henry  1863-1933 

Royden,  (Agnes)  Maude  1876-1956 


585 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Royden,  Sir  Thomas,  Baron  1 87 1  -1950 

Rubbra,  (Charles)  Edmund 

(Duncan)  1901-1986 

Ruck,  Amy  Roberta  ('Berta')  1878-1978 

Rtlcker,  Sir  Arthur  William  #1848-1915 

Rudolf,  Edward  de  Montjoie  1852-1933 

Ruffside,  Viscount.  See 

Brown,  Douglas  Clifton  1879-1958 

Rugby,  Baron.  See  Maffey, 

John  Loader  1877-1969 

Ruggles-Brise,  Sir  Evelyn 

John  1857-1935 

Ruggles  Gates,  Reginald.  See 

Gates  1882-1962 

Rumbold,  Sir  Horace  1829-1913 

Rumbold,  Sir  Horace  George 

Montagu  1869-1941 

Runciman,  Walter,  Baron  1847-1937 

Runciman,  Walter,  Viscount 

Runciman  of  Doxford  1870-1949 

Runciman,  (Walter)  Leslie, 

Viscount  Runciman  of 

Doxford  1900-1989 

Rundall,  Francis  Hornblow  1823-1908 

Rundle,  Sir  (Henry  Macleod) 

Leslie  1856-1934 

Rupp,  (Ernest)  Gordon  1910-1986 

Rusden,  George  William  1819-1903 

Rushbrooke,  James  Henry  1870-1947 

Rushbury,  Sir  Henry  George  1889-1968 

Rushcliffe,  Baron.  See 

Betterton,  Henry  Bucknall  1872-1949 

Rushton,  William  Albert 

Hugh  1901-1980 

Russell,  Arthur  Oliver 

Villiers,  Baron  Ampthill  1869-1935 

Russell,  Bertrand  Arthur 

William,  Earl  1872-1970 

Russell,  Sir  Charles  1863-1928 

Russell,  Charles  Ritchie, 

Baron  Russell  of  Killowen  1908-1986 

Russell,  Dora  Winifred  1894-1986 

Russell,  Dorothy  Stuart  1895-1983 

Russell,  Edward  Frederick 

Langley,  Baron  Russell  of 

Liverpool  1895-1981 

Russell,  Sir  (Edward)  John  1872-1965 

Russell,  Edward  Stuart  1887-1954 

Russell,  Francis  Xavier  Joseph 

('Frank'),  Baron  Russell  of 

Killowen  1867-1946 

Russell,  Sir  Frederick 

Stratten  1897-1984 

Russell,  George  William,  'AE'  1867-1935 
Russell,  George  William 

Erskine  #1853-1919 

Russell,  Sir  Guy  Herbrand 

Edward  1898-1977 

Russell,  Henry  Chamberlaine  1836-1907 

Russell,  Herbrand  Arthur, 

Duke  of  Bedford  1858-1940 


Russell,  John  Hugo,  Baron 

Ampthill  1896-1973 
Russell,  Mary  Annette, 

Countess  1866-1941 
Russell,  Mary  du  Caurroy, 

Duchess  of  Bedford  (1865- 

1937).  See  under  Russell, 

Herbrand  Arthur 

Russell,  (Muriel)  Audrey  1906-1989 

Russell,  Sir  (Sydney)  Gordon  1892-1980 

Russell,  Thomas  O'Neill  1828-1908 
Russell,  Sir  Thomas 

Wentworth,  Russell  Pasha  1879-1954 

Russell,  Sir  Walter  Westley  1867-1949 

Russell,  William  Clark  1844-1911 

Russell,  Sir  William  Howard  1820-1907 

Russell,  William  James  1830-1909 

Russell,  (William)  Ritchie  1903-1980 
Russell  Flint,  Sir  William. 

See  Flint  1880-1969 
Rutherford,  Ernest,  Baron 

Rutherford  of  Nelson  1871-1937 

Rutherford,  Dame  Margaret  1892-1972 
Rutherford,  Mark,  pseudonym. 

See  White,  William  Hale  1 83 1  -1913 

Rutherford,  William  Gunion  1853-1907 
Rutland,  Duke  of.  See 

Manners,  (Lord)  John 

James  Robert  1818-1906 

Ruttledge,  Hugh  1884-1961 

Ryan,  Elizabeth  Montague  1892-1979 

Ryde,  John  Walter  1898-1961 

Ryder,  Charles  Henry  Dudley  1868-1945 

Rye,  Maria  Susan  1829-1903 

Rye,  William  Brenchley  1818-1901 

Ryle,  Gilbert  1900-1976 

Ryle,  Herbert  Edward  1856-1925 

Ryle,  John  Alfred  1889-1950 

Ryle,  Sir  Martin  1918-1984 
Ryrie,  Sir  Granville  de 

Laune  1865-1937 


Sabatini,  Rafael  #1875-1950 

Sachs,  Sir  Eric  Leopold  Otho  1898-1979 

Sackville,  Herbrand  Edward 

Dundonald  Brassey,  Earl 

De  La  Warr  1900-1976 

Sackville- West,  Edward 

Charles,  Baron  Sackville  1901-1965 

Sackville- West,  Lionel 

Sackville,  Baron  Sackville  1827-1908 

Sackville- West,  Victoria  Mary  1892-1962 
Sadleir,  Michael  Thomas 

Harvey  1888-1957 

Sadler,  Sir  Michael  Ernest  1 86 1  -1943 

Saha,  Meghnad.  See 

Meghnad  Saha  1893-1956 

St  Aldwyn,  Earl.  See  Hicks 

Beach,  Sir  Michael  Edward  1837-1916 


586 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Saint  Brides,  Baron.  See 

James,  (John)  Morrice 

(Cairns)  1916-1989 

St  Davids,  Viscount.  See 

Philipps,  Sir  John  Wynford         1860-1938 
St  Helier,  Baron.  See  Jeune, 

Francis  Henry  1843-1905 

St  John,  Sir  Spenser 

Buckingham  1825-1910 

St  John,  Vane  Ireton 

Shaftesbury  (1839-1911). 

See  under  St  John,  Sir 

Spenser  Buckingham 
St  Just,  Baron.  See  Grenfell, 

Edward  Charles  1870-1941 

St  Laurent,  Louis  Stephen  1882-1973 

St  Oswald,  Baron.  See  Winn, 

Rowland  Denys  Guy  1916-1984 

Saintsbury,  George  Edward 

Bateman  1845-1933 

Saklatvala,  Shapurji  1874-1936 

Saladin,  pseudonym.  See  Ross, 

William  Stewart  1844-1906 

Salaman,  Charles  Kensington  1814-1901 

Salaman,  Julia.  See  Goodman  1812-1906 

Salaman,  Redcliffe  Nathan  1874-1955 

Salisbury,  Marquess  of.  See 

Cecil,  James  Edward 

Hubert  Gascoyne-  1861-1947 

Salisbury,  Marquess  of.  See 

Cecil,  Robert  Arthur  James 

Gascoyne-  1893-1972 

Salisbury,  Marquess  of.  See 

Cecil,  Robert  Arthur 

Talbot  Gascovne-  1830-1903 

Salisbury,  Sir  Edward  James  1886-1978 

Salisbury,  Francis  Owen 

('Frank')  1874-1962 

Salmon,  Sir  Eric  Cecil 

Heygate  1896-1946 

Salmon,  George  1819-1904 

Salmond,  Sir  John  Maitland  1881  -1968 

Salmond,  Sir  (William) 

Geoffrey  (Hanson)  1878-1933 

Salomon,  Sir  Walter  Hans  1906-1987 

Salomons,  Sir  David  Lionel  #1851-1925 

Salomons,  Sir  Julian  Emanuel  1835-1909 

Salt,  Dame  Barbara  1904-1975 

Salt,  Henry  Shakespear 

Stephens  #1851-1939 

Salter,  Sir  Arthur  Clavell  1859-1928 

Salter,  Herbert  Edward  1863-1951 

Salter,  (James)  Arthur,  Baron  1881-1975 

Salting,  George  1835-1909 

Salvidge,  Sir  Archibald 

Tutton  James  1863-1928 

Salvin,  Francis  Henry  1817-1904 

Salzman,  Louis  Francis  1878-1971 

Sambourne,  Edward  Linley  1844-1910 

Sampson,  George  1873-1950 

Sampson,  John  1862-1931 


Sampson,  Ralph  Allen  1866-1939 

Samson,  Charles  Rumney  1883-1931 
Samuel,  Harold,  Baron 

Samuel  of  Wych  Cross  1912-1987 
Samuel,  Herbert  Louis, 

Viscount  1870-1963 
Samuel,  Marcus,  Viscount 

Beamed  1853-1927 

Samuelson,  Sir  Bernhard  1820-1905 

Sanday,  William  1843-1920 
Sandberg,  Samuel  Louis 

Graham  1851-1905 
Sanderson,  Baron.  See 

Furniss,  Henry  Sanderson  1868-1939 

Sanderson,  Edgar  1838-1907 

Sanderson,  Frederick  William  1857-1922 
Sanderson,  Sir  John  Scott 

Burdon-.  See 

Burdon-Sanderson  1828-1905 
Sanderson,  Thomas  Henry, 

Baron  1841-1923 
Sanderson,  Thomas  James 

Cobden-.  See 

Cobden-Sanderson  1840-1922 

Sandham,  Henry  1842-1910 
Sands,  Lord.  See  Johnston, 

Christopher  Nicholson  1857-1934 
Sandvs,  (Edwin)  Duncan, 

Baron  Duncan-Sandys  1908-1987 

Sandvs,  Frederick  1829-1904 

Sandys,  Sir  John  Edwin  1844-1922 
Sanford,  George  Edward 

Langham  Somerset  1840-1901 
Sanger,  George  ('Lord' 

George  Sanger)  1825-1911 

Sanger,  Sophv  #1881-1950 

Sankaran  Nair,  Sir  Chettur  1857-1934 

Sankev,  John,  Viscount  1866-1948 

Sankey,  Sir  Richard  Hieram  1829-1908 

Sansom,  Sir  George  Bailey  1883-1965 
Sansom,  William  Norman 

Trevor  1912-1976 

Santley,  Sir  Charles  1834-1922 
Sapper,  pseudonym.  See 

McNeile,  (Herman)  Cyril  1888-1937 

Sargant,  Sir  Charles  Henry  1856-1942 

Sargant,  Ethel  #1863-1918 

Sargant,  Thomas  1905-1988 

Sargeaunt,  John  1857-1922 
Sargent,  Sir  (Harold)  Orme 

(Garton)  1884-1962 
Sargent,  Sir  (Henrv)  Malcolm 

(Watts)  1895-1967 

Sargent,  John  Singer  1856-1925 

Sarkar,  Sir  Jadunath  1 870  -1 958 

Sarony,  Leslie  1897-1985 
Sassoon,  Sir  Philip  Albert 

Gustave  David  1888-1939 

Sassoon,  Siegfred  Loraine  1886-1967 
Sastri,  Valangiman 

Sankaran aravana  Srinivasa  1869-1946 


587 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Satow,  Sir  Ernest  Mason 
Saumarez,  Thomas 
Saunders,  Sir  Alexander 

Morris  Carr-.  See 

Carr-Saunders 
Saunders,  Edith  Rebecca 
Saunders,  Edward 
Saunders,  Sir  Edwin 
Saunders,  Howard 
Saunderson,  Edward  James 
Savage,  Sir  (Edward)  Graham 
Savage  (formerly  Dell),  Ethel 

Mary 
Savage-Armstrong,  George 

Francis 
Savill,  Sir  Eric  Humphrey 
Savill,  Thomas  Dixon 
Saxe- Weimar,  Prince  Edward 

of.  See  Edward  of 

Saxe-Weimar 
Saxl,  Friedrich  ('Fritz') 
Sayce,  Archibald 
Sayers,  Dorothy  Leigh 
Sayers,  Richard  Sidney 
Scamp,  Sir  (Athelstan)  Jack 
Scarbrough,  Earl  of.  See 

Lumley,  Lawrence  Roger 
Schafer,  Sir  Edward  Albert 

Sharpey- 
Schapiro,  Leonard  Bertram 
Scharlieb,  Dame  Mary  Ann 

Dacomb 
Schiller,  Ferdinand  Canning 

Scott 
Schlich,  Sir  William 
Schmitthoff,  Clive  Macmillan 
Scholes,  Percy  Alfred 
Schonland,  Sir  Basil 

Ferdinand  Jamieson 
Schreiner,  Olive  Emilie 

Albertina  (1855-1920).  See 

under  Schreiner,  William 

Philip 
Schreiner,  William  Philip 
Schumacher,  Ernst  Friedrich 
Schunck,  Henry  Edward 
Schuster,  Sir  Arthur 
Schuster,  Claud,  Baron 
Schuster,  Sir  Felix  Otto 
Schuster,  Sir  George  Ernest 
Schwabe,  Randolph 
Schwartz,  George  Leopold 
Scott,  Archibald 
Scott,  Charles  Prestwich 
Scott,  Lord  Charles  Thomas 

Montagu-Douglas- 
Scott,  Clement  William 
Scott,  Cyril  Meir 
Scott,  Dukinficld  Henry 
Scott,  Lord  Francis  George 

Montagu-Douglas- 


1843- 

-1929 

Scott,  Geoffrey 

#1884- 

1929 

1827- 

-1903 

Scott,  George  Herbert 

1888- 

1930 

Scott,  Sir  Giles  Gilbert 

1880- 

1960 

Scott,  (Guthrie)  Michael 

1907- 

-1983 

1886- 
1865- 

-1966 
-1945 

Scott,  Sir  Harold  Richard 
Scott,  Hugh  Stowell,  'Henry 

#1887- 

-1969 

1848- 

-1910 

Seton  Merriman' 

1862- 

-1903 

1814- 

-1901 

Scott,  Sir  (James)  George 

1851- 

-1935 

1835- 

-1907 

Scott,  John 

1830- 

1903 

1837- 

-1906 

Scott,  Sir  John 

1841- 

1904 

1886- 

-1981 

Scott,  Sir  John  Arthur 

Guillum 

1910- 

-1983 

1881- 

-1939 

Scott,  John  William 

Robertson.  See  Robertson 

1845- 

-1906 

Scott 

1866- 

1962 

1895- 

-1980 

Scott,  Kathleen.  See  Kennet, 

1855- 

-1910 

(Edith  Agnes)  Kathleen, 

Lady 

1878- 

-1947 

Scott,  Leader,  pseudonym.  See 

1823- 

-1902 

Baxter,  Lucy 

1837- 

-1902 

1890- 

-1948 

Scott,  Sir  Leslie  Frederic 

1869- 

-1950 

1845- 

-1933 

Scott,  (Mackay  Hugh)  Baillie 

#1865- 

-1945 

1893- 

-1957 

Scott,  Paul  Mark 

1920- 

-1978 

1908- 

-1989 

Scott,  Sir  Percy  Moreton 

1853- 

-1924 

1913- 

-1977 

Scott,  Sir  Peter  Markham 

1901- 

-1989 

Scott,  Robert  Falcon 

1868- 

-1912 

1896- 

-1969 

Scott,  Sir  Robert  Heatlie 

1905- 

-1982 

Scott,  Robert  Henry 

#1833- 

-1916 

1850- 

-1935 

Scott,  Sir  Ronald  Bodley.  See 

1908- 

-1983 

Bodley  Scott 

1906- 

-1982 

Scott,  William  George 

1913- 

-1989 

1845- 

-1930 

Scott-Ellis,  Thomas  Evelyn, 

Baron  Howard  de  Walden 

1880- 

-1946 

1864- 

-1937 

Scott-James,  Rolfe  Arnold 

1878- 

-1959 

1840- 

-1925 

Scott-Paine,  Charles  Hubert 

1891- 

-1954 

1903- 

-1990 

Scrutton,  Sir  Thomas  Edward 

1856- 

-1934 

1877- 

-1958 

Scupham,  John 

1904- 

-1990 

Seago,  Edward  Brian 

1910- 

-1974 

1896- 

-1972 

Seale-Hayne,  Charles  Hayne 

1833- 

-1903 

Seaman,  Sir  Owen 

1861- 

-1936 

Searle,  Humphrey 

1915- 

-1982 

Seccombe,  Thomas 

1866- 

-1923 

Seddon,  Richard  John 

1845- 

-1906 

1857- 

-1919 

Sedgwick,  Adam 

1854- 

-1913 

1911- 

-1977 

See,  Sir  John 

1844- 

-1907 

1820- 

-1903 

Seebohm,  Frederic 

1833- 

-1912 

1851- 

-1934 

Seebohm,  Frederic,  Baron 

1909- 

-1990 

1869- 

-1956 

Seeley,  Harry  Govier 

1839- 

-1909 

1854- 

-1936 

Seely,  John  Edward  Bernard, 

1881- 

-1982 

Baron  Mottistone 

1868- 

-1947 

1885- 

-1948 

Segrave,  Sir  Henry  O'Neal  de 

1891 

-1983 

Hane 

#1896- 

-1930 

1837- 

-1909 

Selbie,  William  Boothby 

1862- 

-1944 

1846- 

-1932 

Selborne,  Earl  of.  See  Palmer, 

Roundell  Cecil 

1887- 

-1971 

1839- 

-1911 

Selborne,  Earl  of.  See  Palmer, 

1841- 

-1904 

William  Waldegrave 

1859- 

-1942 

1879- 

-1970 

Selby,  Viscount.  See  Gully, 

1854- 

-1934 

William  Court 

1835- 

-1909 

Selby,  Thomas  Gunn 

1846- 

-1910 

1879- 

-1952 

Selfridge,  Harry  Gordon 

1858- 

-1947 

588 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Seligman,  Charles  Gabriel  1873-1940 

Selincourt,  Ernest  de  1870-1943 
Sellers,  Richard  Henry 

('Peter')  1925-1980 

Sellors,  Sir  Thomas  Holmes  1902-1987 

Selous,  Edmund  #1857-1934 

Selous,  Frederick  Courteney  1851-1917 
Selwin-Ibbetson,  Henry  John, 

Baron  Rookwood  1826-1902 

Selwyn,  Alfred  Richard  Cecil  1824-1902 
Selwyn-Lloyd,  Baron. 

See  Llovd,  John  Selwyn 

Brooke '  1904-1978 

Semon,  Sir  Felix  1849-1921 
Sempill,  Baron.  See 

Forbes-Sempill,  William 

Francis  1893-1965 
Semprini,  (Fernando 

Riccardo)  Alberto  1908-1990 

Senanavake,  Don  Stephen  1884-1952 

Sendall,  Sir  Walter  Joseph  1832-1904 

Sequeira,  James  Harry  1865-1948 
Sergeant,  (Emilv  Frances) 

Adeline  1851-1904 

Sergeant,  Lewis  1841-1902 

Service,  Robert  William  1874-1958 
Seth,  Andrew.  See  Pattison, 

Andrew  Seth  Pringle-  1856-1931 

Seton,  George  1822-1908 
Seton-Watson,  (George) 

Hugh  (Nicholas)  1916-1984 
Seton-Watson,  Robert 

William  1879-1951 

Severn,  Walter  1830-1904 

Seward,  Sir  Albert  Charles  1863-1941 

Sewell,  Elizabeth  Missing  1815-1906 

Sewell,  James  Edwards  1810-1903 
Sewell,  Robert  Beresford 

Sevmour  1880-1964 

Sexton,  Sir  James  1856-1938 

Sexton,  Thomas  1848-1932 

Seymour,  Sir  Edward  Hobart  1840-1929 

Shackleton,  Sir  David  James  1863-1938 

Shackleton,  Sir  Ernest  Henry  1874-1922 

Shackleton,  Robert  1919-1986 

Shadwell,  Charles  Lancelot  1840-1919 
Shand  (afterwards  Burns), 

Alexander,  Baron  1828-1904 

Shand,  Alexander  Innes  1832-1907 
Shandon,  Baron.  See  O'Brien, 

Ignatius  John  1857-1930 

Shanks,  Michael  James  1927-1984 

Shannon,  Charles  Haslewood  1863-1937 

Shannon,  Sir  James  Jebusa  1862-1923 

Sharp,  Cecil  James  1859-1924 
Sharp,  Evelvn  Adelaide, 

Baroness'  1903-1985 

Sharp,  Thomas  Wilfred  1901-1978 
Sharp,  William,  'Fiona 

Macleod'  1855-1905 

Sharpe,  Richard  Bowdler  1847-1909 


Sharpey-Schafer,  Sir  Edward 

Albeit.  See  Schafer 
Shattock,  Samuel  George 
Shaughnessy,  Thomas 

George,  Baron 
Shaw,  Alfred 
Shaw,  Charles  James 

Dalrymple,  Baron 

Kilbrandon 
Shaw,  Sir  Eyre  Massey 
Shaw,  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  Glencairn  Alexander 

Byam  ('Glen').  See  Byam 

Shaw 
Shaw,  Henry  Selby  Hele-. 

See  Hele-Shaw 
Shaw,  James  Johnston 
Shaw,  John  Byam  Lister 
Shaw,  Richard  Norman 
Shaw,  Thomas,  Baron 

Craigmyle 
Shaw,  Thomas 
Shaw,  William  Arthur 
Shaw,  Sir  (William)  Napier 
Shaw-Lefevre,  George  John, 

Baron  Eversley 
Shearman,  Sir  Montague 
Sheehan,  Harold  Leeming 
Sheepshanks,  Sir  Thomas 

Herbert 
Sheffield,  Earl  of.  See 

Holroyd,  Henry  North 
Sheffield,  Baron.  See  Stanley, 

Edward  Lyulph 
Sheldon,  Sir  Wilfrid  Percy 

Henry 
Shelford,  Sir  William 
Shenstone,  William  Ashwell 
Shepard,  Ernest  Howard 
Shepherd,  George  Robert, 

Baron 
Sheppard,  Hugh  Richard 

Lawrie 
Sheppard,  Sir  John  Tressider 
Sheppard,  Philip  Macdonald 
Sheppard,  Sir  Richard 

Herbert 
Sherborn,  Charles  William 
Sherek,  (Jules)  Henry 
Sheridan,  Clare  Consuelo 
Sherriff,  George 
Sherriff,  Robert  Cedric 
Sherrington,  Sir  Charles  Scott 
Sherrington,  Helen 

Lemmens-.  See 

Lemmens-Sherrington 
Shields,  Frederic  James 
Shiels,  Sir  (Thomas) 

Drummond 
Shin  well,  Emanuel,  Baron 
Shipley,  Sir  Arthur  Everett 


1850-1935 
1852-1924 

1853-1923 

1842-1907 


1906-1989 
1830-1908 
1856-1950 


1904-1986 

1854-1941 
1845-1910 
1872-1919 

1831-1912 

1850-1937 
1872-1938 
1865-1943 
1854-1945 

1831-1928 
1857-1930 

1900-1988 

1895-1964 

1832-1909 

1839-1925 

1901-1983 
1834-1905 
1850-1908 
1879-1976 

1881-1954 

1880-1937 

#1881-1968 

1921-1976 

1910-1982 
1831-1912 
1900-1967 
1885-1970 
1898-1967 
1896-1975 
1857-1952 


1834-1906 
1833-1911 

1881-1953 
1884-1986 
1861-1927 


589 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Shippard,  Sir  Sidney 

Godolphin  Alexander 
Shipton,  Eric  Earle 
Shirley,  Frederick  Joseph 

John 
Shirreff,  Maria  Georgina.  See 

Grey 
Shoenberg,  Sir  Isaac 
Shonfield,  Sir  Andrew  Akiba 
Shore,  Thomas  William 
Short,  Sir  Francis  Job 

('Frank') 
Short,  (Hugh)  Oswald 
Shorter,  Clement  King 
Shorthouse,  Joseph  Henry 
Shortt,  Edward 
Shotton,  Frederick  William 
Showering,  Sir  Keith  Stanley 
Shrewsbury,  Arthur 
Shuckburgh,  Evelyn  Shirley 
Shuckburgh,  Sir  John  Evelyn 
Shute,  Nevil,  pseudonym.  See 

Norway,  Nevil  Shute 
Sibly,  Sir  (Thomas)  Franklin 
Sicken,  Walter  Richard 
Sidebotham,  Herbert 
Sidgreaves,  Sir  Arthur 

Frederick 
Sidgwick,  Eleanor  Mildred 
Sidgwick,  Nevil  Vincent 
Sieff,  Israel  Moses,  Baron 

Sieff 
Sieghart,  (Henry  Laurence) 

Paul  (Alexander) 
Siepmann,  Otto 
Sieveking,  Sir  Edward  Henry 
Sieveking,  Lancelot  de 

Giberne 
Sifton,  Sir  Clifford 
Silberrad,  Oswald  John 
Silkin,  John  Ernest 
Silkin,  Lewis,  Baron 
Silkin,  Samuel  Charles,  Baron 

Silkin  of  Dulwich 
Sillitoe,  Sir  Percy  Joseph 
Silverman,  (Samuel)  Sydney 
Silvester,  Victor  Marlborough 
Sim,  Alastair  George  Bell 
Simmons,  Sir  John  Lintorn 

Arabin 
Simon,  Ernest  Emil  Darwin, 

Baron  Simon  of 

Wythenshawe 
Simon,  Sir  Francis  Eugen 

('Franz') 
Simon,  Sir  John 
Simon,  John  Allsebrook, 

Viscount 
Simon,  Oliver  Joseph 
Simonds,  Gavin  Turnbull, 

Viscount 


1837-1902 
1907-1977 

1890-1967 

1816-1906 
1880-1963 
1917-1981 
1840-1905 

1857-1945 
1883-1969 
1857-1926 
1834-1903 
1862-1935 
1906-1990 
1930-1982 
1856-1903 
1843-1906 
1877-1953 

1899-1960 
1883-1948 
1860-1942 
1872-1940 

1882-1948 
1845-1936 

1873-1952 

1889-1972 

1927-1988 
1861-1947 
1816-1904 

1896-1972 
1861-1929 
1878-1960 
1923-1987 
1889-1972 

1918-1988 
1888-1962 
1895-1968 
1900-1978 
1900-1976 

1821-1903 


1879-1960 

1893-1956 
1816-1904 

1873-1954 
1895-1956 

1881-1971 


Simonds,  James  Beart 
Simonsen,  Sir  John  Lionel 
Simpson,  (Bessie)  Wallis.  See 

Windsor 
Simpson,  (Cedric)  Keith 
Simpson,  Frederick  Arthur 
Simpson,  Sir  George  Clarke 
Simpson,  Sir  John  William 
Simpson,  Maxwell 
Simpson,  Percy 
Simpson,  Wilfred  Hudleston. 

See  Hudleston 
Simpson,  Sir  William  John 

Ritchie 
Sims,  Sir  Alfred  John 
Sims,  Charles 
Sims,  George  Robert 
Sinclair,  Sir  Archibald  Henry 

Macdonald,  Viscount 

Thurso 
Sinclair,  Sir  Edwyn  Sinclair 

Alexander-.  See 

Alexander-Sinclair 
Sinclair,  Sir  Hugh  Francis 

Paget 
Sinclair,  Hugh  Macdonald 
Sinclair,  John,  Baron 

Pentland 
Sinclair,  Sir  John  Alexander 
Sinclair,  Mary  Amelia  St 

Clair  ('May') 
Sinclair,  Ronald,  pseudonym. 

See  Teague-Jones,  Reginald 
Singer,  Charles  Joseph 
Singer,  Simeon 
Singleton,  Sir  John  Edward 
Singleton,  Mary 

Montgomerie.  See  Currie, 

Lady 
Sinha,  Satyendra  Prasanno, 

Baron 
Sitwell,  Dame  Edith  Louisa 
Sitwell,  Sir  (Francis)  Osbert 

(Sacheverell) 
Sitwell,  Sir  George  Reresby 
Sitwell,  Sir  Sacheverell 
Skeat,  Walter  William 
Skelton,  Raleigh  Ashlin 
Skipsey,  Joseph 
Skyrme,  Tony  Hilton  Royle 
Slack,  Kenneth 
Slaney,  William  Slaney 

Kenyon-.  See 

Kenyon-Slaney 
Slater,  Sir  William  Kershaw 
Slessor,  Sir  John  Cotesworth 
Slessor,  Mary  Mitchell 
Slim,  William  Joseph, 

Viscount 
Slingsby,  William  Cecil 
Smallwood,  Norah  Evelyn 


1810-1904 
1884-1957 

1896-1986 
1907-1985 
1883-1974 
1878-1965 
1858-1933 
1815-1902 
1865-1962 

1828-1909 

1855-1931 

1907-1977 

1873-1928 

#1847-1922 


1890-1970 


1865-1945 

#1873-1939 
1910-1990 

1860-1925 
1897-1977 

#1863-1946 

1889-1988 

1876-1960 

#1848-1906 

1885-1957 


1843-1905 

1864-1928 
1887-1964 

1892-1969 
1860-1943 
1897-1988 
1835-1912 
1906-1970 
1832-1903 
1922-1987 
1917-1987 


1847-1908 
1893-1970 
1897-1979 

#1848-1915 

1891-1970 

#1849-1929 

1909-1984 


590 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Smart,  Elizabeth 

Smart,  Sir  Morton  Warrack 

Smart,  William  George 

('Billy') 
Smartt,  Sir  Thomas  William 
Smeaton,  Donald  Mackenzie 
Smiles,  Samuel 
Smillie,  Robert 
Smith,  Sir  Archibald  Levin 
Smith,  Arthur  Hamilton 
Smith,  Arthur  Lionel 
Smith,  (Arthur)  Lionel 

(Forster) 
Smith,  Benjamin  Leigh 
Smith,  Cecil  Blanche 

Woodham-.  See 

Woodham-Smith 
Smith,  Sir  Cecil  Harcourt-. 

See  Harcourt-Smith 
Smith,  Sir  Charles  Bean 

Euan-.  See  Euan-Smith 
Smith,  Sir  Charles  Edward 

Kingsford 
Smith,  David  Nichol 
Smith,  Donald  Alexander, 

Baron  Strathcona 
Smith,  Edwin  William 
Smith,  Sir  Ernest  Woodhouse 
Smith,  Florence  Margaret 

('Stevie') 
Smith,  Frances  (Bunty 

Stephens) 
Smith,  Sir  Francis  (later 

Villeneuve-) 
Smith,  Sir  Frank  Edward 
Smith,  Sir  Frederick 
Smith,  Frederick  Edwin,  Earl 

of  Birkenhead 
Smith,  Frederick  John  Jervis-. 

See  Jervis-Smith 
Smith,  Frederick  Winston 

Furneaux,  Earl  of 

Birkenhead 
Smith,  Sir  George  Adam 
Smith,  George  Barnett 
Smith,  George  Vance 
Smith,  Goldwin 
Smith,  Sir  Grafton  Elliot 
Smith,  Sir  Henry  Babington 
Smith,  Henry  Spencer 
Smith,  Herbert 
Smith,  Sir  Hubert  Llewellyn 
Smith,  Sir  (James)  Eric 
Smith,  James  Hamblin 
Smith,  John 
Smith,  John  Alexander 
Smith,  (Lloyd)  Logan  Pearsall 
Smith,  Lucy  Toulmin 
Smith,  Sir  Matthew  Arnold 

Bracy 
Smith,  Reginald  Bosworth 


1913- 

-1986 

Smith,  Reginald  John 

1857- 

-1916 

1877- 

-1956 

Smith,  Rodney 

Smith,  Ronald  William.  See 

1860- 

-1947 

1893- 

-1966 

Parkinson,  Norman 

1913- 

-1990 

1858- 

-1929 

Smith,  Sir  Ross  Macpherson 

1892- 

-1922 

1846- 

-1910 

Smith,  Samuel 

1836- 

-1906 

1812- 

-1904 

Smith,  Sarah,  'Hesba  Stretton' 

1832- 

-1911 

1857- 

-1940 

Smith,  Stevie.  See  Smith, 

1836- 

-1901 

Florence  Margaret 

1902- 

-1971 

1860- 

-1941 

Smith,  Sir  Swire 

#1842- 

-1918 

1850- 

-1924 

Smith,  Sir  Sydney  Alfred 

1883- 

-1969 

Smith,  Thomas 

1817- 

-1906 

1880- 

-1972 

Smith,  Sir  Thomas 

1833- 

-1909 

#1828- 

-1913 

Smith,  Thomas 

1883- 

-1969 

Smith,  Sir  Thomas  Broun 

1915- 

-1988 

Smith,  Thomas  Roger 

1830- 

-1903 

1896- 

-1977 

Smith,  Vincent  Arthur 
Smith,  Vivian  Hugh,  Baron 

1848- 

-1920 

1859- 

-1944 

Bicester 

1867- 

-1956 

Smith,  Walter  Chalmers 

1824- 

-1908 

1842- 

-1910 

Smith,  Sir  William  Alexander 
Smith,  William  Frederick 

#1854- 

-1914 

1897- 

-1935 

Danvers,  Viscount 

1875- 

-1962 

Hambleden 

1868- 

-1928 

Smith,  William  Saumarez 

1836- 

-1909 

1820- 

-1914 

Smith-Dorrien,  Sir  Horace 

#1876- 

-1957 

Lockwood 

1858- 

-1930 

1884- 

-1960 

Smith-Rose,  Reginald  Leslie 

1894- 

-1980 

Smithells,  Arthur 

1860- 

-1939 

1902- 

-1971 

Smuts,  Jan  Christian 

1870- 

-1950 

Smyly,  Sir  Philip  Crampton 

1838- 

-1904 

1924- 

-1978 

Smyth,  Dame  Ethel  Mary 

1858- 

-1944 

Smyth,  Sir  Henry  Augustus 

1825- 

-1906 

1819- 

-1909 

Smythe,  Francis  Sydney 

1900- 

-1949 

1876- 

-1970 

Snedden,  Sir  Richard 

1900- 

-1970 

1857- 

-1929 

Snell,  Henry,  Baron 
Snell,  Sir  John  Francis 

1865- 

-1944 

1872- 

-1930 

Cleverton 

1869- 

-1938 

Snelus,  George  James 

1837- 

-1906 

#1848- 

-1911 

Snow,  Lady.  See  Johnson, 

Pamela  Hansford 

1912- 

-1981 

Snow,  Charles  Percy,  Baron 

1905- 

-1980 

#1907- 

-1975 

Snow,  Sir  Frederick  Sydney 

1899- 

-1976 

1856- 

-1942 

Snow,  Herbert.  See  Kynaston 

1835- 

-1910 

1841- 

-1909 

Snow,  Sir  Thomas  D'Oyly 

1858- 

-1940 

1816?- 

-1902 

Snowden,  Philip,  Viscount 

1864- 

-1937 

1823- 

-1910 

Soames,  (Arthur)  Christopher 

1871- 

-1937 

(John),  Baron 

1920- 

-1987 

1863- 

-1923 

Sobhuza  II,  Ngwenyama 

#1899- 

-1982 

1812- 

-1901 

Soddy,  Frederick 

1877- 

-1956 

1862- 

-1938 

Soissons,  Louis  Emmanuel 

1864- 

-1945 

Jean  Guy  de 

1909- 

-1990 

Savoie-Carignan  de.  See  de 

1829- 

-1901 

Soissons 

1890- 

-1962 

#1825- 

-1910 

Sollas,  William  Johnson 

1849- 

-1936 

1863- 

-1939 

Solly,  Henry 

#1813- 

-1903 

1865- 

-1946 

Solomon 

1902- 

-1988 

1838- 

-1911 

Solomon,  Keith  Granville. 

See  Granville,  Sir  Keith 

1910- 

-1990 

1879- 

-1959 

Solomon,  Sir  Richard 

1850- 

-1913 

1839- 

-1908 

Solomon,  Simeon 

1840- 

-1905 

59i 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Solomon,  Solomon  Joseph  1860-1927 
Somers-Cocks,  Arthur 

Herbert  Tennyson,  Baron 

Somers  1887-1944 
Somerset,  Henry  Hugh 

Arthur  FitzRoy,  Duke  of 

Beaufort  1900-1984 
Somerset,  Lady  Isabella 

Caroline  (Lady  Henry 

Somerset)  1851-1921 
Somervell,  Donald  Bradley, 

Baron  Somervell  of  Harrow  1889-1960 
Somervell,  (Theodore) 

Howard  1890-1975 
Somerville,  Edith  Anna 

(Enone  1858-1949 

Somerville,  Sir  James  Fownes  1882-1949 

Somerville,  Mary  1897-1963 

Somerville,  Sir  William  1860-1932 

Sonnenschein,  Edward  Adolf  1 85 1  -1929 
Sopwith,  Sir  Thomas  Octave 

Murdoch  1888-1989 

Sorabji,  Cornelia  1866-1954 

Sorabji,  Kaikhosru  Shapurji  1892-1988 

Sorby,  Henry  Clifton  1826-1908 

Sorley,  Charles  Hamilton  #1895-1915 

Sorley,  Sir  Ralph  Squire  1898-1974 

Sorley,  William  Ritchie  1855-1935 
Soskice,  Frank,  Baron  Stow 

Hill  1902-1979 

Sosnow,  Eric  Charles  1910-1987 
Sotheby,  Sir  Edward 

Southwell  1831-1902 

Soutar,  Ellen.  See  Farren  1848-1904 
Southborough,  Baron.  See 

Hopwood,  Francis  John 

Stephens  1860-1947 
Southesk,  Earl  of.  See 

Carnegie,  James  1827-1905 

Southey,  Sir  Richard  1808-1901 

Southward,  John  1840-1902 

Southwell,  Sir  Richard  Vynne  1888-1970 

Southwell,  Thomas  1831-1909 
Southwood,  Viscount.  See 

Elias,  Julius  Salter  1873-1946 

Souttar,  Sir  Henry  Sessions  1875-1964 

Spare,  Austin  Osman  1886-1956 
Spartali,  Marie.  See  Stillman, 

Marie  #1843-1927 

Speaight,  Robert  William  1904-1976 
Spear,  (Augustus  John) 

Ruskin  1911-1990 
Spear,  (Thomas  George) 

Percival  1901-1982 

Spearman,  Charles  Edward  1863-1945 

Spears,  Sir  Edward  Louis  1886-1974 

Spence,  Sir  Basil  Urwin  1907-1976 

Spence,  Sir  James  Calvert  1892-1954 

Spencer,  Gilbert  1892-1979 

Spencer,  Sir  Henry  Francis  1892-1964 

Spencer,  Herbert  1820-1903 


Spencer,  John  Poyntz,  Earl 

Spencer  1835-1910 

Spencer,  Leonard  James  1870-1959 

Spencer,  Sir  Stanley  1891-1959 

Spencer,  Sir  Walter  Baldwin  1860-1929 
Spencer-Churchill,  Baroness. 

See  Churchill,  Clementine 

Ogilvy  Spencer-  1885-1977 
Spencer-Churchill,  Randolph 

Frederick  Edward.  See 

Churchill  #1911-1968 

Spender,  John  Alfred  1862-1942 

Spens,  Sir  William  ('Will')  1882-1962 
Spens,  (William)  Patrick, 

Baron  1885-1973 

Speyer,  Sir  Edgar  1862-1932 

Spiers,  Richard  Phene  1838-1916 

Spiers,  Walter  Lewis  #1848-1917 

Spilsbury,  Sir  Bernard  Henry  1877-1947 

Spinks,  Alfred  1917-1982 

Spofforth,  Frederick  Robert  1853-1926 

Spooner,  William  Archibald  1844-1930 

Sporborg,  Henry  Nathan  1905-1985 
Sprengel,  Hermann  Johann 

Philipp  1834-1906 

Sprigg,  Sir  John  Gordon  1830-1913 

Sprigge,  Sir  (Samuel)  Squire  1860-1937 

Spring,  (Robert)  Howard  1889-1965 

Spring-Rice,  Sir  Cecil  Arthur  1859-1918 

Sprott,  George  Washington  1829-1909 

Spry,  Constance  1886-1960 
Spy,  pseudonym.  See  Ward, 

Sir  Leslie  1851-1922 

Squire,  Sir  John  Collings  1884-1958 

Squire,  William  Barclay  1855-1927 

Sraffa,  Piero  1898-1983 
Stable,  Sir  Wintringham 

Norton  1888-1977 

Stables,  William  Gordon  1840-1910 
Stack,  Sir  Lee  Oliver 

Fitzmaurice  1868-1924 

Stacpoole,  Frederick  1813-1907 

Stacpoole,  Henry  de  Vere  1863-1951 

Stafford,  Sir  Edward  William  1819-1901 

Stainer,  Sir  John  1840-1901 
Stalbridge,  Baron.  See 

Grosvenor,  Richard  de 

Aquila  1837-1912 

Stallard,  Hyla  Bristow  1901  -1973 
Stallybrass,  William  Teulon 

Swan  1883-1948 
Stamer,  Sir  Lovelace 

Tomlinson  1829-1908 
Stamfordham,  Baron.  See 

Bigge,  Arthur  John  1849-1931 

Stamp,  Josiah  Charles,  Baron  1880-1941 
Stamp,  Sir  (Laurence) 

Dudley  1898-1966 

Stanford,  Sir  Charles  Villiers  1852-1924 

Stanford,  Edward  #1827-1904 

Stanier,  Sir  William  Arthur  1876-1965 


592 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Stanley,  Albert  Henrv,  Baron 

Ashfield  1874-1948 

Stanley,  Sir  Arthur  1869-1947 

Stanley,  Edward  George 

Villiers,  Earl  of  Derby  1865-1948 

Stanley,  Edward  Lyulph, 

Baron  Sheffield  and  Baron 

Stanley  of  Alderley  1839-1925 

Stanley,  Frederick  Arthur, 

Earl  of  Derby  1841-1908 

Stanley,  Henry  Edward  John, 

Baron  Stanley  of  Alderley  1827-1903 

Stanley,  Sir  Henry  Morton  1841-1904 

Stanley,  Sir  Herbert  James  1872-1955 

Stanley,  Oliver  Frederick 

George  1896-1950 

Stanley,  William  Ford 

Robinson  1829-1909 

Stanmore,  Baron.  See 

Gordon,  Arthur  Charles 

Hamilton-  1829-1912 

Stannard,  Henrietta  Eliza 

Vaughan,  "John  Strange 

Winter'  1856-1911 

Stannus,  Hugh  Hutton  1840-1908 

Stansfeld,  Margaret  1860-1951 

Stansgate,  Viscount.  See 

Benn,  William  Wedgwood  1877-1960 

Stanton,  Arthur  Henry  1839-1913 

Stapledon,  Sir  (Reginald) 

George  1882-1960 

Stark,  Arthur  James  1 83 1  -1902 

Starling,  Ernest  Henry  1866-1927 

Starr,  George  Reginald  1904-1980 

Stead,  William  Thomas  1849-1912 

Stebbing,  (Lizzie)  Susan  1885-1943 

Steed,  Henry  Wickham  1871-1956 

Steel,  Allan  Gibson  1858-1914 

Steel,  Flora  Annie  1847-1929 

Steel-Maitland,  Sir  Arthur 

Herbert  Drummond 

Ramsay-  (formerly  Arthur 

Herbert  Drummond  Steel)  1876-1935 

Steele,  Sir  James  Stuart  1894-1975 

Steer,  Philip  Wilson  1860-1942 

Steers,  James  Alfred  1899-1987 

Steggall,  Charles  1826-1905 

Stein,  Sir  Edward  Sinauer  de. 

See  De  Stein  1887-1965 

Stein,  Leonard  Jacques  1887-1973 

Stein,  Sir  (Mark)  Aurel  1862-1943 

Stenton,  Doris  Mary  1894-1971 

Stenton,  Sir  Frank  Merry  1880-1967 

Stephen,  Sir  Alexander 

Condie  1850-1908 

Stephen,  Caroline  Emelia 

(1834-1909).  See  under 

Stephen,  Sir  Leslie 
Stephen,  George,  Baron 

Mount  Stephen  1829-1921 

Stephen,  Sir  Leslie  1832-1904 


Stephens,  Bunty.  See  Smith, 

Frances 
Stephens,  Frederic  George 
Stephens,  James 
Stephens,  James 
Stephens,  James  Brunton 
Stephens,  William  Richard 

Wood 
Stephenson,  Sir  Frederick 

Charles  Arthur 
Stephenson,  George  Robert 
Stephenson,  Sir  Gilbert  Owen 
Stephenson,  (John)  Cecil 
Stephenson,  Marjory 
Stephenson,  Thomas  Alan 
Stephenson,  Sir  William 

Samuel 
Steptoe,  Patrick  Christopher 
Sterling  (afterwards 

MacKinlay),  Antoinette 
Stern,  Sir  Albert  Gerald 
Sternberg,  Rudy,  Baron 

Plurenden 
Sterndale,  Baron.  See 

Pickford,  William 
Sterry,  Charlotte 
Stevens,  Marshall 
Stevens,  Thomas  Terry  Hoar. 

See  Terry-Thomas 
Stevenson,  Sir  (Aubrey) 

Melford  (Steed) 
Stevenson,  Sir  Daniel 

Macaulay 
Stevenson,  David  Watson 
Stevenson,  James,  Baron 
Stevenson,  John  James 
Stevenson,  Sir  Thomas 
Stevenson,  William  Henry 
Stewart,  Charles 
Stewart,  Sir  Halley 
Stewart,  Isla 
Stewart,  James 
Stewart,  John  Alexander 
Stewart,  Sir  (Percy)  Malcolm 
Stewart,  (Robert)  Michael 

(Maitland),  Baron  Stewart 

of  Fulham 
Stewart,  Sir  (Samuel) 

Findlater 
Stewart,  William  Arnold 
Stewart,  William  Downie 
Stewart,  Sir  William  Houston 
Stewart-Murray,  Katharine 

Marjory,  Duchess  of 

Atholl 
Stiles,  Sir  Harold  Jalland 
Stiles,  Walter 

Still,  Sir  (George)  Frederic 
Stillman  or  Spartali,  Marie 
Stirling,  Sir  (Archibald) 

David 


1924-1978 
1828-1907 
1825-1901 
1880P-1950 
1835-1902 

1839-1902 

1821-1911 
1819-1905 
1878-1972 
1889-1965 

1885-1948 
1898-1961 

1896-1989 
1913-1988 

1843-1904 
1878-1966 

1917-1978 

1848-1923 
1870-1966 
1852-1936 

1911-1990 

1902-1987 

1851-1944 
1842-1904 
1873-1926 
1831-1908 
1838-1908 
1858-1924 
1840-1907 
1838-1937 
1855-1910 
1831-1905 
1846-1933 
1872-1951 


1906-1990 

1879-1960 

#1882-1953 

1878-1949 

1822-1901 


1874-1960 
1863-1946 
1886-1966 
1868-1941 
#1843-1927 

1915-1990 


593 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Stirling,  Sir  James  1836-1916 

Stirling,  James  Hutchison  1820-1909 

Stirling,  Walter  Francis  1880-1958 

Stockdale,  Sir  Frank  Arthur  1883-1949 

Stocks,  John  Lcofric  1882-1937 
Stocks,  Mary  Danvers, 

Baroness  1891-1975 
Stockton,  Earl  of.  See 

Macmillan,  (Maurice) 

Harold  1894-1986 

Stockwell,  Sir  Hugh  Charles  1903-1986 

Stoddart,  Andrew  Ernest  1863-1915 

Stoker,  Abraham  ('Bram')  #1847-1912 

Stokes,  Adrian  1887-1927 

Stokes,  Adrian  Durham  1902-1972 
Stokes,  Sir  Frederick  Wilfrid 

Scott  1860-1927 

Stokes,  Sir  George  Gabriel  1819-1903 

Stokes,  Sir  John  1825-1902 

Stokes,  Whidey  1830-1909 

Stokowski,  Leopold  Anthony  1882-1977 

Stoll,  Sir  Oswald  1866-1942 

Stone,  (Alan)  Reynolds  1909-1979 

Stone,  Darwell  1859-1941 

Stonehouse,  John  Thomson  1925-1988 

Stoner,  Edmund  Clifton  1899-1968 

Stoney,  Bindon  Blood  1828-1909 

Stoney,  George  Gerald  1863-1942 

Stoney,  George  Johnstone  1826-1911 

Stoop,  Adrian  Dura  1883-1957 
Stopes,  Marie  Charlotte 

Carmichael  1880-1958 
Stopford,  Sir  Frederick 

William  1854-1929 
Stopford,  John  Sebastian 

Bach,  Baron  Stopford  of 

Fallowfield  1888-1961 

Stopford,  Robert  Wright  1901-1976 
Storrs,  Sir  Ronald  Henry 

Amherst  1881-1955 

Storry,  (George)  Richard  1913-1982 

Story,  Robert  Herbert  1835-1907 
Story-Maskelyne,  Mervyn 

Herbert  Nevil  1823-1911 

Stout,  George  Frederick  1860-1944 

Stout,  Sir  Robert  1844-1930 
Stow  Hill,  Baron.  See 

Soskice,  Frank  1902-1979 

Strachan,  Douglas  1875-1950 

Strachan,  John  1862-1907 
Strachan-Davidson,  James 

Leigh  1843-1916 
Strachey,  Sir  Arthur  (1858- 

1901).  See  under  Strachey, 

Sir  John 

Strachey,  Christopher  1916-1975 

Strachey,  Sir  Edward  1812-1901 
Strachey,  Sir  Edward,  Baron 

Strachie  1858-1936 
Strachey,  (Evelyn)  John  (St 

Loe)  1901-1963 


Strachey,  (Giles)  Lytton  1880-1932 

Strachey,  Sir  John  1823-1907 

Strachey,  John  St  Loe  1860-1927 

Strachey,  Rachel  Conn  ('Ray')  #1887-1940 

Strachey,  Sir  Richard  1817-1908 
Strachie,  Baron.  See  Strachey, 

Sir  Edward  1858-1936 
Stradling,  Sir  Reginald 

Edward  1891-1952 

Strahan,  Sir  Aubrey  #1852-1928 

Straight,  Whitney  Willard  1912-1979 

Strakosch,  Sir  Henry  1 87 1  -1943 

Strang,  William  1859-1921 

Strang,  William,  Baron  1893-1978 
Strangways,  Arthur  Henry 

Fox  1859-1948 
Strangways,  Giles  Stephen 

Holland  Fox-,  Earl  of 

Ilchester.  See 

Fox-Strangways  1874-1959 
Strathalmond,  Baron.  See 

Fraser,  William  1888-1970 
Strathcarron,  Baron.  See 

Macpherson,  Qames)  Ian  1880-1937 
Strathclyde,  Baron.  See  Ure, 

Alexander  1853-1928 
Strathcona,  Baron.  See  Smith, 

Donald  Alexander  1820-1914 
Strathmore  and  Kinghorne, 

Earl  of.  See  Bowes-Lyon, 

Claude  George  1855-1944 
Stratton,  Frederick  John 

Marrian  1881-1960 
Strauss,  Henry  George,  Baron 

Conesford  1892-1974 

Streatfeild,  (Mary)  Noel  1895-1986 

Street,  Arthur  George  1892-1966 

Street,  Sir  Arthur  William  1892-1951 

Streeter,  Burnett  Hillman  1874-1937 
Stretton,  Hesba,  pseudonym. 

See  Smith,  Sarah  1832-1911 

Strickland,  Gerald,  Baron  1 86 1  -1 940 

Strijdom,  Johannes  Gerhardus  1893-1958 

Strong,  Eugenie  1860-1943 
Strong,  Sir  Kenneth  William 

Dobson  1900-1982 
Strong,  Leonard  Alfred 

George  1896-1958 

Strong,  Patience  1907-1990 

Strong,  Sir  Samuel  Henry  1825-1909 

Strong,  Sandford  Arthur  1863-1904 

Strong,  Thomas  Banks  1861-1944 

Struthers,  Sir  John  1857-1925 

Strutt,  Edward  Gerald  1854-1930 
Strutt,  John  William,  Baron 

Rayleigh  1842-1919 
Strutt,  Robert  John,  Baron 

Rayleigh  1875-1947 

Stuart,  Sir  Campbell  Arthur  1885-1972 

Stuart,  Herbert  Akroyd  #1864-1927 

Stuart,  James  #1843-1913 


594 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Stuart,  James  Gray,  Viscount 

Swaythling,  Baron.  See 

Stuart  of  Findhorn 

1897- 

-1971 

Montagu,  Samuel 

1832- 

4911 

Stuart,  Sir  John  Theodosius 

Sweet,  Henry 

1845- 

-1912 

Burnett-.  See 

Sweet-Escott,  Bickham 

Burnett-Stuart 

1875- 

-1958 

Aldred  Cowan 

1907- 

-1981 

Stuart-Jones,  Sir  Henry.  See 

Swete,  Henry  Barclay 

1835- 

-1917 

Jones 

1867- 

-1939 

Swettenham,  Sir  Frank 

Stubbs,  Sir  Reginald  Edward 

1876- 

-1947 

Athelstan(e) 

1850- 

-1946 

Stubbs,  William 

1825- 

-1901 

Swift,  Sir  Rigby  Philip 

Studd,  Charles  Thomas 

#1860- 

-1931 

Watson 

1874- 

-1937 

Studd,  Sir  (John  Edward) 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles 

1837- 

-1909 

Kynaston 

1858- 

-1944 

Swinburne,  Sir  James 

1858- 

-1958 

Studdert  Kennedy,  Geoffrey 

Swindin,  Norman 

#1880- 

-1976 

Anketell 

#1883- 

-1929 

Swinfen,  Baron.  See  Eady, 

Sturdee,  Sir  Frederick 

Charles  Swinfen 

1851- 

-1919 

Charles  Doveton 

1859- 

-1925 

Swinnerton,  Frank  Arthur 

1884- 

-1982 

Sturgis,  Julian  Russell 

1848- 

-1904 

Swinton,  Earl  of.  See 

Sturt,  George 

1863- 

-1927 

Cunliffe-Lister,  Philip 

1884- 

-1972 

Sturt,  Henry  Gerard,  Baron 

Swinton,  Alan  Archibald 

Alington 

1825- 

-1904 

Campbell 

1863- 

-1930 

Sueter,  Sir  Murray  Frazer 

1872- 

-1960 

Swinton,  Sir  Ernest  Dunlop 

1868- 

-1951 

Sugden,  Samuel 

#1892- 

-1950 

Swire,  John  Kidston 

#1893- 

-1983 

Sugden,  Sir  (Theodore) 

Sydenham  of  Combe,  Baron. 

Morris 

1919- 

-1984 

See  Clarke,  George 

Sullivan.  Alexander  Martin 

1871- 

-1959 

Sydenham 

1848- 

-1933 

Summerskill,  Edith  Clara, 

Syfret,  Sir  (Edward)  Neville 

1889- 

-1972 

Baroness 

1901- 

-1980 

Sykes,  Sir  Charles 

1905- 

-1982 

Sumner,  Viscount.  See 

Sykes,  Christopher  Hugh 

1907- 

-1986 

Hamilton,  John  Andrew 

1859- 

-1934 

Sykes,  Sir  Frederick  Hugh 

1877- 

-1954 

Sumner,  Benedict  Humphrey 

1893- 

-1951 

Sykes,  Sir  Mark 

1879- 

-1919 

Sumner,  (George)  Heywood 

Svkes,  Sir  Percy  Molesworth 

1867- 

-1945 

(Maunoir) 

#1853- 

-1940 

Sykes,  William  Robert 

#1840- 

-1917 

Sumner,  Mary  Elizabeth 

#1828- 

-1921 

Svllas,  Stelios  Messinesos 

Sutcliffe,  Herbert  William 

1894- 

-1978 

('Leo')  de.  See  De  Svllas 

1917- 

-1964 

Sutherland,  Alexander 

1852- 

-1902 

Sylvester,  Albert  James 

1889- 

-1989 

Sutherland,  Sir  Gordon 

Syme,  David 

1827- 

-1908 

Brims  Black  Mclvor 

1907- 

-1980 

Syme,  Sir  Ronald 

1903- 

-1989 

Sutherland,  Graham  Vivian 

1903- 

-1980 

Symes,  Sir  (George)  Stewart 

1882- 

-1962 

Sutherland,  Halliday  Gibson 

1882- 

-1960 

Symes-Thompson,  Edmund 

1837- 

-1906 

Sutherland,  Dame  Lucy 

Symonds,  Sir  Charles  Putnam 

1890- 

-1978 

Stuart 

1903- 

-1980 

Symonds,  Sir  Charters  James 

1852- 

-1932 

Sutherland,  Sir  Thomas 

1834- 

-1922 

Symons,  Alphonse  James 

Sutro,  Alfred 

1863- 

-1933 

Albert 

#1900- 

-1941 

Sutton,  Sir  Bertine  Entwisle 

1886- 

-1946 

Symons,  Arthur  William 

1865- 

-1945 

Sutton,  Henry  Septimus 

1825- 

-1901 

Symons,  Wrilliam  Christian 

1845- 

-1911 

Sutton,  Sir  John  Bland- 

1855- 

-1936 

Synge,  John  Millington 

1871- 

-1909 

Sutton,  Martin  Hope 

#1815- 

-1901 

Szabo,  Violette  Reine 

Sutton,  Martin  John 

1850- 

-1913 

Elizabeth 

#1921- 

-1945 

Sutton,  Sir  (Oliver)  Graham 

1903- 

-1977 

Szamuely,  Tibor 

1925- 

-1972 

Swaffer,  Hannen 

1879- 

-1962 

Swain,  Joseph 

1820- 

-1909 

Swan,  John  Macallan 

1847- 

-1910 

Tadema,  Sir  Lawrence  Alma-. 

Swan,  Sir  Joseph  Wilson 

1828- 

-1914 

See  Alma-Tadema 

1836- 

-1912 

Swanborough,  Baroness.  See 

Tafawa  Balewa,  Alhaji  Sir 

Isaacs,  Stella 

1894- 

-1971 

Abu  Bakar 

1912- 

-1966 

Swann,  Michael  Meredith, 

Tagore,  Sir  Rabindranath 

1861- 

-1941 

Baron 

1920- 

-1990 

Tait,  Frederick  Guthrie 

Swann,  Sir  Oliver 

1878- 

-1948 

(1870-1900).  See  under 

Swanwick,  Helena  Maria 

Tait,  Peter  Guthrie 

Lucy 

#1864- 

-1939 

Tait,  James 

1863- 

-1944 

Swayne.,  Joseph  Griffiths 

1819- 

-1903 

Tait,  Peter  Guthrie 

1831- 

-1901 

595 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Tait,  Sir  (William  Eric) 

Campbell  1886-1946 

Talbot,  Edward  Stuart  1844-1934 

Talbot,  Sir  George  John  1 86 1  -1938 

Tallack,  William  1831-1908 

Tallents,  Sir  Stephen  George  1884-1958 
Tangley,  Baron.  See  Herbert, 

Edwin  Savory  1899-1973 

Tangye,  Sir  Richard  1833-1906 

Tanner,  Joseph  Robson  1860-1931 

Tansley,  Sir  Arthur  George  1 87 1  -1955 
Tarn,  Sir  William 

Woodthorpe  1869-1957 

Tarte,  Joseph  Israel  1848-1907 

Taschereau,  Sir  Henri  Elzear  1836-1911 
Taschereau,  Sir  Henri 

Thomas  1841-1909 

Tata,  Sir  Dorabji  Jamsetji  1859-1932 

Tata,  Jamsetji  Nasarwanji  1839-1904 

Tate,  Maurice  William  #1895-1956 

Tatlow,  Tissington  1876-1957 

Tattersfield,  Frederick  1881-1959 

Tauber,  Richard  #  1 89 1  -1948 

Taunton,  Ethelred  Luke  1857-1907 

Tawney,  Richard  Henry  1880-1962 

Taylor,  Alan  John  Percivale  1906-1990 
Taylor,  Alec  Clifton-.  See 

Clifton-Taylor  1907-1985 

Taylor,  Alfred  Edward  1869-1945 

Taylor,  Charles  1840-1908 

Taylor,  Charles  Bell  1829-1909 
Taylor,  Eva  Germaine 

Rimington  1879-1966 

Taylor,  Frank  Sherwood  1897-1956 

Taylor,  Sir  Geoffrey  Ingram  1886-1975 
Taylor,  Sir  Gordon  Gordon-. 

See  Gordon-Taylor  1878-1960 

Taylor,  Helen  1831-1907 

Taylor,  Henry  Martyn  1842-1927 

Taylor,  Isaac  1829-1901 

Taylor,  James  Haward  1909-1968 

Taylor,  (James)  Hudson  #1832-1905 

Taylor,  Sir  John  1833-1912 

Taylor,  John  Edward  1830-1905 

Taylor,  John  Henry  187 1  -1963 

Taylor,  Louisa.  See  Parr  </.1903 

Taylor,  Sir  Thomas  Murray  1897-1962 
Taylor,  Sir  Thomas  Weston 

Johns  1895-1953 

Taylor,  Walter  Ross  1838-1907 

Taylor,  William  1865-1937 

Taylor,  William  Ernest  #1856-1927 

Teague-Jones,  Reginald  1889-1988 

Teale,  Thomas  Pridgin  1831-1923 
Teall,  Sir  Jethro  Justinian 

Harris  1849-1924 

Tearle,  (George)  Osmond  1852-1901 

Tearle,  Sir  Godfrey  Seymour  1884-1953 
Tedder,  Arthur  William, 

Baron  1890-1967 

Tegart,  Sir  Charles  Augustus  1881-1946 


Teichman,  Sir  Eric  1884-1944 
Temperley,  Harold  William 

Vazeille  1879-1939 

Tempest,  Dame  Marie  1864-1942 

Temple,  Frederick  1821-1902 

Temple,  Sir  Richard  1826-1902 

Temple,  Sir  Richard  Carnac  1850-1931 

Temple,  William  1881-1944 
Templer,  Sir  Gerald  Walter 

Robert  1898-1979 
Templewood,  Viscount.  See 

Hoare,  Sir  Samuel  John 

Gurney  1880-1959 
Tenby,  Viscount.  See 

Lloyd-George,  Gwilym  1894-1967 

Tennant,  Sir  Charles  1823-1906 

Tennant,  Sir  David  1829-1905 
Tennant,  Margaret  Mary 

Edith  ('May')  1869-1946 

Tenniel,  Sir  John  1820-1914 
Tennyson-d'Eyncourt,  Sir 

Eustace  Henry  William  1868-1951 

Terry,  Dame  (Alice)  Ellen  1847-1928 

Terry,  Charles  Sanford  1864-1936 

Terry,  Fred  1863-1933 

Terry,  Sir  Richard  Runciman  1865-1938 

Terry-Thomas  1911-1990 

Tertis,  Lionel  1876-1975 

Tetlow,  Norman  1899-1982 

Tewson,  Sir  (Harold)  Vincent  1898-1981 
Tey,  Josephine.  See 

Mackintosh,  Elizabeth  #1896-1952 
Teyte,  Dame  Margaret 

('Maggie')  1888-1976 
Thalben-Ball,  Sir  George 

Thomas  1896-1987 
Thankerton,  Baron.  See 

Watson,  William  1873-1948 
Thesiger,  Frederic  Augustus, 

Baron  Chelmsford  1827-1905 
Thesiger,  Frederic  John 

Napier,  Viscount 

Chelmsford  1868-1933 

Thirkell,  Angela  Margaret  1890-1961 
Thiselton-Dyer,  Sir  William 

Turner  1843-1928 

Thoday,  David  1883-1964 

Thorn,  Alexander  #1894-1985 

Thomas,  Bertram  Sidney  1892-1950 
Thomas,  David  Alfred, 

Viscount  Rhondda  1856-1918 

Thomas,  Dylan  Marlais  1914-1953 
Thomas,  Forest  Frederic 

Edward  Yeo-.  See 

Yeo-Thomas  1902-1964 

Thomas,  Frederick  William  1867-1956 
Thomas,  Freeman  Freeman-, 

Marquess  of  Willingdon. 

See  Freeman-Thomas  1866-1941 

Thomas,  Sir  George  Alan  1881-1972 

Thomas,  George  Holt  1869-1929 


596 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Thomas,  Gwyn 
Thomas,  Sir  Henry 
Thomas,  Herbert  Henry 
Thomas,  Howard 
Thomas,  Sir  Hugh  Evan-. 

See  Evan-Thomas 
Thomas,  Hugh  Hamshaw 
Thomas,  James  Henry 
Thomas,  James  Purdon 

Lewes,  Viscount  Cilcennin 
Thomas,  (Lewis  John) 

Wynford  Vaughan-.  See 

Vaughan-Thomas 
Thomas,  Margaret  Haig, 

Viscountess  Rhondda 
Thomas,  Meirion 
Thomas,  (Philip)  Edward 
Thomas,  Terry-.  See 

Terry-Thomas 
Thomas,  Sir  (Thomas) 

Shenton  (Whitelegge) 
Thomas,  Sir  William  Beach 
Thomas,  William  Moy 
Thompson,  Alexander 

Hamilton 
Thompson,  D'Arcy 

Wentworth 
Thompson,  Sir  D'Arcy 

Wentworth 
Thompson,  Edmund  Symes-. 

See  Symes-Thompson 
Thompson,  Edward  John 
Thompson,  Sir  Edward 

Maunde 
Thompson,  Flora  Jane 
Thompson,  Francis 
Thompson,  Gertrude  Caton-. 

See  Caton-Thompson 
Thompson,  Sir  Harold  Warris 
Thompson,  Sir  Henry- 
Thompson,  Sir  (Henry 

Francis)  Herbert 
Thompson,  Henry  Yates 
Thompson,  James  Matthew 
Thompson,  Sir  (John)  Eric 

(Sidney) 
Thompson,  Lydia 
Thompson,  Reginald 

Campbell 
Thompson,  Roscoe  Treeve 

Fawcett.  See  Rotha,  Paul 
Thompson,  Silvanus  Phillips 
Thompson,  William  Marcus 
Thomson,  Arthur 
Thomson,  Sir  (Arthur) 

Landsborough 
Thomson,  Sir  Basil  Home 
Thomson,  Christopher 

Birdwood,  Baron 
Thomson,  David 
Thomson,  Sir  George  Paget 


1913- 

-1981 

Thomson,  Sir  George  Pirie 

1887-1965 

1878- 

-1952 

Thomson,  George  Reid,  Lord 

1893-1962 

1876- 

-1935 

Thomson,  Hugh 

1860-1920 

1909- 

-1986 

Thomson,  Jocelyn  Home 

1859-1908 

Thomson,  John 

1856-1926 

1862- 

-1928 

Thomson,  Sir  Joseph  John 

1856-1940 

1885- 

-1962 

Thomson,  Roy  Herbert, 

1874- 

-1949 

Baron  Thomson  of  Fleet 
Thomson,  William,  Baron 

1894-1976 

1903- 

-1960 

Kelvin 

1824-1907 

Thomson,  Sir  William 

1843-1909 

Thorndike,  Dame  (Agnes) 

1908- 

-1987 

Sybil 

1882-1976 

Thome,  William  James  ('Will') 

1857-1946 

1883- 

-1958 

Thornton,  Alfred  Henry 

1894- 

-1977 

Robinson 

1863-1939 

1878- 

-1917 

Thornton,  Sir  Edward 

1817-1906 

Thornycroft,  Sir  John  Isaac 

1843-1928 

1911- 

-1990 

Thornycroft,  Sir  (William) 

Hamo 

1850-1925 

1879- 

-1962 

Thorpe,  Sir  Thomas  Edward 

1845-1925 

1868- 

-1957 

Threlfall,  Sir  Richard 

1861-1932 

1828- 

-1910 

Thring,  Godfrey 

1823-1903 

Thring,  Henry,  Baron 

1818-1907 

1873- 

-1952 

Thrower,  Percy  John 

1913-1988 

Thrupp,  George  Athelstane 

1822-1905 

1829- 

-1902 

Thuillier,  Sir  Henry  Edward 

Landor 

1813-1906 

1860- 

-1948 

Thursfield,  Sir  James 
Thurso,  Viscount.  See 

1840-1923 

1837- 

-1906 

Sinclair,  Sir  Archibald 

1886- 

-1946 

Henry  Macdonald 
Thurston  (formerly  Madden), 

1890-1970 

1840- 

-1929 

{Catherine  Cecil 

1875-1911 

#1876- 

-1947 

Tilden,  Sir  William  Augustus 

#1842-1926 

1859- 

-1907 

Tillett,  Benjamin  ('Ben') 

1860-1943 

Tilley,  Cecil  Edgar 

1894-1973 

1888- 

-1985 

Tilley,  Vesta 

1864-1952 

1908- 

-1983 

Tilman,  Harold  William 

1898-?1977 

1820- 

-1904 

Tiltman,  John  Hessell 

#1894-1982 

Tinbergen,  Nikolaas 

1907-1988 

1859- 

-1944 

Tinling,  Cuthbert 

1838- 

-1928 

Colhngwood  ('Ted') 

1910-1990 

1878- 

-1956 

Tinsley,  William 

1831-1902 

Tinworth,  George 

1843-1913 

1898- 

-1975 

Titchmarsh,  Edward  Charles 

1899-1963 

1836- 

-1908 

Titmuss,  Richard  Morris 
Tiwana,  Nawab  Sir 

1907-1973 

1876- 

-1941 

(Muhammad)  Umar  Hayat 

1874-1944 

Tizard,  Sir  Henry  Thomas 

1885-1959 

1907- 

-1984 

Tizard,  Jack 

1919-1979 

1851- 

-1916 

Tizard,  Thomas  Henry 

1839-1924 

1857- 

-1907 

Todd,  Sir  Charles 

1826-1910 

1858- 

-1935 

Tolansky,  Samuel 

1907-1973 

Tolkien,  John  Ronald  Reuel 

1892-1973 

1890- 

-1977 

Tolley,  Cyril  James  Hastings 

1895-1978 

1861- 

-1939 

Tomun,  Thomas  James 

Cheshyre,  Baron 

1867-1935 

1875- 

-1930 

Tomlinson,  George 

1890-1952 

#1912- 

-1970 

Tomlinson,  Henry  Major 

1873-1958 

1892- 

-1975 

Tomson,  Arthur 

1859-1905 

597 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Tonks,  Henry 
Toole,  John  Lawrence 
Topley,  William  Whiteman 

Carlton 
Topolski,  Feliks 
Torrance,  George  William 
Tosti,  Sir  (Francesco)  Paolo 
Tout,  Thomas  Frederick 
Tovey,  Sir  Donald  Francis 
Tovey,  John  Cronyn,  Baron 
Townsend,  Charles  Harrison 
Townsend,  Sir  John  Sealy 

Edward 
Townsend,  Meredith  White 
Townshend,  Sir  Charles  Vere 

Ferrers 
Towse,  Sir  (Ernest) 

Beachcroft  (Beckwith) 
Toynbee,  Arnold  Joseph 
Toynbee,  Paget  Jackson 
Toynbee,  (Theodore)  Philip 
Tozer,  Henry  Fanshawe 
Tracey,  Sir  Richard  Edward 
Trafford,  F.  G.,  pseudonym. 

See  Riddell,  Charlotte  Eliza 

Lawson 
Traill,  Anthony 
Traill-Burroughs,  Sir 

Frederick  William.  See 

Burroughs 
Travers,  Benjamin 
Travers,  Morris  William 
Tredgold,  Sir  Robert 

Clarkson 
Tree,  Sir  Herbert  Beerbohm 
Treloar,  Sir  William  Purdie 
Trench,  Anthony  Chenevix-. 

See  Chenevix-Trench 
Trench,  Frederic  Herbert 
Trenchard,  Hugh  Montague, 

Viscount 
Trend,  Burke  Frederick  St 

John,  Baron 
Trent,  Baron.  See  Boot,  Jesse 
Trethowan,  Sir  (James)  Ian 

(Raley) 
Trevelyan,  Sir  Charles  Philips 
Trevelyan,  George  Macaulay 
Trevelyan,  Sir  George  Otto 
Trevelyan,  Hilda 
Trevelyan,  Humphrey,  Baron 
Trevelyan,  Julian  Otto 
Treves,  Sir  Frederick 
Trevethin,  Baron.  See 

Lawrence,  Alfred  Tristram 
Trevethin,  Baron.  See 

Lawrence,  Geoffrey 
Trevor,  John 

Trevor,  William  Spottiswoode 
Trinder,  Thomas  Edward 

('Tommy') 


1862-1937 
1830-1906 

1886-1944 
1907-1989 
1835-1907 

#1846-1916 
1855-1929 
1875-1940 
1885-1971 

#1851-1928 

1868-1957 
1831-1911 

1861-1924 

1864-1948 
1889-1975 
1855-1932 
1916-1981 
#1829-1916 
1837-1907 


1832-1906 
1838-1914 


1831-1905 
1886-1980 
1872-1961 

1899-1977 
1852-1917 
1843-1923 

1919-1979 
1865-1923 

1873-1956 

1914-1987 
1850-1931 

1922-1990 
1870-1958 
1876-1962 
1838-1928 
1877-1959 
1905-1985 
1910-1988 
1853-1923 

1843-1936 

#1880-1971 

#1855-1930 

1831-1907 

1909-1989 


Tristram,  Ernest  William  1882-1952 

Tristram,  Henry  Baker  1822-1906 

Tritton,  Sir  William  Ashbee  1875-1946 
Trotter,  Wilfred  Batten 

Lewis  1872-1939 
Troubridge,  Sir  Ernest 

Charles  Thomas  1862-1926 
Troubridge,  Sir  Thomas 

Hope  1895-1949 

Troup,  Robert  Scott  1874-1939 

Trueman,  Sir  Arthur  Elijah  1894-1956 

Trueta,  Josep  Anthony  1897-1977 

Truman,  Edwin  Thomas  1818-1905 
Truscot,  Bruce,  pseudonym. 

See  Peers,  Edgar  Allison  1 89 1  -1 952 

Tshekedi  Khama  1905-1959 

Tucker,  Alfred  Robert  1849-1914 

Tucker,  Sir  Charles  1838-1935 
Tucker,  (Frederick)  James, 

Baron  1888-1975 

Tucker,  Henry  William  1830-1902 

Tuckwell,  Gertrude  Mary  1861-1951 

Tuke,  Henry  Scott  1858-1929 
Tuker,  Sir  Francis  Ivan 

Simms  1894-1967 

Tulloch,  William  John  1 887  -1966 
Tunnicliffe,  Charles  Frederick         1901-1979 

Tupper,  Sir  Charles  1821-1915 

Tupper,  Sir  Charles  Lewis  1848-1910 

Turing,  Alan  Mathison  1912-1954 
Turnbull,  Sir  Alexander 

Cuthbert  1925-1990 

Turnbull,  Hubert  Maitland  1875-1955 

Turner,  Sir  Ben  1863-1942 

Turner,  Charles  Edward  1831-1903 

Turner,  Cuthbert  Hamilton  1860-1930 

Turner,  Eustace  Ebenezer  1893-1966 

Turner,  Dame  Eva  1892-1990 

Turner,  George  Charlewood  1891-1967 

Turner,  George  Grey  1877-1951 

Turner,  Harold  1909-1962 

Turner,  Herbert  Hall  1861-1930 

Turner,  James  Smith  1832-1904 

Turner,  Sir  Ralph  Lilley  #1888-1983 
Turner,  Walter  James 

Redfern  1889-1946 

Turner,  Sir  William  1832-1916 
Turner,  William  Ernest 

Stephen  1881-1963 

Turnor,  Christopher  Hatton  1873-1940 
Tumour,  Edward,  Earl 

Winterton  and  Baron 

Tumour  1883-1962 

Turpin,  Edmund  Hart  1835-1907 

Turrill,  William  Bertram  1890-1961 

Turin,  Thomas  Gaskell  1908-1987 
Tutton,  Alfred  Edwin 

Howard  1864-1938 

Tweed,  John  1869-1933 
Tweedmouth,  Baron.  See 

Marjoribanks,  Edward  1849-1909 


598 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Tweedsmuir,  Baron.  See 

Buchan,  John  1875-1940 
Twining,  Edward  Francis, 

Baron  1899-1967 

Twining,  Louisa  #1820-1912 
Twort,  Frederick  William 

('Peter')  #1877-1950 

Twyman,  Frank  1876-1959 

Tyabji,  Badruddin  1844-1906 

Tyerman,  Donald  1908-1981 

Tyler,  Thomas  1826-1902 

Tylor,  Sir  Edward  Burnett  1832-1917 

Tylor,  Joseph  John  1851-1901 
Tynan,  Katharine.  See 

Hinkson  1861-1931 

Tynan,  Kenneth  Peacock  1927-1980 

Tyndale-Biscoe,  Cecil  Earle  1863-1949 

Tyndall,  Arthur  Mannering  1881-1961 

Tvrrell,  George  1861-1909 

Tyrrell,  Robert  Yelverton  1844-1914 
Tyrrell,  William  George, 

Baron  1866-1947 

Tyrwhitt,  Sir  Reginald  Yorke  1870-1951 
Tyrwhitt-Wilson,  Sir  Gerald 

Hugh,  Baron  Berners  1883-1950 


Ullswater,  Viscount.  See 

Lowther,  James  William  1855-1949 

Underhill,  Edward  Bean  1813-1901 
Underhill,  Evelvn  (Mrs 

Stuart  Moore)  1875-1941 
Underwood,  (George  Claude) 

Leon  1890-1975 

Unwin,  Sir  Raymond  1863-1940 

Unwin,  Sir  Stanley  1884-1968 

Unwin,  William  Cawthorne  1838-1933 
Upjohn,  Gerald  Ritchie, 

Baron  1903-1971 
Ure,  Alexander,  Baron 

Strathclvde  1853-1928 

Urquhart,  Robert  Elliott  1901-1988 

Urwick,  Wilham  1826-1905 
Uthwatt,  Augustus  Andrewes, 

Baron  1879-1949 
Udev,  Thomas  Edwin 

('Peter')  1921-1988 

Uttlev,  Ahce  Jane  ('Alison')  1884-1976 

Uvarov,  Sir  Boris  Petrovitch  1889-1970 

Uwins,  Cyril  Frank  1896-1972 


Vachell,  Horace  Anneslev  1861-1955 

Vaizev,  John  Ernest,  Baron  1929-1984 

Vallance,  Gerald  Avlmer  1892-1955 

Vallance,  William  Fleming  1827-1904 

Vanbrugh,  Dame  Irene  1872-1949 

Vanbrugh,  Violet  1867-1942 

Vandam,  Albert  Dresden  1843-1903 

Van  Damm,  Sheila  1922-1987 


Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 

Charles  Stewart,  Marquess 

of  Londonderry  1852-1915 

Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 

Charles  Stewart  Henry, 

Marquess  of  Londonderry  1878-1949 

Van  Home,  Sir  Wilham 

Cornelius  1843-1915 

Vansittart,  Edward  Westby  1 8 1 8  -1 904 

Vansittart,  Robert  Gilbert, 

Baron  1881-1957 

Vardon,  Henrv  William  #1870-1937 

Varley,  Henry  #1835-1912 

Vaughan,  Bernard  John  1847-1922 

Vaughan,  David  James  1825-1905 

Vaughan,  Dame  Helen 

Charlotte  Isabella 

Gwynne-.  See 

Gwvnne-Vaughan  1879-1967 

Vaughan,  Herbert  Alfred  1832-1903 

Vaughan,  (John)  Keith  1912-1977 

Vaughan,  Kate  1852P-1903 

Vaughan,  William  Wyamar  1865-1938 

Vaughan-Thomas,  (Lewis 

John)  Wvnford  1908-1987 

Vaughan  Williams,  Ralph  1872-1958 

Veale,  Sir  Douglas  189 1  -1973 

Veitch,  Sir  Harrv  James  1840-1924 

Veitch,  James  Herbert  1868-1907 

Venables,  Sir  Percy  Frederick 

Ronald  ('Peter')  1904-1979 

Venn, John  1834-1923 

Ventris,  Michael  George 

Francis  1922-1956 

Yerdon-Roe,  Sir  (Edwin) 

Alliott  Verdon  1877-1958 

Vereker,  John  Standish 

Surtees  Prendergast, 

Viscount  Gort  1886-1946 

Verity,  Hedlev  #1905-1943 

Verney,  Ernest  Basil  1894-1967 

Vernev,  Margaret  Maria, 

Ladv  1844-1930 

Vernon,  Phihp  Ewart  1905-1987 

Yernon-Harcourt,  Leveson 

Francis  1839-1907 

Verrall,  Arthur  Woollgar  1851-1912 

Vestev,  Wilham,  Baron  1859-1940 

Vezin,  Hermann  1829-1910 

Vezin  (formerly  Mrs 

Charles  Young),  Jane 

Ehzabeth  1827-1902 

Vian,  Sir  Philip  Louis  1894-1968 

Vickers,  Sir  (Charles) 

Geoffrev  1894-1982 

Vickers,  Kenneth  Hotham  1881-1958 

Vicky.  See  Weisz,  Victor  1913-1966 

Victoria  Adelaide  Mary 

Louise,  Princess  Royal  of 

Great  Britain  and  German 

Empress  1840-1901 


599 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Victoria  Alexandra  Alice 

Mary,  Princess  Royal  of 

Great  Britain  1897-1965 

Victoria  Alexandra  Olga 

Mary,  princess  of  Great 

Britain  1868-1935 

Victoria  Eugenie  Julia  Ena, 

Queen  of  Spain  1887-1969 

Villiers,  George  Herbert 

Hyde,  Earl  of  Clarendon  1877-1955 

Villiers,  John  Henry  De, 

Baron.  See  De  Villiers  1842-1914 

Villiers,  Margaret  Elizabeth 

Child-,  Countess  of  Jersey  1849-1945 

Villiers,  Victor  Albert  George 

Child-,  Earl  of  Jersey  1845-1915 

Vincent,  Sir  (Charles  Edward) 

Howard  1849-1908 

Vincent,  Sir  Edgar,  Viscount 

D'Abernon  1857-1941 

Vincent,  James  Edmund  1857-1909 

Vines,  Sydney  Howard  1849-1934 

Vinogradoff,  Sir  Paul 

Gavrilovitch  1854-1925 

Voce,  William  1909-1984 

Voigt,  Frederick  Augustus  1892-1957 

Von  Hugel,  Friedrich,  Baron 

of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  1852-1925 

Voyce,  (Anthony)  Thomas  1897-1980 

Voysey,  Charles  1828-1912 

Voysey,  Charles  Francis 

Annesley  1857-1941 


Wace,  Henry  1836-1924 

Waddell,  Helen  Jane  1889-1965 
Waddell,  Lawrence  Augustine 

(later  Austine)  1854-1938 

Waddington,  Conrad  Hal  1905-1975 

Wade,  George  Edward  #1853-1933 

Wade,  Sir  Willoughby  Francis  1827-1906 

Wadsworth,  Alfred  Powell  1891-1956 
Wadsworth,  Edward 

Alexander  1889-1949 

Wager,  Lawrence  Rickard  1904-1965 

Waggett,  Philip  Napier  1862-1939 

Wain,  Louis  William  1860-1939 

Waismann,  Friedrich  #1896-1959 
Wake-Walker,  Sir  William 

Frederic  1888-1945 
Wakefield,  Charles  Cheers, 

Viscount  1859-1941 
Wakefield,  (William)  Wavell, 

Baron  Wakefield  of  Kendal  1898-1983 
Wakley,  Thomas  (1851- 

1909).  See  under  Wakley, 

Thomas  Henry 

Wakley,  Thomas  Henry  1 82 1  -1907 
Walcan-Bright,  Gerald, 

'Geraldo'  1904-1974 

Walcot,  William  1874-1943 


Waldock,  Sir  (Claud) 

Humphrey  (Meredith)  1904-1981 

Waley,  Arthur  David  1889-1966 

Waley,  Sir  (Sigismund)  David  1887-1962 
Walkden,  Alexander  George, 

Baron  1873-1951 

Walker,  Sir  Byron  Edmund  1848-1924 

Walker,  Sir  Emery  185 1  -1933 

Walker,  Ernest  1870-1949 

Walker,  Dame  Ethel  1861-1951 

Walker,  Frederic  John  1896-1944 

Walker,  Frederick  William  1830-1910 
Walker,  Sir  Frederick  William 

Edward  Forestier 

Forestier-.  See 

Forestier-Walker  1844-1910 

Walker,  Sir  Gilbert  Thomas  1868-1958 
Walker,  Sir  Herbert 

Ashcombe  #1868-1949 

Walker,  Sir  James  1 863  -1935 

Walker,  John  1900-1964 

Walker,  Sir  Mark  1827-1902 

Walker,  Sir  Norman  Purvis  1862-1942 
Walker,  Patrick  Chrestien 

Gordon,  Baron 

Gordon- Walker.  See 

Gordon  Walker  1907-1980 

Walker,  Sir  Samuel  1832-1911 

Walker,  Vyell  Edward  1837-1906 
Walker,  Sir  William  Frederic 

Wake-.  See  Wake-Walker  1888-1945 

Walkley,  Arthur  Bingham  1855-1926 

Wall,  Max  1908-1990 

Wallace,  Alfred  Russel  1823-1913 

Wallace,  Sir  Cuthbert  Sidney  1867-1944 
Wallace,  Sir  Donald 

Mackenzie  1841-1919 
Wallace,  Philip  Adrian  Hope-. 

See  Hope-Wallace  1911-1979 
Wallace,  (Richard  Horatio) 

Edgar  1875-1932 

Wallace,  Thomas  1 89 1  -1965 
Wallace,  William  Arthur 

James  1842-1902 
Wallace-Hadrill,  (John) 

Michael  1916-1985 

Wallas,  Graham  1858-1932 

Waller,  Augustus  Desire  #1856-1922 

Waller,  Charles  Henry  1840-1910 

Waller,  Lewis  1860-1915 

Waller,  Samuel  Edmund  1850-1903 

Wallis,  Sir  Barnes  Neville  1887-1979 

Wallis,  Henry  #1830-1916 

Walls,  Tom  Kirby  1883-1949 

Walpole,  Sir  Hugh  Seymour  1884-1941 

Walpole,  Sir  Spencer  1839-1907 

Walsh,  Stephen  1859-1929 

Walsh,  William  Joseph  #1841-1921 

Walsh,  William  Pakenham  1820-1902 

Walsham,  Sir  John  1830-1905 

Walsham,  William  Johnson  1847-1903 


6oo 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Walshe,  Sir  Francis  Martin 

Rouse  1885-1973 

Walter,  Sir  Edward  1823-1904 

Walter,  John  1873-1968 

Walter,  (William)  Grey  #1910-1977 

Walton,  Arthur  1897-1959 

Walton,  Frederick  Parker  1858-1948 

Walton,  Sir  John  Lawson  1852-1908 

Walton,  Sir  Joseph  1845-1910 

Walton,  Sir  William  Turner  1902-1983 
Wand,  (John)  William 

(Charles)  1885-1977 

Wanklyn,  James  Alfred  1834-1906 
Wansbrough-Jones,  Sir  Owen 

Haddon  1905-1982 
Wantage,  Baron.  See  Lindsay 

(afterwards  Loyd-Lindsay), 

Robert  James  1832-1901 

Warburg,  Edmund  Frederic  1908-1966 
Warburg,  Sir  Siegmund 

George  1902-1982 

Warburton,  Adrian  1918-1944 

Ward,  Sir  Adolphus  William  1837-1924 
Ward,  Barbara  Mary, 

Baroness  Jackson  of 

Lodsworth  1914-1981 
Ward,  Sir  Edward  Willis 

Duncan  1853-1928 
Ward,  Francis  ('Frank') 

Kingdon-.  See 

Kingdon-Ward  1885-1958 

Ward,  Ham  Leigh  Douglas  1825-1906 

Ward,  Harry  Marshall  1854-1906 

Ward,  Henry  Snowden  1865-1911 

Ward,  Ida  Caroline  1880-1949 

Ward,  James  1843-1925 

Ward,  John  1866-1934 

Ward,  Sir  Joseph  George  1856-1930 
Ward,  Sir  Lancelot  Edward 

Barrington-.  See 

Barrington-Ward  1884-1953 

Ward,  Sir  Leslie,  'Spy'  1 85 1  -1922 
Ward,  Man-  Augusta  (Mrs 

Humphry  Ward)  1851-1920 
Ward,  Robert  McGowan 

Barrington-.  See 

Barrington-Ward  1891-1948 

Ward,  Wilfrid  Philip  1856-1916 
Ward,  William  Humble,  Earl 

of  Dudley  1867-1932 

Wardlaw,  William  1892-1958 

Wardle,  Sir  Thomas  1831-1909 

Ward-Perkins,  John  Bryan  1912-1981 
Ware,  Sir  Fabian  Arthur 

Goulstone  1869-1949 

Waring,  Anna  Letitia  1823-1910 

Waring,  Sir  Holburt  Jacob  1866-1953 

Warington,  Robert  1838-1907 
Warlock,  Peter,  pseudonym. 

See  Heseltine,  Philip 

Arnold  1894-1930 


Warne,  Frederick 
Warneford,  Reginald 

Alexander  John 
Warner,  Charles 
Warner,  Sir  George  Frederic 
Warner,  Jack 

Warner,  Sir  Pelham  Francis 
Warner,  Reginald  Ernest 

('Rex') 
Warner,  Sylvia  Townsend 
Warner  Allen,  Herbert.  See 

Allen 
Warr,  Charles  Laing 
Warre,  Edmond 
Warre-Cornish,  Francis 

Warre 
Warren,  Sir  Charles 
Warren,  Max  Alexander 

Cunningham 
Warren,  Sir  Thomas  Herbert 
Warrender,  Sir  George  John 

Scott 
Warrington,  Percy  Ewart 
Warrington,  Thomas  Rolls, 

Baron  Warrington  of  Qyffe 
Warwick,  Countess  of.  See 

Greville,  Frances  Evelyn 
Waterhouse,  Alfred 
Waterhouse,  Sir  Ellis 

Kirkham 
Waterhouse,  Paul 
Waterlow,  Sir  Ernest  Albert 
Waterlow,  Sir  Sydney  Hedley 
Waters,  Horace  John.  See 

Warner,  Jack 
Waters,  William  Alexander 
Wates,  Neil  Edward 
Wates,  Sir  Ronald  Wallace 
Watkin,  Sir  Edward  William 
Watkins,  Henrv  George 

('Gino') 
Watson,  Albert 
Watson,  Arthur  Ernest 
Watson,  Sir  Charles  Moore 
Watson,  David  Meredith 

Seares 
Watson,  Sir  David  Milne 

Milne-.  See  Milne- Watson 
Watson,  Foster 
Watson,  (George)  Hugh 

(Nicholas)  Seton-.  See 

Seton-Watson 
Watson,  George  Lennox 
Watson,  (George)  Neville 
Watson,  Henry  William 
Watson,  Sir  (James)  Angus 
Watson,  Janet  Vida 
Watson,  John,  'Ian  Maclaren' 
Watson,  John  Christian 
Watson,  Sir  (John)  William 
Watson,  Sir  Malcolm 


1825-1901 

1891-1915 
1846-1909 
1845-1936 
1895-1981 
1873-1963 

1905-1986 
1893-1978 

1881-1968 
1892-1969 
1837-1920 

1839-1916 
1840-1927 

1904-1977 
1853-1930 

1860-1917 
1889-1961 

1851-1937 

1861-1938 
1830-1905 

1905-1985 
1861-1924 
1850-1919 
1822-1906 

1895-1981 
1903-1985 
1932-1985 
1907-1986 
1819-1901 

1907-1932 
1823-1904 
1880-1969 
1844-1916 

1886-1973 

1869-1945 
1860-1929 


1916-1984 
1851-1904 
1886-1965 
1827-1903 
1874-1961 
1923-1985 
1850-1907 
1867-1941 
1858-1935 
1873-1955 


6oi 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Watson,  Sir  Patrick  Heron  1832-1907 

Watson,  Robert  Spence  1837-1911 
Watson,  Robert  William 

Seton-.  See  Seton-Watson  1879-1951 
Watson,  William,  Baron 

Thankerton  1873-1948 
Watson-Watt,  Sir  Robert 

Alexander  1892-1973 

Watt,  Alexander  Stuart  1892-1985 

Watt,  George  Fiddes  1873-1960 

Watt,  (John)  David  (Henry)  1932-1987 

Watt,  Margaret  Rose  1868-1948 
Watt,  Sir  Robert  Alexander 

Watson-.  See  Watson-Watt  1892-1973 

Watts,  George  Frederic  1817-1904 

Watts,  Henry  Edward  1826-1904 

Watts,  John  1861-1902 

Watts,  Sir  Philip  1846-1926 
Watts-Dunton,  Walter 

Theodore  1832-1914 
Wauchope,  Sir  Arthur 

Grenfell  1874-1947 
Waugh,  Alexander  Raban 

('Alec')  1898-1981 

Waugh,  Benjamin  1839-1908 
Waugh,  Evelyn  Arthur  St 

John  1903-1966 

Waugh,  James  1831-1905 
Wavell,  Archibald  Percival, 

Earl  1883-1950 

Wavell,  Arthur  John  Byng  1882-1916 
Waverley,  Viscount.  See 

Anderson,  John  1882-1958 

Wayne,  Sir  Edward  Johnson  1902-1990 

Weatherhead,  Leslie  Dixon  1893-1976 

Weaver,  Sir  Lawrence  1876-1930 

Webb,  Alfred  John  1834-1908 

Webb,  Allan  Becher  1839-1907 

Webb,  Sir  Aston  1849-1930 
Webb,  Clement  Charles 

Julian  1865-1954 

Webb,  Francis  William  1836-1906 

Webb,  Geoffrey  Fairbank  1898-1970 
Webb,  (Martha)  Beatrice 

(1858-1943).  See  under 

Webb,  Sidney  James 

Webb,  Mary  Gladys  1 88 1  -1927 

Webb,  Philip  Speakman  1831-1915 
Webb,  Sidney  James,  Baron 

Passfield  1859-1947 

Webb,  Thomas  Ebenezer  1821-1903 
Webb-Johnson,  Alfred 

Edward,  Baron  1880-1958 

Webber,  Charles  Edmund  1838-1904 

Webster,  Benjamin  1864-1947 

Webster,  Sir  Charles  Kingsley  1886-1961 

Webster,  Sir  David  Lumsden  1903-1971 

Webster,  (Gilbert)  Tom  1886-1962 
Webster,  Dame  Mary  Louise 

('May')  (1865-1948).  See 

under  Webster,  Benjamin 


Webster,  Richard  Everard, 

Viscount  Alverstone  1842-1915 

Webster,  Wentworth  1829-1907 

Week,  Richard  1913-1986 
Wedgwood,  Josiah  Clement, 

Baron  1872-1943 

Wedgwood,  Sir  Ralph  Lewis  1874-1956 

Weeks,  Ronald  Morce,  Baron  1890-1960 
Weir,  Andrew,  Baron 

Inverforth  1865-1955 

Weir,  Sir  Cecil  McAlpine  1890-1960 

Weir,  Harrison  William  1824-1906 

Weir,  Sir  John  1879-1971 
Weir,  William  Douglas, 

Viscount  1877-1959 

Weisz,  Victor,  'Vicky'  1913-1966 

Weizmann,  Chaim  1874-1952 
Welby,  Reginald  Earle, 

Baron  1832-1915 

Welch,  Adam  Cleghorn  1864-1943 

Welch,  (Maurice)  Denton  #1915-1948 

Welchman,  (William)  Gordon  1906-1985 
Weldon,  Walter  Frank 

Raphael  1860-1906 
Wellcome,  Sir  Henry 

Solomon  1853-1936 
Welldon,  James  Edward 

Cowell  1854-1937 
Wellesley,  Dorothy  Violet, 

Duchess  of  Wellington  1889-1956 
Wellesley,  Sir  George 

Greville  1814-1901 
Wellesley,  Sir  Victor 

Alexander  Augustus  Henry  1876-1954 

Wellesz,  Egon  Joseph  1 885-1974 
Wellington,  Duchess  of.  See 

Wellesley,  Dorothy  Violet  1889-1956 

Wellington,  Hubert  Lindsay  1879-1967 

Wells,  Henry  Tanworth  1828-1903 

Wells,  Herbert  George  1866-1946 
Wemyss,  Rosslyn  Erskine, 

Baron  Wester  Wemyss  1864-1933 
Wemyss-Charteris-Douglas, 

Francis,  Earl  of  Wemyss  1818-1914 

Werner,  Alice  #1859-1935 

Wernher,  Sir  Julius  Charles  1850-1912 

West,  Sir  Algernon  Edward  1832-1921 
West,  Edward  Charles 

Sackville-,  Baron  Sackville. 

See  Sackville-West  1901-1965 

West,  Edward  William  1824-1905 
West,  Lionel  Sackville-, 

Baron  Sackville.  See 

Sackville-West  1827-1908 

West,  Sir  Raymond  1832-1912 

West,  Dame  Rebecca  1892-1983 
West,  Victoria  Mary 

Sackville-.  See 

Sackville-West  1892-1962 

Westall,  William  (Bury)  1834-1903 

Westcott,  Brooke  Foss  1825-1901 


602 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Westcott,  Frederick  John.  See 

Karno,  Fred  #1866-1941 
Wester  Wemvss,  Baron.  See 

Wemvss,  Rosslvn  Erskine  1864-1933 

Westlake,  John  1828-1913 

Westland,  Sir  James  1842-1903 
Weston,  Dame  Agnes 

Elizabeth  1840-1918 
Weston,  Sir  Avlmer  Gould 

Hunter-  1864-1940 

Weston,  Frank  1871-1924 

Westrup,  Sir  Jack  Allan  1904-1975 
Wet,  Christiaan  Rudolph  De. 

See  De  Wet  1854-1922 

Wethered,  Roger  Henry  1899-1983 

Wex,  Bernard  Patrick  1922-1990 

Weyman,  Stanley  John  1855-1928 

Weymouth,  Richard  Francis  1822-1902 
Wharton,  Sir  William  James 

Llovd  1843-1905 

Wheare,  Sir  Kenneth  Clinton  1907-1979 
Wheatcroft,  George  Shorrock 

Ashcombe  1905-1987 

Wheatlev,  Dennis  Yeats  1897-1977 

Wheadev,  John  1 869  -1930 

Wheeler,  Sir  Charles  Thomas  1892-1974 
Wheeler,  Sir  (Robert  Eric) 

Mortimer  1890-1976 
Wheeler,  Sir  William  Ireland 

de  Courcy  1879-1943 
Wheeler-Bennett,  Sir  John 

Wheeler  1902-1975 

Wheelhouse,  Claudius  Galen  1826-1909 

Wheldon,  Sir  Huw  Pyrs  1916-1986 
Whetham,  William  Cecil 

Dampier.  See  Dampier  1867-1952 

Whiblev,  Charles  1859-1930 

Whiblev,  Leonard  1863-1941 

Whiddington,  Richard  1885-1970 

Whinfield,  John  Rex  #1901  -1966 

Whipple,  Robert  Stewart  1871-1953 
Whistler,  James  Abbott 

McNeill  1834-1903 

Whistler,  Reginald  John  ('Rex')  1905  -1944 
Whitaker,  Sir  (Frederick) 

Arthur  1893-1968 
Whitby,  Sir  Lionel  Ernest 

Howard  1895-1956 
White,  Claude  Grahame-.  See 

Grahame-White  1879-1959 
White,  Sir  (Cyril)  Brudenell 

(Bingham)  1876-1940 

White,  Errol  Ivor  1901-1985 

White,  Sir  George  Stuart  1835-1912 

White,  Henry  Julian  1859-1934 
White,  John  Campbell,  Baron 

Overtoun  1843-1908 

White,  Leonard  Charles  1897-1955 

White,  Terence  Hanbury  #1906-1964 
White,  William  Hale,  'Mark 

Rutherford'  1831-1913 


White,  Sir  William  Hale-.  See 

Hale-White  1857-1949 

White,  Sir  William  Henry  1845-1913 

Whitehead,  Alfred  North  1861-1947 
Whitehead,  Sir  Edgar 

Cuthbert  Fremande  1905-1971 
Whitehead,  John  Henry 

Constantine  1904-1960 

Whitehead,  Robert  1823-1905 

Whiteing,  Richard  1840-1928 
Whitelegge,  Sir  (Benjamin) 

Arthur  #1852-1933 

Whiteley,  William  1 83 1  -1907 

Whiteley,  William  1 88 1  -1955 
Whiteway,  Sir  William 

Vallance  1828-1908 
Whitfield,  Ernest  Albert, 

Baron  Kens  wood  1887-1963 

Whitla,  Sir  William  1851-1933 

Whidey,  John  Henry  1866-1935 

Whidey,  William  Thomas  1858-1942 

Whitman,  Alfred  Charles  1860-1910 
Whitmore,  Sir  George 

Stoddart  1830-1903 

Whitney,  James  Pounder  1857-1939 
Whittaker,  Sir  Edmund 

Taylor  1873-1956 

Whittard,  Walter  Frederick  1902-1966 
Whitten  Brown,  Sir  Arthur. 

See  Brown  1886-1948 
Whitty,  Dame  Mary  Louise 

('May')  (1865-1948).  See 

under  Webster,  Benjamin 

Whitworth,  Geoffrev  Arundel  1883- 

Whitworth,  William'  Allen  1 840- 

Whvmper,  Edward  1840- 

Whymper,  Josiah  Wood  1813- 

Whyte,  Alexander  1836- 
Wiart,  Sir  Adrian  Carton  de. 

See  Carton  de  Wiart  1880- 

Wickham,  Edward  Charles  1834- 
Widgery,  John  Passmore, 

Baron  1911-1981 
Wigan,  Baron.  See  Lindsay, 

David  Alexander  Robert  1900-1975 
Wigg,  George  Edward  Cecil, 

Baron  1900- 

Wiggins,  Joseph  1832- 

Wigham,  John  Richardson  1829- 

Wigram,  dive,  Baron  1873- 

Wigram,  Woolmore  1831- 

Wilberforce,  Ernest  Roland  1840- 
Wilbraham,  Sir  Phillip 

Wilbraham  Baker  1875- 

Wilcox,  Herbert  Sydney  1890- 

Wild,  (John  Robert)  Francis  1873- 

Wilde,  Henry  #1833- 

Wilde,  Johannes  (Janos)  1891- 
Wilde,  William  James 

('Jimmy')  1892- 

Wilding,  Anthony  Frederick  1883- 


1951 
1905 
1911 
1903 
1921 

1963 
1910 


1983 
1905 
1906 
1960 
1907 
1907 

1957 
1977 
1939 
1919 
1970 

1969 
1915 


603 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Wilkie,  Sir  David  Percival 

Dalbreck 
Wilkins,  Augustus  Samuel 
Wilkins,  Sir  (George)  Hubert 
Wilkins,  William  Henry 
Wilkinson,  Ellen  Cicely 
Wilkinson,  George  Howard 
Wilkinson,  (Henry)  Spenser 
Wilkinson,  James  Hardy 
Wilkinson,  Sir  Nevile 

Rodwell 
Wilkinson,  Norman 
Wilkinson,  Sir  (Robert 

Francis)  Martin 
Wilks,  Sir  Samuel 
Will,  John  Shiress 
Willcocks,  Sir  James 
Willcox,  Sir  William  Henry 
Willes,  Sir  George 

Ommanney 
Willett,  William 
William  Henry  Andrew 

Frederick,  prince  of  Great 

Britain  (1941-1972).  See 

under  Henry  William 

Frederick  Albert,  Duke  of 

Gloucester 
Williams,  Alfred 
Williams,  Alwyn  Terrell 

Petre 
Williams,  (Arthur  Frederic) 

Basil 
Williams,  Charles 
Williams,  Charles  Hanson 

Greville 
Williams,  Charles  Walter 

Stansby 
Williams,  Edward  Francis, 

Baron  Francis-Williams 
Williams,  Sir  Edward  Leader 
Williams,  Ella  Gwendolen 

Rees,  'Jean  Rhys' 
Williams,  Eric  Ernest 
Williams,  Evan  James 
Williams,  Sir  Frederic 

Calland 
Williams,  Sir  George 
Williams,  (George)  Emlyn 
Williams,  Sir  Harold  Herbert 
Williams,  Hugh 
Williams,  Ivy 
Williams,  John  Carvell 
Williams,  Sir  John  Coldbrook 

Hanbury-.  See 

Hanbury- Williams 
Williams,  Sir  John  Fischer 
Williams,  Kenneth  Charles 
Williams,  (Laurence 

Frederick)  Rushbrook 
Williams,  Norman  Powell 
Williams,  (Owen)  Alfred 


1882-1938 
1843-1905 
1888-1958 
1860-1905 
1891-1947 
1833-1907 
1853-1937 
1919-1986 

1869-1940 
1882-1934 

1911-1990 
1824-1911 
1840-1910 
1857-1926 
1870-1941 

1823-1901 
1856-1915 


1832-1905 

1888-1968 

1867-1950 
1838-1904 

1829-1910 

1886-1945 

1903-1970 
1828-1910 

1890P-1979 

1911-1983 

#1903-1945 

1911-1977 
1821-1905 
1905-1987 
1880-1964 
1843-1911 
1877-1966 
1821-1907 


1892-1965 
1870-1947 
1926-1988 

1890-1978 

1883-1943 

#1877-1930 


Williams,  Ralph  Vaughan.  See 

Vaughan  Williams 
Williams,  Raymond  Henry 
Williams,  (Richard)  Tecwyn 
Williams,  Sir  Roland  Bowdler 

Vaughan 
Williams,  Rowland,  'Hwfa 

Mon' 
Williams,  Thomas,  Baron 

Williams  of  Barnburgh 
Williams,  Watkin  Hezekiah, 

'Watcyn  Wyn' 
Williams,  Sir  William  Emrys 
Williams,  Winifred.  See 

Strong,  Patience 
Williams-Ellis,  Sir  (Bertram) 

Clough 
Williams-Freeman,  John 

Peere 
Williamson,  Alexander 

William 
Williamson,  Henry 
Williamson,  James,  Baron 

Ashton 
Williamson,  John  Thoburn 
Willing,  Victor  James  Arthur 
Willingdon,  Marquess  of.  See 

Freeman-Thomas,  Freeman 
Willink,  Sir  Henry  Urmston 
Willis,  Sir  Algernon  Usborne 
Willis,  Henry 
Willis,  William 
Willock,  Henry  Davis 
Willoughby,  Digby 
Wills,  Sir  George  Alfred 
Wills,  Leonard  Johnston 
Wills,  William  Henry,  Baron 

Winterstoke 
Wilmot,  John,  Baron  Wilmot 

of  Selmeston 
Wilmot,  Sir  Sainthill  Eardley- 
Wilshaw,  Sir  Edward 
Wilson,  Sir  Arnold  Talbot 
Wilson,  Arthur  (1836-1909). 

See  under  Wilson,  Charles 

Henry,  Baron 

Nunburnholme 
Wilson,  Sir  Arthur  Knyvet 
Wilson,  Charles  Henry,  Baron 

Nunburnholme 
Wilson,  Charles  McMoran, 

Baron  Moran 
Wilson,  Sir  Charles  Rivers 
Wilson,  Charles  Robert 
Wilson,  Charles  Thomson 

Rees 
Wilson,  Sir  Charles  William 
Wilson,  Edward  Adrian 
Wilson,  Eleanora  Mary 

Cams-.  See  Cams- Wilson 
Wilson,  Ernest  Henry 


1872-1958 
1921-1988 
1909-1979 

1838-1916 

1823-1905 

1888-1967 

1844-1905 
1896-1977 

1907-1990 

1883-1978 

1858-1943 

1824-1904 
1895-1977 

#1842-1930 
1907-1958 
1928-1988 

1866-1941 
1894-1973 
1889-1976 
1821-1901 
1835-1911 
1830-1903 
1845-1901 
1854-1928 
1884-1979 

1830-1911 

1895-1964 
1852-1929 
1879-1968 
1884-1940 


1842-1921 

1833-1907 

1882-1977 
1831-1916 
1863-1904 


1869-1959 
1836-1905 
1872-1912 

1897-1977 
#1876-1930 


604 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Wilson,  Frank  Percy  1889-1963 

Wilson,  George  Fergusson  1822-1902 
Wilson,  Sir  Gerald  Hugh 

Tyrwhitt-,  Baron  Berners. 

See  Tyrwhitt-Wilson  1883-1950 

Wilson,  Sir  Graham  Selby  1895-1987 

Wilson,  Sir  Henry  Hughes  1864-1922 
Wilson,  Henrv  Maitland, 

Baron  1881-1964 

Wilson,  Henry  Schutz  1824-1902 

Wilson,  Herbert  Wriglev  1866-1940 

Wilson,  Sir  Horace  John  1882-1972 

Wilson,  Sir  Jacob  1836-1905 

Wilson,  James  Maurice  1836-1931 

Wilson,  Sir  (James)  Steuart  1889-1966 

Wilson,  John  Cook  1849-1915 

Wilson,  John  Dove  1833-1908 

Wilson,  John  Dover  1881  -1969 

Wilson,  John  Gideon  1876-1963 

Wilson,  (John)  Leonard  1897-1970 

Wilson,  Joseph  Havelock  1858-1929 

Wilson,  Peter  Cecil  1913-1984 
Wilson,  Samuel  Alexander 

Kinnier  1874-1937 

Wilson,  Sir  Samuel  Herbert  1873-1950 

Wilson,  Walter  Gordon  1874-1957 

Wilson,  William  1875-1965 

Wilson,  William  Edward  185 1  -1908 
Wimborne,  Viscount. 

See  Guest,  Ivor  Churchill  1873-1939 

Wimperis,  Harrv  Egerton  1876-1960 

Wimshurst,  James  1832-1903 
Windsor,  Duke  of.  See 

Edward  VIE  1894-1972 
Windsor,  (Bessie)  Wailis, 

Duchess  of  1896-1986 

Windus,  William  Lindsav  1822-1907 

Winfield,  Sir  Percy  Henry  1878-1953 
Wingate,  Sir  (Francis) 

Reginald  1861-1953 

Wingate,  Orde  Charles  1903-1944 
Winn,  Sir  (Charles)  Rodger 

(Noel)  1903-1972 
Winn,  Rowland  Denys  Guy, 

Baron  St  Oswald  '  1916-1984 
Winner,  Dame  Albertine 

Louisa  1907-1988 

Winnicott,  Donald  Woods  #1896-1971 
Winnington-Ingram,  Arthur 

Foley  1858-1946 

Winstanley,  Denys  Arthur  1877-1947 

Winstedt,  Sir  Richard  Olof  1878-1966 
Winster,  Baron.  See 

Fletcher,  Reginald  Thomas 

Herbert  1885-1961 

Winter,  Sir  James  Spearman  1845-1911 
Winter,  John  Strange, 

pseudonym.  See  Stannard, 

Henrietta  Eliza  Vaughan  1856-1911 
Winterbotham,  Frederick 

William  1897-1990 


Winterstoke,  Baron.  See 

Wills,  William  Henry  1830-1911 
Winterton,  Earl.  See 

Tumour,  Edward  1883-1962 
Winton,  Sir  Francis  Walter 

De.  See  De  Winton  1835-1901 

Wise,  Thomas  James  1859-1937 

Wiskemann,  Elizabeth  Meta  1899-1971 

Withers,  Hartley  1867-1950 

Witt,  Sir  Robert  Clermont  1872-1952 
Wittewronge,  Sir  Charles 

Bennet  Lawes-.  See 

Lawes-Wittewronge  1843-1911 
Wittgenstein,  Lud wig  Josef 

Johann  1889-1951 

Wittkower,  Rudolf  1901-1971 

Wittrick,  William  Henry  1922-1986 

Witts,  Leslie  John  1898-1982 
Wodehouse,  John,  Earl  of 

Kimberley  1826-1902 
Wodehouse,  Sir  Pelham 

Grenvilk  1881-1975 

Wolf,  Lucien  #1857-1930 
Wolfe,  Humbert  (formerly 

Umberto  Wolff)  1886-1940 

Wolfe-Barry,  Sir  John  Wolfe  1836-1918 
Wolfenden,  John  Frederick, 

Baron  1906-1985 

Wolff,  Gustav  Wilhelm  #1834-1913 
Wolff,  Sir  Henrv  Drummond 

Charles  1830-1908 

Wolff,  Martin  1872-1953 

Wolff,  Michael  1930-1976 

Wolfit,  Sir  Donald  1902-1968 
Wollaston,  Alexander 

Frederick  Richmond  1875-1930 

Wolmark,  Alfred  Aaron  1877-1961 
Wolmer,  Viscount.  See 

Palmer,  Roundell  Cecil  1887-1971 

Wolpe,  Berthold  Ludwig  1905-1989 
Wolselev,  Garnet  Joseph, 

Viscount  1833-1913 
Wolverhampton,  Viscount. 

See  Fowler,  Henrv  Hartley  1830-1911 

Wontner,  Arthur  #1875-1960 

Wood,  Charles  1866-1926 
Wood,  Charles  Lindley, 

Viscount  Halifax  1839-1934 
Wood,  Edward  Frederick 

Lindley,  Earl  of  Halifax  1881  -1959 

Wood,  Francis  Derwent  1871-1926 

Wood,  Sir  (Henry)  Evelyn  1838-1919 

Wood,  Sir  Henry  Joseph  1 869  -1944 

Wood,  Sir  (Howard)  Kingsley  1881-1943 
Wood,  Matilda  Alice  Victoria, 

•Marie  Lloyd'  1870-1922 

Wood,  Sir  Robert  Stanford  1886-1963 

Wood,  Thomas  1892-1950 

Wood,  Thomas  McKinnon  1855-1927 

Woodall,  William  1832-1901 

Woodcock,  George  1904-1979 


605 


DICTIONARY  OF  NATIONAL  BIOGRAPHY 


Woodgate,  Walter  Bradford 
Woodham-Smith,  Cecil 

Blanche 
Woodruff,  (John)  Douglas 
Woods,  Sir  Albert  William 
Woods,  Donald  Devereux 
Woods,  Edward 
Woods,  Henry 
Woods,  Sir  John  Harold 

Edmund 
Woods,  Samuel  Moses  James 
Woodward,  Sir  Arthur  Smith 
Woodward,  Sir  (Ernest) 

Llewellyn 
Woodward,  Herbert  Hall 
Woolavington,  Baron.  See 

Buchanan,  James 
Wooldridge,  Harry  Ellis 
Wooldridge,  Sidney  William 
Woolf,  (Adeline)  Virginia 
Woolf,  Leonard  Sidney 
Woolgar,  Sarah  Jane.  See 

Mellon 
Woollard,  Frank  George 
Woolley,  Sir  (Charles) 

Leonard 
Woolley,  Frank  Edward 
Woolley,  Sir  Richard  van  der 

Riet 
Woolton,  Earl  of.  See 

Marquis,  Frederick  James 
Wootton,  Barbara  Frances, 

Baroness  Wootton  of 

Abinger 
Worboys,  Sir  Walter  John 
Wordie,  Sir  James  Mann 
Wordsworth,  Dame  Elizabeth 
Wordsworth,  John 
Workman,  Herbert  Brook 
Wormall,  Arthur 
Worms,  Henry  De,  Baron 

Pirbright.  See  De  Worms 
Worrell,  Sir  Frank  Mortimer 

Maglinne 
Worthington,  Sir  Hubert 
Worthington,  Sir  Percy  Scott 
Worthington-Evans,  Sir 

(Worthington)  Laming.  See 

Evans 
Wren,  Percival  Christopher 
Wrenbury,  Baron.  See 

Buckley,  Henry  Burton 
Wrench,  Sir  (John)  Evelyn 

(Leslie) 
Wright,  Sir  Almroth  Edward 
Wright,  Basil  Charles 
Wright,  Charles  Henry 

Hamilton 
Wright,  Sir  Charles  Theodore 

Hagberg 
Wright,  Edward  Perceval 


1840-1920      Wright,  Helena  Rosa  1887-1982 

Wright,  Joseph  1855-1930 

1896-1977      Wright,  Sir  Norman  Charles  1900-1970 

1897-1978      Wright,  Robert  Alderson, 
1816-1904  Baron  1869-1964 

1912-1964      Wright,  Sir  Robert  Samuel  1839-1904 

1814-1903      Wright,  Whitaker  1845-1904 

1868-1952      Wright,  William  Aldis  1831-1914 

Wright,  Sir  (William)  Charles  1876-1950 

1895-1962      Wrong,  Sir  George 
#1867-1931  Mackinnon  1860-1948 

1864-1944      Wroth,  Warwick  William  1858-1911 

Wrottesley,  Sir  Frederic  John  1880-1948 

1890-1971      Wrottesley,  George  1827-1909 

1847-1909      Wycherley,  Ronald.  See  Fury, 

Billy  1941-1983 

1849-1935      Wyld,  Henry  Cecil  Kennedy  1870-1945 

1845-1917      Wylie,  Charles  Hotham 
1900-1963  Montagu  Doughty-.  See 

1882-1941  Doughty-Wylie  1868-1915 

1880-1969      Wylie,  Sir  Francis  James  1865-1952 

Wyllie,  Sir  William  Hutt 
1824-1909  Curzon  1848-1909 

1883-1957      Wyllie,  William  Lionel  1851-1931 

Wyndham,  Sir  Charles  1837-1919 

1880-1960      Wyndham,  George  1863-1913 

1887-1978      Wyndham,  John.  See  Harris, 

John  Wyndham  Parkes 
1906-1986  Lucas  Beynon  1903-1969 

Wyndham,  John  Edward 
1883-1964  Reginald,  Baron  Egremont 

and  Baron  Leconfield  1920-1972 

Wyndham  (formerly  Moore), 
1897-1988  Mary,  Lady  1861-1931 

1900-1969      Wyndham  Goldie,  Grace 
1889-1962         Murrell.  See  Goldie  1900-1986 

1840-1932      Wyndham-Quin,  Windham 
1843-1911  Thomas,  Earl  of  Dunraven 

1862-1951  and  Mount-Earl.  See  Quin  1841-1926 

1900-1964      Wyn-Harris,  Sir  Percy  1903-1979 

Wynn-Carrington,  Charles 
1840-1903  Robert,  Baron  Carrington 

and  Marquess  of 
1924-1967  Lincolnshire  1843-1928 

1886-1963      Wynne,  Greville  Maynard  1919-1990 

1864-1939      Wynne-Edwards,  Sir  Robert 

Meredydd  1897-1974 

Wynyard,  Diana  1906-1964 

1868-1931      Wyon,  Allan  1843-1907 

#1875-1941 

1845-1935 

Yapp,  Sir  Arthur  Keysall  1869-1936 

1882-1966      Yarrow,  Sir  Alfred  Fernandez  1842-1932 

1861-1947      Yate,  Sir  Charles  Edward  1849-1940 
1907-1987      Yates,  Dornford,  pseudonym. 

See  Mercer,  Cecil  William  1885-1960 

1836-1909      Yates,  Dame  Frances  Amelia  1899-1981 

Yeats,  Jack  Buder  1871-1957 

1862-1940      Yeats,  William  Butler  1865-1939 

1834-1910      Yeo,  Gerald  Francis  1845-1909 


606 


CUMULATIVE  INDEX 


Yco-Thomas,  Forest  Frederic 

Edward 
Yerbury,  Francis  Rowland 

('Frank') 
Yonge,  Sir  (Charles)  Maurice 
Yonge,  Charlotte  Mary 
Yorke,  Albert  Edward  Philip 

Henry,  Earl  of  Hardwicke 
Yorke,  Francis  Reginald 

Stevens 
Yorke,  Henry  Vincent, 

'Henry  Green' 
Yorke,  Warrington 
Youl,  Sir  James  Arndell 
Young,  Sir  Allen  William 
Young,  Mrs  Charles.  See 

Vezin,  Jane  Elizabeth 
Young,  Edward  Hilton,  Baron 

Kennet 
Young,  Francis  Brett 
Young,  Sir  Frank  George 
Young,  Geoffrey  Winthrop 
Young,  George,  Lord 
Young,  Sir  George 
Young,  George  Kennedy 
Young,  George  Malcolm 
Young,  Gerard  Mackworth-. 

See  Mackworth- Young 
Young,  Sir  Hubert  Winthrop 
Young,  Sir  Robert  z\rthur 
Young,  Stuart 


Young,  Sydney  1857-1937 

1902-1964      Young,  William  Henry  1863-1942 

Young,  Sir  William 
1885-1970         Mackworth  1840-1924 

1899-1986      Younger,  George,  Viscount 
1823-1901  Younger  of  Leckie  1851-1929 

Younger,  Sir  Kenneth 
1867-1904         Gilmour  1908-1976 

Younger,  Robert,  Baron 
1906-1962  Blanesburgh  1861-1946 

Younghusband,  Dame  Eileen 
1905-1973  Louise  1902-1981 

1883-1943      Younghusband,  Sir  Francis 
1811-1904         Edward  1863-1942 

1827-1915      Yoxall,  Sir  James  Henry  1857-1925 

Ypres,  Earl  of.  See  French, 
1827-1902         John  Denton  Pinkstone  1852-1925 

Yule,  George  Udny  1871-1951 

1879-1960 
1884—1954 

1908-1988      Zaharoff,  Sir  Basil  #1849-1936 

1876-1958      Zangwill,  Israel  1864-1926 

1819-1907      Zangwill,  Oliver  Louis  1913-1987 

1837-1930      Zee,  Philip  1909-1983 

1 9 1 1  -1 990      Zetland,  Marquess  of.  See 
1883  -1959  Dundas,  Lawrence  John 

Lumlev  1876-1961 

1884-1965      Zimmern;  Sir  Alfred  Eckhard  1879-1957 

1885-1950      Zulueta,  Francis  de 

1871-1959  (Francisco  Maria  Jose)  1878-1958 

1934-1986      Zulueta,  Sir  Philip  Francis  de         1925-1989 


607 


(